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

by Adelaide Forrest

  It was Ryker.

  My husband. The murderer.

  "Will the bad men who got away get caught?" Axel had asked, his face stern and solid and looking at least twice his age with the horror he'd seen that day. I'd sobbed, escaping the room so I couldn't upset him further as Ryker told him he'd make sure they could never hurt me again.

  My eyes never left the bandage on the side of my head, staring at it and remembering the way it felt to have Ryker's fingers take such delicate care of me as he cleaned the wound when we got home.

  Like he wasn't a killer.

  I knew the moment he came up behind me in the bathroom, even without looking at him. His presence was always tangible in the air, the menace and danger and absolute power that rolled off of him was something that I'd never been able to deny. I didn't know how I'd convinced myself he wasn't all that bad. That his crimes must have been less severe. That it would somehow be okay as long as he only killed other criminals who deserved it.

  Everything I'd needed to see was right in front of me, I just hadn't been able to handle the truth.

  I still couldn't handle the truth. I dropped my eyes to the sink, gripping the edge of the counter as I tried to focus on my breathing. Tried to let air into my lungs that burned for it when I felt like I was dying. Like my heart was being torn from my body. Because I'd fallen in love with a monster.

  "You keep a hatchet in your Maserati," I said, and the flat tone to my voice grated against me, making my head pound.

  "I don't like guns," Ryker said, and there wasn't a single hint of remorse in his voice. Nothing to show that he regretted killing two men, or anything even remotely close to it. He stepped up to my side, and his hand reached out to touch the edge of the bandage. The sudden movement made me flinch back, stumbling over my own feet as I tried to put distance between us. His blue eyes darkened, his face hardening into a cruel mask. He took a step toward me, his lips parting to reveal his straight teeth as he spoke so low, so quietly I might have thought it my imagination if it hadn't been for the intensity of his gaze on mine. "You do not ever flinch away from me," he growled.

  He closed the gap, and I held my ground. I didn't flinch the second time, but I released a slight whimper as he peeled the bandage back to expose the wound. He studied it, his fingers gently prodding the bruising around the edges as if testing the severity. I didn't know why, since he had no intention of taking me to a hospital.

  I had the distinct feeling it didn't bode well for me.

  "Did you really kill your family?" I whispered, and I immediately regretted the question. I couldn't handle the answer, wouldn't survive knowing—

  "Yes," he said, so simply as he studied me. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think. "Shh, Tesoro," he murmured, his voice gentling with whatever he saw on my face. I still couldn't breathe, and it felt like he'd sucked all traces of life out of me with his confession. "Breathe, Sunshine," he ordered, tapping my chest as I finally heaved in a deep soul-wrecking breath.

  His hand reached up, touching the pulse point on my throat and feeling it pound. Too quickly, too hard.

  Too much.

  Lifting me into his embrace, he brought me to the bedroom and deposited me on the bed, and the feeling of the soft sheets beneath me seemed to spur me into action. My limbs moved in a flurry of motion, struggling and shoving and kicking him off of me. "Still, Calla," he ordered. "Do not make me hold you down for this conversation." I froze immediately, hope surging with the word conversation.

  I knew he'd want to punish me, as he always did, and that sex would be the answer. But there was time, time to think and find a way out of the situation. "My family," he breathed, and his eyes clenched shut. "Deserved everything they got."

  I gasped when his eyes flung open, the blue of them seeming to shine even brighter than normal. "I wanted nothing to do with the family business," he scoffed. "My father and his friends had a penchant for children, and my father had the unique skill of training them to be obedient. He trained my brother and I to follow in his footsteps, and to do that he made us watch. My mother just let it happen. She didn’t stop any of it." Tears flooded my eyes, but they couldn't seem to fall.

