Page 45 of Sin & Secrets

I blink hard. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Cas.”

It had been the world’s cruelest prank. I’d boarded that plane to Brooklyn after seventeen years of wondering if I would ever know my father, only to arrive in his city, days away from meeting him again, and then to receive the news.

Carmine Bellini, died by suicide.

I couldn’t mourn a man I didn’t know. And yet, the news had been heavier than I had expected it to be. Perhaps that was because I’d been so close to finding out everything I had ever wondered.

Why had he let my mother go? Why had he never tried to contact me? Did he care about us? Did he think about us at all?

Was it his guilt that had killed him?

Was it somehow my fault?

It was part of why I’d been so quick to agree to Claudio’s offer to come out here. But even that had backfired in my face.

“It sucked,” I admit quietly to the only woman who could possibly understand the kind of grief I’m dealing with, “but he’s just the man who gave me a bit of genetic material. You’re my mom. That’s all I need.”

My memories of Carmine are spliced with photos my mom kept lying around. There’s nothing solid or concrete to them at all. It’s all just a haze of ideas and projections that I can barely grasp onto.

“I know, baby.” My mother sighs again. “I’m just sorry that nothing is how you expected it to be.”

She could say that again. “Listen, it’s getting late. I just wanted you to know that I’m okay. I’ll call you again in a few days, all right?”

“You just say the word, baby, and I’ll fly out there.”

“I know.” I smile fondly at my phone. It’s nice that some things haven’t changed. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Cassy.”

An eerie silence falls over the room when I hang up. No sirens, no drunken revelers walking the streets, no tourists squealing outside my window. We may as well be a thousand miles away from Brooklyn.

Where the hell is this house?

I lie back in bed and try to settle into the quiet, desperate to ignore the demanding thoughts coursing through my brain.

I’d flirted with him. He’d asked for my help, and I’d offered to suck his cock.

What the hell was I thinking? I’d meant it as a joke…but…

Lying low to help out a criminal organization was one thing, but to make those demands had been a moment of sheer insanity.

Yes, I’d been worried about money. Yes, I’d been sick of everyone lying to me all the time. But all rational thought had apparently evaporated the moment he looked at me like…

Like I was something too precious for him to touch. As if my situation made me vulnerable and scared. As if he was somehow too honorable to besmirch my dignity.

The man who’d come home with another man’s blood on his shirt. And made ajokeabout it.

The hypocrisy is almost baffling.

Every time I think about it, I come back to the question: where the hell does Rocco Moretti’s morality lie? Because he simply can’t be both the savior of broken womenandthe breaker of men.

Can he?

I groan as I toss over to my other side. Maybe I’m just overcomplicating everything. Maybe he just wants me to play along with his little schemes without a fuss. Would he have really let me leave if I’d said no?

Where would I even go?

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