Page 10 of Their Princess

I’d run from it before, but I couldn’t spiral anymore. Deep in my throat, I started humming, a constant noise to drown out the real and perhaps not real voices.

When the low buzz took center stage in my head, I let go and looked around the MC headquarters. It sat in an open cavern with nothing to protect us from being picked off one-by-one. This setting put Adelina’s life in danger. She had an independent streak a mile long, and with this much open space and danger lurking over the hill, she’d get herself killed.

Adelina had already slipped away from her father—without me realizing—and yapped on the phone, probably bitching to her mother or Catalina.

I marched over to her. “Adelina, let’s go inside.”

She held up her hand to my face, cutting me off and continued to talk. I followed like a dog on her heels. She spoke in Italian, and I could only follow if the speaker spoke slowly and in simple terms... and if I wasn’t humming to keep my head on straight.

Italian hadn’t been my first language like Massimo and Adelina. I didn’t start learning the language until my mom died when I was twelve and I moved in with the father Massimo and I shared. I could barely make out the words with how quickly she talked.

I ground my teeth and reminded myself I was safely back on American soil.

“Adelina,” I barked as she still talked on the phone. “Get off the phone.”

As soon as the command was loose, Massimo strolled over, adding, “And go talk to your future husband.”

“Why don’t you go give him a blow job, Papà?” Adelina snapped at Massimo, and the smile fell from my brother’s face. I couldn’t even laugh before she continued, “It’s not my fault you dragged me into this shit and earned me life debt.”

“I wasn’t the one who ran outside,” said Massimo.

“You got me into this! You used me as leverage?—”

I stepped between Massimo and Adelina, halting both sides of the heated conversation. The MC members had all stopped talking and stared. She let out a frustrated bellow and thrusted her chest and body against me, her arms reaching toward her father. Massimo yelled too, and I lost track of what they said.

All the yelling—too loud.

The motorcycles.

The gunshots.

The whistling wind.

Figlio di puttana!

“Fuck,” I muttered, caught between them.

“Stop acting like a brat,” snapped Massimo. “This isn’t how I raised you.”

She scoffed. “Stop acting like you raised me at all, Papà. Rafe was around more than you until he was away at war. And whose doing was that?”

Massimo threw up his hands and stalked off toward Wilde.

“That was my choice,” I said to her in a voice for only her ears.

“This is bullshit,” snapped Adelina, backing away from me and shaking her head.

“Adelina,” I warned. The MC was still watching.

“Yeah, I know.” She waved her hand dismissively, calming down almost immediately and looking so much like her father in that moment. She jabbed a finger into my chest. “But you’re helping me get out of this fucking mess. No matter what.”

It was the no matter what that concerned me.

Chapter Three

SAS

Adelina Parisi was... pretty. But her looks weren’t enough to let a mouth like hers go unpunished. Only people who worked for their spots at the top could get away with that shit, so knocking her off her high horse and into the real world would be my absolute pleasure.

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