Grieved Loss
Bellandi Crime Syndicate #3
Adelaide Forrest
Copyright © 2020 Adelaide Forrest
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by: Adelaide Forrest
Proofreading by: Light Hand Proofreading
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
For all my readers who see the sunshine in the shadows.
For Tove,
Thank you for always being the Doodle to my Moonie.
About the Author
Adelaide lives in her tiny house with her husband and two rambunctious kids. When she's not chasing all three of them and her shepherd/husky mix around the house, she spends all her free time writing and adding to the hoard of plots stored on her bookshelf and hard-drive.
She always wanted to write, and did from the time she was ten and wrote her first full-length fantasy novel. The subject matter has changed over the years, but that passion for writing never went away. She has a degree in Psychology, and prior to having her kids she worked as a therapist using horses in her treatment strategy and working with adults and kids with disabilities.
Adelaide started her journey as a published author in September 2019 with her other pen name, Kenna Bardot, where she writes reverse harem. Having achieved her passion of becoming an author, she expanded with the launch of her Adelaide Forrest pen name.
For more information, please visit Adelaide's website at www.adelaideforrest.com.
About Grieved Loss
Calla
I’ve never known pain like when I lost my husband, never known the fear that came with wondering how I would suddenly support my two kids. So when an anonymous benefactor stepped forward on my husband’s behalf, I never questioned it.
And then Ryker comes from the shadows to show me the truth, determined to show me what his brand of love can be. He demands everything from me, my heart, my soul, my body.
And he won’t stop until he’s taken everything.
Ryker
For years, I watched my Sunshine from the shadows, letting her live out her simple life with the man who didn’t deserve her. My loyalty to the Bellandis demanded nothing less, but when her husband is shot down in a drug deal gone bad, there’s nothing that will stop me from stepping in and claiming Calla and the kids as my own.
I give her one year to grieve, to adjust to life without him. But when the year is up, rising tensions in my world threaten to steal her away from me. I won’t let anything come between us.
Not even Calla herself.
Disclaimer
Grieved Loss is a full-length standalone novel with an HEA, but the series presents a better reading experience when following the suggested reading order.
This series contains dark elements, including an over-the-top stalker of an antihero who does as he pleases. Please read at your own discretion.
For questions regarding triggers, please don't hesitate to reach out to Adelaide Forrest on Facebook.
Soundtrack
“Be Here For You” – Sam Tinnesz
“I Get Off” – Halestorm
“Goddess of the Rain” – Burn the Ballroom
“Play Dirty” – Kevin McAllister
“Grip” – Seeb, Bastille
“Chaos” – Ravenscode
“Drown” – Brian Dalton
“Devil A Pray” – Easy Mccoy
“Eye of the Storm” – Watt White
“Live in the Light” – Watt White
“Disgust Me” – New Years Day
“Nothing Is As It Seems” – Hidden Citizens
“Dance in the Rain” – Bolshiee
“Wanted” – Ben Hazelwood
“Take It All” – Pop Evil
“Animal In Me” – Solence
“Gone” – Bebe Rexha
“I Was Alive” – Dark Signal
“Underwater” – Skies Collide
“Falling Down” – Landsdowne
“Animals” – Concepts
“Better Together” – UNSECRET
“Never Have I Ever” – Danielle Bradbery
“Church” – Fall Out Boy
“The Truth” – Audiomachine
“Make Me Believe” – The Everlove
“Something to Remind You” – Staind
“Hold” – Vera Blue
“Eyes on Fire” – Blue Foundation
“Snake Charmer” – Jiovanni Daniel
"Going to Hell" - The Pretty Reckless
"Zombie" - Bad Wolves
"Give Me One Reason" - Tracy Chapman
"Broken" - Seether ft. Amy Lee
"Love the Way You Lie pt 2" - Rihanna ft. Eminem
"Have a Little Faith in Me" - John Hiatt
"Love the Way You Lie" - Eminem ft. Rihanna
Prologue
Ryker
Four years ago
There was no excuse for the things I’d done. Nothing I could say to make them right. In the end, it would all be a lie anyway. I liked the feel of my knife slicing through skin and found beauty in the way blood poured onto the floor to spread like motor oil. I liked them too much to regret them, and I’d do them all over again.
To find her.
Despite all my crimes, and all my sins, I knew even then that nothing could compare to the crime of stalking Calla Latour. Following her husband came easy, even if it meant I had to work harder to stay hidden.
They frowned upon watching the police.
But stalking his innocent wife because he decided the simple life with white picket fence just wasn’t enough for him? That was a crime worthy of the death sentence. It was a crime I knew I could never justify to myself.
Especially since she quickly became an addiction. I felt her burning in my veins as if I'd shot her up like a drug.
