Beautiful Carnage: A Dark Mafia Bully Romance (The Boys of Sinners Bay Book 1)

by Caroline Peckham

  “I’ll go look for him now,” I agreed. “Keep pressure on that wound and-”

  “No!” Royce coughed. “I mean Giuseppe shot me…he took Sloan…help her.”

  “What?” I frowned, wondering if he was delusional or something.

  “There’s something you need to know,” Royce croaked, reaching out to grasp my ankle.

  I hesitated a moment then dropped down beside him, taking his hand. I couldn’t let a dying man’s words go unheard.

  “What is it?” I pressed.

  “Years ago, when you were just a small boy, I was part of a group of men your father used to strike against the Romeros.”

  “Okay…” I frowned. The Calabresis struck at the Romeros every chance they got, so I had no idea where he was going with this.

  “One night, we got word that Evelina Romero was alone in their home with one of their boys. The second born, only four years old but a strapping little fella…”

  “Right.” I looked away from him, glancing down the corridor in case someone else might be approaching, but the house was quiet aside from Coco’s barks. “I’m going to call you an ambulance. Just keep talking to me while I’m on the phone-”

  “No!” Royce reached out and knocked my cellphone from my hand. It skittered away down the corridor and stopped outside Sloan’s room. “This is the least I deserve after everything. But I need you to hear the truth now. From someone who was there.”

  “Someone who was where?”

  “The night Angelo Romero was kidnapped. The night a little boy was stolen from his mother’s arms moments before she was murdered…”

  “You’re losing me again, Royce,” I said because the only thing I really knew about Angelo Romero was that he’d died with his mother in a house fire when the boys were all very young.

  “You’re just not listening properly,” Royce snapped. “What do you remember of your birth mother? Or father? Or siblings?”

  I frowned at the odd question. It wasn’t something I thought on much, but I did have some fuzzy memories of the family I’d had before I was put into care. “My mother used to smell of roses,” I said slowly. “And she had the softest hands…and sometimes, I think I can remember playing with another little boy. But that can’t have been a sibling because I read my file and I didn’t have any.” I shrugged.

  “A little boy with dark, curly hair?” Royce asked. “A little boy called Rocco?”

  I suddenly grasped what he was trying to say and my lip curled on a derisive snort which never seemed to quite make it out of my body. It was insane. What he was suggesting couldn’t be true. The level of cunning, denial, brainwashing that it would have taken to carry out such a plan…

  “Why?” I asked, not wanting to believe something so crazy. “Why would Giuseppe Calabresi want to steal a Romero child and then put a crown upon his head? He wants me to marry his daughter. He’d never want a Romero to-”

  “Giuseppe longed for sons more than anything. He tried for years with his wife, even had affairs but he couldn’t get them pregnant either. They resorted to IVF in the end to conceive and even at that, it took nine rounds before his wife fell pregnant. When the baby turned out to be a girl…he just lost his mind. And to rub salt into the wound, Martello Romero and his wife just kept having strong, healthy boys one after another. Rumour had it your mother was pregnant again when-”

  “Evelina Romero was not my mother,” I hissed. Though as I said it, I almost felt like I could hear the distant echo of a woman’s screams, smell smoke tainting the air…

  “I was there,” Royce growled. “Giuseppe plucked you from her arms and delivered you to a family who posed as foster carers. They fed you false information about your family, convinced you your name was Nicoli and not Angelo. They told you your true memories were dreams and showed you photographs of strangers with lies about them being your dead family. They worked tirelessly to convince you that you weren’t who you had been. And after five years, they trotted you back out again, ready for Giuseppe to sweep in like a knight in shining armour and offer you the chance to become a part of his family. He groomed you to be the son he couldn’t have and kept the true cruelty of your identity as his own twisted secret just for his amusement.”

  My lips were open but no words were coming out.

  Royce started coughing and blood poured between his lips.

  I reached out to try and brace him but he waved me off.

