Page 44 of Alessio

“Will do, son.”

Once Corrado had ended the call, he gave Ginevra his attention. She continued standing in the doorway not coming further into the room or moving away.

“You need something?”

She pointed at the bookshelves. “I picked out a book yesterday, but I didn’t take it with me. I hadn’t finished my other one, so …”

Corrado nodded and gestured at the shelves. “Go ahead. This space is as much yours as it is ours while you’re here.”

She passed him a curious glance, but Corrado didn’t bother to ask what for. He figured it was better he talked like Ginevra had to share the same spaces he and Alessio did daily because it was true.

She belonged here.

With them.

They needed to figure it out, too.

Ginevra moved into the office, and crossed the space with quick, quiet steps. She bent down to pull a book from the third shelf, like she had known where she left it, and straightened back up with it in her hand, ready to leave.

Before she did, she flipped it open to the title page, and a soft noise of surprise escaped her. That gained Corrado’s attention again, but she wasn’t even looking at him. Instead, her focus was on the book in her grasp.

“Something wrong?”

Ginevra glanced up, a soft smile curving her cheeks. “No, I … there’s a note here, is all.”

“Pardon?”

She turned the book around so that Corrado could see what she meant by a note. There, a yellow sticky note with familiar handwriting scrawled across it stuck to the page. He was unable to read what Alessio had written on the note, but he still recognized the bold cursive lettering.

Corrado felt his smirk growing. “From Les.”

She shrugged. “Seems so.”

“What does it say?”

“That I will like the second half more, and to skip the first,” she said, laughing. “He gave me the page numbers of his favorites, too. It’s another book of poetry—that’s all.”

Not at all something Corrado enjoyed.

Or appreciated.

Yet, Ginevra and Alessio shared that, and he found it fascinating. “Did you show him that book when you picked it out yesterday?”

“No, I came in and looked it over before putting it back.”

Right.

But those shelves …

All those books.

They were Alessio’s. He’d picked every single one and decided where they should go on the shelves. He recognized them front to back because not a single book went into his library if he didn’t read it cover to cover. If one of those books moved, Alessio would know about it.

Which meant …

He’d been watching for which books Ginevra picked out on her own.

“I’m sure it seems silly,” Ginevra said, rolling her eyes, “But … it’s nice.”