  I could only imagine the horror of being raised by a man who trained children for sexual servitude. "Ryker—"

  "My brother was a willing participant by the time he turned fourteen. Lost his virginity to a girl in our basement, that he and my father had painstakingly trained. I was only eight at the time. So in the face of my brother's success, as my father put it, I was the continual disappointment. Especially when I'd yet to fuck any of them by my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t want to learn. I refused to train the kids they brought in. I had nightmares every night of the things they did in that basement. So, I ran. I just left. I didn't report what I'd seen, because I knew enough to know they would make me disappear before I could do something that stupid. I thought if I ran, they'd let me live my life in peace," he rasped, hanging his head in shame. "I was wrong and stupidly naïve. A year and a half later, my brother ran Lauren off the road and killed her and the baby when I refused my father's attempts to draw me back to the family business."

  "I—" I didn't know what to say. What would I have done in that situation? I wanted to say that I'd have gone to the police, but having seen the power Matteo wielded over the Chief of Police, I understood with more clarity that it would have been pointless and dangerous. And the FBI offered no more help when a very powerful man, like a senator, were involved.

  "After that happened, I came to the Bellandis. Matteo's father offered to help me if I agreed to work for him, so he trained me to fight. I'd already put on muscle mass since leaving home, so it was just a matter of teaching me to fight and torture and kill. I learned on the streets, and when I was ready, he gave me permission to kill them. He made it go away with the police, even if it was outside his territory. The Bellandi name reaches everywhere," Ryker explained. "So yes, Sunshine. I killed my family. I massacred my family, and if Franco Bellandi had allowed it, I'd have massacred all the men I knew who bought the kids my father trained."

  "I'm so sorry for what you went through," I whispered, but I still couldn't move to embrace him. I felt frozen solid as I stared at him, and the horrors he must have seen at such a young age made me cry.

  I wanted to comfort him, but I didn't know how to comfort something that powerful. That overwhelming.

  There was nothing that could be said in the face of that kind of pain.

  "You should have come to me and asked me after Jason showed you those pictures. Not let him drag you to his car and pick up the kids to leave me.” The sudden shift back to anger was startling. I'd known it would come, had known that there would be hell to pay if he caught me.

  "I was in shock," I whispered, and it was true. I'd never decided to leave him. I'd never made any decision, but I'd known I needed time to figure it out.

  "You left with another man!" he yelled, and I clenched my eyes shut to avoid the intense way he glared at me. “You should have fought harder.”

  "It wasn't like that!" I protested. "I just needed to think, and nobody would let me think."

  "You put yourself at risk. You put the kids at risk," he plowed on, as if he didn't care to hear anything I had to say. So lost in his rage, my voice went unheard.

  "I was with a cop. I didn't think we would be in danger," I told him. "Who attacks a cop in the middle of the day?"

  "Because you know nothing about this business," he said, reaching out a hand to stroke over my cheek. I winced, the proximity to my wound making it pulse with pain. "That is exactly why you stay with your fucking security and let me keep you safe. Can you take one goddamn second to think about what it was like for me to see that car, and fucking know you'd been inside it? The last accident I saw, I pulled my dead wife's body out of," he seethed.

  I shuddered, an apology spilling from my lips. "I'm so sorry, Ryker."

  "I don't want your fucking ‘sorry,’" he growled, moving so suddenly I didn'
t have time to react. He shoved the dress up my thighs and tore my underwear down. "I want you to promise me you won't do that again."

  I couldn’t give the words he wanted, not without addressing the other secret, the other betrayal that had humiliated me and made me doubt everything. “I didn’t even know your name,” I whispered.

  “The name my father gave me is not my name. I didn’t hide it from you, Sunshine. I just do not think of myself as his son. Now, stop stalling and promise me,” he growled as he spread my legs wider.

  "Ryker," I begged, wincing when he slid his hips between my thighs and freed himself from his shorts. "I didn't know. I won't risk our safety again. I promise."

  Grabbing my chin, he held my face as he stared down at me and his other hand reached down to glide himself through me. "Tell me no."

