Page 68 of Mafia Don's Secret Twins

Quickly, I duck back into my room. My heart is pounding in my chest.

If Dino is here, that means….

It means nothing.

I put a hand over my heart, trying to calm it down. There’s something in the jumping rhythm that’s making me feel almost sick.

I know why.

The strange fluttering in my chest, the way that I feel kind of… like I’m waiting on something.

I’m hopeful.

Dino came here, and now I’m hopeful.

Tears press against the edges of my eyes, and I put my head into my hands.

I feel so stupid for feeling hopeful like this.

Hope is a worthless emotion. Feeling it right now is just my traitorous body, or something like that. Dino and I don’t have a connection. We aren’t lovers, and we aren’t dating. We’re not married. There’s no rational reason why Dino would come, because there’s nothing for him to come after me for.

I need to stop hoping.

I need to address the realities.

Biting my lip, I sigh. “Okay Marisol. Let’s look at this from the beginning,” I whisper to myself.

The reality of the situation is that there are too many unknowns. I don’t know why Dino is here. It’s stupid of meto think that he might be here for me. That he might have come here to save me.

Given that I clearly don’t know him after all.

Bernadino Drakos.

His name, the one he gave, makes my stomach roll again.

If he is the heir to some long-lost mafia family, a Greek one at that, then…

There it is. Sure as a punch to the gut, the air puffs out of my lips softly at the realization.

Of course there’s no reason to be hopeful. I know exactly what is happening.

Dino didn’t come here for me.

He did come here for something. I’m part of that something, but I have no doubt he wants the same thing from me that all of these other men do.

He wants a piece of my father’s empire.

It makes sense. Dino’s a second son. He’s been his family’s black sheep, or so I understand, for quite some time. Dino never intended to come after me.

He’s coming after an empire.

The tears fall from my eyes. Itwassilly to think that Dino would try to come for me. Clearly, I told him everything that he needed to know about this competition, about my father.

About what was at stake for him.

He knows exactly why my father needs a new heir. He knows about the debt, and he knows my father’s greatest weakness.He might even be trying to use me, and our connection, as a way to get a leg up on the competition.

I look down at the note.

---