Page 69 of Princess of the Mafia

“Yeah?” Lorenzo pinned me with his eyes. “She offered you to me. She said you’d be a better wife.”

My lips wobbled. Is that why he married me? Because I was a virgin and supposed to be a better wife?

Orietta’s answer buzzed in my ears. Something about how she should have married him anyway, so that she wouldn’t be stuck on a Soldati’s earnings.

But I couldn’t have cared less about her answer. I wished I could have said I didn’t expect this from her. But it would only make me as naïve as she’d once accused me of being. Because somehow I had known she never liked me. Still, I asked the question, burning like acid in my throat. “Why?”

“Why? Why? You’re always the fucking princess of the family. You and Lia. You were Papà’s favorite.” I gasped at the venom in her tone. “He never even looked at me properly, but if you wanted something, you got it instantly. Then he fucked up and died, and Vitale is the fucking same. I wanted you to suffer. I wanted you to fall off the pink cloud you were living in.”

“He never gave me anything I wanted, Etta. If he had, he wouldn’t have…he wouldn’t have…” I couldn’t finish. She hated me. She really hated me. No one was Papà’s favorite. Papà loved no one but himself. Couldn’t she have seen that?

There was a wetness sliding on my cheeks, yet all I felt was a hollowness in my rib cage.

“You were his fucking princess,” she screamed down the phone.

“Guess what,” Lorenzo’s dark tone filled the room. “She’s still the fucking princess.”

A sob left my body. How could my own sister be filled with so much wrath towards me? For what? I hadn’t done her any harm. At least not knowingly. Yet again, Papà hurt me long after he was gone.

“Don’t go there,” he muttered. His vision swam before my tear-filled eyes. He must have hung up because the phone wasn’t in his hand.

“Why did you make me do that?” I accused him.

He ran his hand through his hair in agitation. “I don’t want anyone treating you badly, and that includes you. Why are you blaming yourself for her unhappiness? She did that all by herself. I wanted you to know.”

“Does Mamma know?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know, but your brother found out.”

He sank next to me on the bed and pulled me roughly into his arms. “You need to stop blaming yourself for other people’s faults, and that includes your papà’s.”

“Papà was a cheat,” I snapped, pulling myself away from him.

His lips thinned. “I know, Principessa. So was mine. Except he didn’t bring his women home like yours.”

“Didn’t your mamma—”

“I don’t want to talk about her.” His tone was too dark and too final to continue down that path.

His phone beeped, and regret framed his face as he picked it up. “Sì?” He pulled me into his arms, and this time, I remained there. My thumping heart calmed down, listening half-heartedly to the conversation. A rough Italian voice filtered through the phone. “I need you here, Lorenzo.”

“I can’t come today.”

I didn’t catch the response to that except my husband’s words. “No. My wife needs me. Nico will come in my place.”

Something unfamiliar pulled at my heartstrings. It was warm, and it flowed as thick as honey through all my veins.

“I hate him,” I muttered darkly, a few heartbeats after he clicked his phone shut.

“It’s okay to hate and love a person at the same time. You will have good memories with him, too.”

“I hate her.”

Silence is all that I heard.

A flicker of doubt ignited inside my hollow chest. “Is that why you didn’t marry her? Because she wasn’t a virgin?”

His harsh voice fell on the glass and echoed all over the room. "Makes you wonder why I married you then, because a vision is etched to my brain that you weren’t one either.”

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