Page 6 of Sinful Bargains

But soon—soon, all of this would bemine.

I had spent my entire life dedicated to the mafia. I was recruited young, desperate to escape my violent home life. The streets of the Bronx were home to scary individuals. At the time, Christopher, now the boss of the family, caught me stealing from the convenience store one of his guys ran. Instead of giving me a good beating, he took pity on me. I was starving for not only food, but guidance. Roaming the streets of New York City day and night. I don’t know why he decided to take me under his wing, but I have always been grateful he did. He was the only father figure I had ever had—he and the other guys in the family had become the only family I had ever had besides my mother. They stepped in as father figures, brothers, and friends to me. Paul and Marco stepped up for the past ten years, visiting Rickers and meeting up with Ben to follow out my orders from behind bars.

I never wanted to put a label on my relationship with Renee, but she had labeled me her man after our first night together.

Renee plays innocent, like any good mafia princess should, but she’s far from innocent. Her first husband and the father of her son, Giovanni, was slapped with a life sentence, and Renee couldn’t let her boy grow up without a father. I never wanted to be a father. How could I be someone’s father when my own was a piece of shit? And no matter how much I hated his fucking guts, I knew his blood ran through my veins. I was a lot ofthings, but I would never roll the dice and fuck up a kid the same way I’d been fucked up.

Renee loved the underworld just as much as I did. She idolized men like me. She loved that she was a mafia princess because of Vincent’s street status, which is why she forced me to the top of the food chain—just so she could don the title of mafia wife. She wanted to be mafia royalty just as badly as I did.

But in this life, love doesn’t exist. You hold your cards close to your chest and learn to play them right. What she thought was love was just a desire to claim me, pin me down, and attach herself toThe Shark—the man they report about on the 5 o’clock news. The man they print in the newspapers for “suspicious criminal activity.”

But maybe I can hold out just long enough to make it all work out in the end.

Later that night, I sat on the sofa at home, slowly enjoying a cigar. I was lost in my thoughts when Renee walked in and sat at the other end of the sofa.

She eyed me intently. I could feel her gaze, but I wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. “You were quiet during dinner. Is everything okay?”

“Just thinking,” I remarked, blowing the smoke into the air and watching it curl and dissipate. Something I wish I could do in that very moment—disappear. If only for a second.

“About what?” she pressed, like I knew she would. I never felt like I was allowed my own thoughts around her—it was an unspoken rule that I had to reveal what was on my mind if I were in her presence. “Us?”

I finally acknowledged her, reluctantly, as I snapped, “Why does everything have to be about us, Renee?”

She boldly met my eyes. “Joey, what is going on with you? With us? I don’t want to keep dancing around this. We’ve been…whatever this is, for months now. What are we?”

I leaned my head against the back of the sofa, staring up atthe ceiling fan swirling above us. I suddenly noticed how tense my jaw was as my hand gave it a soft rub out of exasperation. Renee always made me feel tense. Something that was supposed to be simple between us had become so much more—so much more than I had ever bargained for. “I told you, I’m not big on labels. You knew that going into this with me.”

“Don’t give me that,” she scoffed, her voice rising in volume. “You’ve been staying undermyroof, aroundmykid, sleeping inmybed. What do you call that? I deserve an answer, Joey!”

The other thing about Renee is that she shared the same anger as her father—she had no emotional intelligence to stay quiet, to read the room, to not overreact.

What I was so desperate to say at that moment wassurvival. I just needed to play my cards right, and then I would be gone. I felt trapped. Suffocated. Vincent had already been giving me a hard time about staying in her home without marrying her—a sin that could hammer the last nail in my coffin.

My gaze was brutal and unfriendly, even though I hadn’t intended it to be so. “Look, Renee. I care about you—always have. You’ve been good to me, better than I deserve, even. But what you want is for me to love you, and I don’t know if I’m capable of that.”

She glared at me with burning, reproachful eyes. “That’s a cop-out, Joey, and you know it. You can love someone. You can love me. You just won’t let yourself.”

“Maybe you’re right. But don’t act like you have no reasons for keeping me around, either. It’s not just me, Renee. I’m not the only one looking out for their own interests here.”

I knew I had hit a nerve by the hurt look on her face. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I was only trying to be honest for both of our sakes. “That’s what you think this is? Some kind ofarrangement? I’ll have you know I’m no arrangement, Joseph Romano.”

“I think we both know this is complicated,” I confessed. Thetruth was, this was some sort of arrangement she’d constructed. And with her father's backing, my hands were tied.

“You want out?” she challenged me, her expression clouded in anger. Yes, I did. Of course, I did.

A shadow of annoyance crossed my face. “I didn’t say that. But you and I both know if I wanted out, it wouldn’t be that easy.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” she said coldly before storming off and leaving me alone with my own thoughts again.

Just hold on a little longer.

JOEY

Istepped into Davidson’s corner store, and the bell above the door gave a soft chime as I walked in. Behind the counter, Davidson looked up from his ledger, his weathered face breaking into a knowing smile. “How’s it going, Joey?” he greeted.

I flashed him a grin, resting my hands on the counter. “Got a meeting downstairs.”

Davidson nodded, setting his pen down. “Business as usual.”

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