Dirty Mafia Sinner (Dirty Mafia Kingdom #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

RILEY

He’s not coming.

My one-night stand, who turned into consecutive Friday nights and then into every night over the course of a few weeks. It was hardly the beginning of a meaningful relationship. People talk in healthy relationships. He said hello and goodbye, and between, fucked me six ways to Sunday. His touch was addictive. He was addictive.

His late-night visits became less frequent until they stopped entirely.

Three weeks now.

It’s over.

I curl a tea bag around a spoon. It’s two in the morning, a bad time for a caffeine fix. Except, I can’t sleep, so what does it matter?

He left that night after our wild fling, and I thought that was the end of it. Then, a few days later, a man in an expensive suit showed up at my apartment to install a new lock. Ciro—when I approached him later about it—was dumbfounded, and I realized he was the wrong man to thank. Not fully comprehending I’d soon be doing so in person.

My buzzer rang, waking me. It was well past midnight, but I scrambled from bed to answer the door, believing guilt had driven Emily to come over to apologize for a fight we’d had over dinner. That, or because she’d left Ciro. Because who else would show up at this hour?

Except it wasn’t Emily standing there, eyes smoldering and daring me, just daring me, to comment on his return. As if his presence didn’t make my throat go dry and words impossible. He came every Friday night, then practically every night until his visits stopped altogether.

Now, it’s over.

I squeeze the amber liquid from the tea bag. The tea’s too hot, but I drink it anyway, welcoming the burn and the reminder that even something outwardly innocent like tea can still hurt you.

The things we did, the boundaries he pushed …

He was everything I didn’t know I was searching for.

Liquid sloshes across my T-shirt and kitchen floor. “Great,” I mutter, setting everything on the counter before tearing off the shirt to rinse it in the sink. Once finished, I grab a towel, get onto my knees, and wipe up the mess, blindly making wide swooping arcs to reach liquid I can’t see while I work.

Why is it so dark in here?

Big windows bookend my apartment’s railroad-style layout, with plenty of natural light filtering in. The kitchen and small functional bathroom sit on one end, the living area square in the middle, and my bedroom on the other side. With renovations ongoing and the other apartments vacant, it’s quiet at night.

“You live in a newly renovated NYC apartment rent-free,” Emily informed me after I finally commented on how she’d bailed on being my roommate. One minute, she was crying over catching Ciro snorting coke like a character straight out of the movie Scarface , and in the next—after I suggested she move in with me “as planned”—she was defending him and attacking me. “Everything always has to be about poor, poor Riley, doesn’t it?”

This from a friend who’d picked me up from the airport, dropped me off at the curb, informed me there’d been a change in plans and she’d moved in with Ciro, then, blurting out the entry code, drove off without the slightest remorse.

I’d stood on the sidewalk, in an unfamiliar city, in front of an unfamiliar building, two suitcases at my side and my one connection to home abandoning me. Left behind with an emptiness eating away at me.

“He could charge thousands .”

“Is that why you’re dating him?” I snapped, unleashing an anger that had been brewing for months. “For his money?”

Her claws came out to sink into my jugular. “I liked you better when you barely talked.”

I stood up from the table, wavering somewhere between being the wrecking ball and the wrecked. “We’ll talk when you’re ready to hear the truth,” I said in a flat voice before walking off.

But maybe I have changed. Still broken, yet not entirely defenseless.

I submitted to him yet discovered an inner strength long absent from my life.

With a sigh, I sit back on my haunches and toss the towel at the sink. “Why did he have to end it so soon?”

A grunt disrupts the quiet. A muffled sound, which has me falling backward. I search for the source, and find it at my kitchen table, a shadowy figure seated in the dark.

My eyes shift toward the door.

“Don’t.” His voice.

Fear quickly changes to indignation. “How long have you been sitting there?” The kitchen curtains are pulled closed, shrouding the table in darkness. I can barely make out his features.

