Page 132 of Vicious Little Princess

I intended to head into the kitchen to snack on some comfort foods—something chocolaty, of course—before beginning my search for Milo and Nico, but I’d only gotten a few steps down the corridor when I heard Nico’s voice in the distance. I frowned when I picked up on the noticeable urgency in his tone.

I made my way down the corridor toward the sound until I reached his office.

The door was halfway open.

I was about to walk on in when another voice pulled me up short. Milo’s.

“The risk is too great, Nico.”

“It’s too great if we don’t let her remain here as a part of it all.”

“I don’t think—”

“This is about her choices, her power. I won’t fuck all over that by sidelining her now.”

“What we’re about to do will escalate the danger a thousand times over. The baby—”

“If we do this, send her out to a safehouse, and hide her away, it will be over. It will ruin everything.”

“Nico—”

“We. Will. Lose. Her.”

I pushed the door open the rest of the way and walked on in.

Nico was behind his desk at his laptop and he jolted as he saw me, slapping his hand to his heart. “Fuck, J.”

Milo spun around where he was standing opposite Nico’s desk in just a pair of boxers and one of his sexy tanks. “Lose the creeping, Sunshine. Goddammit.”

I ignored all the preamble and told Milo, “Nico’s right. We will lose her if you ramp up the overprotectiveness.”

“It’s not beingoverprotective. It’s necessarily protective. She’s carrying our child and we’re going to war.”

“I get it, all right? But Cat’s not just anyone. She’s highly skilled. She’s beyond capable. And she’s a vital asset in this war too, so there’s also an argument from that side of things. We need her, Milo.”

He grimaced and pulled at his spiky hair. “I… just… after everything we’d gone through, all the dark and dirty shit… this child is a gift from on high. I can’t stand the idea of… it just… it needs to be protected at all costs.”

“Not at the cost ofher, Milo,” Nico ground out. “It took me so long to earn her trust, then for her to trust all three of us. And a great deal of that was built on the fact that we don’t try to exert control over her, that she’s free to make her own choices, and that we recognize her power and strength. You saw what happened when I almost fucked that up to an extent when I met with Levi that night. This would be far beyond that. Shipping her off to a safehouse and essentially locking her up like a fragile thing, it’s an insult and demeaning beyond belief, especially to someone as forthright and as full of fire like Caterina Leone.”

“You know, it’s one of the reasons she didn’t tell the two of you right away?”

They both eyed me.

“She said that?” Milo asked, taken aback.

“I read it from her and she admitted it was a concern, yeah.”

“Fuck,” Nico said, scrubbing his hand over his jaw. “See what I mean?”

“Goddammit.” Milo dug his fingers into the edge of the desk and sucked in a breath. “Well, she’s not on the front lines of these strikes later tonight, so that’s something. At least she won’t be in the field.”

“You realize she was pregnant during the crash?” I pointed out. “Also, when she massacred those assholes in that garageandwhen she came to rescue me?”

“Yeah, and it was unbelievably lucky that the baby wasn’t hurt during the crash, let alone all the rest. I mean, fuck, that kind of thing runs out.”

“I’m not doing it,” Nico insisted. “So you need to get on board and find a way to make peace with it.” He rose from behind his desk and walked to him, his tone softening as he asked, “Do you think this reaction from you has some roots in what I revealed to you about Leo being responsible for your parents’ deaths? That it could be bringing up some issues there?”

“Maybe,” Milo admitted.

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