A woman like Calla was all good, all sunshine and light. I lived my life in the shadows where I belonged. But somehow it felt like my shadows changed when I first set eyes on her. Like my shadows became her shadows. Calla was a guiding light in my otherwise bleak existence, and I couldn’t turn away.
It didn't matter that she spent most of her time in yoga pants, with her white blond hair in a ponytail, looking more and more exhausted with every hour that passed. Something about those big, dark blue eyes called to me in a way that I couldn’t explain.
But I kept my distance. Because if I got too close, I would take Calla for my own. I owed everything to the Bellandi family. Her husband Chad would be useful to Matteo if he proved himself.
Very useful.
It wasn't every day that a Police Lieutenant wanted to join the Bellandi payroll, intending to make evidence disappear or stop it from being collected.
So I watched her. I made sure she wasn't meeting with anyone on her husband's behalf. Even though I knew from the first moment I followed her that the only crooked thing she had going was her smile.
She walked through the park, pushing her two-year-old son Axel in the stroller and willing him to stay asleep. She looked pained doing it, as if the toddler just never slept or gave her a moment's peace. Judging from the look on her face and t
he way I’d watched her snuggle with him on the couch the entire night before, I suspected it might be true. Her husband had come home after dinner, greeted her briefly, and gone up to their bed to sleep peacefully under the covers while she handled Axel.
She was too good for him. Too good for both of us.
I stayed a few paces behind her, feigning disinterest as she made her way down the path in the park near their house. The fresh air seemed to help calm Axel, as it was already their second stroll through the park for the day.
The stroller veered to the right suddenly, something shifting, so it tilted to the side. She tried to put it right, but it woke Axel anyway. Groaning, she dropped her head for a moment before she bent down to inspect the wheel. I couldn't see what happened from my spot behind them, but the way Calla buried her face in her hands and took out her phone was sign enough that something was wrong. She typed a number in, putting it to her ear as she reached down and grabbed her son from the stroller.
She bounced him rhythmically while she spoke to whoever she'd called for help—her face looking more and more harried with every second. When she finally hung up, she turned a smile to her son and shushed him before she spoke to him.
With every second she waited, her body slumped more and more. The weight of her two-year-old exhausted her, and I could practically see the way her back pained her when she tried to straighten out.
At 5'3", she was far too small to be holding Axel for lengthy periods of time like that. Yet she did it anyway, never even trying to set him down as he snuggled into her side desperately.
With a muttered, "Fuck," I knew I couldn't watch her suffer. Knew in that moment, I'd do anything to make her life just a little easier. It would end badly, there was no way approaching and talking to her would end well for me or her.
But I did it anyway.
I stepped out of the shadows of the trees, making myself visible as I walked along the path more noticeably. "Excuse me," I said, and even to me my voice sounded rough. I didn't talk much, avoided it when I could. When I was on a hunt or doing surveillance, I could go days without ever speaking a word.
I tried not to wince, tried to give her the friendliest smile I could manage. But I wasn't friendly. I didn't know how to be. I'd lost everything that made me human a long time ago.
I cleared my throat. "Do you need some help?"
She spun around, fixing that deep blue gaze on me so suddenly it was like a punch to the gut. My body stilled as my world spun, focus narrowing down on the flush that spread over her pretty cheeks and the way her pursed little mouth tipped into a blinding, ever-so-slightly crooked smile. She sucked back a sharp intake of breath that seemed to echo the raging in my blood. As if she could feel the same inexplicable urge I did, the need to claim and take and make her mine.
Those blue eyes glittered in the sunshine, my world narrowing down to the way they felt on mine. To the reminder of the kick to the teeth she’d provided from the very first moment I laid eyes on her through her living room window the day before.
"You don't mind?" she asked, but her body sagged with relief.
"Let me take a look," I agreed, going to the stroller and squatting down. Her eyes felt warm on my back, heating the chilled skin like the rays of the sun itself. I didn't imagine Calla saw many men like me in her sheltered life.
It should stay that way.
She averted her eyes as her teeth bit into her bottom lip with another flush of her cheeks. "Thank you so much for this," she sighed. "My husband is on his way, but it can be hard for him to get away from work," she explained. I resisted the urge to laugh at her attempt to let me know there was a husband in the picture. Under normal circumstances, it would have been smart. Dissuading interest early on could only benefit her, but she should have known that a man like me could take whatever he wanted. Married or not.
"It's no problem. Your boy looks like he's having a rough go of it," I grunted, finding the part where the tire had come off the rim.
"He's teething," she responded. "These teeth will be the death of me. He's usually a calm boy, but something about this time has him miserable." She wiggled her nose on his, making him squeal with laughter even as he clung to her. "Don't they, Cookie Monster?" she asked him.
