Page 73 of Sin & Secrets

Danny slides herself onto my lap far too easily.

“Have you forgiven me yet?” she purrs in my ear.

I glance over at the backstage door, but Cas hasn’t emerged yet. “I’ll give you about three seconds to get off me before I make a scene.”

The last time I saw her was that night at theElectrix.I thought she might have finally understood that our little arrangement was over, but considering the stench of alcohol on her breath, it seems she’s not making particularly rational decisions right now.

She scowls at me. “Please. You can’t seriously think we believe you’d settle down with someone like Bellini.”

The name catches me off guard. “What? Who are you talking about?”

Danny laughs. Her golden hair cascades down her back as she throws back her head. “You haven’t changed a bit! You’ve been fucking her all this time, but you still don’t know her name?”

She keeps talking, but it becomes background noise to the thoughts racing through my mind.

Danny is talking about Cassandra. Cassandra Bellini.It was a common enough name. Except…

It wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.

CarmineBellini.The man who sold Guild intel to the Cartel had a family. At least, he used to before his wife divorced him.

Seventeen years ago.

At the same time, Cassandra moved from Brooklyn to Ohio at the age of eight with only her mother.

CarmineBellini.Whose only friend in my father’s inner circle was Marco Chiavari. Whose daughter had been childhood friends with Cassandra.

But perhaps the most damning piece of evidence was that Cassandra’s father died a month ago.

When CarmineBellinihad shot himself in the head before my very eyes.

“You know it’s true,” Danny is saying, but I can barely hear her over the ringing in my ear. “Let’s just get back to the way things were.”

Cassandra can’t know. Couldn’t know. Could she?

Could she have been playing me this whole time to enact some kind of sick revenge?

I can’t believe that. Refuse to. She’s been through too much for that to have been an act. I had seen the truth in her eyes when she’d bargained for her protection.

Besides, she’s been alone with me in my own home countless times. Countless, veryvulnerabletimes, and yet she’s done nothing to take advantage of that.

But why is she here? Now? After seventeen years, magically appearing only a week before Carmine’s death?

If her mother had taken her to Ohio to getawayfrom Carmine and the Guild and all the pressures of the Italian Mafia, why would she suddenly know to come back now? Why not come as soon as she turned eighteen?

Is it all just a tragic coincidence? Carmine finally found the courage to reach out, only to die before he got the chance to meet.

Unless…somehow, heknewhe was going to die.

But what kind of father would drag their estranged daughter into something like that? He must have known his life was on the line when he betrayed the Guild. Would he really endanger her like that? For the sake of his own closure?

“You are going to do great things, Rocco.”

None of this makes any sense. Every question only branches out into five more.

Somehow, this has to be connected to the missing rat. The timing is just too perfect. I just need to figure outhow.

A pair of lips press against mine, and I’m abruptly torn from my spiral.

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