  I didn't. Couldn't seem to find the words, even though there'd been no foreplay, and I knew I wasn't ready to take him. He guided himself to my entrance, shoving inside slowly. I wasn't nearly wet enough.

  It burned. It hurt. It made me feel alive, made me feel something.

  I whimpered, but I couldn't find the words to tell him to stop. I couldn't decide if I even wanted to, despite the pain. Part of me, deep down, knew I deserved his punishment. Knew that my lack of trust in him could have been responsible for my own death. For the kids' deaths.

  "You will never leave me again, Tesoro. Tell me you understand," he ordered, as he finally seated himself inside me.

  I shivered beneath him, feeling him press against all of me and knowing that when I told him what he wanted to know, he'd take me. He'd break me. He'd find a way to put me back together again when he was done with me, but the me that had existed that morning would be gone.

  I'd be his. Even all the little pieces of my soul that I'd tried to keep for myself.

  I knew, without a doubt, that it had never been meant to end any other way. Ryker didn't know how to love without consuming.

  "I understand," I said.

  He dropped his thumb to my clit, circling it as he stayed planted inside me. Building up my desire, making me wet enough that he could take me the way he wanted without doing too much damage. "I'm going to fuck you until you're pregnant," he growled, and I stared up at him with wide eyes. "I hope you weren't intending to sleep tonight, Sunshine."

  I gasped when he punctuated it with a roll of his hips, testing my slickened channel. We both groaned, and he drew his hips back with a satisfied smile. Both hands went to my hips, lifting me to grind himself inside me before he drew back in a long, never ending withdrawal where I felt every inch of him. His piercing dragged through me, adding another sensation to his torment. When he shoved back inside, there was no part of me where I didn't feel him. With him kneeling between my legs, I had the perfect view of the glistening muscle, of every one of the ridges of his abs as he used them and worked them. He slid through my tender tissue, making sure I was ready one last time.

  And then he fucked me, holding true to the promise in his eyes. Each thrust inside me went straight to my soul, like I could feel the very connection between us as it pulled taut. The sight of his chest starting to glisten with sweat from his exertion was a reminder of how he'd looked with blood staining the olive skin at his neck and on his hands after he saved me.

  Ruthless. Savage.

  Mine.

  "Never again, Calla," he repeated, and as his hand reached up to touch my bottom lip. I realized he'd yet to kiss me, and the desire to feel his lips on mine was jarring. I needed it, needed to know that he still loved me despite his anger with me.

  He smiled at me as his hips moved, as if he could see the desire. "What will you give me?" he asked, his cock spearing through me with every hard thrust that went straight to the end of me and drew a gasp from my lips.

  I didn't know what would tumble free. Had no clue what the answer would be until the words were spoken. "A baby," I whispered. I gasped as soon as I heard the words, and his face darkened to a look of complete and utter possession.

  He dropped his weight to mine, barely restraining himself from crushing me as he moved within me. I wrapped my legs around his waist, drawing him in as deep as he could go in my desperation to feel his lips on mine. "You'll already give me that, Tesoro," he whispered. "You'll sign the adoption papers too," he ordered, and I glared up at him.

  I nodded my head hesitantly. “You’ll ask the kids first.” I still questioned if it would be the right thing to do, but in the wake of what Axel had seen, I knew it would comfort him to know that Ryker was his father legally. That he would always protect us like he had that day.

  I wouldn't let my own fears get in the way of our safety and our family again.

  Ryker thrust his hips inside me repeatedly, and when his lips finally touched mine, it was a mix of tongue and teeth.

  Biting, licking, shredding my very soul.

  I hugged him to me, needing every inch of him against me. Needing to feel him and the reminder I was alive.

  That I was safe.

  When he nibbled on my bottom lip, it sent me spiraling over the edge into an orgasm that stole the words from my throat and all I heard was the buzzing in my head. Ryker roared out his own climax, branding me with his heat and stroking his hands over my skin as he leaned just a little of his weight off me.

