My Sinful Longing (Sinful Men Book 3)

by Lauren Blakely

  “I assure you, we are. And you can let your clients know that you’ve talked to Metro and that we’re committed to this,” he added. “We’re doing everything we can to dismantle the gangs, member by member.”

  My brain latched onto that last word, making me wonder if my old friend Danny had gone down the path of his brother into the Sinners.

  “Hey, what happened to Danny? We didn’t stay friends.”

  “Danny Nelson is dead,” John said matter-of-factly, and my blood froze. “Shot three times in a drive-by shooting a few years ago. Retaliation from another gang over a murder. One we think TJ was involved in. Both TJ Nelson and Kenny Nelson seem to be on the run. They’re wanted for other crimes over the years.”

  My whole body turned to ice. “Wow,” I said heavily, grappling with the shocking news. “Danny died before he was thirty.”

  “Gangs are a young man’s business,” John said. “You don’t find many old men in street gangs. The young men usually die or wind up in prison by the time they hit thirty. Like Danny Nelson. Like Jerry Stefano.”

  “What about TJ and Kenny Nelson? They must be in their forties. What’s their secret to a long life as gang men?”

  “I’d like to know. Because they’re the exception to the rule,” John said, then thanked us for our time and left.

  27

  Marcus

  The bell above the door jingled. I looked up from my math book as a guy in jeans and a black T-shirt entered the convenience store where I worked.

  I nodded a hello then returned to the page in front of me, as my mind replayed the day. Talking to Elle had unburdened me, and I was more fired up than ever about my plans. College, living on my own, getting to know my unknown family—I’d wanted all of that for so long, and I was close to having it. Living with my dad had been stifling for so many reasons. Sometimes I missed seeing my stepmom, Angie, and my little sisters now that I was no longer at home with them, but Angie kept in touch, checking in about my college prep. I was glad to be on my own, and I was on a path to becoming an assistant manager here at the store. That was helping make ends meet, along with my savings from other little jobs over the years.

  As I worked through some equations, the guy grabbed a bag of chips and sauntered over to the counter. He was about my age, maybe a year older. He had a goatee, light eyes, and a black-and-blue fingernail on his right hand, as if he’d slammed it in a car door.

  He tossed the bag on the counter, as if it were a prize he’d won at the fair. Okay. “I’ll take this tasty bag of barbecue chips, please,” he said, stretching out the last word.

  “Sure,” I said, scanning the bag. “That’ll be a dollar and two cents.”

  The guy jammed his hands into his pockets, riffling around. He pulled out a flip phone and set it on the counter, eyeing it dismissively. “Someday I’ll get an iPhone.” Stuffing his hand into his pocket again, he produced a wadded-up bill, then spread it open. “Shit. I only have a one.”

  “That’s cool. I got it,” I said, reaching into the change tin to grab two pennies. It was just easier to cover for him.

  “You are the man,” the guy said with a too-wide grin as he pointed his index fingers at me like guns.

  Yeah, I wasn’t too wild about the gesture, but he’d be out of my life any second. “No problem.”

  The guy glanced at my textbook and stabbed his finger against it. “You learning algebra or something like that?”

  I nodded, not bothering to explain that I was well beyond ninth grade math at this point. “Studying for a test.”

  “College?” the guy asked, as if he’d never heard of it before.

  “That’s the goal.”

  “Man, that shit looks hard. I can’t even imagine.”

  I smiled faintly. I wasn’t worried. I wanted the challenge. Wanted to meet it and exceed it.

  The guy ripped open the bag with a loud pop and stuffed a chip in his mouth, crunching loudly, like he was showing off how well his teeth worked. “My goal is to never need college,” he said, then cocked his head like he was studying me. “See you later,” he finally said, then walked to the door and stopped to add, “Marcus.”

  A chill swept through me as the bell jingled and the guy left.

  How the hell did he know my name?

  I glanced down at my work shirt and laughed at myself. My name tag was on. “Duh,” I said, relieved, then grabbed my phone when it buzzed with a text from Angie.

  Angie: How’s the studying going? I would offer to quiz you but I’m pretty sure you want to pass.

  I replied right away, her note resetting my mood.

  Marcus: Pass? C’mon! How about ace it?

  Angie: That’s what I meant!

  Setting the phone down, I returned to my textbook, putting the odd moment with the guy behind me. But something uneasy still ran through me from the encounter.

  It just felt . . . off.

  28

  Colin

  My bike pounded against the bumpy trail, vibrations thrumming in my bones. I leaned into the curve, relentlessly focusing on the single track beneath the wheel and the 180-degree turn ahead of me on the descent.

  Whipping past the switchback, I stomped the pedals, chasing speed, chasing adrenaline, and finding it on the hills of Red Rock Canyon with my mountain bike. Dirt churned up beneath me as I tackled the toughest trail, leaving the latest twists and turns in the never ending saga of our mother in a swirl of dust.

  When I reached the bottom, my heart hammered mercilessly, but I’d beaten my brother.

