Grieved Loss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 3)

by Adelaide Forrest

  It felt like the sudden loss of his father had affected him more than I’d ever known, and that made me feel like a terrible mother because I hadn’t seen it.

  He was so like his father sometimes, so stoic and hesitant to show emotion. “Okie dokie,” Axel said, shoving the last bite of bagel into his mouth and rushing off to go play video games like I’d promised he could after breakfast.

  “Wash your hands!” I shouted after him, shaking my head when I heard him veer off toward the bathroom instead of the couch.

  “And what about you, Princess? How did you sleep?” Ryker asked, and Ines peered up at him hesitantly.

  “Bad dream,” she whispered, turning to cling to me. I couldn’t be surprised, with everything that had changed in the last few days I’d have been more surprised if she didn’t have nightmares than if she did.

  But Ryker winced at her confession, shaking his head with a pained smile. “Maybe tonight will be better.” He patted the top of her head and then turned to look out the front door window. “Dante is here. Why don’t you come meet him first, Sunshine?” he asked, and I nodded as I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Mommy will be right back, okay peanut?” I asked her, and she nodded as she went back to chewing on her bagel bite by bite.

  The man stepping out of the SUV was much smaller than Ryker, not that it was a tough task. His hair had gone mostly grey, though he couldn’t have been a day over forty years old. He wore a suit, and it seemed so comically overkill that I couldn’t help but laugh. He’d worn a suit to come hang out with me and my two kids while he made sure I didn’t run off. “Dante works for Enzo, who runs security for the Bellandis. He’s the best of the best, and he’ll make sure nothing happens to the three of you when I’m not around,” Ryker said as I stepped outside the front door.

  “Mrs. Fiore,” Dante said, stepping up to hold out a hand for me to shake. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Latour. My name is Calla Latour,” I corrected him, and I ignored Ryker’s jaw clenching with my words.

  “Why don’t we just go with Calla, then?” Dante asked, eyeing Ryker like he might be eaten alive. It wouldn’t surprise me. He must have needed a lot of protein to maintain that body mass.

  “I’ve got to go, but I’ll be back soon. Today shouldn’t take long,” Ryker said, tugging me into his side and turning my face up. He kissed me before I could protest, drawing back with a grin that made me want to punch him in the throat.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, deciding to be bold. It pissed me off that I would be stuck in Ryker’s home when he wouldn’t even be there. Disgusted me to think of myself as a prisoner, particularly when it seemed like my jailor could change with only a moment’s notice. I didn’t know Dante or Ryker, yet they just expected me to trust them with my kids’ lives.

  “Don’t ask questions you know I can’t answer,” Ryker grunted, taking a few steps toward where the Maserati already waited for him. “As you so kindly pointed out, you aren’t my wife. You can know those kinds of details once we’re married.” He grinned at me like he hadn’t just turned my world on its head with a declaration of marriage.

  He was in for a surprise, because I would never remarry.

  I’d never put myself at risk for the pain that came along with losing a husband again. Not after what it had been like to bury the first.

  I wouldn’t do it with a second.

  “Do you want me to fuck him too? Or is that only when you’re my jailor?” I asked, intentionally being difficult. I could kill the man for putting me in this situation where I had to tolerate a stranger.

  Ryker’s face twisted into a scowl, and he glanced over at Dante, whose skin paled in the face of Ryker’s wrath. “I like Dante. Don’t make me hurt him to prove a point,” Ryker growled.

  “You’re insane,” I scoffed back at him, twisting my head away so I didn’t have to look at his stupid pissed off face.

  “And you’re mine,” he grunted, stepping back into my face to crash his lips to mine in a claiming kiss before he hurried to the car.

  When the Maserati started up, he met my glare through the open window before turning and driving away. When the gate closed behind him, I turned my glare to Dante as I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “I didn’t choose this, you know?” I asked, and I tried not to feel any guilt when he winced visibly. I trudged on anyway. “He won’t let us leave. He won’t let me choose for myself, and you’re okay helping him keep me locked away here?”

