Damn Raffaello Price.I’d been perfectly content with my bachelorhood, but one look at this one—the softness of her angelic features—and I knew. There was only one answer. I would take her. I would fuck her. I would become the next Price Heir and make one of my own.
“Yes,” I said, folding the image of Evangeline’s face in half and tucking it into my inner pocket. “I want Evangeline.”
Chapter 2
Angel
She’s wrong. Insane. Absolutely certifiable.
It was the only explanation. This couldn’t be happening. Absolutely not. Not when I was so close to my freedom. The applications were in, and even though my family could afford to send me to any school in the world, I’d sworn to myself that I wasn’t going to take blood-stained money. I’d applied for scholarships and I knew I was guaranteed at least some financial assistance in that area.
Confusion whipped through me as I strode out of the library and into the hallway of the Price Estate. While the world had moved on from extensive properties and manor houses, the rest of society choosing to settle into more appropriate apartments and suburban houses, the Price Family had not. We couldn’t. Not with all of the enemies my father had made along the way—before my mother's death and since. Thanks to my sister—who enjoyed regaling me with all of the things she’d overheard and dug up because she knew just how uncomfortable it made me—I now knew far more about it than I cared to.
That all slipped from my mind though, the second Gertrude—our longtime maid—had congratulated me on my upcoming nuptials. Nuptials that I hadn't heard about until that verymoment. I’d stood frozen in the library as she’d chattered on about how she’d gotten married young too and her husband had been a solid ten years her senior, but an older man always felt a little naughty, didn’t it? I could honestly say there were things now I was thinking about Gertrude that I never, in my life, wanted to consider.
"It's not real," I told myself. "She's just going senile. She probably thought I was her granddaughter." God, it was horrible, but I prayed to any god that would listen and even a devil or two that the old woman was just losing her mind.
"Where are you heading?" I stopped at the sound of my sister's voice behind me.
I turned and faced her. There was a kernel of knowledge in her eyes—in the way she smiled at me, which was both amused and smug. I wasn’t sure, but from the quirk of her lips and the light of amusement in her eyes that was so rare, I had a dreadful feeling. It was her expression that tipped me off. She always got the same one right before she tormented me.
“You knew, didn’t you??” I blurted out the question, hoping against hope that my sister would laugh over this horrible misunderstanding. Is that what she does, though? Of course not. Not my psychopath of a sister.
Instead, her smile widened, and my stomach dropped. “Who finally told you?” she asked.
“Told me?” I repeated, shaking my head. My chest felt hollow and strangely sore, as if something had punched right through me. I rubbed a hand over it absently as I tried to think of something to say, some way to get out of this. “Don’t you think I should’ve been more than told?” I snapped. “I should’ve been fucking asked! If this bastard has to choose one of us?—”
“One ofus?” Jackie laughed, the sound like a sharp piercing horn in my ear. So loud, it made me flinch away. “No, kiddo, not us—you. Congrats, you’re getting married before me. Gotta say,I'm a little bit jealous." She didn't sound jealous. Instead, she sounded almost pleased—amused.
Out of respect for our dad and our mom, despite her passing, I’d refrained from being too angry with Jackie in the last seven years, but right now, it was really hard not to want to smack her face. She had a personality and an ever-present tone that made it clear she was laughing at everything and everyone around her. As if the world was a comedy she couldn't help but chuckle at, no matter the circumstances. And unfortunately, most of it had been centered around me, including today.
This can’t be happening.But even as that thought echoed through my head, I knew the truth. The fact that Jackie seemed so amused to know something about me that I didn’t, made it painfully clear that this wasn’t the horrible joke or the ramblings of an elderly woman slowly disintegrating into insanity that I’d hoped it would be.
“How did you find out before me?” I demanded. “If I’m the one getting married, then why wasn’t I even involved?”
Jackie shook her head at me. “Oh, sweetheart.” The endearment sounded caustic and sarcastic coming from her lips.
I gritted my teeth as she approached. Jackie and I were related by blood, but that was where our relationship ended. Where I preferred to sink into the background, reading books and studying while secretly planning and hoping that one day I could leave the family behind and start a normal life—she was … well, ambitious was a polite way of putting it. For as long as I could remember, and since I’d realized what our family did for money, Jackie had been preparing to take over the Price empire whenever our father finally stepped down. She’d been convinced that because I was so dead set against it all, she would be the only choice, and she’d blatantly said as much.
I loved my father—honestly, I did—and I knew he loved me. Because of that, I had foolishly misled myself into thinking thatone day he'd support me in trying to have a future outside of the mob and my role as a woman born into the Price Empire and let me go to college. Otherwise, what was the point of the last seven years?
Is it purposeful?I wondered.Is he angry with me? Because I told him that I wanted to move out?The reminder of the acceptance papers sitting on my nightstand stung.
Is this a punishment?Can I talk him out of it? Make him see reason?He wouldn't even have to pay for my tuition. Not that we couldn't afford it, but I'd worked my ass off to ensure I got a scholarship covering everything. He and Jackie might have felt perfectly fine living in the shadow of danger, but I wanted out.
There was only one instance in which I’d been grateful for the wicked men that surrounded my family, and that was seven years ago when I’d asked one of them to kill the person who’d taken my mother from me—the man from the funeral. It was the one and only time I’d allowed myself to ask something of the dark criminal world into which I was born.
“Why?” I shook my head, trying to make sense of it all. “Why would he do this? Why wouldn’t he at least ask me?” I repeated.
“Little Angel.” Jackie’s heels clicked against the rich mahogany floor as she moved closer. The tight, low-cut dress she wore tightened around her thighs with each step. The way she said my name made my insides churn and irritation build. Fuck, she was such a bitch. I wanted to smack the shit out of her every time she said it in that condescending tone. “Daddydoesn’t need to ask your permission for anything.” Her words were mocking. “You should’ve realized it by now. Men like him can do whatever they want.”
She was right. As much as I’d wanted to hide from it, run away from it these last several years, the truth was that my father was no different than any other man in this dark godforsaken world. He controlled. He ruled. He made the ultimate decisions.It was as if I’d been picked up and dropped back a hundred or more years in the past when women were little more than commodities. That still didn’t explain why she seemed to be so okay with that, in any case.
Stopping in my tracks, I spun to face her. “Why aren’tyoufreaking out?” I demanded.
Jackie came to an abrupt halt and tilted her head to the side as she considered me. Her deep brown eyes were lined with a black that contrasted as much as it could with her olive complexion. She pursed her red lips as I waited for an answer. When it came, though, it wasn’t what I expected. With an indifferent shrug, Jackie smiled back at me. “It doesn’t really affect me, now, does it?” she said. “So, why would I care?”
A growl rumbled in my throat. Of course, she would think that. The urge to slap her resurfaced, but I refrained from doing so. “No,” I said again, shaking my head. "This is a mistake." My hope was a valiant little thing, blossoming in my chest even when I knew, deep down, it was a fragile thing that was easily broken.