  “Giuseppe knows Sloan lied about the baby. He knows she tried to run back to Rocco. He’s going to kill her,” Royce wheezed.

  “No,” I breathed, my whole world caving in.

  “You have to help her. He’s taken her to the Inverno Bridge. The same place he took her mother when she tried to leave him.”

  “I thought she committed suicide?” I balked, my brain spinning with so much information that I just couldn’t process it.

  “You thought a lot of things Giuseppe wanted you to. He…always preferred a pretty lie to a dirty truth…” Royce started coughing more violently, gasping for breath as more blood fell from his mouth. I tried to help him but when he finally fell still, he didn’t draw another breath.

  I shook my head, refusing to believe he was dead, despite the way his eyes stared glassily up at the ceiling.

  I needed to know more about so many of the things he’d said but more than that, I had to help Sloan.

  I shoved myself upright and moved to retrieve my cellphone from the floor where he’d tossed it.

  Coco’s incessant barking came from the other side of the door beside me and I pulled it open for him before turning and hurrying back out of the house.

  I needed to call someone to help me. But who? Giuseppe’s men would never turn on him, not even to help his daughter. He was the head of the household. The kingpin. The don. The boss. No one stood against him and lived. And yet for some insane reason, I was planning on doing just that.

  I got into my car but before I could close the door, Coco leapt up onto my lap.

  I picked him up, meaning to move him onto the passenger seat and my fingers caught on a piece of paper which was hanging from his collar.

  I ripped it off on instinct and looked down at the scrawled note from none other than Rocco Romero himself. He spoke of love among other things and something twisted in my gut at the sight of that word. Was this why Sloan had slept with him? Had she felt such a thing towards that monster? My enemy, my rival…my brother…

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to believe that, but Royce’s story had a ring of truth to it which I just couldn’t shake off.

  At the bottom of the note, a phone number was written and my heart leapt as I spotted it.

  If there was a chance he loved her then perhaps I really did have someone I could call on for help. But was I insane to attempt such a thing? I’d hated Rocco Romero for as long as I could remember. It was as if the need to hate him had been branded into my soul. And perhaps it had been. By the devil I’d been trying to impress…

  Before I could overthink it, I dialled.

  My car linked into the call as I started driving and as the phone began to ring, I sped out of the gates. I must have been losing my mind to be calling on him of all people.

  But he might just have been the only shot I had.

  My cellphone finally rang as I was walking down the street to get pizzas for me and my brothers, which was mightily fucking depressing after getting used to Sloan’s cooking.

  Anticipation ate me alive as I snatched it from my pocket so fast I almost dropped the damn thing.

  I only took in the fact that it was an unknown number before I’d hit the button to answer it with my heart beating half out of my chest.

  “Fuck, baby you kept me waiting long enough,” I groaned. “If hearts had balls mine would be so fucking blue right now. Kinda like my actual balls which are currently, really fucking-”

  “This isn’t Sloan,” Nicoli spat and I straightened my spine as I recognised his voice.

  “Yo
u’d better not have laid a finger on her,” I growled, because the only way he could have my number would be if he’d found my note. And if that was the case, then he might have figured out that there was so much more to me and Sloan than just kidnapper and hostage. So much fucking more it cut me open and bled me dry. But if he’d punished her for that fact, then I’d personally cut him into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the sea.

  The sharks would feast on the blood of this motherfucking, stuck up, piece of-

  “I need your help, Rocco,” Nicoli demanded as if he had any right to ask anything of me.

  “Go fuck yourself.” I’d sooner cut my own dick off than help a Calabresi wannabe like him.

  “Sloan needs your help!” he shouted half a second before I could end the call.

  “What?” I asked, my heart thundering at those words. The only words he could have uttered to make me stay on that line. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Giuseppe found out about you and her. He knows about the baby, he knows about all of it. And he-”

  “What baby?” I interrupted because my fucking ears must have been malfunctioning. The world seemed to narrow in around me and I stopped walking dead in the middle of the sidewalk, causing people to curse as they almost bumped into me. But I didn’t give a shit because that fucker had most definitely said baby.