  “I’m just doing my job, ma’am.”

  “Well your job sucks,” I told him, turning and striding into the house. He followed only a moment later as I worked to clean Ines of the cream cheese she’d smeared all over her face. “And don’t call me, ma’am,” I ordered. He nodded, not looking the slightest bit bothered by my attitude problem.

  It would be a long day.

  Eighteen

  Ryker

  By the time I got to the warehouse, my skin danced with the edge of urgency I associated with being away from Calla and the kids. It was impossible to shake the feeling that someone would hurt them while I was gone or that they'd escape.

  That leaving them was a mistake.

  After Emilio had betrayed Lino so thoroughly, Matteo, Enzo, and I spent weeks cleaning house. Torturing our own men wasn't something we took lightly, but anyone we couldn't trust had to be tested.

  We’d trusted Emilio.

  He'd betrayed that trust, leaving a stain on our family and nearly costing us one of our women.

  It was unforgivable.

  My methods had exposed three more people who'd been complicit in the attempted sale of Samara to the cartel. To the same cartel that Miguel Cuevas ran a regional branch for.

  It felt good to know that our shit was clean, that the people who remained were loyal. Even if it meant that people like Sandro looked at me like I was the devil. I supposed he wasn't fond of the fact that I haunted his nightmares, that Matteo had used me as the boogeyman to inspire honesty.

  "If you betray me, I'll feed you to Ryker," had become his favorite line. I didn't mind being the threat that went bump in the night.

  It was a natural evolution in my career, really.

  Matteo was nowhere in sight when I stepped into the freezer and Sandro hustled out to give me privacy to work. He'd seen my blade carve through our traitors when we used them to motivate the rest of the grunts.

  I went to the corner, waiting for Matteo. While I might have once waited patiently, I twirled my knife between my fingers in anxious energy. The build-up, the anticipation, should have been half the fun.

  But my Sunshine had taken that from me. I couldn't even be mad about it.

  It was quiet inside my head. What had once been a constant rage was gone, and I didn't feel the compulsive need to make someone bleed.

  I just felt the need to fuck my woman, to remind her of exactly who she belonged to, and of what she tempted with her drunken antics. After our kiss that morning, I knew she was ready. The time had come, and I'd feel her beneath me soon enough. I just had to get home first.

  And get the kids in bed.

  I loved them like they were my own, but that didn't mean that it wasn't frustrating that I couldn't toss Calla over my shoulder, cart her upstairs, and fuck her until she couldn't remember her own name.

  Until there was nothing left but my Sunshine and her Shadow.

  Matteo and Simon finally walked in the freezer doors, and Matteo took one look at my face and laughed. "Still no, huh?" he asked.

  I grunted in response, making Simon shake his head. "Bunch of crazy fucks. I swear," he muttered, moving to the other corner to watch the show. He looked like he considered leaning against the wall and then thought better of it. It was a smart choice, given that blood had a tendency to splatter. I didn't exactly spend my free time cleaning the fucking walls.

  And our cleaning crew could only come after I'd killed the fuck in the chair.

  If they came at all. />
  "I don't know anything else. I swear," he mumbled, his voice a rasp like he'd spent a year wandering the Sahara.

  "Sandro!" Matteo yelled. "How's he supposed to talk if you don't water him?" Sandro hurried into the room with a water bottle in his hands, holding it to the man's lip so he could take greedy gulps of water.

  He'd throw it up.

  I'd seen enough vomit for a few days. "That's enough," I grunted, and Sandro pulled back to scurry to the very edge of the room.

  "Kid’s loyal," Simon chimed in. "But damn do his balls need to drop a bit. What did he think this was? Playtime with glitter and sequins?"

  "He's young," Matteo returned, and there was a light bite to his words. One I recognized as a man who thought about his future sons needing to harden up for the role they'd be expected to fill.

