Page 14 of Vicious Little Princess

I laid my hand on his shoulder. “We’ll bring him back to us.”

“What if it’s too late by the time we manage that? What if Angelo… what if hispunishmentshatters him? After what happened with his father, Julian is susceptible to certain—”

“He won’t succeed in breaking him. You know how devious and resourceful Julian is when it’s called for. He can hold out until we get to him.” I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “You know that too. You’re just panicking, getting emotional.”

He frowned at me. “And you’re not… how? Us being threatened, it’s a major trigger to you and yourferalside.”

“Believe me, I’m feeling it, but you all need me to be above it right now. It’s the only way we’ll win out here.”

“Thank you.”

I smiled. “You know that I would never do anything less for the three of you.”

Sentiment threatened to get the best of me as he stared back at me with so much intensity, so I released him and looked away, telling him in my commanding tone, “Pass me Caterina. I’ll get her back to the Manor and see to her. Sort this shitshow with Carlo’s help.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Yeah.”

He handed her off to me and I swept her up in my arms as he pulled out his phone and started snapping into action and communicating with Carlo.

As I carried Caterina outside and toward my car, I breathed her in, hating that I couldn’t smell her usual Chanel scent and only other people’s blood. “We’ve got you. You’re going to be just fine.Everythingis going to be fine.”

They were more than hollow words of comfort.

They were a fucking promise.

And a brutal warning to all of our enemies.

5

~Nico~

“This isn’t her.”

“Did you really think there wouldn’t be a massive emotional toll to enduring all that shit at your wedding? Or even all the shit before then? Santino and Angelo’s abuse? Getting stabbed? Being pulled back into this world she worked so hard to escape from? Having to now go to war?”

When I’d expressed my concerns about Caterina’s state of mind and the toll everything of late had taken on her, I hadn’t wanted things to gothisway, with her going to the extreme that she had tonight.

Sure, in a way she was back on track, no longer reeling like she had been, but in the most dangerous way imaginable.

Not to mention, a highly unpredictable way with the complete loss of control that letting the monstrous side of her loose involved.

I had enough unpredictable elements to deal with as it was without this becoming another.

Hell,shecouldn’t afford to be that way with what we were up against.

Carlo’s words to me kept playing on my mind.

“You need to take power over the Marchetti Syndicate, Nico. And Caterina needs to do the same where the Leones are concerned.”

I knew a great deal about Caterina, but evenIcouldn’t predict how she was going to react to his intention there.

I watched the last of the dirt and blood swirling away down the drain as a whole lot of special soap and the warm water cleansed it from her skin, while I held her tightly against me in the shower of her ensuite at the Manor as I cleaned her up.

“Nico.”

I pulled from my thoughts at the soft sound of Caterina uttering my name.

It was the first time she’d said anything since she’d woken up on the drive back to when we’d been six minutes out. She’d just looked at me, a mixture of guilt and shame flitting across her features before she’d then held up her hand to me in order to discourage me from getting into what had happened, and she’d spent the rest of the drive just staring aimlessly out of the window while slumped in the passenger seat exhaustedly.

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