  Michael had determination on his side, but I possessed that too, along with a more potent dose of fearlessness. Sometimes fearlessness meant you were faster on a downhill. Tonight, with the sun sinking low on the horizon, the time on the bike was therapy—it was necessary to shed the frustrations I felt over Elle, but also the guilt I still harbored over my mistakes as a kid. Riding a rocky downhill required extreme concentration, and the rattle and hum of the wheels on the ground had forced everything else from my brain, narrowing my focus to only the bike and the trail—and besting my brother.

  Michael rolled up next to me, stopping his bike.

  “Streak’s still intact,” I said, my breath coming fast as I wheeled to the water fountain at the base of the hill. “I continue to reign supreme on two wheels.”

  “Watch it. You’re lucky I still ride with you,” Michael teased, as he unsnapped his helmet.

  After a drink of water, I let the therapy continue, this time with words. Because I wasn’t done. The silt on the riverbed of the past had been well and truly stirred up tonight. “Michael,” I said, stripping away the macho bravado. “I still feel like shit for being friends with those guys.”

  My brother got off his bike, resting his palm on the seat. “You’re not responsible. Your friendship played no role in the murder.”

  “But what if I hadn’t been friends with Danny? What if I’d never known them? Would things be different?” I asked, letting the question hang in the air.

  Michael dropped a hand on my shoulder. “Forget the what-ifs. Focus on the real. And that’s this: Mom didn’t find Stefano through you,” he said, his voice firm and clear. “She found Stefano on her own. She found those others on her own. Hell, for all we know, she might have found them through her lover. The one thing I know for certain is she didn’t find them through you being buddies with TJ’s little bro when you were thirteen. That is not how it happened. But even if it had, for the sake of argument, let me ask you this. Who planned a murder?”

  “She did,” I said softly.

  “Who hired Stefano?”

  “She did.” My voice picked up volume.

  “And who saw the murder of our dad through?”

  “She did.” My tone was strong and certain now.

  “Exactly,” Michael said, bending to the water fountain and gulping up a stream. As he rose, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “But I’ve made the same mistakes she made,” I
said quietly, guilt stitched into my voice, into my goddamn heart and soul. Most days, I didn’t beat myself up. But some days, I was consumed with the emotion.

  Michael raised a finger and pointed it at me. “You didn’t do what she did. You made mistakes that are fucking forgivable. You made mistakes that hurt yourself. You made mistakes that a human being makes. You did not kill a man. You are not like her.”

  I pressed my thumb and forefinger against the bridge of my nose and exhaled, visualizing letting go of all this guilt.

  Soon, soon, I had to say goodbye to it.

  “Speaking of what-ifs, have you ever heard from your what-if girl?” I asked as we loaded our bikes on the roof rack a few minutes later.

  Michael shook his head. “Not lately. That’s why she’s a what-if girl.”

  As we left, I asked myself if I’d be happy letting Elle become a what-if girl.

  29

  Elle

  Big dots of primary-colored lights swirled in a speed race across the slick hardwood floors, as the music of The B-52’s pulsed throughout the rink.

  “All right, my crazy skaters, I want to see how excited you get when you go to the looooooove shack!” The directive came from my sister, Camille. Mic at her mouth, she worked up the crowds at the Skyway Roller Rink.

  A flurry of teens, sprinkled with a few moms and the regular crew of older skaters who still rocked out nearly every night, motored around the oval, picking up the pace to the popular skating tune. An appropriate number for the conversation I needed to have with my little sister, considering Colin and I were having a “Love Shack” kind of relationship.

  The getaway kind. The sneak-off-and-get-together kind.

  Did I need to cut things off with him? I wasn’t sure if the news about Marcus meant I should end things with Colin. But I flinched at the mere thought of ending the sweetest thing I’d had in ages—our wonderful . . . what was it? A tryst? An affair? I didn’t know what to call it.

  “That’s right!” Camille shouted. “Skate like there’s glitter on the highway!”

  As I waited for the upbeat song to end, Marcus’s confession echoed in my mind. There was no way I could tell Colin about his brother. That would be wrong. It wasn’t my place. But I felt awful knowing this news was barreling toward him and that any day now he’d learn he had a long-lost brother.

  There was something so very soapy about it, as if I could be reading the crib notes to a storyline on The Young and The Restless.

  The character of the mother becomes pregnant before the murder of her husband. The mother hides her pregnancy during what turns out to be a speedy trial. She goes to jail six months pregnant. No one in her family knows about the baby in her belly. The only one the wiser—besides the medical staff at the correctional facility—is her lover on the outside. The lover whose hands were clean of the crime.

  I shuddered as my sister encouraged the crowd to “Bang, bang, bang on the door.”

  Then the half-brother is born in prison and handed over to his father, who moves far, far away from Las Vegas with his baby son. He’s not required to tell a soul. There are no prison rules, nor federal ones, requiring a parent to disclose to half-siblings that they have a new little brother.

  The father meets a new woman in San Diego, falls in love with her, fathers more children, and returns to Vegas a few years later with his oddly blended family.

  I started to replay the rest of the story, when the song ended and Camille introduced an MC Hammer tune then set down her mic. She nodded to the little gate at the edge of her DJ booth. I rose and followed her to the skate racks as she began straightening pairs of rental skates. I joined in, knowing the routine well from having helped out before.

