Page 57 of Dangerous Contract: Part 1

Shit. Raz didn’t want to talk about his dad. He didn’t even want to think about the man. But he didn’t stop Bryceson from saying what he had to say.

“Your dad loved his wife. That’s a good thing, right? Wrong! The problem was, she didn’t love him back. She never would’ve married him if he hadn’t blackmailed her into doing so.”

Orazio sighed. He tended to ignore the part where his father blackmailed his mother into the relationship. Instead, he always chose to dwell on the fact that his mother had never been much of a wife to his father or a mother to Raz and his brothers.

Yet, she’d moved on from them and started a new family that was thriving, a family she actually smiled at. It wasn’t that she was incapable of love. It was them, the Cattaneos. They were the ones who were unlovable.

So much so that his father had to blackmail his mother to get her attention. That was a truth Orazio learned later in life after his hatred toward his mother had already festered. It was hard to see someone in a new light after you’d gone years only seeing what you thought was darkness in them.

Even now, he ignored his father’s wrongs and focused solely on his mother’s. Maybe it was because he understood her disdain for his father but not her hatred for him and his brothers. They hadn’t done anything wrong.

Sure, they resembled their dad. And sure, they’d grown up to be more like him than her. But she was to blame for the latter. Their father had raised them. She hadn’t. How the hell had she expected them to turn out?

“It’s not the women who are the problem,” Bryce slurred. “It’s us fucking Cattaneos. What the fuck is wrong with us?”

Something in Raz shifted. Reality finally set in. A disturbing reality that forced him to see he wasn’t much different from his dad at all. He could see why Monique compared him to her scum of an ex.

Trevor was fucked up. And so was he. They were two different types of fucked up. But fucked up was fucked up, no matter how you looked at it. However, he wasn’t the only one who was fucked up. Monique was fucked up too.

Even if he hadn’t seen her in his club that first night, even if he hadn’t paid Trevor to divorce her, he and she still would’ve ended up in a situation similar to the one they were in now. Last night, he hadn’t gone to her.

She’d come to him. He hadn’t seduced her. Technically, she’d seduced him. And instead of just using him for sex as one would in a typical one-night stand, she’d made him feel things. She’d let her guard down around him.

She’d been vulnerable in front of him, triggering a protective instinct in him that had been reserved for family only. If she hadn’t wanted to be a part of his family, she shouldn’t have made him feel that way.

The smiles she’d given him, the gentle caresses and shy glances, that wasn’t some shit you did with a stranger. You didthat with someone you felt a connection with. Or, at least, that was what he’d thought those types of things were reserved for.

But Monique had done that withhim, meaning she didn’t see him as just some one-night stand. He was more than that in her eyes. But, this morning, she’d awakened and pretty much saidthanks for the dick and breakfast, see ya.

She’d planned to waltz out of his life, leaving him with all these fucking feelings. Hell no. It didn’t work like that. Yeah, he needed to be responsible for his actions and the fucked up shit he’d done, but so did she.

She’d toyed with his emotions, used him as a cheap thrill, a rebound fuck. And he couldn’t let that slide. Orazio reached for his drink again. Cas pulled it away.

“I already admitted to having woman troubles,” Raz said, needing a drink badly. “I also admit that, like all the other Cattaneo men, I’m the reason for my troubles.”Part of the reason.

With a nod, Cas pushed his drink over to him. Orazio downed his drink, then tapped the bar counter, wanting more.

Cas refilled his glass. “The first step is admitting you’re the problem,” his brother told him. “The second step is figuring out how to stop being the problem. How can you stop being the problem?”

Raz sipped from his drink as he pondered his brother’s question.

“I know a way you can stop being the problem,” Cas told him.

“How?”

“Leave her alone. Problem solved. Let her go home. Don’t bother her again. Cease all contact with her. That would end her problems. Right?”

“Wrong?” Raz whispered.

“How is that wrong?” Cas asked.

“Because that would only cause more problems.”

“For who?”

For me.Leaving her alone, not being able to see her smile, hear her voice, or feel her touch, that would cause problems for Raz.

Bryce placed his hand on Raz’s shoulder. “Cousin, have you fallen in love with the wrong woman?”

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