I stand, arms folded, very aware how naked I am, wearing nothing but a skimpy red thong.

He doesn’t respond. Typical. What else should I expect from a man who so reluctantly offered me his name. Al —that’s all I got. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know.”

Three weeks, and he knows?

“Come here.”

My stomach dips as I stand rooted in place, my hesitation shrouded by worry, because that voice is nonnegotiable. Yet he disappears and then reappears, and all he has for me is “I know”?

“Riley.” His tone’s laced with warning.

I close my eyes in defeat.

“Please.”

Not once, in all the time we’ve spent together, has he ever used that word. I’m the pleaser. He’s the taker. And never is the dividing line crossed.

He doesn’t deserve my obedience, though I worry how he’ll react if I completely disobey, so I meet him halfway, shuffling by him to open the kitchen curtain. Moonbeams dance across my skin, though he remains obscured by shadows.

“How did you get inside?”

“Used my key.”

“What?” I gasp. “You have a key to my apartment?”

He counters my question with one of his own. “I’ve failed, haven’t I?”

“Failed?” I stare at him, incredulous.

“At corrupting you.”

A shiver races up my spine. That voice. That tone. He makes me forget my own name. “No,” I whisper.

“Let me see,” he orders. “Unfold your arms.”

My skin heats beneath a flush. What a picture I must have made, bare-chested and crawling around on the floor. His lips have crisscrossed every inch of my body, so why this crippling shyness?

“Show me what you’re hiding, baby.”

Baby. The word feels like a soft caress from this harsh, no-nonsense man. Did he feel my absence, as much as I missed him?

I drop my arms, and my D-cup-size breasts bounce free. On my small frame, breasts this size appear bigger. And he, freakishly, loves them. Is borderline obsessed with them.

“Come here.”

I step closer. My mema’s crystal cocktail glass on the table, alongside a nearly empty whiskey bottle I don’t recognize.

He had a few drinks the night we met, but I’ve never seen him drunk.

“What’s wrong?”

His midnight black hair’s mussed, like he’s been running fingers through it. Scruff darkens his chin like he’s forgotten to shave. I’ve memorized even the curve of his lips, the cupid’s bow of his upper lip softening the rigid set of his bottom lip. I focus on the upper one, the antithesis of the steely force I’ve grown accustomed to.

How little I know about him, other than he thrives on control, domination, and filthy, dirty sex. He’s always well-groomed, hair smoothed back and face baby-bottom smooth.

But tonight … something’s upsetting him.

“Say something.”

“I’m here.”

“I didn’t notice,” I quip. Such a liar. Because I notice everything about him. The spicy lemon cologne he wears. The tension sizzling between us. His face, body, enormous dick. The way Italian bleeds into his words, especially when he’s bossy or extra dirty in bed.

“This is the last place I should be.” He drops my cell phone onto the table with a clatter. Why did he have it? Was he scrolling through it?

As his comment registers, my earlier irritation reignites. Am I some magical, big-breasted siren who’s lured him in? Does he actually believe, after weeks of relinquishing complete control, I have power over him?

“Then go,” I respond, and mean it. I might beg him to fuck me, but I won’t plead with him to stay.

The silence between us builds to a crescendo.

“You make my life impossible.”

It’s the only warning I get.

He lunges, knocking over his chair as he grabs me by the waist, hauling me off my feet, then rolling me back across the kitchen table. His arms wrap around me as he nuzzles his face between my breasts.

“I didn’t mean it.” I weave my fingers through his hair. Soothing him. Comforting him. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Riley.” He growls my name against my skin.

In moments like this, he allows me inside. Deepening our connection in a way words never could. His vulnerability as tangible as my fragile heart. I sensed the shift in him the week before his late-night visits stopped. Relentlessly overpowering me every way he could was normal but wrapping me in his arms afterward and praising me until I fell asleep was new.

What changed to make him stop coming?

