“Leticia.” I speak to the phone, knowing she’ll never hear me. “Couldn’t you tell me something about what’s going on at the funerals?”
Leticia D’Medici:
Also, Berto is MAJOR UPSET.
I lovethe way she keeps using caps lock for emphasis. Most girls have a favorite emoji, but Leticia seems to use caps in their place.
“Tell me about Berto?” I’m talking to the phone. I’ve clearly lost my mind.
My wolf has locked in on my interest with a lazy yawn, trying to determine whether it’s worth waking up for or if he’ll go back to sleeping inside me.
Leticia D’Medici:
I think Berto is mad you got married before him. Not that he’ll ever admit to that, but he’s really upset that you went through with this and are now a Cavanagh.
Also, when did the Cavanaghs get so HOT? I do not remember anyone being this attractive in the photos that Dad showed us of people to be on the lookout for.
I roll my eyes.
Leticia D’Medici:
Maybe Royal is ugly to make up for how attractive Valor is?
“Ouch.”I push the phone over on the desk. “Rude.”
I ignore the next few messages when they come in, transitioning to working on tracking software installation rather than information gathering. But it takes all of two minutes before I crack and check what the Mafia princess has to say next.
Leticia D’Medici:
Nope, he’s hot too. I looked him up. He was at a fundraising eventfor women in STEAM.
I smirkand then do the same thing Leticia did... look myself up online. I don’t do it a lot. But from time to time, I search for myself, Mom, Dad, my older brother Valor, and his daughter Kerrianne, and scrub any of the top search results from the internet. Luckily, since our family is small, it doesn’t take a lot of time to expunge the unnecessary posts from the World Wide Web.
Attending and being seen at some galas and events are societally necessary for networking, but we prefer to keep our wealth less flashy.
I have to scroll through three pages of images before I find one of me tagged at the particular fundraising event she’s referencing.
She spent all that time looking us up?My wolf yawns, paying attention again.What is she like?
Why do we care?I set my phone down on the desktop and stare at it.
Call it curiosity?My wolf rolls over to the side and then starts pushing images of outside and rolling in the grass before hunting through some bushes.
Yeah, yeah. Outside, touch grass. I know, I know.I shove him down, out of my mind, but I give in and start searching for Leticia D’Medici.
She isn’t hard to find. Public social media profiles, photos at all sorts of fundraisers and events. The camera loves her.
Leticia is... stunning. Uncharacteristically blonde hair stands out in stark contrast to the dark browns of her family. She’s smiling in every single picture, and in ninety percent of the photos, it looks genuine.
With one click, I examine one of the photos that doesn’t have a genuine smile. When it opens up, not centralized on her face, it’s not hard to figure out why she’s not smiling as brightly. Leticia stands sandwiched between Gregorio D’Medici, leader of the Italian Mafia, and her older brother Berto, his heir. Gregorio’s grip on her wrist looks damn near bruising.
I download the image and view its digital backmatter before I start doing my standard scraper to pull it off the internet. Normally, I’m thorough and dive deep with every search. Something tells me to leave the proof there though. That somewhere, there needs to be public record of this likely abuse.
It’s so natural to just remove images and scrub an entire existence from the internet. Our family values privacy and operates a whole major corporation under pseudonyms. But I don’t know Leticia. She’s not my family, yet I’m deleting the image nonetheless.
“I can’t imagine what that’s like, Leticia,” I whisper, deleting all but one image from the internet.
The phone buzzes, and guilt rakes through me.I shouldn’t have meddled like that.But I can’t help but look at the text messages anyway.
