Sinful Desire

“What’s she like, then?”

“Oh, she’s lovely. Natalie is very sweet and friendly.” As he waxed on about the new woman in his life, Sophie tried to ignore the strange new sting in her heart from this conversation. Seeing Holden through the lens of a preference for men had been far more manageable for her ego, it turned out. Now, her confidence was suffering another blow, unexpectedly, with this realization that she wasn’t the right woman for Holden either.

But there was more to this hollow ache in her heart. A new worry took root—the fear that Holden would slip away from her, too, as he cozied up to Natalie. Because Sophie couldn’t help but wonder how this new lady would feel about him being so friendly with his ex-wife, and if this most predictable relationship in her life was about to become unpredictable, too.

She loathed instability.





Chapter Thirty-Eight


Colin arrived first, with two six-packs. Ryan side-eyed the beers. “Corona?”

His younger brother shrugged. “That’s not what you drink?”

Ryan shook his head, grabbed the beers, and shut the door. “Haven’t had a Corona since I was in college.”

Colin shrugged. “What do I know about beer?”

“Nothing. As you fucking should. I’m all out of that near beer shit. Want a soda?”

“Always,” Colin said, and they headed for the kitchen. Ryan handed him a can of Diet Coke, then opened a Corona and took a long swallow. It tasted like spring break.

“Guess you don’t hate it that much,” Colin said pointedly.

“Guess I needed a drink after my day.”

“So what’s the deal? Shan said Mom confessed to you?” Colin made a keep rolling motion with his hand. “What the hell?”

“Yup,” Ryan said, taking another drink then setting the bottle on the counter and telling him everything that went down in the visiting room.

Colin scoffed. “Made her do it. See? Even now, she holds onto the notion that she somehow isn’t to blame.”

Ryan shrugged. “Yeah, well. That’s not what this is really about. That’s not why I feel like I’m pretty much having the second-worst day of my life.”

Colin yanked him in for a hug. “Yeah, I know,” he said softly. “I know, man. You wanted to believe her. You wanted to hold on to a possibility. You wanted that hope that maybe she hadn’t done it.”

“Can you blame me? Wouldn’t you want that too?”

“Sure,” Colin said with a nod as he broke the hug, stopping to pet Ryan’s dog, who’d wandered into the kitchen. “Of course it would be really fucking fantastic if she didn’t do it, Ry. It would be like the greatest thing in the world if our mother didn’t have our father killed, right?”

Though there was a touch of sarcasm in Colin’s remark, there was also the bare truth. It would be the greatest thing.

“But you see, I came to peace long ago with the fact that she did,” Colin continued. “Maybe details are still coming to light. Maybe the detective is looking for accomplices. And maybe he’ll find them, and they can join Jerry fucking Stefano in the big house where they all belong. The fact is, our mother was into some fucked up shit, from associating with the likes of Stefano, to the ass she was cheating with. She was a messed-up, desperate woman who wanted money, and wanted out so badly she killed for it.”

Colin dropped the volume on his voice and draped an arm over Ryan’s shoulder. “This shit happens. Just look at the New York prison escapees and how that woman was going to have one of them kill her husband. It’s awful, and it feels shocking from a distance, but up close, when it happens to you, you can’t believe it. You wish it didn’t happen.” Colin tapped his chest with his free hand. “I wish that, too. But it did. This is our fucked up story. This isn’t the news. This isn’t the papers. This isn’t someone else’s tragedy. It happened to us, and deep down somewhere inside you”—Colin moved his hand to Ryan’s chest, tapping his breastbone, searching for his heart—“you know it’s true.”

Ryan swallowed hard. He scrubbed his hand over his jaw, trying to process the whole damn day, but making no sense of the way the floor beneath him was tilting and cracking. “What do you mean, I know it’s true?”