HaBO: MMA Hero Doesn’t Love the Heroine’s Pie

You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!

This HaBO request is from Simmi, who wants to find a romance that’s part of a sought after series. Trigger warning for the description below:

I’ve been watching the Bitchery work its magic and help people find their long lost book-loves for years now, so when I realized that there was a book I wanted to reread, but couldn’t remember the title.

The book I wanted help with is actually part of a series. I remember only bits and pieces from each one, so I thought I’d go through and give as much detail about each of the books as I could.

The first book deals with a MMA fighter who finds the love of his life after she serves him pie at a diner. From what I remember, they live in a small town, and the woman is a newcomer who takes a job as a waitress in the diner. The MMA fighter is somewhat of a celebrity in that town, as they have a training center in town which has produced many great fighters over the years. The waitress doesn’t know that though, and serves him a piece of pie, bought with her own pay check, because she thinks he looks lonely. He’s harboring a crush on her and doesn’t tell her that he hates that type of pie, and just shows up like clockwork during her shift, eats his meal, and chokes down that piece of pie.

I think the next book’s hero is named Romeo?

A later book (I don’t know if it’s the second book) is about the MMA fighter’s best friend who used to be an MMA fighter as well, but is now the town sheriff. He is actually married and estranged from his wife, an author. They were childhood sweethearts and married young, but one night they got in a fight and she walked back to her house where her abusive brother drugged her and let his friend rape her. When she wakes up in the hospital, she refuses to let the nurses tell her husband what happened because she knows he will end up in jail after killing her rapist (he has assaulted people who have abused the girl before).

A still later book involves the mafia. A hero from a previous book was loosely connected to the mafia, and his brothers, who were much more closely involved, come down from NYC to the small town in order to try and gain some distance. One of the brothers is an enforcer, and the other is a genius.

The book I am looking for involves the enforcer, and is mostly a giant flashback as to how he became an enforcer, and how his family became involved in the mafia. He was a gigolo at one point, though he never told his family what he was forced to do. The role was marked by a stylized bracelet he wore, and whenever he saw someone else wearing something similar he would go and hug them because he knew what it meant they had to do,

The first book described sounds really sweet, but the next two have a huge tone change.