Scarred Regrets: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 5) Read online

  SCARRED REGRETS

  BELLANDI CRIME SYNDICATE #5

  ADELAIDE FORREST

  Copyright © 2021 by Adelaide Forrest

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by Adelaide Forrest

  Editing by Light Hand Editing

  Created with Vellum

  ABOUT SCARRED REGRETS

  Broken men don’t fall in love.

  We linger in the darkness, consumed by the sins that define us.

  Irina is the sole reason my heart beats. She’s everything that matters in a world filled with evil that a woman so good and pure should never have to see.

  She’ll add another scar to my collection — this one engraved on my heart.

  When she’s taken by our enemy to use for his vengeance. Even knowing she can never be mine, I’ll stop at nothing to see her safe.

  The Irina I rescue isn’t the same feisty woman they stole.

  Her soul is broken. Her heart is hollow like mine, because of the things she’s seen. She needs me in a way I’ve never known.

  And I will destroy the man who shattered what’s mine.

  TRIGGER & CONTENT WARNINGS

  Scarred Regrets is a dark mafia romance and includes self harming behavior, suicidal ideation and suicide attempt, and references to rape/sexual assault. Please consider carefully before reading. Other themes included are:

  - Drug use

  - Depression

  - Child abuse

  - Human Trafficking

  - Descriptive Violence against women

  - Stalking

  CONTENTS

  I. Slumber

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  II. Awaken

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  III. Rise

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  ***

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Epilogue

  Also by Adelaide Forrest

  PART I

  SLUMBER

  1

  SCAR

  Twenty-four years ago

  “If you were to tell your story in one sentence, what would it be?” My feet raced along the haphazard attempt at a sidewalk as I thought over my teacher’s words. I jumped over one of the broken spots where the ground had split and crumbled over years of repeated abuse. I didn’t even need to watch where I was going as I tried to find the words for my story, but all I could think about was how much I had in common with the broken, jagged concrete beneath my sneakers that were filled with holes.

  I didn’t need a sentence to tell my story. I only needed one word.

  Suffering.

  Pain came in different forms, but the result of all of them lumped together into a puddle of misery was the same—a story no one who didn’t exist as jagged, broken pieces would understand. It was the kind of story that people turned a blind eye to, pretending they didn’t see the bruises or tattered, stained clothing.

  Because it was a story that no one wanted to hear.

  Just like all those people who pretended they couldn’t see the signs, I raced over that broken concrete like my life depended on it. It was nothing but a symptom of the bigger problem, a reminder of the dangers of my home. Nothing could make me walk in this neighborhood, not if I wanted to keep breathing, to go to school to be ignored the next day.

  To walk here was to die. To walk was to risk running into one of my parents’ friends, or someone even worse, who was barely even human anymore.

  The chain clutched tightly in my hand pressed against my skin as I ran, the charm dangling and the vivid green of the butterfly sparkling in the light. My sister loved the butterflies on the rare occasion we snuck out of the house in the middle of the day, so she could see more than the bare glimpse of sunshine that streamed in the old, warped window in our bedroom.

  When we’d go to the park, where the grass was as green as the charm held tightly in my hand, we’d just watch the other kids play while she enjoyed the sun warming her skin. They seemed so carefree, so light and child-like, that we couldn’t relate.

  I’d never been on the swings. No one had ever bothered to teach me how to pump my legs the way they did, so I’d never risked making a fool out of myself in the presence of other kids.

  Adults could be cruel. They could hurt and maim and violate, but the laughter of kids who judged me for everything I didn’t know was another kind of torment. I’d save myself from the pain.

  I had enough of that in my life as it was.

  I rounded the corner to our street, hauling ass like my life depended on it, and in our neighborhood it very well might have. Needles and syringes lined the streets, used condoms littering the openings to alleyways where men took what they wanted from women and boys alike. The thought of walking to school with Cesca every day, knowing she would see the things I did, made my breathing come just a little harder.

