Page 39 of Princess of the Mafia

“Shhh, baby, I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” I crooned to her wails as I rocked her tight. Her body jittered in my arms like she was in a boat in the middle of the Atlantic and not in my damn arms on a mid-August Monday.

I wrapped my hands around the nape of her neck and pushed her face to my chest. “Shhh, breathe with me,” I whispered in her ear, and it was like a magic switch had been flipped on. Her painful wails slugged down instantly to harsh whimpers vibrating on my chest.

A shiver rocked her body as she tried to hold her breath in, and when I did the same, hers released to my whoosh. Somehow, with a hitch here and there, we found the balance, and slowly but steadily, we started breathing to a tune that was ours. With each breath, I found a shiver less in my arms. Her stiff body sagged till she went completely slack.

Noise filtered into my mind again. Gapes from strangers. Ringing phones, flashing cameras. The black-suited bodies of my men surrounded us. In an instant, I wanted her out of here and away from prying eyes. She was mine. To protect. No one else should witness her weakness, if it even could be called that.

So I rocked back and stood up with her in my arms and strode to the lift with the moving wall of my men as she buried her face in my neck.

Only when the lift pinged shut behind us did I dare to release my breath.

CHAPTER TWENTY

LORENZO

Unease crawled through my skin like frost on an icy lake. I watched my wife, all curled up and tight like a kitten, in my bed. She’d fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion right away.

A soft sob left her breath, and it vibrated through my veins. My fists clenched as tightly as the pressure around my chest. Oxygen snuck out of the room, and heat protruded from my throat. I couldn’t breathe in here. Guilt wasn’t knocking on the door. It was standing right in front of me, had my hands shackled, and a gun to my face.

The next sob that left her had me jump out of the chair I was sitting on like it was a fucking burning hot red plate.

The third soft sob hit me hard on my back as I strode out of the room and stumbled into my office.

Before I knew it, I was pacing the floor with a long distance call pasted to my ears.

“Martello,” Di Matteo’s growl came over the line. His tone, as always, told me he was mad at me. I supposed it had something to do with the fact that I’d stolen his sister from him.

“Need some answers.”

A hitch and an immediate, “Is Daria—”

“She’s fine or will be soon—”

“What the fuck!”

Jesus! His thunder was going to puncture my ear. I held the phone away from me before bringing it back to his, “What the hell happened, Martello?”

I hadn’t planned on telling him anything. But the image of my wife, on her knees, bawling her eyes out, was lasered onto the back of my eyeballs. So I told him of actions and reactions I didn’t fully comprehend, but somehow he did because there wasn’t a single surprised gasp that snagged through the international line. All he did was sigh, like he’d known this would happen, like it all made sense to him. I didn’t care to remain in the dark. Especially when it came to my wife. Frustration trudged up my spine.

“You planning to tell me what this is all about?”

Another annoying huff. “I’d hoped she would tell you herself—”

“She didn’t. If you want me to help your sister, get to the fucking point.”

Heavy silence followed before Di Matteo's venom leaked through the phone.

“Carlo fucked up all my sisters.”

Apprehension hit me like a cold bucket of ice water. It didn’t slip my mind that he didn’t call him Papà.

“Not a worthy Papà?”

Di Matteo's harsh laugh bounced off the phone and echoed lightly in the room.

“Not in my eyes. I don’t know if he was ever faithful to Mamma, but as long as I can remember, he wasn’t. Unfortunately, that’s what my sisters have grown up with. Nothing unusual. That’s the Cosa Nostra as we know it. Except in the last few years, he took it further. It was like a sickness had overtaken him, and he just couldn’t fucking stop. He stuck his dick into any whore he could get his hands on. Any maid. Any girl who stepped into our house.”

“My old man wasn’t any different—”

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