Page 71 of Princess of the Mafia

I swallowed tightly. There were so many things to worry about when it came to her. Emily was one-tenth of it. But she took my silence as approval.

“Perfetto. Don’t wait up for me.” She pushed off the wall and sauntered past me in her fucking tight mini-skirt, but I whipped her around to my chest.

I shouldn’t have let her go. But it was suicidal to hold her against her will. “If you get into trouble, you call me, capisti?”

She patted my chest. “Don’t worry, big boy, I can look after myself.”

She pushed past me and out the door.

“Fuck!” I slammed my fist on it. My fucking front door was edged with my fist now, but it didn’t touch me. She wanted fucking freedom. Insanity was the only way. I would let her fly. I just hoped to God she would come back to her nest.

DARIA

Defiance had made me push past him and out the door. That and vexation. They had taken me for a ride. Emily the least of all because I didn’t actually care for her. But Stefano had known, and now his reaction made sense. It wasn’t that he had fucked her, it was because his brother, my husband, had. And my fucking husband had taken me for a ride. He could have told me. At any one time, he could have told me. If it was just an ex, he could have opened his damn mouth, and instead of sucking me dry, he could have told me. But he didn’t, and that told me so much more.

New York traffic flitted past as Orso drove, talking softly into his mouthpiece. I would have bet my damn ass it was my husband.

I leaned forward and asked in Sicilian, “Is that my husband?”

His shoulders stiffened, and I had my answer. Of course it was.

“Gli faccio un culo così.”

I slipped back into my seat, a quiet pleasure running up my body that I had told my husband to go screw himself. I wasn’t going to hide in a dark room like Mamma. I was going out clubbing. Because he didn’t have the power. He couldn’t hurt me.

My judgment was all wrong. I trusted rarely. But it itched my skin like a nasty rash that I hadn’t seen Emily for who she was. The woman he had fucked. She wasn’t a friend. More of an acquaintance. Still, the fact that I had actually had lunch and gone shopping with the woman he had fucked threw me off. The thought of meeting up with her disgusted me. He hadn’t allowed Aldo a second to live when he found out. In my mind, this was no different, but I was supposed to move on.

Irritation spiked. I wanted a world between myself and everyone. Away from him, his fuck buddy. Away from his men. My Mamma always told me my impulsive decisions would get me into trouble one day. I realized it was time to find out.

The car slowed down, and the pounding of music thundered in my ears. I pushed the door open and stumbled out to the loud curse of Orso. The door almost hit a passerby. Loud cursing followed me. I didn’t know whose. Orso? The guy who I had hit with the door? I didn’t hang around to find out and dashed to the pulsing building with the neon light-clad walls. I was anonymous here. No one’s wife, no one’s daughter. I whizzed past the bodyguards in the front. The charm of a woman’s body that I used for the second time in my life. Dark music and heat pulled me in when the door swung open. I didn’t even get a second to catch my bearings before the crowd carried me through. Suffocation constricted the walls of my lungs. Unease riled below the sweat on my spine. I fought the bile in my stomach. Memories of another time in another bar hit me like a fist to my belly. I found a gap in the mass, groped my way to the toilets, and emptied my stomach of the bile.

I tottered out and splashed ice-cold water on my burning face. My eyes caught on the hot piece of ass staring back at me in the mirror. Well, I would not allow it to go in vain. I didn’t care about him. I was going to party my ass off. I was going to show him he didn’t have my heart. He had my body, and if he looked at me with those burning eyes of his, he would probably have it again. But not my damn heart. That was all mine, locked and sealed in a box.

So I went out and headed to the bar. Emily and Orso were nowhere to be found. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my brute of a husband had his entire team looking for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I ordered a vodka straight up. Even though I had never had it before, it sounded like a badass drink the new me would have. Except it took me a few sips and a groping hand of a stranger to realize I didn’t care for the new me that much.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

LORENZO

Iwasn’t sure if the phone even rang before I had it pasted to my ear. The regret of letting her go weighed on my chest right before her drunken whisper hit my ear.

“Enzo.”

“What’s wrong?” I had already got my keys and was headed out the front door.

“Can you come…” a flutter of a second before she dropped a, “please.”

My heart skidded to a halt as the elevator pinged open. Fuck. I was going to lose her if I stepped in, but even I couldn’t throttle 129 fucking floors down. I was beginning to fucking hate these elevators. Why am I always running after her? “On my way, Principessa. Can you see Orso?” My voice dripped nonchalance even though I was slowly losing my mind.

A sob. “No.”

I gritted my teeth and stood between the doors, one foot in and one out. “Find the toilet and lock yourself in there.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“He’s watching me,” she muttered in Sicilian, and an icy fist wrapped around my heart.

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