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“Well?” he prompted when I’d yet to reply.
I thought back to last night when I’d done some digging on Maria’s date, and the man had been boring but safe. “He’s no longer in the picture, but only because she wasn’t interested.”
“Because she wants you. And you want her.”
I turned away from the window, remembering my conversation with Maria before and after Thomas’s untimely arrival. “Even if I tell her everything, I’ll screw up at some point. I don’t know how to be who she needs,” I admitted. “And I don’t want to hurt her.” Plus, who’s to say she’ll even want me now that she knows I’m a killer?
“First of all,” Alessandro began, his brows snapping together, “like, ‘tell her everything’ as in everything?” The best I could do was nod, so he continued. “Second, you’d never hurt her. That’s a nonissue.”
“Not physically. You know damn well what I’m talking about. Just because you act like you don’t have a heart doesn’t mean—”
“Sorry, man. Constantine is beeping in. I should take this.”
“Yeah, sure. You hanging up with me to get your ass chewed out by him? Likely story.” We all had our hard limits when it came to topics of conversation, and Alessandro discussing his own personal demons was never up for discussion.
The man didn’t think he had a heart. My problem? I only had half of one.
Alessandro mumbled something too low to hear, then added, “Just do us all a favor and shit or get off the pot. It’s now or never, man. Either be with her or go find someone new to distract yourself with. At the very least, you need a blow job before you blow up.”
“Great advice, asshole. Fuck you very much.” I waved my hand at the screen, motioning for him to go. “Later.” I ended the call and chucked the phone onto my bed.
Alessandro was right about one thing. I was hanging on the edge of my sanity.
My thoughts drifted back to Maria and the way her body had quickly responded to my touch, with her coming hard on my fingers as they were buried deep inside her pussy.
Fuck. My cock went hard at the memory, and I adjusted myself, realizing I’d never survive the day without relief. I needed to get off before I lost all self-control.
But Maria deserved to know the truth before deciding if she could truly love a man like me. And I needed time to be sure there wasn’t a chance I’d break her heart.
SIX
Enzo
“WHAT WAS HER NUMBER?” I remembered roaring, demanding to know how many lives the bastard had taken.
His eyes had been cold and dead as he’d blankly stared at me, refusing to answer. I’d wrapped my hand tighter around his throat. “What was her fucking number?” I’d seethed, dragging the knife in my other hand down his sternum.
The bastard had looked down at my knife, then back into my eyes, a gleam evident in them.
Seeing red, I’d snapped and stabbed him. Constantine and Alessandro had reached for me, pulling me back to prevent me from finishing him off.
“You good, Boss Man?”
Blinking a few times, I dropped my eyes to the knife in my hand, and all I could see was blood coating the blade. “What?” I muttered, freeing myself of the thirteen-year-old memory.
“You okay?” my sous-chef, Brandon, asked. “You’re off tonight. You’ve never messed up a dish.”
“I messed up a dish?” I let go of the knife and faced him.
“Yeah, man, this doesn’t taste right, too much salt.” He set a bowl of my signature red Romesco sauce in my hand. “That’s not like you.”
I snatched a spoon and tasted the sauce meant for tonight’s salmon dish, and damn, he was right. But my mind had been messed up ever since the exchange with Thomas that morning, especially the conversation afterward with Maria.
In the back of her head, she had to have known my brothers and I would never have let that animal walk away after what he did, though. Justice had failed my sister. The murderer’s lawyers had the case thrown out of trial because of evidence mishandling. No way would we let him walk away and potentially hurt someone else.
We’d wound up arrested for his murder. Constantine had tried to fall on the sword for us, but we wouldn’t let him go to jail.
But then we were offered a get-out-of-jail-free card and a fake news story about the man’s death in exchange for our souls. Though nothing in life is ever truly free.