His lips find my nipple. I smirk—they always do. God, I missed his mouth on me. Teeth scrape flesh, followed by pain softened with pleasure. I arch into him, relinquishing myself completely.

“Cazzo,” he mutters then tenses. Just like that, everything shifts. “This shouldn’t be this fucking hard.”

His admission guts me. He doesn’t want to want me. “You’re breaking up with me.” Hurt catches on each forced word.

He steps back—an answer in itself—and I hop off the table.

Tipping my chin up, I dare look at him. And immediately wish I hadn’t.

His dark, brooding gaze locks on my face. Almost as if he was looking at a puzzle piece without a puzzle present to solve. Almost like we never stood a chance, but somehow we find ourselves in this moment.

“It’s complicated,” he grinds out.

“Explain it to me, then.”

He stares at me. One second. Two. Then, he scowls and a steel wall slams down so hard between us, my teeth rattle. Not today, Riley. Not ever.

He disappears into the connecting bathroom. The faucet runs, and I listen to him splashing water on his face. I stand frozen. One part wanting him to leave; one part desperate for him to stay.

He returns, as cool, calm, and collected as the man I invited home that first night.

Silence thickens the air, but it’s me who breaks it.

I pull my shoulders straight and draw on every ounce of pride remaining. “Am I just a fuck to you?”

“And if I say yes?”

His callous question is a punch in the stomach. This isn’t within the rules of the games we play. This isn’t me being a good girl or him pushing my boundaries. I might willingly, even eagerly, relinquish power, but what I won’t do is be some doormat he can walk all over. “Go on. Leave. I’ve survived worse than you.”

He frowns.

With a shaky hand, I gesture toward the door. If there’s anything I know how to do, it’s endure.

Everything pauses.

“Goddamn you,” he growls, and before I can guess his intent, I’m swept into his arms and carried toward the bedroom.

Sunlight filters in between the blinds, waking me. A smile carves my lips. Late-night hours and early-morning summer sunshine might not play nicely together, but shades of my old self are resurfacing. Every day I wake up stronger than the day before.

Even if every blessed muscle in my body aches.

Last night was incredible.

He carried me to bed, undressed me, laid me down on the mattress, and with a surprising gentleness, showered my breasts, neck, and lips with kisses.

Then, he made love to me.

You never know someone completely, do you? They dress in a certain style or move in a familiar fashion. Act in ways you grow accustomed to and sometimes, intentionally, say things to evoke a reaction. You label everything to derive meaning; husband, boyfriend, lover, or gullible, naive, innocent. Life is orderly that way, with no space for shades of grey.

But do you truly know them?

Because life is shrouded by greyness. And often, you don’t realize it exists until it’s too late.

Just consider my father’s perfect fiancée. So popular and pretty. So young, too—a few years older than me. Yet look what she did. Look at the life she took and the one she destroyed. Look at the woman she devastated.

I shake off the last thought. What I’m learning—what he’s taught me—is when you live a life without pain, you’ll never truly know pleasure.

“Good girl.” “Look how well my greedy girl takes my cock.” “Come for me, Riley.” He was gentle after weeks of aggressive fucking. I gave myself to him completely, and never felt so alive. But I’m not alone in sensing the shift in our relationship or how the bliss from one sweet comment could offset his typical filthy sex-talk.

“ You feel like home.”

Did he really say it, or was it a dream?

I roll toward the sunlight but don’t notice him right away. He’s seated in a chair pulled up next to the bed, hunched forward with elbows on thighs while he studies me.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I sit up and secure the bedsheet around me.

He shakes his head.

Whatever was bothering him still plagues him, doesn’t it? “What’s wrong?”

“Tell me a secret no one else knows.”

This is what he’s been contemplating all this time? “Like what?”

“Something you’re not proud of. A dirty little secret.”