  “So, what’s the story? Time to spill,” Camille said in her no-nonsense tone as she tucked some laces into a pair of skates.

  “The problem is, I can’t even tell you what the problem is,” I said, frustration thick in my voice as I adjusted the wheels on another pair.

  Camille arched an eyebrow and stared at me with her deep brown eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said. I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  “Well, unswear yourself, girl, so I can help out,” Camille said, nudging me with an elbow. “Or do I need to tickle it out of you, like when we were kids?”

  I stepped away and held up my hands in surrender. “Not the tickle! Anything but the tickle.”

  “Fine. I won’t torture you like that. But tell me what’s on your mind. I have ten minutes of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice queued up before I need to get back there, and I want to help you,” she said as she worked her way down a row. Camille’s dark hair was twisted into a looped-over ponytail, and she wore jeans and a T-shirt. She’d been managing this rink since after college.

  I sighed and tried to figure out how to begin to ask for the advice I couldn’t even truly ask for. “So, there’s this guy . . .”

  “Ah, the plot thickens.”

  “And I like him.”

  “Ooh. It’s even thicker.”

  “A lot. But I don’t know if it can be serious.”

  “Because of you or him?”

  I stopped unknotting a gnarled lace to consider the question. Did Colin want to be serious with me? He’d seemed to. But he never pushed me. He understood my boundaries. The trouble was, I didn’t fully understand what to do with this new rush of feelings. Especially now that I was privy to the Marcus news. “Because of a bunch of things. Especially because I learned something about him and his family that he doesn’t know.”

  “Oh, now the plot is molasses thick,” Camille said, her eyes glittery with excitement at the prospect of a juicy tale.

  “And I can’t divulge what I know because of confidentiality guidelines as a social worker, and it’s kind of a big thing, so I just have to wait and see if this other person will divulge it to him. And I just feel like a mess in here,” I said, grabbing my belly. “I’m all twisted and turned, and I feel like I’m lying to him, but I’m not. I just can’t tell him. It’s not my secret to tell.”

  Camille’s expression turned serious, and she stepped away from the row of skates. She parked her hands on my shoulders. “You can’t solve every problem. If this is something you can’t do anything about, you need to try not to let it eat away at you. You worry too much, and you take on the weight of everything. And I get it. You’ve had some tough shit to deal with yourself.”

  “But do I keep seeing him while knowing this secret and not being able to say it?”

  “Do you want to see him?”

  I nodded. Easiest question of the night.

  “If your hands are tied, your hands are tied. You can’t untie them, just like you couldn’t make Sam a better dad,” she said, reminding me of how hard I’d tried to fix the things beyond fixing. “Lord knows if you’re having a nice time with this new guy, you deserve it. Let go of the things you can’t control.” Camille snapped her fingers. “That reminds me of a song. Lace up!”

  I grabbed a pair of skates, tied them quickly, and rolled over to the rink, eagerly anticipating my sister’s musical choice for my life.

  Camille returned to her perch at the mic. “Boys and girls, men and women of all ages. I need to take a break from Vanilla Ice because every now and then we must heed the advice of the one and only Ice Queen, Elsa.”

  I cracked up over my sister’s choice. Only Camille could find inspiration in the insanely popular Disney song that blared through the rink. Maybe the verses of “Let It Go” weren’t entirely on point where my problem was concerned, but the chorus and the final few lines gave me something else I needed.

  A reminder that this battle wasn’t mine to pick and choose. It wasn’t mine to fight or not fight. All I could do was stand on the sidelines and let the storm rage on.

  Whatever was brewing in Colin’s life wasn’t my storm. It would rage on its own power, whether or not I saw the man again.

  Later that Wednesday night, Alex grabbed a composit
ion notebook as we passed the school supplies aisle at Target, and showed it to me. “For planning.”

  “Always good to plan for school.” The start of Alex’s freshman year was just weeks away.

  He shook his head. “No, this is for State of Decay. I came up with a new strategy today, and I want to write it down and test it out step-by-step,” he said, his voice rising in excitement as I continued to push the cart. “That guy at the center, Colin, told me to.”

  I stopped immediately and tilted my head. “He did?” I asked, intrigued to hear his name in this context. True, the two of them had talked before. But still, I was damn curious what they had chatted about.

  “He said you just devise a strategy and follow it,” he said, sweeping one hand across the other and pointing forward, like a general launching into battle. “But don’t be afraid to change if it’s not working.”

  As he dropped the notebook into our cart of groceries, I had my answer. Funny that it came from Colin through my son.

  Time for me to change my approach.

  30

  Colin

  From the twenty-ninth floor of my office building, the icons of the Strip looked like Monopoly hotels. Up here, they became little Lego structures with playful shapes and Lilliputian charm—the pyramid of the Luxor, the miniature Eiffel Tower, the roller-coaster that wrapped around the New York–New York hotel . . .

  The view from miles away was akin to how an idea took shape for me. It started small, but as I zoomed in closer, it had the potential to become a glittering star on the skyline. That was what I was looking for today from my team of venture capitalists as they presented the start-ups we were considering funding.