Page 17 of Princess of the Mafia

There wasn’t any music. Only tension swirled in the air, dark and angry, and the pounding of my heartbeat.

While he drove fast, unease crawled under my skin. This was the first time I was truly alone with a man who wasn’t my family. Well, the second time, if you counted my brief interlude with Aldo, but he was dead, and that said a lot about that.

My mouth popped open a hundred times. But there wasn’t a voice to be found to ask the questions I knew the answers to but didn’t dare to believe. Had he turned Aldo into bones without a breath? Did he suffer a lot? Was he going to kill me? Who were the other men he’d killed? Thank God, I had not heard a woman in his words. Luna was hopefully still looking for me or she had gone home. But the biggest question of all was worse. Much much worse. Was he going to keep me alive and tell my brother? I would have preferred him to put an end to my life. Vitale’s pain, if he heard about what I had done, hit my chest hard like a punch, and a harsh breath wheezed out of my air pipes. His gaze shot to mine. Eyes off the road. Pitch black directed at me. Minchia! He lived his life on the line, even by Cosa Nostra’s standards. Palermo flew past, as fast as death would hit us, with his eyes on me. I didn’t know how many heartbeats passed, but finally, he dragged his gaze away and fixed it on the road, and we were, by some miracle, still on the road, still alive.

Well, at least I won’t have to marry him now.

The relief I felt surged out of my body as quickly as it had rushed in. What would that mean for Vitale? I suddenly realized how naïve I had been. A child in a world of wicked men. Orietta had been so right about me. How had I ever thought I’d get away with this? But then again, how had he found me when my own family hadn’t?

Worry, thick and heavy, shot through my veins and throttled out my throat in words. “Will you cancel the wedding?”

His knuckles fisted on the wheel. The numbers of my birth year stretched taught on his tan skin. I regretted my words already. Because it hung like a bad smell in between us. Seconds ran into a minute. Two minutes. I would know. I counted them silently. I didn’t expect him to answer, and when he said, “It depends,” in his rough voice, it took me a moment to realize he had and it wasn’t a part of my imagination.

“On what?” I squeaked.

He pinned me with his crude gaze. “Your sister’s availability.”

I frowned in confusion. “Orietta got married two weeks ago.”

His face turned hard and nasty. A vein of utter evil threaded through his face as he uttered the next words that left me gasping for breath. “I didn’t mean that sister.”

Lia! She was fucking eighteen, and he was thinking of her. Something so cold and bitter slithered through my body that I forgot what it would feel like to ever feel warm. I shrank away from him like he’d hit me in the face. It would have hurt less anyway than his cruel words. Hatred etched into my skin. More than him, I hated myself.

“What?” He growled at my shocked face. “Didn’t think your actions would have consequences?”

Lia! Lia! Lia! I needed her away from him. What had I done? This had been just a business deal for him. I’d messed it up, and he wanted his revenge. Stupido! I’d gotten Vitale and Lia in trouble because somehow I’d made this all about me!

I hadn’t paid attention to where he was driving. If I had, I would have noticed that it wasn’t the way home. He took a sharp turn to the left and drove into the underground parking of a posh hotel like he owned the place. I didn’t know what we were doing there, but I wanted to be home, in my own bed, away from him and his animosity. Yet we sat in a parked car with only the noise of the engine cooling down because his rage still burned hot.

Panic for the safety of my little sister made me utter words no sane woman would do in the presence of a made man. “There’s no need to be vile about it,” I rushed on even when his face turned dark and his wrists fisted on the wheel. “It’s only a business deal, anyway.”

“A business deal?” He asked tightly.

“You and my brother both need alliances, and I am the loot that seals the deal.” I thought it was pretty obvious, but the way his lips thinned said otherwise.

He shifted away from the wheel and leaned against the door. He ran his fingers lazily across his scruff and observed me as if I were an interesting species under his microscope. “Is that how you think of yourself?”

“Think?” I shook my head with a nervous laugh. “I know it. Every woman in the Cosa Nostra knows it. We are only worth as much as the next deal we can be traded for.”

“I thought women of Sicily were supposed to be timid and good housewives. All I’ve seen is rash behavior and filth out of your mouth.”

“I can be a good housewife.” Not. But I’d do anything to save my sister from him and his bloodied hands.

He frowned like I’d said his shirt was black. My eyes dropped to his shirt, and for the first time, I realized it was buttoned haphazardly. I’d seen this man twice, and both times, he’d been more undressed than dressed. Except, the first time his shirt had truly been white, now it was mixed with crimson staining brown.

“Did you kill him?” I whispered to his shirt.

I didn’t know why I had even asked him that. Maybe I thought his rage had a limit. I was wrong. He was out of the car and on my side in the lapse of a second. “Get out,” he hissed between his teeth.

There were some things we girls knew growing up in the Cosa Nostra. One was to recognize that tone of voice. The one that said, “Do as I say now or you are going to regret it for the rest of your life.” I scurried out of the car. Instead of backing away, he caged me between his arms. My breath turned shallow, even though there wasn’t an inch of him that touched me. His hands brazed the car as he growled in my ear. “He took what was mine. I did much worse than kill him.”

My eyes slid closed in pain. What was worse than death? A shift in the air and the click of a car locking made me wrench my eyes open. He stood a few feet away, glaring at me, impatience stiff on his tight shoulders. “Try to keep up,” he muttered like he’d given the grocery list rather than tell me he’d tortured a man to his death. Just imagining what he might have done to him made me shrink away from him.

His eyes narrowed into hard slits. If death had a look, this would have been it. “Daria, don’t make me fucking come and get you because I swear to God, you don’t want me touching you tonight.”

His tone was sharp and lined with thick venom. It hollowed on the empty parking lot and echoed behind my rib cage. Even though my legs trembled like settling jelly, I put one foot awkwardly in front of another, pulled myself forward, and followed him meekly to a private elevator, into a penthouse suite, and, I realized too late, into his room. I stood in the middle of it, trepidation slowly cruising through my nerves.

“Get in the shower.” He jerked his head towards what I assumed was the bathroom.

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