Page 10 of Forbidden Mobster's Daughter

“I just learned my mother had an affair.”

“That shouldn’t change how you think about her,” I say, but it’s a straight-up lie. I have forsaken my father many nights. If only he hadn’t worked for Mancini. If only he hadn’t carried an affair with his boss’s fucking wife for five years.

Sienna rubs her eyes. “None of this makes sense. It’s a lie. He wants to tarnish my mom’s reputation. It has to be. Until now, I’ve never heard of…” She trails off as she starts crying, tears rolling down her face.

I haven’t seen a woman cry in a few years.

My mom cried for a long while after my father died, then she slipped into autopilot.

Frustration washes over me. I scoot closer to Sienna and pat her shoulder. Damn, that does nothing. If anything, she’s sobbing louder. I swallow the lump in my throat. I wasn’t assigned to be her therapist… maybe I should just leave.

Though now that I’ve seen it, it’s worse. Leaving now is the equivalent of seeing a car wreck and not stopping to help the screaming victims. Shit.

I pull her into a hug, and she jerks away at first, moving her arms, but I embrace her tighter and shush her. The sound comes out impatient, then I remind myself this is a woman who’s hurting, and soften the shush a tad until it resembles the type of comforting sound my mom would use when I was a kid and had fallen off my bike.

This strategy works.

She stops moving, and her crying lessens.

Good. Relief pours over me. I’ll take any progress. I’ve known the truth for ten years, but she’s finding out now. Didn’t her father have a lick of sense? Why tell her now? Annoyance rumbles through me.

I could kill Mancini now for a completely different reason.

“Thank you,” she says softly and doesn’t move.

I don’t move either. I’ve sent hundreds of men to the hospital… dozens to the cemetery. They were scum of the earth, and I didn’t hesitate a second before hurting them. On the other hand, Sienna is the complete opposite. I don’t enjoy these… warm sensations swirling in my chest whenever she’s around.

She rests her hand on my chest, and embarrassment washes over me. She’s casually palming my heart, and I’m positive she can feel it beating. Fuck.

I shift a little to show her none of this is appropriate.

She takes the hint and moves away from me, withdrawing and sitting upright across from me. “Were my mother and your dad lovers?”

“Yes,” I answer before I think. “Did your father tell you?”

“No. I connected the dots a few minutes ago, before my cryfest.” She reaches for a tissue from the box on her nightstand and taps it around her face. “He said my father had an affair before she passed. You never told me why my father killed yours. And the whole story is messy.”

I rub my temples, feeling the steady throb. I’m not sure what her finding out means to me. Protecting her from the truth was never my job. Why does her sadness matter? A niggling side of me alerts me against caring. I lived through that pain and have become numb to it. Opening an old wound won’t do me any favors. “You can’t think about it too much. Otherwise, you’ll go crazy.”

She drinks the rest of her wine and then sets the glass aside. “I… do you know if your dad loved my mom?”

“I think so. Does it make a difference?”

“She had a crazy amount of sleeping pills. If she killed herself because he died because of her… I’d like to think if she truly loved him, some of it was at least worth it,” she says, with a slight smile on her pretty face.

I run my fingers down my face and sigh. I hear tenderness in her voice. It’s a soft tone that shows all her vulnerability. This girl isn’t made for the Mancini world. She shouldn’t be a part of it. Regret soars in my chest, conflicting emotions arrowing in different parts of my body because I don’t know how to handle them. Avoiding them is much easier. That has been my number one strategy. But even though I want to keep doing it, a strange, visceral part of me doesn’t let me when it comes to Sienna. “Still doesn’t make it fair.”

“Doesn’t. How… how’s your mom?” she asks.

I reach for the bottle of wine and drink the remaining red liquid from it. “She’s good. She pulled through. Made of strong stock.” My mother has mastered controlling her emotions. On the outside, she’s warm and kind, but she tucked her biggest heartache in a vault and buried the key.

Sienna scoots closer and reaches for my hand. She gives it a gentle squeeze. Her touch shoots an electrifying awareness up my arm, quickly spreading through all of me. “Matteo… I’m sorry for everything.”

“Why are you sorry? Maybe my father seduced your mom. Maybe it’s his fault,” I say and tug my hand away, but she clutches it in mine. I could easily outmaneuver her. I’m more than strong enough.

Yet here I am, hostage to a woman who can fuck up my one chance to leave unscathed. I can easily beat up a few meatheads at once, but dragging my hand from her requires a willpower I don’t currently possess.

“I don’t know what kind of marriage your father had or the problems he experienced. I can’t judge. All I know is when you’re in that fucked-up situation, looking death in the eye so many times, you have to find a little of happiness wherever you can. However you can.”

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