Page 59 of Sins and Secrets

“If you had one chance to do whatever you wanted with the mafia and nobody would try to fight you on it, what would you do?” I don’t want to tell him what’s really on my mind. He would get too close. See too much of me.

“I don't know,” he says as he pulls up to the iron gates and punches in the code. “I have a lot of things that I would want to do, but we don’t live in a world where nobody would fight me on those things. I have people waiting for me to slip up every way I turn.”

“Alright,” I say as he parks the car in front of the house. “Think about it. Pretend that just for tonight, the world is a perfect place and you could change anything you wanted in the famiglia. Nobody would ever come for you. Nobody would try to fight you. What would you do?”

He sighs as we walk into the house. “I don’t know. I’m tired of everyone thinking that they are better than everyone else. People will do and say what they need to if they want to get ahead. My father and brother were great at creating a toxic environment for everyone around them.”

“How would you be different, then?” I ask as we walk to my room. I want to go sit beneath the stars and the pretty lights as we talk, surrounded by tropical plants in a place that feels like our own little paradise.

“Everybody would have to earn what they have. Women would have equal places among the men. If you don’t earn what you have, then you start over again. There is no blaming others when you are passed over on a promotion or an opportunity. I want them to see me as the bad guy, instead of seeing everyone else that way.”

“Why do you have to be the bad guy?” I lead him out to the far side of the courtyard where an outdoor sofa bed sits. There is a curved canopy hanging over it, soft white curtains cascading down either side.

Alessio reaches for a light switch on the wall to turn on the string lights overhead. “Someone has to be the bad guy. Right now, I’m still seen as weak. I know I am. It’s been ten years of being in control, but the men who came to their positions under my father and brother still see me as weaker than they were.”

“So,” I say as I climb onto the sofa bed and lean back into the cushions. “In a perfect world — one where you could turn the Marchetti mafia into anything you wanted — you would still be the bad guy.”

”It’s the only option there is.” He climbs onto the bed beside me, looping an arm over the back. “Someone has to be the bad guy.”

“I fail to see why it has to be you. Why couldn't you be a leader who was respected instead of one who was feared?”

“Marchettis are men who earn respect through being feared.”

“Do you think that is true respect?” I shuffle a little closer to him. “I think that you are more capable than you realize, but you keep using your dead brother and father as an excuse to not step up and take full control. You let men who were alive when the dinosaurs roamed the earth whisper in your ear and tell you the way that things should be.”

“The same way that you’re telling me the way things should be?” The corner of his mouth twitches as he stares at me.

“I haven’t told you what I thought you should do with the mafia once tonight, though I’ve had plenty of opportunities to. I’m questioning why you seem to allow others to run the mafia for you.”

“It’s easier than creating waves.”

“No great empire was built by a man who was too afraid to make waves.”

Alessio sighs and leans back, closing his eyes. “Maybe I don’t want to build a great empire. Maybe, in another world where everything is perfect, I would be working a normal job with a wife and kids. I wouldn’t have killed anyone. I wouldn’t have flown us to another state over a war that is on the horizon.”

“You have chance after chance to walk away and leave the mafia to another. You could pick up tomorrow and leave if you really wanted to.”

“Blood in, Billie, but death to get out. You know that as well as I do.”

I nod and close my eyes, pushing away the guilt that rises at those words. He doesn’t know that I’m planning to leave. It won’t be death out for me. I will get to have the life I want.

I wish he could have the life he wants.

When I open my eyes, Alessio is looking at me. There are a thousand different questions lingering in his eyes, but he doesn’t voice any of them. Instead, he sighs and looks away.

“So,” I say, sensing the need for a change in topic. “How about that casual sex trend the kids are all about these days?”

Alessio bursts out laughing, the tension in the air fading away. I laugh with him, staring up at the gauzy white canopy above me.

He takes my hand and kisses the back of it, driving the butterflies in my stomach wild. There are more and more moments like these where I see the person beneath all the shit going on in his life. There are glimpses of a man who is terrified of who he is.

It’s that man that interests me the most. The one who hides away from the world while being able to take control of everyone around him. The man who is calm in a crisis, even though his own life is falling apart.

I move to straddle his lap, my heart racing in my chest. I may not know what I’m doing when it comes to Alessio, but if I have a few more weeks left with him, I may as well make the most of them.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” he asks, his tone surprisingly playful as his hands land on my hips.

I roll my hips, feeling his cock harden beneath me. “I told you that I heard about this new casual sex thing. I was thinking of trying it.”

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