Page 23 of Vengeful Mafia Prince

He gets to his feet and stalks out, leaving my sister and I alone together. I look over at her, but she's staring at a picture of Mom and Dad on the table next to the couch.

I try not to look at it too hard, if I can. It's too painful a reminder of everything we've lost, a reminder of the family we had before all of this fell apart. She picks it up, gazing down at it for a long moment, and then, silently, she lifts her gaze to meet mine.

"I miss them so much, Gio."

"I miss them, too." I rise to my feet and put my arm around my sister's shoulders. She reaches out to touch the picture, as though she could reach in and pull the two of them out of it.

"I just... I can't lose you, too."

"What are you talking about?"

She turns to me, raising her eyebrows. "You really don't know?"

I sigh. She's got a point.

"I'm not going to let them... hurt me, Val," I promise her. "I can handle myself. You know that."

"It's not just them hurting you that I'm worried about."

"What?"

"It's..." She bites her lip. "I worry about losing you to another family," she admits. "I worry about your loyalties changing. And if I lost you that way, Gio, I don't know what the hell I would do because it feels as though you're the last connection I have to our old life right about now." She tries to laugh as she says the last part, but it comes out as more of a sigh.

"Hey," I murmur to her, shaking my head. "That's never going to happen. You hear me? My first priority is this family.And always has been this family. That's why I'm doing all this in the first place."

She eyes me for a long moment, clearly not sure if she's buying what I'm telling her. But then, finally, she nods.

"I know, Giovanni."

She puts the picture back and glances at the stairs.

"I'm going to get some rest," she tells me. "You will soon, won't you? Here, not at your apartment?"

"Of course."

Even though there's a part of me that wants to go back to my apartment in the city, just to see if she's there, Valentina needs me tonight. She needs some small piece of normalcy to convince her that at least some things are going to stay the same around here.

Even though, I know, deep down, that nothing will be the same again.

Chapter Thirteen—Elena

I stand there, just outside the door to my father's office, and wonder why the hell it's suddenly become so hard for me to go in there and have a conversation with my father.

As if I don't know.

I've been going through the folder that Jordan made for me the last few days, picking my way through every little detail, taking it all in. And what it has revealed to me is that the man I thought my father was... well, there's a whole lot more to him than that.

I lift my knuckles and rap on the door. I need to talk to him about what's going on. I need to understand the extent of everything. I need to wrap my head around the reality of it. I'm old enough now to hear the details, no matter how terrifying they might be.

"Come in."

His voice sends a shiver down my spine, but I plant my hand on the door and push it open. Inside, my father is sitting behind a large desk, one hand pressed against his temple, the other fiddling with a fountain pen. He glances up and manages a small smile when he sees me. It doesn't reach his eyes.

"Oh, Elena," he says, rising to his feet and gesturing for me to sit down. "Here. What can I help you with?"

The way he says it, it sounds almost stilted, as though I'm nothing more than an employee interrupting him when he's in the middle of something else that's so much more important.

"There's something I wanted to talk to you about," I confess. How the hell am I going to even start this conversation with him? I can already tell from the way he's looking at me that he doesn't have a goddamn clue what I'm talking about, and he doesn't like it.

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