Page 152 of Vicious Little Princess

But of course I couldn’t, because we never could with anything in our world.

It was always tainted, always fucking poisoned by something or someone.

Always taken from us.

Fuck.

The three of us exchanged a look, and I saw the rage I was struggling to keep buried for now reflected back at me.

I forced an even, calm tone that she needed so badly right now as I said, “I know. But he didn’t. You stopped him. Our baby is safe and well. You’re both well.”

“It’s okay,” Julian added, coming near now with Milo joining us, until the three of us were essentially all standing before her.

“We’re here now, we’re here,” Milo uttered, his voice cracking with emotion.

It had come far too close.

And it made me fucking sick.

The knife she was holding clattered to the floor, and she collapsed into the three of us.

“I had to,” she cried. “I had to end it… end him.”

As we held her to us, I looked over at her father’s corpse.

In one shot, our strategic approach had been ripped to shreds.

And we were in really dangerous fucking territory now.

Santino Leone was dead.

Now all bets were off.

33

~Emilio~

“All right, yes. Thanks, Carlo,” Nico spoke into his cell as he smoked out on the patio just beyond the shattered fucking doors.

We had people coming within the next hour to fix them up and clear the debris from the kitchen. That was the good thing about how we operated. We could call in people in the dead of night. The bad part was obviously the fact that things like this actually happened.

Aside from Caterina’s infiltration a while back during her war with Nico, the Manor had only been breached once before. And that had been by fucking Leo Marchetti when he’d blindsided us, pulled rank on our soldiers and had them stand down while he’d then sent in several of his own to beat us down for an infraction Nico had committed wherein he’d challenged the bastard at a high-level meeting between the three families and embarrassed him, which he’d taken as a major demonstration of disrespect. The manipulative fucker had even managed to get Marco’s blessing for theharsh lessonhe’d delivered to Nico that night. It had put him in the hospital for three fucking days and it was also how he’d gotten those scars on his lower back and his right thigh—goddamn stab wounds from that night.

Things were different now.

For one, Nico’s soldiers were now loyal only to him personally. They couldn’t be swayed or ordered by Leo or Marco anymore. They werehisforce.

And the Manor had also been reinforced since those days too. Not just with surveillance and alerts, but wherein a breach would trigger a lockdown involving armored fucking ballistic shutters. We even had weapons hidden externally and able to fire automatically on a single command at those attempting an incoming assault, or when lockdown protocol had been triggered.

The fact that these assholes tonight who’d come for Caterina hadn’t triggered the system at all was something else entirely. To say they were skilled to be able to evade itandour soldiers that we’d had stationed around the property didn’t even cover it.

I walked out onto the patio as Nico finished his call with Carlo and he turned at my approach.

“What happened with Gio’s soldiers?”

“They all pledged their loyalty to me.”

“What? How? You had to take off.”

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