I stiffen as his request knocks the wind out of me. Weeks of carefully piecing my heart back together only to be asked to voice the impossible. “Will you tell me your name first?” I demand, deflecting. Because, before I reveal the darkest corner in my life, he should offer me the simplest pieces of himself—his full name. “Al is an abbreviation. Is your name Albert? Alex? Allen?”

“Al is all you need to know.”

“ You feel like home, ” Albert, Alex, or Allen had grunted in my ear. Or was it my imagination, desperate to move our relationship forward?

I stare at him. So cold to the eye. So proud and confident. So distrustful … suspicious, even. Like I’d ever betray him. “You can trust me, you know.”

“Trust isn’t the problem.”

I wait for him to elaborate, and then give up. It’s clearly up to me to deepen our connection, as hard as it may be. “My dirty little secret is my father’s fiancée shot him and then herself over a Gucci bag. She was upset about a canceled credit card. She spent so much money, more than my father could afford. The newspaper headlines called her ‘ The Baby-Faced Murderess.’ It made national news.” Even to my ears, my admission sounds clinical and cavalier, like I’m discussing a balance sheet that doesn’t add up.

“Cazzo!” he exclaims, with more expression than I’ve ever witnessed from him. He straightens, prepared to battle. To defend me. Except the war’s already over, and I ended up on the losing side.

He waits for me to continue, but I pause. This kind of hurt can only be addressed in spurts and is better said like I’m listing facts off paper. “Stephanie shot my father in the head. He died. I was left with my grandparents.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“It does. I found them. Pieces of their brains were splattered across the white tile entryway. It was dark when I entered the house, and I slipped and fell, not understanding at first what caused me to lose footing…”

“Jesus Christ. Come here, baby.”

I spring from the bed and climb onto his lap. He pulls me in tight, and I snuggle into his arms.

“The first thing I noticed was her handbag.”

Silence descends. It’s always the damn bag that does it. They say speaking your truth will set you free. And Lord knows, I’ve done everything I can to avoid discussing what happened. All the busybodies back in Marietta can attest to it, as can the therapist I left behind.

I draw in a breath and then let everything out. “What hurts me the most and what I most feel guilty about is that I’m so fucking angry at him. Because he asked her to marry him and never told me. Stephanie and I despised each other—we were briefly in the same accounting class at college until she was caught cheating and dropped out, which said a lot about her character. But still, what father gets engaged without telling his only child? I found out about the engagement in the news.”

He goes rigid beneath me, and I immediately worry I was too honest. He asked for a dirty little secret. I gave him the weight of my fucked-up world.

“I said too much…”

“And your mother?” he asks, surprising me. “Where is she?”

“She passed from cancer when I was fifteen. It’s just me and my grandparents now.” I snuggle further into his arms. It’s true you never get over losing a loved one, even if you’re angry or feeling abandoned. Anguish may subside over time but missing them never fades away. “Have you ever lost someone?” I croak.

“My mother. Drug overdose. My father didn’t know we existed until we showed up on his doorstep. He was twenty. We were five.”

I do the math, but don’t comment on the obvious. He’s opening up, and we’ve reached an enormous milestone. “You have a sister?” I ask instead.

“Brother.”

I consider that for a second, curious if they’re close. I’m a single child but imagine if I had a sibling, we’d be best friends. His tenderness last night makes me think he’s a good brother. That he protects those close to him. “You never really know a person, do you?” I whisper.

“No. You don’t.”

“Can I tell you something else?”

He’s quiet for a few seconds too long. “Go on.”

“You’re the best kind of hurt.”

He tenses for the briefest moment like I surprised him. Then he tightens his arms around me and confirms the feeling. I’m completely and utterly vulnerable right now yet feel safe in his embrace. When was the last time I felt so protected? Months? Years?

I relax into his arms, and we fall quiet, offering our heavy words space to settle. After a long while, I break the silence. “Ready for my darkest secret?”

“Fuck no.” His chest rumbles. “I need a whiskey shot for this?”

