Page 62 of Syndicate of Sin Bundle

Alessa: He does???

Me: Doesn’t want you to know about it, so don’t mention it to him if you see it today. But I lost your room code.

Alessa: 87346

I curled my lips into a smirk and typed her passcode into her door, pushing it open and stepping into her stupid fucking apartment. A wave of adrenaline rushed through me at the thought of breaking into and entering someone’s home. It was illegal, but so was killing people, and this family had no problem with that.

And, come on, Cristian couldn’t expect me to sit around all day.

I had nothing to do, no work to attend anymore, and had been trapped in by all these damn guards. I had to keep myself preoccupied somehow. Breaking into Alessa’s apartment to find all the fucking dirt on her that I could was definitely a good way to keep myself busy without getting into any real trouble with Cristian.

Nobody would know.

Before anyone could see me, I shut the door and turned on the light. On the surface, this probably seemed like a terrible fucking idea—sneaking into your rival’s home, telling her that your boyfriend wanted to give her a surprise, knowing that she’d kill you if she found you snooping through her stuff.

But to me, Crazy Roxie, this sounded like a wonderful idea because it killed two birds with one stone. I could find more information about Alessa, and when she asked Cristian later about the flowers “he” had left her—because that bitch wouldn’t be able to help herself—it would prove to me if he was still into her or not. Because back at the yacht last night, he hadn’t pushed her away.

And I fucking loathed that.

After snooping around for almost twenty minutes, I found at least ten guns in her apartment, which I took all the bullets out of and tossed into the trash, a locked tablet, and a box full of pictures of Cristian and Alessa together and kissing, which must’ve been from months ago.

Nevertheless, it still fucking hurt.

They both looked so happy on the beach, a perfect couple who seemingly had no problems. A blonde beauty and a Mafia boss, who would rip your head off if you got on his bad side. And I couldn’t help but feel a bit self-conscious because I looked nothing like her. If Cristian and I took pictures like this on the beach, I’d look like some kind of emo cow with tattoos covering my arms and a stomach that wasn’t particularly flat. Not like a damn supermodel.

I blew out a deep breath and promised myself that I would never look at them again, but then I shoved them into my purse. I didn’t know why I had done it. Maybe I didn’t want Alessa to fawn over the pictures anymore, or maybe I just wanted to be angry with Cristian for ever dating someone as psychotic as her.

Continuing into her bedroom, I pulled out a notebook from her bedside drawer that had pictures of Cristian with girls throughout the years. There must’ve been twelve of them since he had just been a teenager, and each one had a red X over their faces. Except the last picture, which was a picture of me alone. Cristian and I didn’t have any pictures together yet.

My eyes widened slightly, and I snapped the book shut. Alessa was fucking insane.

After deciding to leave as soon as humanly possible, I walked out onto her balcony, snipped a couple of flowers from the back of her balcony garden, and left them with a note on her table. I’d bet that she was too stupid to even recognize the flowers that she grew herself.

Hope you enjoy these. xx

I purposely didn’t leave the roses that I bought because when Alessa thanked Cristian for them, Cristian would find out that, a few hours earlier, I had bought roses from across the street. And I didn’t want word to get out to Alessa that I left them instead of Cristian. It had been my original plan, but this was easier and would confuse that stupid asshole.

So, I slipped out of her room with them and walked back to our apartment with those pictures in my purse and a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had thought that Alessa was all talk about killing me, but apparently, she had done it many, many times before.

52

cristian

Sitting in the car with Chiara, I stared out at the river and blew out a deep breath. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? Please fucking tell me that you’re lying and that this is one big fucking joke, Chiara, because I can’t fucking do this right now.”

Chiara frowned at the river, moonlight reflecting off her dark eyes. “Alessandro told me about it. He had been looking into it during your yacht party the other night. I’m sorry, Cristian. I saw the video and …” She paused, tears welling up in her eyes. “I can’t believe that our families have ever done something like that … to children.”

“Fuck!” I balled my hands into fists and slammed one into the steering wheel. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I ran my hand through my hair, my knuckles swelling slightly. “Let me see the fucking video. I need to see if it’s her. I remember exactly what she looked like at that age.”

Instead of pulling out her phone to show me, Chiara shook her head and pressed her trembling lips together. “It’s her, Cristian. You don’t need to see it. It’s too bad. I’m afraid that you’ll do something stupid.”

“Do something stupid? Like fucking kill all those motherfuckers?” I snapped, glaring at her. “That’s what they all fucking deserve. Roxie’s entire family, every last fucking one who knew what was going on behind closed doors and didn’t do shit about it. Now, give me your fucking phone.”

After staring at me for a couple more moments, Chiara cursed under her breath, pulled her phone out of her pocket, and scrolled through Alessandro’s messages until she reached a video. “We can’t tell who the person behind the camera is, but you can hear his voice.” With a shaky hand, she gave me the phone.

I snatched it from her and clicked play, my stomach in knots. Truthfully, I didn’t want to see the video of my girlfriend getting molested by a man who was already dead, but, fuck, I needed to find out who was behind all this because these motherfuckers needed to be taken down now.

When the video started playing, I pressed my lips together and bit back a fucking sob. A sob from me—Cristian Ricci, the Manhattan devil—because nobody should ever have to experience something like that and have so much fucking trauma from it that they couldn’t even remember it happening.

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