  I immediately thought of Axel, because even though he wasn't my biological child, he was mine all the same. I’d raise him in the family.

  Calla wouldn't like that, but I could already see the boy was born to do it. His head for numbers meant he'd probably end up working with Lino, but he'd be in the family, regardless.

  "You were fifteen when you slit a man's throat," Simon pointed out. Matteo shrugged, but we both knew that he wouldn't raise his sons the same way his father raised him. It was only Ivory who had pulled him out of the darkness he'd been destined for, and even after he'd had to walk away from her, he'd worked to guide the business to endeavors that endangered innocent people as little as possible.

  He had a list of rules, of tenets that weren't to be broken.

  Not if you wanted to survive in his city, anyway.

  "When will Miguel leave the city?" Matteo asked.

  "Within the next week," the guy admitted and his eyes went down to his arm where it remained wrapped in a towel. I stepped forward, grabbing the edge and yanking it off. It took all the dried blood, all the potential for healing, with it, and fresh blood welled to the surface immediately as he moaned in pain. "Please! I swear that's all I know."

  Stalking back to my table, I picked up my filet knife from yesterday. I normally took excellent care of my tools, cleaning them after every use, so the sight of the dried blood on the blade made me pause.

  Then I touched it to his cheek. "Do you think I can carve out your eyeball before you die?" I asked him, tapping the pointed tip of the blade against the spot just beneath his eye.

  "He's done it before," Simon said. "Pretty sure you've taken both eyes and an arm before someone died."

  "Oh, that's right," I sighed. "Guess that means you'll have plenty of time to feel pain then."

  He thrashed in the chair, and I used one hand to pry his eyelid open. As the blade approached his eye, any normal man with information would have confessed. But there was nothing but silence aside from his pathetic whimpering.

  "Put him down. He knows nothing else. We got what we needed anyway," Matteo sighed dramatically, and I nodded to him. My blade shifted, swiping across his throat so quickly he didn't even have time to register the change in threat. I watched the life bleed from his eyes, the same way blood poured from the straight line across his throat.

  When I turned back, I tossed the knife to Sandro. "Clean that," I grunted. "And put the fucking body and the chair in the incinerator. Call the cleaners to deal with the rest of the mess," I told him.

  "Yes, Ryker."

  "There's a good boy," Matteo said, sarcasm in his voice as he followed me out the door. "You in a hurry?"

  "Fuck you, Bellandi!" I called, climbing into the Maserati while he and Simon roared their laughter behind me.

  I didn't care, because I still had to go to the store before I could go home.

  ✽✽✽

  The stuffed wolf in my hands was adorable, with vivid blue eyes that echoed the fierceness of his face.

  I could only hope it would do the trick for my Princess and keep the bad dreams away. I wouldn't tolerate Ines suffering in her sleep.

  With the wolf in my hands, I wasn't sure what kind of mess I'd expected to walk into when I got home, but Dante showing off pictures of his own kids and sitting at the table with a coffee in his hands wasn't it.

  I'd thought my hellcat would tear him to shreds for his complicity in what she still saw as her imprisonment. Instead, she'd apparently saved all that vitriol for me, because when I stepped in the door from the garage the smile died from her face and she leveled me with a fierce glare.

  Dante sensed the change in energy, wisely standing from his place at the table and moving for the front door. "Bye Dante!" Axel called, and Ines peeped up from her little corner nook where she was pretending to bake cookies.

  "Bye!"

  "Do you need me tomorrow?" he asked me.

  "Nope,” I said, taking care to control my voice. Even just the sight of my Sunshine in her floral dress was enough to make my cock go rigid in my jeans, and I still had hours to go before I could get her beneath me.

  Fucking shit.

  “I’ll walk you out,” I told Dante, retreating out the front door alongside him so we could talk in privacy. Calla’s friendly nature with him rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn’t help the suspicion that flooded me. “How were they?” I asked, walking him to his car in the driveway.

