Twisted Cravings (The Camorra Chronicles 6)

Coming from her mouth, she made it sound like I deserved accolades. “I didn’t kill my mother. My brothers did.”

“You stabbed her. You wanted to kill her and you would have if your brothers hadn’t been quicker.”

She made it sound like a race too. It hadn’t been. It had all happened as if in slow motion. I didn’t like to think of that day, but it occasionally visited my dreams.

“You would have killed her, right?”

I searched Dinara’s eyes, wondering why she wanted to know. Most people felt uncomfortable with that particular topic. Killing your mother just wasn’t a good small-talk topic.

I nodded. It hadn’t been a conscious decision to stab my mother. I’d acted on pure instinct and the fierce determination to protect my brothers and their families.

“What about your mother?” I asked.

A shadow passed Dinara’s face. “Dead. She was killed.”

I nodded, wondering if she was lying or if she didn’t know the truth. Eden’s life could hardly be considered living but she definitely wasn’t dead.

She leaned in closer. “Do you still think of that day? Do you regret it?”

“My mother’s brutal death is what fascinates you most about me?” I asked, my voice harder than before.

“It is fascinating. Children are supposed to forgive and forget the wrongdoings of their mother. They are supposed to love and cherish them despite their faults. But you Falcones aren’t about forgiveness, huh?”

Challenge rang in her voice.

I put the cigarette out in my palm, a spot that wasn’t sensitive to pain anymore after I’d made a habit out of killing my cigarettes like that as a teen. Dinara’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “No, we aren’t in the business of forgiveness, Dinara.” I stood, towering over her. She didn’t move from her spot on the hood, only threw her head back to look at my face. “That’s something you should always remember.”

She hopped off my hood and pushed past me. Throwing me a dark smile over her shoulder as she strode away, she called, “Oh I know, Adamo, and I won’t forget.”

I shook my head. She was something else. My eyes followed her to-die-for body until she arrived at her own car. I had a strict no sex with other racers policy but I had a feeling Dinara wouldn’t stay in the camp for long, only until she realized she couldn’t get what she wanted or I kicked her out. It had been a long time since a woman had caught my attention like this, that I’d felt such a strong urge to conquer someone.

But if I wanted to play Dinara’s game, I needed to find out more about her and the reason for her appearance.

C.J. might know more about Eden. They’d worked together for a while, even if they’d never been close. I had been wrapped up in my own problems back then so I’d never paid much attention to the friendships between the prostitutes. If I wanted to understand Dinara, I needed to find out more about her mother first, and it was clear that neither Dinara nor Remo would be helpful in that endeavor.

I was on the road with the race camp most of the year, but we had several family occasions that required me to return to the Falcone mansion in Las Vegas. In the first few months of me living the nomad life, I’d resented coming home where I was still the youngest brother and would always be, where everyone remembered me as the unstable fuck-up and would probably always do. I’d enjoyed the freedom of a new life racing had offered me, but eventually I’d realized I missed my family and our crazy gatherings, even if Remo knew how to push all my buttons. Maybe it was payback for my teenage years.

I pulled up in front of the ginormous white mansion, and for the first time in a long time, I almost turned back around and returned to camp. For some reason, I didn’t want to be away from Dinara, as if she might vanish into thin air if I left her out of sight. Seeing her drive in the main race for the first time and holding her own, finishing in the top ten despite the strong competition, my admiration for the redhead had only grown. I wasn’t sure what she’d done to wedge herself into my brain like that, and it needed to stop. Maybe a couple of days with my family would give me the chance to stifle my fascination for the redhead and at the same time gather more information about her—if Remo was in a generous mood.

I got out of my car. The front door flew open and my nephew Nevio stormed outside. “Adamo!” he screamed. He barreled toward me and collided with my middle not five seconds later. The air rushed out of me from the impact. “Happy birthday,” I said, tousling his black hair. He pulled back to look up at me with his dark eyes. Every time I saw him, he looked a little more like my oldest brother Remo, his spitting image inside and out. I dreaded to think what kind of trouble he’d cause once he got a little older.