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She didn’t look at me. She continued listening as Ayla asked Izzy whether Rose had begun sleeping through the night.

Her fingers closed around mine as though they belonged there. Perhaps they did.

I swept my gaze around the table.

My brothers and sister had learned to live without me. They had built marriages. Raised children. Survived wars I had known nothing about. They had become people I could not claim to understand simply because we shared blood.

They didn’t need me to reclaim the place I had abandoned. They had made room for the man who contained both men. The priest who had believed in mercy. The killer who had turned his back on his family. The brother who had failed them. The man trying to stay.

They did not ask me to deny one life in order to deserve another. They asked only that I remain long enough for them to know me again.

I had spent ten years wondering whether a man like me could be forgiven. Sitting there, I understood that I had been asking the wrong question.

Forgiveness was not the end. It was the turning of a key, the opening of a door I had spent years believing was locked forever. Beyond it was the rest of my life.

Loved Unholy Saint? Zeno Orsini’s story is next. Forced into marriage with the woman who challenges everything he controls, Zeno is about to discover that some queens cannot be conquered. Here’s a sneak peek at the next book in the series:

FORCED QUEEN

Chapter One - Ayla

Blood looked black under nightclub lights. Dark and slick against skin, gleaming beneath the strobe like oil.

It painted the floor in ugly streaks. It splattered over white sneakers and got stuck beneath my nails.

Mine? His? It didn’t really matter.

The bass pounded through the underground club hard enough that the ground vibrated, shaking dust from the concrete ceiling while bodies packed the floor shoulder to shoulder, sweating through designer clothes.

The place sat beneath the city, a well guarded secret. It had no windows, and no rules. It was a place where people came to deal in dirty money and score drugs or forget their name. It was my kind of place.

I stood at the bar with Bianca Morelli, my oldest friend and the only woman stupid enough to keep company with me after all these years.

She sipped her drink and watched the dance floor.

“You promised me no fights tonight.”

She seemed jittery tonight.

I drank my whiskey. “I promised no such thing.”

“Come on, Ayla. Please don’t,” she begged.

I leaned back against the bar, letting the burn of the alcohol settle into my chest.

The room smelled like stale perfume as bodies moved like shadows under the neon lights. The patrons were hungry, aimless, and dare I say, a little pathetic.

Bianca glanced sideways at me.

“You look mean.”

“I am mean.”

She laughed as I smiled into my glass.

Bianca was soft where I wasn’t. She was pretty where I was sharp. Patient where I was violent.

We balanced each other out. Sometimes.