  “Your baby,” he snapped impatiently.

  “My baby…in Sloan?” I was just standing there. Just fucking standing there. Because that wasn’t possible. The doctors had told me. I’d had mumps. Mumps!

  “That’s what happens when you fuck a girl and don’t use contraception.”

  My mouth was hanging open. Because no, I hadn’t used contraception because I knew there was no fucking way I could get her pregnant. No chance at all. Even if we had been fucking like the sky would cave in if we didn’t. Even if I might as well have been giving it my best fucking shot at putting a baby into her-

  “The point is, Giuseppe knows and he’s going to kill her!” Nicoli yelled and I heard the blare of a car horn in the background.

  “Where?” I demanded, stepping straight out into the road in front of an oncoming car.

  “Inverno Bridge. I’m on my way there, but Rocco, we have to hurry-”

  “I’ll be there.” I cut the call just as the car skidded to a halt barely a foot away from me.

  I strode straight up to the driver’s door and yanked it open.

  “Get the fuck out!” I roared and despite the fact that the guy driving it was probably twice the size of me, he leapt out like a little bitch and practically pissed himself.

  I was in his seat before he’d even finished murmuring his prayers and his girlfriend was only half way out of the passenger side as I hit the accelerator.

  She fell out with a scream as I tore away from them and the doors slammed shut. I weaved traffic, climbed the sidewalk and sped down side alleys in my desperation to get to Inverno Bridge.

  I didn’t want to exist in a world without Sloan Calabresi in it. I would get to that bridge and tear Giuseppe limb from limb for even thinking about hurting her. Her and our baby. An actual, fucking baby.

  A crazed laugh spilled from my lips as I imagined the three of us together. There was this whole life waiting for me on the other side of this moment. All I had to do to claim it was cheat death. And I’d cheated meaner fuckers than him before and lived to tell the tale.

  I’m coming for you amore mio. Don’t give up.

  “Please don’t do this, Papa,” I begged for the hundredth time.

  I was sitting in the passenger seat of his car while he drove like a maniac toward the outskirts of Sinners Bay. He had one hand on the wheel while the other pointed a pistol at me. I wanted to believe he wouldn’t pull that trigger, but a more honest part of me knew he would. I’d tried to see good in him all my life when I should have been looking for the bad. If I’d let myself see it, maybe I could have escaped this fate. Maybe Royce could have too.

  We sailed along the water’s edge, the bay impossibly still, looking like a sheet of iron under the dusky evening sky. I wrung my hands together as I tried to come up with a way out, panic making my thoughts a blur.

  Papa took the next exit, racing up the hill into the forest and the road quickly fell dark beneath the canopy.

  “Where are we going?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice steady. But it wasn’t just me he was pointing that gun at. I had a whole other life to protect. Maybe if I hadn’t, I’d grab the wheel, take my chances. Because something told me I did not wanna reach the destination of this journey. But I couldn’t risk hurting this baby. I’d never forgive myself for it.

  Papa ground his jaw, not looking at me, his murky gaze set on the road.

  “You’re not thinking straight,” I said gently, reaching out to rest a hand on his knee. He smacked it away, swerving across the road and I recoiled into my seat in alarm.

  “My thoughts are crystal clear, daughter,” he growled. “Your mother was the same as you. Always day dreaming about a world outside of this one. Do you think I don’t see it? Do you think I can’t tell my own flesh and blood is ungrateful for the life I handed her?”

  “I am grateful,” I said desperately, hoping I could talk him down from this rage.

  “Ha,” he laughed hollowly. “You’re a liar like she was too. And a shitty one. The two of you have been the worst mistakes of my life.”

  “Don’t say that,” I snapped, my heart twisting sharply. “Mamma loved you.”

