By
Melanie Munton
Scars and Sins
Brooklyn Brothers Book Two
Copyright © 2020 Melanie Munton
All rights reserved
Cover Design by L.J. Anderson at Mayhem Cover Creations
www.mayhemcovercreations.com
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This is a work of fiction and any similarities to persons, living or dead, or places, actual events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters and names are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Epilogue
More Books by Melanie Munton
Acknowledgments
About the Author
More books by Melanie Munton:
Brooklyn Brothers:
Lace & Lies
Sultry Nights:
Salsa (Sultry Nights 1)
Tango (Sultry Nights 2)
Rumba (Sultry Nights 3)
Samba (Sultry Nights 4)
Mambo (Sultry Nights 5)
Standalone romance:
King of the Court
The Unforgettable Kind
Slow Seductions series:
Casual Affair (Slow Seductions #1)
Sweet Attraction (Slow Seductions #2)
Cruz Brothers series:
Playing for Kinley (Cruz Brothers #1)
The Art of Sage (Cruz Brothers #2)
Always Mickie (Cruz Brothers #3)
Timid Souls novellas:
Stubborn Hearts
Unexpected Love
Possession and Politics Trilogy:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
We always tend to wonder how we’ll react in intense situations, don’t we?
We always ask ourselves if we’ll be courageous when the time calls for action. If we’ll be brave, selfless, heroic. It’s part of the human condition, I suppose. To speculate over our true character, which usually reveals itself during the most dire of circumstances. Life or death situations are typically the best indicator of whether or not these qualities exist in a person.
Most people never endure moments like those in their lifetime.
They’re left to always wonder if they’re the type to fly or fight. To charge or retreat. To stand tall or to cower.
I’d experienced enough of those moments in the past three months alone to last me an entire lifetime.
But this one right here might end up being my last.
A reasonable assumption, considering the fact that a deranged lunatic was currently holding a gun to my head. And if his bullet didn’t kill me, his stranglehold around my neck would probably get the job done. He was shouting at the other man, the one who had his gun aimed squarely at my captor. The one who was dripping wet from head to toe, much like the two of us were. The one who didn’t look scared or frazzled in the least, but who was standing there exuding his usual brand of quiet strength and determination.
My hero.
The only indication that anything was even amiss in his world were his eyes.
I’d never seen them look so…unhinged. Furious.
Maybe even a little panicked.
I listened to my hero and my enemy exchange threats and felt my hope sink a little bit further into a black pit of despair. My enemy had no intention of letting everyone make it out of here alive. At the very least, one of us was going to die, if not all three of us.
“You’re not getting out of here with her,” my hero said defiantly. “You know that. So, let her go and we can settle this just between us.”
The arm around my neck tightened, cutting off more of my air. The demon at my back shouted expletives at my angel, so loudly my ears rang.
“There’s no way out,” my hero roared back. “But if you let her go right now, I’ll let you walk away. Free and clear. As long as you never show your face in this city again.”
I needed to feel that connection with him, however brief, to let me know we were going to make it through this. I needed him to silently tell me that everything was going to be okay. But he wouldn’t meet my eyes full-on. He’d glanced at me a time or two but had immediately shifted his attention back to the man who held me. I wanted to look into his eyes, just in case it was the last opportunity I would ever have to do so.
I wanted him to know that even though he betrayed my trust and went behind my back, I still loved him.
Unfortunately, a love like that doesn’t just vanish after the heart takes a beating.
In the end, no matter how bruised and battered it may have become, my heart still worked.
And as much as it angered me to admit, it still beat for him.
Miraculously, my enemy began to lower the gun from my head.
I was finally able to take my first deep breath ever since he’d first shoved the barrel against my temple. Maybe he actually would surrender and take the escape my hero was offering him. Me for his freedom. Even my hero started lowering his weapon, clearly willing to keep his word.
Maybe no one had to die here today.
Then my enemy’s hold tightened once again.
And I knew what was about to happen.
I also knew I couldn’t let it happen.