I turn in his lap and rest my head on his shoulder so I can see his face. “I faked an orgasm.”

His eyes flash.

I almost laugh. He thinks I meant with him.

“When?” he growls.

I’m tempted to lie. To press his buttons. After he loved on me all night and well into the morning, in full command and with me in full compliance, as every ache, bruise, and whisker burn applauds him for it, it’s comical he’d question his prowess.

“Riley,” he grinds out. Like he doesn’t know .

I rise up and kiss his drawn lips. “With my ex-boyfriend back in Marietta,” I clarify. “I faked them.”

“Why?”

I sigh. “I didn’t want him to feel bad.”

“Them. More than one?” He scowls. Like an injustice has been served—on my behalf or not, it’s difficult to decipher.

“All of them.”

“Madonna!”

I smile at his expression. “He was madly in love with me. It was easier to pretend than to embarrass him. We only had sex a couple of times.” My first love, except I always knew something was missing. Too sweet. Not bossy enough. “We never experimented.”

“My greedy girl never got oral?”

“Nope.” I flush. “No spankings. No handcuffed to the bed.”

“That stupid kid didn’t go down on your sweet pussy?”

“Never.”

He stares at me, much like he did hours ago, like I’m an enigma he’s struggling to figure out. Something within my expression causes him to stiffen, and then, with a look intense enough to burn steel, he demands, “And the others?”

“Others?”

His jaw slackens, his expression almost pained .

It’s not how I anticipated he’d react. He thinks I’m a good girl, and I am. Trouble came calling for my parents, not me. I follow the rules. I choose right over wrong. The few white lies I’ve told were to protect someone’s feelings from being shattered. I told my boyfriend we were breaking up because of me. Part white lie, part truth, though until I met him , I didn’t truly understand what was missing. Orgasms, yet more.

A wave of shyness grips me, but I owe him the truth. “The other can spark an orgasm with the crook of his finger.”

He stands and places me on my feet so quickly, I get whiplash. Then, he begins to pace. To the wall, and back to the chair. Back and forth. Wall. Chair. His broad chest, tapered waist, massive cock, and well-formed thighs on full display. No one could doubt his masculinity.

But his curses set me on edge. “Jesus Christ. Fuck. Cazzo.”

I watch him, alarmed, as he thrusts his fist through the drywall.

What in God’s teeth? He’s losing his shit.

“What’s the matter?”

He ignores me and heads for the kitchen. I hear the refrigerator open, and then seconds later, ice falling into a glass.

This worked up over a discussion about orgasms?

“Riley,” he bellows. He never raises his voice. “Bring me my clothes.”

Hurt washes over me. I shared my soul with him. Who does he think he is?

My feet won’t move, but my mind races. He was tender and attentive. Loving, I’d dared to believe. Only we’ve circled back to where we started last night.

Like a robot, I pull on a robe and scoop the clothes piled on the floor into my arms. The hole in the wall competes with the one unraveling within my heart.

His eyes skim over me when I enter the kitchen.

Not cold, but hot. Like a fire rages within yet he’s helpless to stop it. He shoots back a whiskey, then without a word, without an apology or explanation, takes the pile from my hands and disappears into the bathroom.

When he reemerges, he’s not alone in his rage.

I feel foolish. It’s one thing to be on your knees and begging to be fucked. It’s another to be as intimate as two people can be, only to get fucked over. Eleven weeks of emotional whiplash, and my heart can no longer bear it.

Tears fall, but I swipe them away.

Back to me, he drinks straight from the bottle, before slamming it on the table, turning and stalking toward where I wait by the door. He moves to open it.

“Say it,” I exclaim.

His jaw tightens.

“Say it.” I rise on my toes and get in his face. “We’re over. Give me that much.”

His jaw tics. One second passes. Two.

On three, he nudges me aside and exits into the hallway.

He couldn’t do it.

Damn him. Why didn’t he say it?