  He made no motion to move, didn't seem to have any interest in separating our bodies as he rolled to his back and pulled me onto his chest without ever dislodging himself. "Mine," he murmured, and I barely heard it as I drifted off to sleep.

  He woke me up an hour later.

  Fifty-Five

  Calla

  Awareness came slowly, like the sun rising over the horizon. The tightness in my body, the pain in every inch of muscle seeped in through my consciousness as I tried to stretch.

  “Easy,” Ryker whispered. “You’ll hurt for at least a few days.”

  I nodded my head, and even that motion felt like too much motion for my neck. Lifting my arm to touch the ridges of his abs, my arm protested the motion. My stomach muscles tightened and spasmed with the movement, but I traced his abs with a delicate finger.

  Cataloguing all the little scars that littered his body. They were faint, too old to be noticeable unless I really looked for them.

  But after his confession the night before, I saw them all.

  I saw them for what they were. The countless abuses he’d suffered instead of hurting other children. There was no one in the world my kids would be safer with.

  “He showed me pictures of other bodies too,” I admitted. “Did you kill them too?”

  “No,” he said with a sigh.

  “How can you be so sure?” I whispered back. “You know nothing about the victims. How could you possibly—”

  “I know, because I don’t leave bodies behind, Sunshine,” he said, gently rolling me to my back so he could lean over me. He kept his weight off me, his skin barely brushing against mine as he cupped my face in his massive hands. “They couldn’t have been mine.”

  I swallowed, picturing all the ways to dispose of a body so thoroughly. All the crime shows I’d watched, all the horrific scenarios involving acid and pigs, didn’t help the vision forming in my head. “Women and kids?”

  “Never, Tesoro. I have never killed a woman or a child aside from my mother.”

  My breath whooshed out in a rush as I contemplated my next words. I didn’t know what good they would do, but it felt too significant not to mention. In my adrenaline rush and fear from the accident, I’d neglected to tell him. “Ness was there,” I whispered.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Remember that new student I told you about? The one who came with a man and you went into a jealous rage. That’s what she told me her name was, but I don’t think anything she told me was real. She was at the accident and one of the men you killed was the one who came with her. But they were with the blond from your photos,” I said the words softly, guilt filling me. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so jealou
s, the accident never would have happened. Ryker might have had eyes on her. He might have been able to expect whatever it was they were planning.

  His body went still as he froze above me, staring down at me intently. “What photos?”

  “The ones I saw in the garage. The woman you followed for a job for Matteo. I don’t know why they were there. I didn’t exactly have time to chat, but it was them.”

  “And you’re sure? There’s no doubt? This is important, Calla.”

  I paused, contemplating the words to make him understand. “I thought you were having an affair when I saw them. I’ll never forget her face, and there was no mistaking her.” Ryker kissed me gently, vaulting from the bed to stand. “Wait there’s something else.”

  He spun, staring at me as he tugged his pants on. “What is it?” I smiled at the gruff note to his voice. The impatience as he wanted to get to work with whatever information I’d given him. If it really was that important, I imagined he needed to call Matteo.

  “There was something…” I paused, biting my lip as I struggled to sit up. My body protested with every movement, and Ryker stopped to help me. I ignored the concern in his eyes to push forward. “Off with Jason. Once my shock wore off, I knew he was too impatient. It was just too sudden, too rushed. When I called you, he told me he wouldn’t let me ruin it for him.”

  “Any idea what he meant?” he asked, his body going alert as he watched me climb from the bed. I watched the gears turn in his head, watched him try to puzzle the pieces together in a way that I was incapable of doing because I didn’t have all the information.

  “None, but it felt important,” I told him. He leaned in, kissing me firmly before he grabbed his phone off the nightstand and turned for the door.

  “Ryker,” I called. “I want to know what he was up to, and why Ness played me like that. I deserve that much.”