  “Kids were great. Sweet as could be and behaved so well for their mom. Calla was prickly at first, but she seemed to mellow out as time went by and she realized I wasn’t going to bite or be demanding. Honestly seems like she’s starved for adult interaction. You should probably do something about that.” He grinned as he got in the car. "Call me when you need me.”

  I stalked back into the house with a mocking set to my lips. I’d do something about it alright.

  "Gonna take a shower, and then I'll come down and see what I can cook up for dinner," I told Calla when I stepped into the house. She didn't move, her glare just growing heavier and heavier on me with every moment that passed.

  It was safe to say she was pissed.

  I turned to Ines, leaning down and holding the wolf out to her. She looked at it for a moment, studying me in confusion. "A wolf protects his young, right?" I asked her, and I watched her eyes go over to where one of her story books about a little white wolf sat on the coffee table.

  "Me?" she asked.

  "Yes you, Princess. I thought he could protect you from the bad dreams." I told her, and she leapt up to wrap her arms around my neck for a hug before she snatched the wolf out of my hands.

  "Ines, what do you say?" Calla asked, ever the mother.

  "Thank you, ‘yker!" Ines went over to show her dolls that sat on the couch her new toy, and I turned my eyes back to Calla with a smile. Hers were narrowed in on my waist, and I followed the gaze down to a red stain I hadn't noticed near the fly of my jeans.

  Shit.

  She swallowed visibly, licking her lips as the glare faded from her face in favor of a more nervous expression.

  "Calla—" I started.

  "Later," she said, nodding her head toward the kids.

  I knew she was right, knew without a doubt that we could not talk about the blood on my pants in front of the kids, but I hated the look on her face. I’d need to be more careful, but I wasn’t used to having to worry about someone seeing blood when I came home. The thought had never even crossed my mind.

  All I’d done was slit a throat, for fuck’s sake.

  I went up to shower anyway, but only after I called the guard on duty to let him know to be extra alert.

  I wouldn't take any chances Calla might try to take the kids and run.

  I washed the filth off my skin so I could be clean enough to not to soil my family with the blood of my enemies.

  Nineteen

  Calla

  I did not believe in violence.

  I did not believe in violence.

  I did not believe in violence.

  Maybe if I said it enough times, I’d finally believe it.

  But as I stared at the back of his giant head, all I could think was t
hat it would make a wonderful soccer ball. We even had a net and everything.

  At first, I’d thought the red stain on the fly of his jeans was lipstick. My body had filled with the fire of rage and indignation, given that he locked me away, claimed to own me, touched me, and then went out and got his rocks off with another woman when he couldn’t slap his meatballs against my ass earlier that morning. Then I’d gotten even more pissed off when I realized it pissed me off, and that I was jealous. I shouldn’t care if he got his rocks off elsewhere, since I had zero intention of riding his monster dick.

  When I realized it might be blood, that pissed off had melted into full-blown fury. He’d touched my daughter. Let her hug him when he had blood on his hands.

  Pants.

  It didn’t matter.

  I didn’t know if I’d rather it was blood or lipstick and that bothered me. I should have wanted it to be lipstick, because that meant he hadn’t been out murdering people or doing whatever the hell it was Ryker did for the Bellandis.

  He stepped outside, going to the grill where he had a piece of salmon cooking for me, kindly separated from the cheeseburgers he’d grilled for him and the kids. They desperately wanted them, even though Ines had never even had a cheeseburger.

  Ines pointed at the cheeseburgers on the tray when he came inside, “Meat?”

  “Yeah, baby girl. Cheeseburgers are meat,” Ryker answered when I stood off to the side, chopping vegetables for a salad to go with them.

  “So you aren’t a Pescatarian like mom then?” Axel asked, stirring macaroni with dressing.

  “Hell no. Do I look like a Pescatarian? I eat meat. Next you’ll tell me your Mom thinks rock music is just noise.”