Page 74 of Vicious Little Princess

I couldn’t allow it to infect me the way it had last time around.

It had takensolong to even begin to move past it.

It felt like I’d be back to square one in a sense if I registered what had been done to me by Angelo on the same level as that.

That was what had become brutally apparent to me during my back-to-back sessions with Doctor Roslynn Williams, the same therapist I’d seen regarding my past… issues.

When I’d asked Nico to bring her in, I’d thought dealing with it head on with no waiting had been the best way to go, because I’d just wanted it over. I’d wanted to hurry through it, I guess, move beyond it as quickly as possible, and get back to me.

But it was just dredging up everything. Even the stuff with my father. As if I hadn’t worked so fucking hard to bury that over the years, now it was rising back up. It had caused me to have flashes of the things Angelo had done to me, some things that I hadn’t even remembered at first because I’d been in a delirious state or something from the sickness I’d suffered as a result of the crash injuries I’d sustained.

Just as I was heading for the living room door, Cat burst in.

Or back in.

The three of them had been taking shifts with me, making sure I wasn’t left alone for even a moment.

But then Nico’s doctor had shown up to check her out, so she’d had to step out for the last little while. She’d accepted that I’d be fine when I’d told her I’d needed to finish up dealing with Carver Group business.

Milo or Nico hadn’t been able to take over because they weren’t home right now. They’d headed out onMarchetti business. Whatever that meant these days. And they hadn’t told me either.

More of them keeping things from me.

Maybe I was reading too much into it because I’d noticed the tension coming off them. Maybe it was just par for the course, general day-to-day business that Nico, as Capo, was dealing with, running his territory and all of that. I mean, things had calmed down since the Lone Gunners had attacked the wedding, so maybe things were going back to normal. Or whatever normal meant with them now allied with the Leones.

“Hey, do you need something?” Cat asked me, taking in the fact that I was standing with my cane and about to head on out of the room. “What can I do?”

“You can tell me how it went with the doctor.”

“Oh, it’s all fine, just as I insisted to Nico.”

“Well, you did manage to push it off for quite a while,” I said, grinning at her. She definitely had an impact on him, even able to get him to change his mind on certain things and to reconsider things he normally would have been entrenched in doing his way.

“Yeah,” she murmured.

“So you’re really okay?” Milo had at least told me about her dizzy spells and the vomiting.

“Right. Fine,” she murmured again, this time with a faraway look in her emerald eyes.

Something was off.

Or was I misreading her because I was off my game, maybe?

“You don’t like doctors? Was that why you resisted being checked out?”

“No, it’s not that. There was just a lot going on, so it wasn’t really a priority.”

“It’s about looking weak, huh? And even feeling weak, too?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

I smiled. “You’ve come a long way, you know that?”

“I have?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Admitting to that. You wouldn’t have a few months back. You would have completely denied it and anything you were feeling. I’m happy you feel safe to do that now. I’m glad you’ve found that in us. You were alone for so long. I mean, you were doing your thing amazingly well, but not having anyone in your corner… that was brutal.”

“Yeah, despite how insane things are, in some ways, they are better. Definitely where the three of you are concerned. I didn’t think I’d be able to function well as a part of a team, but it’s really grown on me.” She smiled. “In fact, I can’t imagine it being any other way now.”

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