This was the defining moment of my life, the one where I had to choose. When I showed my true colors. Not that thoughts of bravery or heroism were running through my mind in tho
se few seconds. All I told myself was you have to save him. All I could remember thinking was that he couldn’t die in front of me. I’d already lost too many people that I loved. I couldn’t watch one more leave me.
I knew the decision I had to make really boiled down to me or him.
My enemy was either going to use that gun on the man I loved, or he was going to train it back on me and pull the trigger.
So, I chose a path and I acted.
I chose him.
And if I had it to do over again—regardless of what happened to me next—I would have made the same choice over and over again.
Love could be a blessing or a disease.
It could heal or it could wound.
It could save you, redeem you, free you.
But what I learned that day…
Was that it could also kill you.
Three months earlier
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
My head was lowered in prayer. My hands were clasped tightly in front of me with my mother’s rosary wrapped around one wrist as I knelt in the confessional booth. But my words were muttered through clenched teeth, which I highly doubted would help my cause with the priest and with God.
“It has been 336 hours…20, 160 minutes and…” I looked up at the ceiling as I did the final calculations in my head, “1, 209, 600 seconds since my last confession.”
Silence. “Uhh…”
“Two weeks, Father,” I clarified, taking pity on the poor man. I was sure he’d never heard that one before. “It has been two weeks since my last confession. I apologize. Math helps me organize my thoughts.”
And relieve stress. And altogether distract me from whatever I was trying to procrastinate dealing with. Counting, long division, calculating time or distance…anything worked so long as numbers were occupying my brain instead of my roiling emotions.
“Continue with your sins, my child,” the priest instructed.
I wondered if they trained all priests to speak in that low, monotone voice in the seminary. Did they have a special class for it? Calmness During Confession 101 or something? It was surely meant to soothe the sinner. But I had so many repressed feelings boiling up inside me, his tranquility grated on my nerves more than anything.
I blew out a heavy breath of annoyance, making my unruly wavy hair flutter over my forehead. I knew that what I was going to confess was technically a sin in the eyes of the Church, but I still felt that part of me was justified in my frustration. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure if I was seeking absolution or justification.
Admit it, you want permission to be mad.
“I’m angry with my papà,” I began as I clutched the rosary’s sharp crucifix. “He’s forced me to come home from Connecticut for the summer where he knew I had a job internship that I worked very hard to get. One that’s extremely important for my career. But I had to turn it down because he said “it’s critical that I be home right now,” though he refused to give me an actual explanation.”
I cringed.
Did that make me sound like a spoiled brat?
Seriously, though. I had graduated with my undergrad from Yale a whole year early. I’d worked my as—you’re in a church—butt off to beat out all the other candidates for that internship and had sacrificed having any kind of life to do so. The experience that internship would have provided meant I would have already been in one of the top spots in my class by the time I started medical school in August.
Which was absolutely still happening.
I didn’t care what Papà thought was “critical.” There was no way in hel—heck he was stopping me from leaving in three months. I was already enrolled in the Yale School of Medicine—it was a done deal.
Becoming a doctor had been my dream since I was a little girl.
One of my dreams, anyway.
But now, anxiety clawed within me at the idea of being behind the rest of my peers all because I was missing out on an amazing opportunity. One I had earned.
And it’s all Papà’s fault.
“Go on,” the priest prodded, cutting into my bleak thoughts.
I sighed. “He’s just being very withholding, not his usual self, which is even more frustrating. Worst of all, he didn’t leave me any choice in the matter. He just dragged me back here without any thought for what I wanted to do. As if my opinion didn’t even matter, even though it’s my life. It’s made me feel…powerless.”
Which, as far as I was concerned, was the greatest wrong someone could commit against me.
I insisted on controlling my own life.
Perhaps that was because of the horrible, unexpected events of my past, or perhaps it was just my nature. And with Papà essentially dragging me back home by my little girl pigtails while I kicked and screamed like a petulant child, I’d felt like a spectator, watching from the sidelines as my own life passed me by. He’d been treating me like a helpless pawn who was expected to watch while others led her by the hand to her own destiny.