I snapped the tire back onto the rim, grateful the solution came so quickly. I needed to get away from her, put distance between us before it was too late to turn back. The sound of her laughing in response to her boy's joy was something I couldn't handle. Not if I wanted to have any chance of leaving her alone.
I straightened, and the position put me closer to her than I meant to be. As my eyes slid down over her face, my gaze settled on the thumping of the pulse in her delicate neck as she stared up at me.
Axel broke my moment of fixation when he reached out his arms, straining toward me while Calla tried to contain him. "I'm so sorry," she laughed. "He isn't usually so friendly."
A boy after my own heart.
I held out my hands, lifting him under the armpits and out of Calla's arms. She looked panicked for a brief second, but then relief crossed her face as the weight left her back. I stared at the little boy in my arms, at the chocolate brown hair he'd inherited from his father, but his mother's blue eyes shone back from his face. His little hand reached up, touching the scar through my eyebrow in confusion before he laughed and punched my nose.
"Axel!" Calla scolded.
"He's alright," I said, hearing a smile in my voice for the first time in as long as I could remember.
A beautiful woman in front of me, a boy who somehow looked like me in my arms. It was everything I'd wanted once upon a time, before they took it all away.
When Axel lost interest in using me as a punching bag, Calla took him back and settled him into the seat of the stroller.
Once she’d gotten him buckled, she turned her attention back to me, smiling happily. "Thank you again. So much. Can I give you some money or—"
"You've already given me more than you know," I whispered, reaching out a hand to touch her face. "Have a good life, Tesoro." Treasure.
She gasped again the moment I touched her, my hand cupping her cheek as she stared up at me in confusion. I could never speak to her again, never touch her, but I'd never be able to walk away from her either.
The moment my thumb touched her high cheekbone, something in me shifted.
I was found.
One
Ryker
Two weeks later
Latour’s black sedan pulled up at the back of the lot. We might have been tentatively willing to trust him in the interest of an alliance, but until the man proved himself to Matteo, he wouldn’t set foot inside his home.
Or my warehouse.
When Chad got out of the car, his eyes traveled to Simon standing by the driver’s side of the Lincoln as he waited for the head of the Bellandi family to emerge from the vehicle. We had designed every aspect of the meeting around the need to emphasize the power hierarchy, and the shift from what Chad felt familiar with.
The full wrath of Matteo Bellandi needed to stare Chad Latour in the face, because if he ever made the stupid mistake to cross Bellandi, it wouldn’t only be the man himself who unleashed his fury on him.
I’d take away everything he should have worshiped and make him watch as I made them mine.
I watched from the sidelines, with my backup beater car behind me. I leaned my ass against it with my arms crossed over my chest, as fury filled my veins.
He was so fucking stupid. So fucking oblivious to his surroundings. How did someone survive as a cop and not realize a monster lingered just out of sight?
If Matteo hadn’t needed him, I’d have slit his throat before he even saw me.
Simon opened Matteo’s door finally, and the head of the Bellandi family made a grand show of unfolding his brutal body to stand next to the car. He eyed Chad’s tall frame with distaste, noting the badge he wore strapped to his belt.
Our line of work made dirty cops inevitable, a n
ecessary evil we suffered to avoid jail time. But as people who took our vows of loyalty seriously, I couldn’t think of a single dirty cop who I didn’t think was worse than the dirt beneath my boots. Loyalty came first. The family we chose came first. A dirty cop betrayed both.
This one was just worse than most, because he was in my way.
I watched the exchange from the shadows. Chad stretched out a hand to shake Matteo’s, and my boss refused to touch him. His mouth moved, and Chad was quick to withdraw the hand.
Matteo wasn’t a germaphobe. He just hated people. The cruel expression on his face never faded, never relented for even a moment to show a hint of happiness.
I’d heard stories of a time when he’d been a different man. A boy really, in love with a girl he’d never be able to keep.
I understood the feeling.
Simon nodded at me over Matteo’s head, and I pushed off my car to make my way into the fray. Chad still hadn’t seen me, hadn’t even bothered to take his eyes off of who he saw as the threat. But while Matteo might have posed a threat, he’d never kill Chad himself.
He’d save that pleasure for me, when the time came that he stopped being useful.
I knew, because he’d told me. We were forthcoming like that.
Chad’s eyes finally landed on me when my suit clad ass touched the Lincoln, and I perched on the hood. Simon glared at me as the weight of the car shifted, the tires groaning under my bulk. I ignored him, letting my fists clench around the edge of the hood.
I couldn’t stand. Couldn’t be too close to the fuck, because if I got any closer, I just might fuck everything up and kill him.
Grieved Loss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 3) Page 1
