Bastiano Romano: A Standalone Mafia Romance Novel (The Five Syndicates Book 4) by Parker S. Huntington (24)

I’d never been a fan of birthdays.

I had no parents, and while I loved my aunt, she’d never wanted children. She didn’t know how to care for them. I felt that as each birthday passed with little fanfare, like she didn’t know what to do.

When I’d turned twelve, a neighbor had asked her if she had plans to throw me a birthday party, and she’d looked so flustered by the idea. She ran to the grocery store, bought me an array of Barbie party paraphernalia I was too old for, and threw me my first birthday party with the neighborhood children as guests—all of which were at least five years younger than me.

I hadn’t minded. I knew she’d tried. I knew I’d stuck a knife in the middle of her plans for life. She had ambitions in her law firm, and I’d been an obstacle the second she’d taken me in, yet she loved me anyway.

I was grateful for her sacrifices.

Truly.

But understanding how woefully she’d been prepared for me didn’t lessen the sting of a birthday without parents each year. It didn’t help that my mother died on my birth date, giving birth to me, so it always felt wrong celebrating my life on the day of her death.

I had this baggage, but Bastian didn’t. His parents were both alive and healthy as far as I knew, yet he didn’t look particularly happy as he sat in the corner of the bar on the day he turned thirty-one.

Maybe, like Tessie, he had issues with his parents abandoning him on his birthday. I’d seen his Uncle Vince stop by earlier to wish him a happy birthday and the chirpy call from Tessie, but that had been it.

Loneliness bled deep. I knew that better than most, and I felt the craziest desire to cure his. I told myself it was because I still hadn’t thanked him for getting me home safely as I ducked into the fridge in the employee break room and pulled out a juice pouch from Squeezed! Tessie would understand.

Making my way back behind the empty bar, I ignored how unnerved I felt at being the only one still here. The staff had left at closing. Graham had given Dana a ride home, and I’d offered to do closing tasks myself.

I cut the top of the juice pouch off, dumped ice into a whiskey glass, and poured the juice over the little square ice cubes. When I set the glass in front of Bastian, I told myself it was a thank you for taking me home.

Nothing more.

I was such a fucking liar.

My fists clenched, and I watched the same hands that had been in me curl around the glass as he brought it to his lips.

“What’s this?”

“Your nightcap.”

“It’s juice.” He narrowed his eyes on me and studied my posture. “You buy these for Tessie.”

We’d never fully acknowledged my relationship with his sister. I wanted to keep her out of this. Of us. Of this entire world. The little ray of purity in my otherwise dark world needed to stay pure.

But I was coming to terms with the fact that Bastian wasn’t entirely bad. I didn’t need to protect her from her own brother, and maybe I didn’t need to protect myself from him either. Everything I thought I knew had been twisted during my time undercover. I felt like a baby taking her first steps, experiencing things for the first time.

I didn’t say anything as he took another sip. I slid a step back to go back to the bar, but he stopped me with a hand on my wrist.

“Thank you.”

My eyes dipped to his fingers on my skin. “For what?”

“For the drink. For keeping these juice pouches on hand for Tessie. For keeping her company and helping her with her homework and school, but—”

“Happy birthday,” I cut him off before he said something that would piss me off.

Why did there always have to be a but?

I knew if I’d let him continue, with the way his parents had abandoned him today and how lonely he looked, we’d fight. For once, I didn’t want to fight. Not after I’d come to terms with the fact that this cover had changed me. He’d changed me. Or maybe I’d always been this way, and I was just discovering myself.

Bastian ignored me. Of course, he did. “You can’t be friends with her.”

This wasn’t happening. I’d come to the realization a few days ago that Tessie might have been my only friend nowadays, and he wanted to take her away from me?

Over my dead body.

I hoped my glare burned holes in his clearly underdeveloped brain cells. “So, I’m good enough for you to fuck, but I’m not good enough to be friends with your little sister, who seems to spend more time with me than you or anyone else in your family, by the way. You sure have a way with kids.”

His eyes flared, and anger consumed them, like maybe my words had cut him deeper than I’d intended them to. I should have given him a stiff drink. And spit in it. Anything but the juice pouches I used my own money to buy, taking my very little personal time to get, walking to Fifth Avenue despite my mounting back pain, because I already loved that little girl so much, I wanted her to be happier than I could even fathom.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. People come and go. That’s life. But Tessie’s not like us. She doesn’t have to be like us. We can shield her from this world for as long as we can.” I opened my mouth to retort, but he cut me off, so damned unapologetic, “And don’t deny we need to shield her from you, because the reality is, you’re not always going to be in Tessie’s life, so spending more time in it now will only make it harder when you leave. Or she leaves for that matter. She doesn’t even live in this state.”

Why was he so torn up about it? Yes, she lived in a different state. People still built relationships long distance. Siblings grew up and moved to other states. Sons moved away from fathers, daughters from mothers. Life happened. We just had to adjust.

But at the same time, I knew he had a point, even if I wanted to resist it. I was sent here to take down the very people she loved. I wasn’t doing her any favors by befriending her, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut the strings. I liked her. I liked the normalcy she gave me. Some days, I pretended she was my sister, and I had a chance to give her the life I never had.

How fucked up was that?

I shook my head. “Tessie doesn’t need to worry about me hurting her. You, on the other hand—”

“I’m her brother. Nothing you say will change the fact that blood ties us together. I could live across the world, and I would still be her brother.”

He believed it, so I believed it. Simple as that. If I were being honest, he really seemed like a good brother. But it also seemed like he repeated it because he wasn’t so sure. Like, somewhere along the way, the distance between him and his sister had made him uncertain of his place in her life.

