Page 141 of Vicious Little Princess

“It’s Caterina. We can’t get a hold of her. The security system at Charon Manor is offline. As is her ring. Physical security is unreachable as well.”

I’d barely gotten the last few words out when he pulled his phone out and dialed right away.

“Rocco, head up to Charon Manor now. Take a team with you. Milo and I will meet you there. There may have been a breach. Report back immediately.”

He spun then and rushed back to Carlo, telling him, “I have a situation. I need to leave right now.”

“What’s happened?”

“Caterina is missing.”

“Home invasion?”

“It’s looking like it.”

Gio snickered. “Thought you had it in the bag. Thought it would be this easy.”

Nico growled and wrapped his hand around Gio’s throat. “Nothing has been easy since motherfuckers like you rose to positions of power in the families. It’s destroyed everything. Now you’ll all fall. Even if I have to rip your lives away to make it so.”

Gio went to bite back, but Nico released his throat, then drove his knife through his carotid artery, shocking us all from the sudden brutality of it.

Nico snarled and thrust his boot into the chair, Gio tumbling back and crashing to the ground on the chair on his back, spluttering and choking on his own blood as he rapidly slipped away.

With that, Nico snatched up his jacket then bolted out of the room, with me following in his wake.

Everything had gone so smoothly and to plan tonight.

And now all hell was about to break loose.

31

~Caterina~

I jolted awake in a panic, adrenaline flooding my system.

The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t free to move around.

I was bound to a chair.

Not for the first fucking time.

There had been several kidnapping attempts on me during my childhood just because of who my father was, yet none of them had succeeded. Mostly because Dante had been such a competent guard. But now, in the space of a few weeks, it had happened twice.

And at the hands of my own family.

Well, my own family by name only, because they certainly weren’t anything else to me now.

I felt behind me, determining that it was a pair of cuffs that bound me. Yet again.

Definitely Santino’s work.

He’d taught that to Angelo and the rest of his soldiers. It was a part of their protocol when they took hostages. Or when they tortured someone. Always with the cuffs, never rope or zip ties.

Fortunately, that was an asset to me.

As I instinctively prepared to dislocate my thumbs to escape them, I pulled up short while I scanned my surroundings too.

This place.

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