Page 57 of Their Princess

“You can’t leave.”

“I can afford to do whatever I need to do to get the hell away from this shitshow.”

“They’ll come after you. Your father will have someone hunt you?—”

“Don’t you think I know that.” She slammed her cell phone down on the bed and flew to her feet. “That’s why I’m only looking. It’s why I didn’t just fucking walk out. It’s why I’m still here. In jail.” She held my eyes for a long second before adding, “Nothing more than a brood mare.”

I scowled at her. “Don’t be dramatic, Adelina. Mass isn’t breeding you.”

“Might as well be.” She returned to her phone and the rideshare app, supposedly.

Did she really think she could run from la Famiglia...? I tried but landed right back in the now-Parisi family.

“You can’t run, tesoro. Your father?—”

“Don’t you think I fucking know what my heartless father would do,ZioRafaele?” She used our familial connection like a slur, and I flinched.

I shouldn’t be alone with her, because I was the last person in the world who could offer her any kind of comfort. She needed more than me, but there was no one else here to help her. Or me, for that matter. We were stuck in a game bigger than either of us.

“Is there something else?” I asked.

“Something else?” She furrowed her brows.

“You’re upset.”

“Your deduction skills are magical.” There was my favorite eye roll.

I gritted my teeth. “If this is about Sas and that sweetbutt, then I should tell you?—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she snapped. If I didn’t know her, I’d believe the words. But the faster her thumb swiped up that phone screen, the more agitated she was. It was almost her only tell.

“Then it is about them?” I stared at her, confused.

How was I supposed to make her believe what she should already know? The whore Sas apparently fucked was just that—a whore, but Adelina was a Parisi. She was a prize. It was what her grandmother had said to my mother many times... just before she told her how much she muddied the purity of their blood.

“No, Rafe.” She let out an exasperated huff, then admitted in a small voice, “It’s about me.” Red tinged in her cheeks, a reaction I so rarely saw in her. In all her bratty glory, her embarrassment broke through in bright red blotches.

I would admit there were many, many things I didn’t know or understand about women. Girls and older women alike had fawned over me when I was a teenage boy, and I had known they were after the Parisi fortune. Or the prestige that went with marrying into the family who was the right hand of the Gambino family. It was actually a bit repulsive.

Sex, yeah, there was that too. But the prostitutes sent by my father were also after a buck. In the military, I had also stayed away from any form of romantic entanglement, whether at home or abroad. That hadn’t changed since I separated.

But I would always be here for Adelina. No matter what.

“What do you mean?” I asked, “About you?”

She shook her head, like she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me, but this was tearing her up inside.

“I’m just confused,” she said in a small, childlike voice. “About myself.”

“Because of Sas?”

“Yes, him.” She slumped on the bed.

“You definitely have nothing to be confused about with him, and you shouldn’t be letting his shit get to you.” I crossed over and sat next to her on the bed.

Her head fell. “He did something to me.”

“What?” My blood boiled and my first instinct was to palm my gun and blow his fucking head off. I thought I’d been in time to keep him from hurting her.

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