Forgivable Sins (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 2)

I shook my head silently, watching as his jaw clenched.

"Your brother? Does Yavin know?"

"No," I whispered.

"Did you think keeping the truth from them would stop them from raining Hell down on this city when they find out? No matter what you tell me, that man—" He spun in his chair, thrusting an arm out to point at Indulgence through the window—"is obsessed with you. You are fucking blind if you don't see that."

"Don't be ridiculous," I scoffed.

"You're only prolonging the inevitable. When he finds out, and Samara, he will find out, you had better hope that he loves you enough to shield you from the flames," Jasper huffed. "I can't even understand what you were thinking. Lying to me about that, and then not telling them. You're smarter than that."

"I thought that I wouldn't let any of you pay the consequences for my decisions. I married him. I stayed with him after the first time he hit me, and then the second and the third. I forgave him. Nobody else did that, so when it escalated, I had no one to blame but myself!"

Jasper paled, standing from his chair abruptly. "Don't you dare. You are not responsible for what he did."

"You're right. I'm not, but I am responsible for the fact that I was there. I ignored the warning signs, and I paid the consequences for that. Now, it's done. Now, I can move on, and I want to do that with my best friend, brother, and boss walking free and not visiting them behind bars!"

"Samara," he whispered, his brow furrowing as if my words hurt him physically.

"I already ruined my life. I won't ruin theirs too." Turning on my heel, I strode out of the office and closed the door behind me.

My desk chair was a welcome respite, and I tucked myself into it and woke up my computer. After a few deep breaths, I felt stable enough to get through the rest of my day.

And I did just that.

Four

Lino

Campbell had the sense to look nervous as he stepped into my office at Indulgence. No matter how much I wanted to give him his latest job and send him off to do it, we both knew I couldn’t ignore the way he’d failed with Ivory. The man wasn't dumb, and he had long since heard the news that Matteo had claimed her in every way a man could claim a woman.

I knew that Matteo had relayed him a message too.

"Sit down," I said, gesturing to the seat on the other side of my desk. I barely glanced up from the contract sitting on my desk, letting him wait for a few moments. "Matteo isn't pleased."

"I couldn't have known about the robbery before him. She went straight to his place after it happened," he protested.

I raised an eyebrow at him, finally glancing up into his ruddy face. "Ivory Torres was assaulted in a club nearly a decade ago. Why wasn't Matteo made aware of this?"

He blanched. "I—I didn't know. She never filed a report."

"You were supposed to keep tabs on her," I pointed out.

He laughed. "Keeping tabs and stalking are two very different things. Bellandi only wanted to know if she was in danger, otherwise she was persona non grata, and he didn't want to hear about it. I didn't follow her every step of her life, and if something happened, then there would be no way of me knowing. She never saw a shrink. Never went to the police. There was nothing to find, Lino."

I nodded, because I'd expected an answer like that. As much as Matteo loved Ivory, in their years apart even the mention of her name was enough to send the man spiraling into a violent rage. He wouldn't have wanted to know about her daily life, about the men she may have dated. It would have driven him crazy. "I need you to look into someone for me."

"What's the name?" he asked, pulling a small notepad out of his back pocket. Old-fashioned as always, but he was damn good at his job.

"Connor Walsh."

"Why does that sound familiar?" he asked as he jotted the name down. His pen looked ancient, and the way it scratched at the paper made my skin crawl.

"You ran him a few years back. I need an update now that they're getting divorced."

"Ah, the one who married your pretty friend. Samara Walsh?"

"Mahoney. She never took his name."