Scarred Regrets (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 5)

Iclimbed into the front seat of the Range Rover, shaking my head to get the excess water out of my hair. My clothes immediately soaked into the seat, but I pulled the cell out of my pocket and stared down at it.

Tossing it onto the passenger’s seat next to me with a shake of my head, I jabbed my finger into the button to start the SUV. I was better off at the Bellandi Estate with Ivory nagging me incessantly because I’d made the mistake of snuggling Luna in her first few days home from the hospital.

It wasn’t something I could do long term, and I couldn’t make Ivory understand that. Not without talking about something that was better left in the past.

Paolo De Luca had died with Francesca. He was the one who’d rocked babies to sleep and cuddled with them.

Scar was nothing but a shield and a fist.

I shifted the vehicle into gear, putting my foot on the gas and inching forward out of my parking spot only to slam on the brakes and draw back a deep breath.

Just a name. I needed a name to get the butterfly out of my head, to prove that I’d been nothing but a rich girl’s attempt at slumming for an afternoon. I shoved the gear shift back into park, reaching across the center console and taking my phone into my hand once again.

I’d hack the system. Find her name. Move the fuck on from the woman that I couldn’t seem to get out of my head, for no fucking reason. Fingers dancing over the screen, I dialed the number of the one man at the Bellandi house who could find out what I needed.

Don answered on the second ring. “Yes?” he asked, his voice distracted and no doubt entranced while watching Luna simply exist.

“I need you to look up a plate for me,” I said, listening to his irritated huff. Nonetheless, there was shuffling on the other end of the phone as he moved around in his office at the Bellandi Estate.

“Go,” he said.

I rattled off the characters, the sounds of his fingers on the keys soothing my soul. They were rhythmic, and something about the clacking brought me comfort. “What are you doing poking around Irina Ryan?” Don asked, his voice going very serious before the silence that followed.

“Am I supposed to know who that is?” I asked, rolling my eyes to the ceiling. The political scene in Chicago was far from my concern, but he only confirmed that she was so far out of my league that I had no business even approaching her in the first place.

“Judge Ryan’s only daughter. You know, the Judge Ryan?”

“Shit,” I groaned, hatred filling me. To be so connected to the Bellandis, she’d known exactly what she was looking for when she walked into that club.

A dance with danger, and she’d used me as nothing more than a conduit to get it. Nothing pissed me off more than a spoiled-ass rich girl.

There was also one other reason I had to hate her. One reason she had to hate me, though she probably didn’t know it.

“Where’s she work?” I asked, ignoring Don’s muttering on the other end about how I needed to stay away. “I’m not going there, man. I just want to let her know to be more careful.”

“She runs Fresh Start,” Don said, and it was obvious the information wasn’t something he needed to look up. “How do you not know that?”

“Why the hell would I? What do I care what some spoiled woman does with her time?” I asked, leaning forward to rest my forehead against the steering wheel.

He chuckled. “She’s the children of Chicago’s guardian angel,” he murmured. “Spoiled, maybe, but she gives it back, too.”

“I’m sure they all do,” I said, ending the call and typing the address for Fresh Start into my GPS. If the spoiled little butterfly thought she could toy with men like me and walk away unscathed, I’d give her the fucking scare of her life.

She’d never dare to wander on the dark side again.

The drive a few blocks over to the children’s center went quicker than I wanted, anticipation making my blood pump with eagerness for the confrontation coming. It was far easier to hate the woman who had turned my life upside down in a single moment than to think about the alternative.

About the obsession simmering in my blood after just a few minutes next to her, with her sweet, melodic voice in my ears.

Fresh Startwas a monstrosity of modern architecture in the center of the city. The single-story building had architectural white lines and enormous windows that seemed to cover the entire building in glass. The building was crowded, children racing around the interior with laughter on their faces.

Butterfly, Irina, kept to herself, discussing something with a woman on one side of the main space that was open to the windows. Throwing the car into park, I settled in to watch her for a few minutes as she accepted the flowers from the woman she spoke with.

Her face twisted so visibly that I could see it even from my distance, her hands rising to cover her face as she shook her head from side to side. Her cheeks turned pink with emotion while I watched, and something in my chest eased.

Whatever had driven her to drinking in the middle of the day, maybe it hadn’t been just the thrill of a quickie with a made man.

She worked to compose herself, shaking off the emotion that had taken over her and forcing a smile to her face as she bent down to lift a little girl off the floor and into her arms. She bounced her while she finished her conversation with the other woman, swaying from side to side in a well-practiced move.

She handed the little girl the bouquet of roses, unbothered when she ripped the petals off one of the flowers and dropped them at her feet.

By the time the other woman had finished talking and hurried off to do something else, Irina was surrounded by kids demanding her attention. She kept a broad smile on her face, sorting through them one at a time and talking to them or hugging them or patting them on the head.

Another little girl brought her a piece of paper that I assumed was some kind of drawing, and she touched her chest as an enormous smile took over her wide, pouty lips and filled her face.

The empty space in my chest clenched.

“Fucking shit,” I groaned, running a hand through my hair. I might have been wrong about her.

The kids of Chicago adored her, and I knew foster kids well enough to know they didn’t trust easily. But there was something about their interactions with her that made it clear she was the center of their universe.

She was their savior. An angel sent to protect them from the harsh reality of life in a city that chewed kids up and spit them out.

But her reckless behavior in going to a Bellandi-owned club in the first place couldn’t be denied, and I was overcome with the sudden realization that she was without protection, even if the protection she needed was from herself.

If I’d been a better man, I’d have walked away and left that duty to a man more deserving of her, because, armed with the new information of her identity, there was no denying the traces of her heritage on her face. She was the spitting image of her mother.

Maya Regas.

A name I’d crossed off my list in red ink years ago; the woman I suspected Irina herself didn’t even know was very much dead and rotting six feet under.

And I’d been the one to pull the trigger.