Page 56 of Their Princess

“No, I’m enlightening you as to some of the lessons my father taught me and Massimo,” I said. “My brother was the enforcer to Tommy Gambino, his righthand man until Massimo staged his little coup. But we learned everything from our father, who was a Gambino enforcer too. You could say it runs in our blood.”

Sas chuckled like he didn’t believe the awful things we learned, and I pressed my weight into him.

These weren’t idle threats, and I wasn’t letting up. “We had special soundproofed rooms in our house with drains in the floor. The first time I saw my father interrogate someone, I was eight. Ivo”—because my calling him Papà had earned more thanone hungry night from his wife—“narrated every cut he made. The man begged to die long before it was done.”

My breath turned to a wheeze as I remembered those horrible times when I was a child, everything red and sticky. My eyes no longer saw them man I had pinned or if fear had finally crept into his eyes. All I could see was the past.

My boyhood.

The war.

The gore.

Bloody red across a stone floor washed through my sight, but I didn’t need to see Sas to put out the final warning. “If you fuck over his daughter, you’ll have both Massimo and me to make sure your slow death will last for days. Maybe weeks.”

I wouldn’t regret what Mass and I would do to Sas if he hurt Adelina.

“You think I’m scared of your brother when I have the Rojas brothers on my ass?” Sas scoffed.

The statement brought me back to the present, and I blinked. Maybe he had two brain cells knocking around up there. I didn’t know how with how drunk and high he seemed, but it still took me aback.

“Yeah, that’s right. They’ll get to me long before your brother will.”

At least he was aware. I dropped my arm from his throat and leaned back against the island counter, nodding. “I talked to Wilde.”

Sas balled his hands into fists. “You shouldn’t have done that. That’s none of your fucking business.”

“He’s riding up tomorrow for church,” I continued. “He knows about the Parisi money. He’s thinking about it.”

“We’re not accepting a fucking handout from a Mafia Don,” snapped Sas.

“Maybe he’s just being smart,” I said. “Unlike you.”

His upper lip twitched. “I am?—”

I shut down and turned my back to Sas. Whatever he had to say wasn’t important. He didn’t get the fact that Adelina had her own money, and if he didn’t want to put away his cock and temper for five minutes, we could just deal with it in church. The VP was in a big enough hole.

I would let him finish digging his own grave.

One thing he wouldn’t do was drag Adelina into it with him. She presented other problems, but those had nothing to do with a threesome of enforcer-type brothers from Colombia.

I busted through the door to the bunnies’ wing of the clubhouse and marched straight for my niece’s door. I didn’t knock as I walked in. Adelina sat on her bed, cell phone in her hands. She snapped her head to look up at me, startled by the invasion, but then she rolled her eyes and looked down at her cell phone again.

Not even a hello after I saved her ass.

“You good?” I asked, closing the door behind me and trying to erase the thought of her ass.

“Fine,” she mumbled, still looking down at the cell phone.

Her cheeks were swollen, and there was a tinge of red on the corner of her mouth. The white light of her cell phone illuminated her face, showing off her wet eyes, but she didn’t look at me. She wouldn’t tell me, and I wouldn’t ask about the tears.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking at rideshare apps,” she said.

“Adelina—”

“Don’t start, Rafe.”

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