Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,58

that he’d participated in such retribution. He had to confess as much as he could to her, but there were things he had to keep to himself.

She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “It won’t matter,” she said stubbornly.

He touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “Bernie, I’ve been involved with the mob since I was old enough to carry a piece. I’ve done things...” He hesitated. It had never really bothered him before. Now it was hard to reconcile what he’d done with what he wanted to do now. He drew in a breath. “You’ve watched The Godfather movies, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yes. They’re great movies,” she said.

“You remember about the horse’s head being in bed with the producer who wouldn’t give the outfit’s singer a job?”

She nodded.

“And the way Michael’s older brother was murdered, a hit organized by a rival family?”

She felt cold chills down her spine. “Yes,” she said huskily. “I remember that, too.”

“Well, that was glossed-over stuff,” he said flatly. “Family hits are just plain gore. You don’t know what happened to Paulie, do you?”

She just shook her head.

“He had a wife and a little girl, before he came down here to work for old man Grayling as a security expert,” he said. “Paulie was the only person in our whole family who went straight. He worked with the FBI in Jersey, and he shut down one of the minor crime bosses. He felt great about it. But when he went home that night, his wife and his little girl had been done with a shotgun.”

Bernie put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, the poor man!” she exclaimed, shocked.

“He took years getting over it,” he said. “Eventually, he fell in love with Sari, but he got cold feet and made some excuse to quit. It was three years before he came back. In the meantime, Sari’s father had beaten the girls to within an inch of their lives. Sari blamed Paul and had nothing to do with him when he worked out of the FBI office in San Antonio. But she was in a hurricane down in the Bahamas. Paul thought she was dead, but he and Mandy went to bring her home. She turned up alive and they were married the same week. Paulie never got over losing his family, though. He blamed himself for pushing the crime boss too hard and going after his whole organization.”

“What happened to the man who killed his first family?” she asked.

His face grew hard. “I knew a guy who was inside,” he said shortly. “I took care of it.”

She felt the blood drain out of her face. “You...?”

“I took care of it,” he repeated quietly. “Yes. I have that kind of power. I worked my way up through the organization for years, to get to where I am now. I own one of the biggest casinos in Vegas and I’m filthy rich. I was arrested once on a murder charge, but I had witnesses swear I was nowhere near the scene of the crime. They had no real evidence, so they dropped the case.”

She moved to a big oak tree and leaned back against it. This was news she hadn’t anticipated, and it was shocking. She looked up into cold dark eyes.

“I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t want to have to confess how bad a man I am. But you had to know,” he said. Inside, he was churning like storm clouds. He hadn’t wanted to tell her these things, but he couldn’t offer her a future without making her aware of the past. “There’s more,” he told her. “A lot more. But this is enough for now.”

Her lips parted on a long breath. She looked at him helplessly. She loved him. He was a criminal. He would probably never give up that life. He’d told her graphically what the family he belonged to would do if they were betrayed.

“Omertà,” she whispered heavily.

He moved closer. “Yeah. Omertà,” he replied. “It’s the code we live by. Or die by, if we betray anybody in our family. They don’t just kill you. They kill everybody you love. It’s like erasing your whole life.”

She leaned her head back against the hard bark of the tree and just looked at him. She didn’t understand what he wanted from her, why he was telling her something so personal.

“So that’s the secret I keep,” he said. “It’s bad. It’s horrible. But it’s a part of my life that you