I punched him in the shoulder. As effective as punching one of the faces on Mount Rushmore.
One hand on the steering wheel, he pulled out a leather case from the compartment between us, drew out a syringe with a dangerous precision and punched it into my neck.
Sudden fear grips me but my mouth is as dry as cotton wool. I push off from his embrace, nearly topple again, but find purchase against another wall. “You injected me with something, you, you… you grumpy giant!”
He raises a brow, a flash of amusement dancing in his eyes. “Quite the vocabulary you have there, Princess.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I look around the cozy cabin and my slow-brewing panic slows down. He can’t be a serialkiller if he reads all these books, can he? God, I sound idiotic. “Where even is here? Why did you come to the church?”
“I was paid for an extraction,” he says, walking by me. He checks the basic looking phone in his hand and his jaw tightens. “But no one was at the drop point.”
I wrap my arms around my waist, suddenly feeling very alone. A lot of things that Marco decided in the last two weeks feel like pieces of a puzzle. “Didn’t understand a word of that.”
He looks up. Something shifts in his gaze as he eyes me but doesn’t fully surface in his expression. Or he doesn’t let it. The man’s control over his facial expressions has to be like a superpower. “Someone paid me a lot of money to pull you out of the wedding. But whoever it was either has cold feet or is biding their time because no one showed up to take you off my hands.”
“Oh,” I say, several things hitting me at once.
Relief is the most overpowering one. I don’t have to endure a wedding night with old man Vitale. My nightmares about it have been rather vivid. I don’t have to be a cultured, mafia trophy wife, spewing out babies on order.
But worry about Marco gnaws at me, as do doubts of varying degrees. “You don’t know who asked you to save me?”
Mountain man flinches, as if I smacked him across that granite jaw. “I didn’t save you, Princess. I got paid to extract an asset out of a dangerous situation, and then hand it over. Except looks like no one wants you and so I’m stuck with babysitting you for the time being.”
No one wants you, Iris.
He couldn’t have picked a better line to remind me of my general situation in life.
I’ve heard it all my life, from my stepsisters, my stepmom, general staff when I tried to make myself a part of them. From the two cousins I had on my mother’s side because one, I lookednothing like them and two, my mom had tangled with the bloody mafia.
Even my mother on that long ago day when she’d dropped me off at my father’s doorstep had said something close to it.
Only my father and Marco had ever made me feel like I mattered. Suddenly, I want nothing but to hide my face in my brother’s chest and bawl like a baby. But I don’t even know if he got out of the church unhurt.
My lower lip wobbles and I grip it with my teeth.
Don’t cry, Iris. The man’s already made it clear that you’re a nuisance to him.
“No need to be so crotchety about being stuck with me,” I say, raising my head and meeting his green gaze. My future’s a complete blob right now but I’ve had enough of people making me feel like I was unwanted. I have to start growing a spine even if it feels like it’s made of noodles as that dark gaze holds me captive. “Like you very aptly reminded me, as a mafia princess, I’m a high security asset. You can pad your paycheck for letting me use this cozy little cabin for a few days. I’ll make sure my brother pays you a little extra for all your trouble.”
His eyes narrow and his jaw tightens, but mountain man doesn't say a word. Just looks at me for one long beat like I’ve turned into an even worse problem than he imagined.
4
ELIAS
Mafia princess.
She’s a fucking mafia princess.
The words detonate in my skull like a flash-bang.
I stare at her—chin up, brown eyes glassy with hurt she's trying to bury under all that sass—and feel the full weight of what Aiden withheld from me land square on my chest.
The church scene reframes itself in my head in about three seconds flat. The armed men. The cowering groom. The level of violence visited on a beautiful wedding day. Nothing about it had been a simple extraction job.
Of course she's mafia royalty. That oily little man hadn't just been marrying up. He'd been buying himself a young, nubile mafia bride, probably along with some territory and new alliances.
So who had instigated the shoot-out then? Who had been the target—a third party that didn’t like the alliance being forged? Was it her brother’s enemies or her prospective bridegroom’s?