  I’d done everything I could to protect her, ever since I was old enough to know that most kids didn’t know men paid for sex on street corners. Most of the other boys in second grade didn’t even know what sex was yet, let alone where you stuck your thing.

  But kids in this neighborhood grew up fast. We grew up finding our parents passed out on the couch with needles in their arms, or white powder on the table. We walked in on them while they had sex out in the open, everything visible for their friends to see.

  And sometimes, we didn’t escape fast enough when we stumbled onto something we shouldn’t have.

  The bushes in front of the house were overgrown, half covering the rickety wooden steps that led up to the front door. I rounded the corner and put my hand on the railing that felt like it might topple over any day now. Running up the first three steps, I jumped over the fourth that was rotted out, and my foot barely kissed the fifth before I stood on the platform at the top.

  It wasn’t quite what anyone would call a porch or a deck, closer to a stoop than anything, but to sit on it would have been to tempt the agony of falling through.

  I hated to think of how I would come and go once it collapsed.

  Sucking back a deep breath, I placed my hand on the knob and turned. They never locked it, and the front door creaked as I shoved it open quickly and threw it closed behind me. My feet carried me toward the bedroom I shared with Francesca, hurtling past my parents and their friends with barely a glance.

  Their best friend, the person I hated more than anything, called out to me as I ran. “Where you goin', boy?” I knew I was only prolonging the inevitable in not answering, but Cesca deserved to have the pretty butterfly I’d found at school before he could desecrate it with his touch.

  Before they could take it away and crush it like they did anything that was even a little beautiful in this house. It was only a matter of time before they got to Cesca. I needed to get her out.

  I rapped my hand on the door in our secret knock that she knew meant it was me. It changed every day of the week, something different to keep anyone from figuring it out. My parents’ friends were usually too high to even attempt to learn it.

  But I’d rather be safe than sorry with Cesca.

  She opened the door, letting me slip inside quickly and lock it behind myself. The bedroom window on the other side of the room called to me, making me wish we could just leave. Go somewhere else and start over, but there was no more hope ou
t there than there was in here.

  At least here there was a roof. There was a door with a lock that my parents hadn’t taken away yet, though as Francesca got older, that was sure to change.

  They’d see the value in her just as they had with me.

  I turned to look back at the door, waiting for Brad’s furious knocking to start when he got impatient waiting for me to come back out on my own. It was no secret that I liked to check on my sister and give her whatever food I’d snuck away from school before going to the living room to deal with…

  Them.

  Whoever it might be that day. The name and face hardly mattered anymore.

  They were all the same.

  I dropped my torn backpack on the floor next to Cesca’s feet, unzipping it to reveal the apple and half a sandwich I’d saved for her. She stared at it hungrily, tears pooling in her pretty brown eyes while she waited for permission to eat.

  I didn’t make her wait, nodding to her to dig in. She’d not eaten all day, and the food I brought from school was the only thing she’d have for the rest of the night, unless I was brave enough to sneak out after our parents were asleep to find something in the dumpster at the pizza place down the street.

  In the fall, she’d go to school with me every day. At least she’d be safe for a few hours a day and she’d have food of her own. We wouldn’t have to share a single lunch for too much longer.

  Even if it felt like an eternity.

  “Come on, Boyo!” Brad called from the living room, his footsteps shaking the house as he stood and made his way toward the hallway. I smiled at Cesca like always, holding out the necklace for her to see.

  “Me?” she asked, touching dirty fingers to the shiny green butterfly that seemed far too pretty for people like us. But every little girl deserved something pretty, even if she lived an ugly life.

  “You,” I said, unclasping it and securing it around her neck. She looked down at where the butterfly hung too low on her chest, smiling at it softly where it rested. The knock on the door made her jump, her eyes flying wide as she shook her head no. “If anyone tries to come in, you go out the window,” I said, like I always told her.

  She nodded, her bottom lip trembling as I stood and ran a hand over her greasy hair. We’d have to risk leaving the room after everyone was asleep that night so she could take a shower.

