Page 315 of Sinfully Savage Mafia

And suddenly, the guy I know who’s inside of him, the one he’s so bent on rejecting, claws his way through that vicious exterior.

He’s not the monster he is so desperate to put on display.

With a deep, shuddering sigh, he leans back against the cushion, his eyes closed. He hasn’t moved his hand, though, and he’s still nuzzling Bella’s ears. Pretty soon, her body begins to quake and she’s snoring.

Because she’s comfortable.

And because she sees exactly what I do, the real Roman Villani.

Not the nefarious alter ago he insists on showing the world.

“I’m the youngest of all my brothers,” he murmurs, his tired voice shattering the still, tense air. “I always got away with everything because of it. My dad tried to shield me from the family businesses because he knew how dangerous things could get if I got involved too early without knowing how to handle things. But I was a rebel. I didn’t care about consequences, and it always pissed me off that they’d hold me back. I couldn’t learn if they didn’t trust me to do the work.” He runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends. “So a couple of years after your family left Sicily, I tagged along on a job that Dante did. He didn’t know it until I showed up, and to say he was angry is a huge understatement. I didn’t know what was about to go down and me being there, in the center of something really dangerous, knocked him off his game. He was doing a hit and I was in the way. I distracted him from his targets. One guy got away, the other one came after us. Shot Dante in the chest. I didn’t realize he’d been wearing a Kevlar vest, but thank fuck, he was.”

I bite down on my lower lip. “What did you do?”

He sits up and looks at me, his expression grave. “I killed him,” he says, his voice hoarse. “First guy I ever popped.”

I inch toward him. “So you saved Dante.”

“That time, yeah. But when the other guy got away, he came after my family. Opened us up to attacks from all directions. All the bottom-dwelling scumbags who were trying to claim a piece of what we had came after us because I made a mess of everything. The hit was supposed to be clean and untraceable. I fucked all of that up and it put us all in a bad place for a long time afterward.” He drops his gaze to Bella. “It’s something I know they all think about and even now, years later, I still feel like a liability, like I have to prove to them that I’m not that fucked-up kid anymore, that I can make good decisions, that they can trust me.”

Gingerly, I lower myself to the couch. “And that call with your brother?”

“It just brought everything back,” he grumbles. “Because I feel like every time they give me an inch of rope, I end up hanging myself with it. I lose sight of what’s important and shit goes sideways. I try to recover but keep sinking deeper into the mess I’ve created.”

I nibble at my fingernail. “I think you need to stop getting sucked into the past. You’re battling against it so hard that you can’t move forward. Things happen. You’ve made up for them and your brother clearly trusts you or he wouldn’t have left you in charge.”

Roman’s eyes rake over me, the icy glare melting to reveal a mix of emotions that are even more startling.

Regret, remorse, and guilt.

Color me completely confused about now.

“You can’t move forward if you keep making the same mistakes,” he murmurs. “Making the wrong choices, not seeing the writing on the wall, being so intent to follow a certain path even though I’d have known it would lead to a dead-end if I spent the time thinking about it instead of bulldozing my way toward it.” His hand creeps over to me, grazing the top of my leg. “Deciding how the hell I’m supposed to deliver on the one thing that can save our livelihood,” he rasps, his blue eyes darkening with each word spoken.

I smile at him, lacing my fingers with his. “Nobody ever said being the boss was easy,” I whisper, stroking the side of his face.

“Neither is giving up something you want more than anything,” he says.

“This life is all about choices, Roman. I learned that the hard way when my dad made his,” I say.

“Chella…” he whispers, moving closer still, careful not to disturb Bella.

“Yeah?”

“I need to tell you something.”

CHAPTER17

ROMAN

“Don’t make the mistake of cutting off ties with your father,” I say. “I’ve learned the hard way that people have reasons for doing things. They may be good reasons, may be bad ones. But before you decide to turn your back on him forever, you should listen to his.”

God only knows, my own father could have shut me out plenty of times but didn’t.

Family needs to stick together, no matter how bad things get.

And even though he caused my own family a hell of a lot of headaches and is a piece of garbage, he’s still her father. He’s still her blood.

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