Page 38 of Princess of the Mafia

Sweat.

Girl with blond hair.

Girl with blond hair.

My eyes rolled with madness.

Lorenzo scowled. Like Papà did.

Or was it guilt? Or was it insanity?

Something so sharp and deep twisted in my heart, and acid filled each vein, every cell, and every pore.

Panic didn’t crawl through my throat, it flooded the gateways and burst through.

Someone was screaming like a banshee, and feet were running.

Running, running, running.

LORENZO

I could judge the tension in a room in a single heartbeat. Calculate the egos, manipulate the room, know the pros and cons, and attack where it would hurt the most. With a word, a look, or a fucking gun.

Except when it came to my fucking wife because she rattled me like marbles in a damn tin jar.

I came out of my gym to find her plastered to the floor as if her very soul was in danger of being sucked away. But there was nothing to equal the terror in her eyes. All I found was the new maid I’d hired since my Sicilian housewife didn’t know how to cook. Fuck if I knew what the danger was oozing out of her, but it must have been big because I’d never seen my wife look like this.

She looked haunted like past horrors in the present tense. Like the monsters under her bed had found her in my territory. She looked like no man could protect her, even if he wanted to. And that irritated my skin like a nasty rash and clenched my chest like a metal clasp. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to protect her with all that I had. But before I could put a word to my thoughts, and take a step towards her to comfort her, she let out an ear-splintering scream that had the small hairs on the back of my neck jerk up. The eeriness of it would haunt me for days to come, I thought as I lunged for her. But whatever demons she was fighting with had her sprint so fast that the lift was already buzzing down even before I’d crashed through the front door.

“Fuck!” I punched my fist into the marble wall. It should have hurt, but all it did was burn my heart. I bolted back inside to grab my phone, and even as I punched the button for Danilo, my heart pounded like damn gunshots in a loop.

“Daria… she’s coming down. She’s terrified. Keep her in the lobby.”

The button of the bloody lift pulsed from the number of times I’d pushed it. I paced, and I growled, and I pushed the damn button a million times.

Frustration jumped on me and clawed all over my skin.

I’d known how to handle a gun since I was nine. Mamma went out with a blast, and the very next hour, I found myself with my first gun. I wasn’t letting anyone else die on my watch. But there wasn’t a damn gun in the world that could prepare me to help my fucking wife, who was running away from a demon I couldn’t fathom.

I wanted to be down there. Not let my man catch her before me. I had to be there for her. Not my fucking men.

The moment the lift went ping, I swear that the fire in me flew out like I was a fucking dragon. Jesus, each drop of a floor riled my frustration up an inch. What a fucking stupid idea of mine to go and live on the goddamn 129th floor.

The lift landed with a gentle thud, the soft whoosh of the doors, and I strode into the lobby. The view loomed dark in front of me. My feet skidded to a stop so fast that I staggered back like a fist had landed on my beating heart. My Principessa was on the ground wailing her heart out while my fucking men stood around her like damn Satan’s wall.

“Move the fuck away from her,” roared out of me as I sprinted toward her.

We were the fucking entertainment of the lobby, and on any other day, I might have cared. Might. Not today, though. I skidded, took a breath to calm my racing heart, and approached her tentatively. I hoped to fucking God she wouldn’t run. I didn’t know if I would have the heart to chase, when she looked so fragile and shattered, like a princess should never be.

My insides burned like acid swirling in a hot pot. It hurt so much that I almost wanted to keel over and throw the fuck up. But I put one foot in front of the other, and when I was in front of her, I slowly slid to my knees, and I forgot that there was a world outside of us.

I’d thought seeing another man in between her legs was the worst it could ever get. I was so fucking wrong.

Her eyes were tightly shut, and she rocked on her knees as she wailed out her pain. She was so precious. A crystal amidst fucking bulldozers.

“Principessa,” I rasped, terrified she might run again because I didn’t have the heart to cage her in. But she surprised me. Yet again. The moment the word left my mouth, she jumped on me and hung on to me like a fucking koala bear. Her tiny body flung me back onto my heels, and damn, did it feel like candlelight in the darkness of my heart.

I don’t think she knew how tight she held on. Her long nails crawled my back, and her chest pasted to mine. It was with sheer strength that I knelt up straight when the slightest whiff could have taken me to the floor. Her weeping shook my chest, each sob vibrated in my rib cage.

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