  “Loved me?” he snorted derisively. “She despised me. She scorned me every day. Even her body scorned me, refusing to give me a son. You’re the most spiteful thing she ever did.”

  A jagged lump pushed at my throat. His words cut deep, slicing into my heart and carving out the piece that had always held onto the hope that Papa loved me. But he didn’t. Never had. And I suddenly saw my father for what he really was: a vicious creature with nothing but hate in his heart.

  “Sloan,” he muttered to himself. “I always hated that fucking name.”

  I swallowed back the pain that was threatening to pull me apart, trying to think of a way out of this. I had to focus on my child, I had to find a way to escape for their sake. “Let me go. I’ll leave the city. I’ll stay out of your life.”

  “Pah,” he spat. “And let you run into the arms of that scum Rocco Romero like a good little slut? I won’t be humiliated by my own daughter.”

  He turned down a side road at speed, accelerating through the forest and my heart juddered as I realised where we were. I hadn’t been up here for years. Not since Mamma had died. But when I was young, she’d brought me here to play at Inverno Bridge. I’d only ever come here in the summer, throwing sticks into the river and watching them twist and spin as they raced the ones Mamma had thrown. It didn’t look anything like that now. There were no flowers or green grass, just snow and the dark water which ran like ink beneath the arch of the high bridge.

  Papa pulled up as we reached it, the concrete structure stretching out ahead of us to the other side. There was no railing, just a low wall which was covered in snow. The trees broke around the river, the steep bank running down twenty feet to the water below.

  Papa stepped out of the car, taking the keys and locking the doors the moment he left. My heart beat wildly. I opened the compartment in the dashboard, searching for a weapon. I reached under the seat, desperate to find anything to protect myself with. But there nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed to my child, because I couldn’t see a way out. I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to protect them and that was the most heart-breaking thing I’d ever experienced.

  I tugged at the door handle, pressing all the buttons to get it open but it wouldn’t unlock.

  Papa appeared at my door a moment later, wrenching it open and reaching for me.

  “No!” I screamed, throwing a kick at him. He snarled, raising his gun to point right at my head.

  I stilled, the darkness of t
he barrel calling my name. Death lived in there and it wanted to claim me. Us.

  “Get out,” he commanded and terror thumped through me. He caught my wrist and yanked me out of the car as I began to shake. Then he twisted me around and threw me against it, binding my wrists behind me with rope.

  “Please don’t,” I begged, trying to turn my head to catch his eye. “You love me.”

  His hardened gaze met mine as he tightened the binds so much I winced. “I’ve tried to love you. But you’re just like her. And now you’ll meet the same end.” He shoved me along the bridge and I whimpered.

  “You killed Mamma,” I stated, a tear running down my cheek and freezing there in the icy wind. I was reminded of her words. The last thing she’d said to me before I’d never seen her again.

  Death is the truest form of freedom.

  She must have known Father was going to kill her. She must have been so afraid. She must have walked these final steps I was taking now.

  “She had plenty of chances,” Papa growled. “As have you.” He pressed the barrel of the gun to the back of my head and pure fear ripped into me. I couldn’t do anything but keep walking, praying for another few seconds of life.

  The air seemed so crisp, so sweet, like it was begging me to keep drinking it in. The world around me was something out of a fairytale, the water rushing beneath the bridge, the trees reaching over the river, their branches glittering with icicles and a dusting of snow caught the moonlight. It was too beautiful a place to die.

  My gaze fell on a huge rock on the wall, the snow shoved away around it. My throat closed up as I stared at it. Papa must have put it there while I was searching the car and now I wished I’d fought harder before I was faced with this fate.

  I lurched backwards in fright then tried to run, darting away from him despite the gun. But this was it. Between two choices of death, I had to find life.

  Papa yanked hard on the rope binding my hands and I was forced back towards him with a shriek of terror, stumbling on the icy road as he reeled me in. He bound the other end of the rope to the huge rock on the wall and I stared at my fate, refusing to accept it. Rejecting it with every atom of my being.