To heck with that.
And here I thought I’d entered adulthood a long time ago.
But nope.
Time had apparently been rewound to the days where tiny little Roxy followed her father’s law to the letter because she was too afraid of disappointing him. I guess Vincenzo “Vinnie” D’Angelo didn’t realize my hero worship of him had gone out the window the day he’d shipped my butt off to a Connecticut boarding school in the first place.
He’d tossed me out years ago.
Now, he was corralling me back in.
And what I didn’t understand was why.
Guilt? Maybe he had genuinely missed me, his only daughter? Though neither of those possibilities coincided with his odd behavior.
Something big was going down.
But that fell under the category of “family business,” something I had never been privy to and something Papà had always been close-mouthed about.
“It is natural to want to control the course of everyday life,” the priest stated. “But you have to remember that only the Holy Father controls all. We have to let his will be done.”
Another cringe.
I had no idea how to do that—give up complete control. Which obviously made me a terrible person. My priest was telling me exactly what I needed to do in order to cleanse my soul, and my automatic instinct was to ignore him.
“I’ve also…lied about some things,” I said in a lower voice, as if speaking quieter would lessen the sin.
And this lie was a doozie, too.
After hearing that I’d had to turn down the internship up in New Haven, one of my professors at Yale had pulled some strings and gotten me an internship at a hospital here in New York. It may not have been the internship I’d worked for, but this hospital’s emergency room—where I eventually wanted to specialize—had a great reputation. After all, experience was experience.
Papà had no idea.
And I didn’t tell him about it because…the hospital was in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn.
In Crown Heights, of all places.
Forbidden land, as far as the D’Angelos were concerned. We’re talking Chernobyl here. Papà acted like I’d become radioactive if I ever set foot in that particular borough. If he found out I’d taken a job there and was going to be traipsing around Brooklyn thirty or so hours a week all summer…
Well, let’s just say that being locked away in a tower like Rapunzel would be like living in Versailles compared to the cage he’d probably trap me in.
Plus, he’s in Brooklyn.
The boy of my dreams.
Although he’d be a man now.
Yet another reason why I probably should have considered that entire zip code a quarantined area. Inaccessible. I didn’t need to see him and spiral back into that vicious cycle of crushing and being crushed. I wasn’t a little girl anymore, tagging along after him like a puppy on a leash.
I’d matured since then, dam—dang it!
You won’t see
him, anyway.
Right.
I was just going to be coming and going from the hospital. It wasn’t like we’d be running in the same circles while I was in town. Besides, there was no way he’d step foot in my neck of the woods over in Hell’s Kitchen, my family’s home base. And sure, maybe Crown Heights was sort of in his backyard but again, the odds of actually bumping into each other were extremely slim.
“I just don’t feel that what I’m lying about is necessarily a bad thing,” I continued, feeling more guilt pile on. “I mean, I know that breaking a commandment is wrong. But what I’m actually doing isn’t.” I’d be working in a hospital emergency room, for Pete’s sake. Helping people. “I just know my papà wouldn’t like it, so I’m conflicted.”
That’s when it hit me that coming to confession about this was a waste of my time.
You’re going to Hell.
More cringing.
But I honestly had no intention of not going through with the hospital job. If the priest was about to tell me that I needed to stop lying to Papà and refrain from doing something he wouldn’t approve of, I couldn’t in good conscience vow to do that.
I could practically hear the flames of my eternal damnation crackle to life.
I mean, who intentionally denied the wisdom of their priest? Six years ago, you would never have caught me doing something like this. I had been a good little Catholic girl and obedient daughter. I never so much as put a hangnail out of line and had been the star student in every class, in every grade, since preschool.
Funny how disaster and devastation could erase all the rules.
Obeying them had never gotten me anywhere, aside from Yale. Not that I had gone all Shaved Head Britney Spears once I’d gotten to boarding school. I’d set my own goals, and getting into med school had been at the top of the list.
But no longer did my life focus on pleasing my father. His approval had become inconsequential.
Instead, my life centered around doing what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.
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