  “Cover your ears, Cesca,” I said, moving back toward the door. She took her food and curled up on the mattress we shared in the corner of the tiny room, leaning her back against the wall and tucking her knees to her chest as she rocked back and forth.

  I opened the door and yanked it shut behind me, twisting the lock on the inside as I did it. Brad waited on the other side, the badge on his chest shining like a joke of all the things he should have been.

  And everything he wasn’t.

  2

  SCAR

  The house was silent when I forced myself to my feet finally, the need to check on Cesca more powerful than the agony flooding my body. Everything ached as I crept through the house, ignoring the shot of pain with every step I took.

  I leaned my weight into the door to our bedroom, resting my forehead against the wood and tapping it repeatedly in the pattern for the day. The sounds of her scrambling to answer it from inside came from the gap under the door, and then the light from the nightlight I’d stolen for her filled the open doorway as she pulled it open and I fell inside.

  She stumbled back to avoid the weight of my fall, leaving me to catch myself on the door frame. Her tiny, too thin body slammed into mine when she wrapped her arms around my waist, and I ignored the pain in my bruised ribs long enough to wrap her in my embrace.

  “I’m going to clean up the living room. You stay here and I’ll take you to shower when I get back,” I murmured into her hair, wishing she smelled clean like the girls in my class at school. Little girls should get to feel pretty, or at the very least not be stained with the filth of their family.

  She deserved better. She deserved the world—my sister who wouldn’t even kill the spiders that crawled along our ceiling.

  She nodded, stepping back and wiping the back of her hand over her face. She crawled back on top of our bed, pulling my sweatshirt over her lap and using it as a blanket to keep out the chill. Even in early summer, the nights were far from warm this year.

  Instead of creeping out to the living room, I closed the door behind me and twisted the lock, moving to sit on the mattress with her and letting my body relax for just a few minutes. I promised myself I’d get up soon to do the things I needed before morning. They wouldn’t be happy to wake up covered in their own filth, or to find the wrappers from their dinner laid out on the coffee table and covered in flies.

  They wouldn’t want to be reminded of what kind of scum they were, expecting me to erase all the signs of it while they slept so they could wake up in the morning and pretend to be functioning human beings. Until the need to get high again consumed them.

  As if it ever really left.

  I fell asleep despite my promise to Cesca, dreaming of blue skies and an open field where Cesca could run with green butterflies to her heart’s content. Of her in school, where someone far smarter than me could teach her to read and all about the animals she loved so dearly.

  The sun was just rising over the horizon when I woke up with a jolt. Cesca’s head rested against my shoulder as she curled into me for warmth. Despite my urgency, I gently set her to the side and laid her flat on the mattress, hurrying to the door and pulling it open.

  I locked it from the inside as I pulled it closed behind me, letting it shut quietly and twisting the knob to double check. Satisfied, I tiptoed on bare feet through the hall to the living room, heaving a sigh of relief when I found my parents asleep in the same position they’d been when I peeled myself off the floor where Brad had left me.

  He was nowhere to be found, probably going back to his patrol the moment he finished getting high and going about his day like he hadn’t ruined me.

  Like he hadn’t destroyed every piece of my innocence when I’d been too young to understand what it meant the first time my parents called me out to that living room. I’d seen his badge and thought everything would be okay.

  Nothing would ever be okay again.

  I grabbed the garbage can from the kitchen, tucking it under my arm and moving to pick up all the trash. I stayed away from the drugs, having made the mistake of tossing out a ‘perfectly good syringe’ once and suffering the consequences of being wasteful when my father belted me for it.

  My thigh twitched when I stepped wrong, the muscle tightening and a sharp ache shooting straight through my leg. The garbage can fell, dropping to the floor with a loud bang that made my heart stop.

  Even with the sun rising, it was far too early for my parents to wake up. I usually had Cesca set up for the day and was safely on my way to school before they opened their eyes.

  I froze.

  I didn’t even breathe, waiting for the moment that my father’s angry voice would shake the walls. Ricardo De Luca had the voice of a bear, the bass of it when he yelled deep enough to scare the bravest of men.