Tempted by the Sinner

“That’s not a bad idea,” he said.

“Wait, really? I just threw that out there because I’m annoyed. I don’t think Dante wants to get involved.”

“Dante is perfect,” he said. “He’ll be honest. And things have gotten better between us lately. This might be what we need.”

I chewed my cheek and shifted side to side then threw up my hands.

“Fuck it,” I said.

“Perfect.” He beamed at me and put both his hands on my cheeks, pressing them together. He kissed me big and bold and made a loud smooching sound.

“Yuck,” I said when he let me go.

He laughed and walked over to where his phone sat on the counter. He picked it up and dashed off a text.

“There,” he said. “Now go email it to him.”

“He didn’t even agree to do it yet,” I said.

“Yeah, but he will.”

“Fine.” I hopped off the counter, but didn’t move. Vince turned to look at me, and I stared into his eyes. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure,” he said. “I love you, Mona. If this is what you want, then it’s what I want, too.”

I lingered there in the kitchen with him, and wondered how I got so lucky.

Three months ago, I never would have imagined I’d end up here, living with Vince in this little apartment in his father’s mansion. I knew I loved him then, but I didn’t know where things would lead us, not with a war going on, not with all the chaos.

But after that night, after the night where he killed Santos and hit the rest of the Jalisco safehouses, things settled down for a while. The Gulf cartel moved in and took over a lot of the Jalisco shipping routes.

And best of all, one of Don Leone’s tech guys, one of the younger soldiers, found a treasure trove of information on Santos’s laptop. He found logs of sales to gangs all over the country, lists of safehouses, lists of informants and soldiers, payroll for all those hired thugs, and even detailed routes they used to bring drugs up from the south. With all that information, the Gulf cartel was slowly dismantling everything the Jalisco built up north and taking over their trafficking routes.

Which left me in limbo with Vince. I kept expecting him to go back to New York, but he kept making excuses, until we stopping talking about it all together. His second-in-command ran the show up there, and by all accounts he was doing well. Vince floated from crew to crew in Philly, helping where he could, rebuilding old relationships, establishing himself again as one of the best Capos in the entire family.

Somehow, things worked between us. He did his job, and I sat up in my sweaty little hot box attic room and I did mine. He came home, fucked me wild and nasty and deep and good, and went about his business the next day. We clicked, and our love deepened, but it always felt like we were just waiting for something, waiting for the end to come around.

This article felt like the end of it all.

“I need to know something,” I said.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“New York.”

He watched me for a few seconds. “What about it?”

“Are you ever going back?” I asked. “I mean, it’s your crew up there, right? Are you ever going to go back to them?”

He took a deep breath and let it out then smiled a sad, quiet smile and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. Not unless you want to move there.”

“Vince,” I said. “I can’t ask you to give that up for me.”

“You don’t have to,” he said.

“Vince—”

“Listen to me,” he said, taking a step closer. “That crew meant a lot to me. I built it up myself, but now it’s beyond everything I could’ve imagined. They don’t need me anymore, and I’m okay with that. Ambrose can handle things from here. I don’t need to go back there, because the work is already done. But there’s so much to do here.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like be with you,” he said. “Like build a life with you. And somebody has to take over the family when my father passes, which will happen one day. I want to be that man, and there’s no way I could do it from New York. That’s obvious to me now.”

I nodded slowly. “You want to… make a life with me. And take over the family.”

“That’s the goal,” he said, coming closer. He put one hand on the small of my back, the other on my stomach. “Put a few babies in here.”

I swatted his hand away. “Not just yet,” I said.

“We’ll have some fun first,” he said, then kissed my neck, my cheek, my lips. “I promise, little Mona, you’re all mine. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good,” I said and relief hit me, flooded over me. I pressed myself against his skin and held him tight, and realized that I’d been holding this in for months now. Maybe it was why I’d taken so long to write the article. Maybe I was scared that if I finished, he’d leave me forever.