I tilted my chin up and tore my wrist away from him. “I came here to be nice to you and wish you a happy birthday. Are you so miserable that you have to stomp on that, too?”

“Yes.”

The earnest dip of his brows. The flare of something undefinable behind his eyes. The tense set of his shoulders. I’d walked onto a minefield with that question, and there was no backing out now. Not unless I wanted to get blown up, and even I couldn’t pull off splattered intestines. I couldn’t erase his reply from my memory. My self-preservation demanded I try, but I didn’t.

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Do you want to know what I think?” He didn’t wait for my reply. “I think you’re miserable, too.”

I should have been pissed off. Nice people didn’t say things like that. Polite people didn’t either. Civilized people didn’t confront other people’s demons like they had a right to pick fights with them.

“Well, I think you’re trying to pick a fight with me because it’s your birthday; you’re alone at your bar that closed an hour ago; no one in your family is here, including your sister; you’re wondering how you reached thirty-one with no one to chase away the loneliness; and you’re so fucking bitter, you can’t think straight.”

I knew this because I felt the same way.

Living in a city of millions but always alone.

Always bitter.

“There she is.”

I narrowed my eyes, not waiting to take the bait but biting into it anyway. “There who is?”

“The real you.”

“Oh?” I hated his certainty and wished I had it. “And who is that?”

“You’re a biter. Once you latch on, your jaw clamps down, and there’s nothing anyone can say or do to get you to release. You decided from the beginning you would hate me. I’m okay with that. It wasn’t like I treated you like royalty. But the thing about being bitten is, it means nothing if I have a high pain tolerance. I don’t need you to like me for L’Oscurità to maintain its success.” His eyes raked a path down my body before he met my eyes once more. “I don’t need you to like me for us to fuck either.”

I knew he was deflecting, turning this conversation away from him, trying to swim from the deep end to the shallow end as quickly as he could. I wouldn’t let him.

“You’re disgusting and crass, and this has nothing to do with me and Tessie.”

“Except it does. You and I aren’t made like everyone else. You like to bite; I like to be bitten. But other people? They can’t handle the pain, the anger, the aggression, the never-ending stream of bullshit life has piled onto us. Tessie is a strong girl. She’s smarter than most kids double her age, and she always will be. But the one thing she is not is a fighter, which means people like us have to take the hits for her. And I’m okay with that.” He cocked a brow. “Are you, Biter?”

Always.

I would always be okay with protecting Tessie.

I wanted to tell him she didn’t need protecting from me, but that’d be wrong. If I succeeded in my assignment, I’d strip her of everything—her family, her money, the life she’d grown up in.

She did need protection from me.

I swallowed away my hatred for myself. This should have been easy. It should have been black and white. Romanos—bad; FBI—good. If only it were that simple. It’d be easier to stomach who I was and what I did to others as I weaseled my way into their lives and lied until I destroyed them.

“Your opinion is duly noted.” I swiveled on my heel and headed for the break room, hellbent on getting out of here before he could see me break down.

The first tear slipped past as I grabbed my things from my locker. I swiped at it with the back of my hand, my movements jerky and angry. I had identity issues, yes, but surely this wasn’t me. I wasn’t the girl who cried when the mean boy pointed out all her flaws.

I’d thought I had a spine.

“Don’t cry.”

I swung my head to Bastian. He stood at the door, his arms crossed as he leaned against the archway.

His voice was harsh as he spoke, “Biters don’t cry.”

“Maybe I’m not a biter.” I certainly didn’t feel like one as my voice wobbled, and I swayed a little to the right.

“You are, but you’re lost.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I am, too.”

I swallowed the thickness in my throat and shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve been asking myself why someone with a double major from Degory University would spend her time bartending for an asshole she can’t stand. You could have any job you want, not just because you have a fancy degree but because you’re smart. I see it in you—that unshakeable drive people are born with and can’t be taught.”

He gestured down his body, and I followed the path of his hand, taking in the three-piece suit only status could buy. Not a hair or thread out of place on him. The perfect golden boy with the perfect golden cufflinks. “I was born with a gold-coated spoon dangling from my lips, and I have an education most can’t fathom let alone acquire. Give me any Fortune 100, and I’d run it easily. But I don’t. Why not?”

“How drunk are you?”

I couldn’t fathom why he was telling me this.

“I’m not drunk,” he dismissed. He took a step closer. “That’s a cop-out, and you’re not copping out of this conversation.” Another step. “We’re the same, Ariana De Luca,” he accused, his voice so seductive, it was like he was calling me his lover. “We have the mafia last names—and don’t even deny that.” It was the first time he’d ever said the word mafia around me, and he didn’t even give me time to marinate in the severity of that. “We have the Ivy League education.” Another step. “We have the bone-deep, mouth-frothing viciousness that cannot be faked. I see it in your cold eyes.” He stepped in front of me, tipped my chin so I stared into his eyes, and whispered against my lips, “And we are both so very lost.”

“I’m not lost,” I tried to deny, but I knew in my bones I was.

I didn’t want this job anymore. Not the bartending one, but the one with the FBI. I didn’t want to lie. I didn’t want to pretend. I didn’t want to know my fake covers more than I knew myself. I didn’t want to die alone. I didn’t want to betray the people around me.

You’d think with my job, I would be a fighter. I wasn’t. They taught us to run in the bureau. When our cover was blown, we ran. My cover wasn’t blown, but my heart had been torn to shreds by the truth in his words, so I did what I did best.

I turned and ran.