Page 26 of Princess of the Mafia

“Let’s go.” My tone was clipped and came out gruff.

Her lips thinned in annoyance, and she strode out of the room without a glance back.

And I spilled blood for this? For fuck's sake, couldn’t she see I was walking around with loaded balls between my fucking legs?

I strode out, yanked on her arm, and pulled her to me. Lips, eyes, lavender and all, fell against my chest. A flame, hot and itchy, spread down south. “Watch your attitude, or they’ll really doubt those red sheets.”

“Well, now you have as much to lose as I do,” she gritted through her clenched teeth.

Well, well, well, until last night, I thought her firecracker attitude was lost as much as her virginity was. Turned out it only took a night with me to get it riling back. At me.

I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. Again, indecision coasted through me. One thing I was sure of. She fucking annoyed me.

I had a comeback, and I could have spit it out. Something about the fact that I didn’t care for my reputation as much as she did. But I swallowed it back the moment I caught a glimpse of a movement behind her. I needed to get the fuck out of here. Strangers intruding on my privacy pissed me off. Besides, I was starving, and I was always in a bad mood when I was hungry.

The longer I sat among the Di Matteos the deeper they itched under my skin. No fucking and no smoking put me in a dark mood. It didn’t help that they were happy with an espresso and a few pieces of fruit. I missed my smokes and my American fucking breakfast. My knuckles fisted and unfisted around Mamma’s birth and death anniversaries under the table. The only interesting thing about the entire ordeal was the woman seated next to me. I’d learned some new things about her. She played with her food as if her life depended on it. She called all her siblings by their last syllables. Fucking juvenile if you asked me. But no one did.

The loud, robust laugh of a man irked me. I ran my gaze along the table and found a man in his sixties, hairy and loud enough to be a damn gorilla.

“Who’s that?” Truthfully, I didn’t give a shit. Didn’t even know why I asked. Probably delusional.

Her gaze lifted reluctantly from her plate of apples and grapes. “Zio Remigio, he’s Papà’s fratello. He has a line of whores.”

So, we were still on that line of thought. My brows furrowed. If that was the way she introduced everyone in her family, this could be fun. “What about him?” I nodded to the next one, the man who’d been in the room the first time I’d been here.

“Another brother. Zio Marco. He has a mistress in Palermo. She has her own penthouse.”

“Must be a good fuck if she got a penthouse.”

Right on cue, she stiffened next to me like a cold slab of thick meat. Someone get me a fucking bacon and eggs.

“Him?” I nodded to another idiot.

“He’s fucking his cognata.”

“Well, it’s not a whore or a mistress.” There was a burn on my cheek hot enough to scald a fucking hole into it. Interesting. She didn’t have a great opinion of the men in her family. Was this what her talk this morning was about?

“What about your brother?”

“He’s not married.”

“So?”

Bitterness seeped through her voice. “When he does, he’ll cheat on her too.”

“Is that what you think? That all men cheat?”

She shook her head. “No.” My relief was short-lived. “All made men do.”

The thought crossed my mind to tell her that wasn’t true. But I was many things, but I wasn’t a liar. This was the Cosa Nostra. Money and power did strange things to fidelity. In all honesty, that was exactly what I planned to do. Couldn’t bother not to.

She could play house, and I could do what I did before. Married or not. Fucking one woman for a lifetime just wasn’t written anywhere in my cards. It was better she knew it sooner rather than later.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DARIA

Bricks in my heart and pins and needles in my throat. The cold metal clamps around my lungs tightened as the car rolled up the tarmac to his private jet. There was only a distance of a few feet between him and me. But in my mind, the napa leather between us might as well have been an ocean separating us. I knew I would never feel at home with this man, the one who yanked me away from my family too soon, too fast, too fucking unwanted.

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