Page 2 of Diary of a Mafia Princess

I yelped, flinching back, but her red talons only dug into my flesh harder.

“You stupid, stupid girl! Your father promised the Guerras a virgin! You think he’s going to accept you knocked up? Tarnished by another man?”

I knew full well Carlos Guerra, head of a Mafia empire that stretched across a territory twice as wide as my father’s, would have no interest in me now.

It was exactly why I was smiling. This baby was my ticket to freedom.

It was my ticket back to Saint View.

Back to Dax.

I’d broken his heart when I’d left. I’d lied to him, told him I was taking care of my sick mother, and I couldn’t be with him when he reminded me too much of the baby we’d lost.

My hand hovered over my stomach. The baby we hadn’t lost at all.

My mother slapped my arm so viciously a red mark came up instantly on my olive skin. “Don’t be stupid, girl! Don’t go rubbing your belly like you love that bastard child.”

“I do!” I hissed at her. “Of course I do!”

She shook her head, her condescending pity rolling off her waves. “You fool. You should have known better, Nyah. Should have known your place. We should have never let you out of our sight. Your father…” She darted a fearful look down the hallway.

Jeremiah Matish’s footsteps echoed back, the click of expensive, well-shined shoes on polished wood floors.

Dread pooled in my stomach as each step drew closer.

My mother’s face paled.

“What’s all the squawking about down here?” he asked in his agitated, deep baritone. He glared at the woman who’d been given to him by her father decades before. “I was on a call.”

She pointed an accusatory finger in my direction. “Your daughter is knocked up.”

My father didn’t react for a long, bone-chilling moment.

He stalked closer, stopping barely a foot away, towering over me. “Is this true, Nyah?”

I refused to back down. Refused to take a step back, even though everything inside me screamed to get away from this man.

He might have been my father, but that didn’t make him someone safe.

But I wouldn’t cower in front of him like he wanted either. I’d already done that once. “Yes, it’s true.”

I expected him to shout. Waited for him to kick me out of his house and demand I never show myself in his presence again. Which I would have happily agreed to.

What I didn’t count on was the sharp slap of his palm across my face or the brutal way he grabbed my chin, yanking it up so I had no choice but to stare into his almost black eyes.

This man had never cared about me. But he’d never hurt me either.

Apparently, those days were gone. My face stung with the proof of it. I clutched my belly protectively, like my arms could stop him attacking me.

My head knew better.

My father could kill me if he wanted to. I wouldn’t be the first person who had stopped breathing at his hands.

“I promised Guerra a blushing virgin, Nyah. He’s old-school and demands that. And instead, you’re telling me I have to deliver him a slut who got herself knocked up before she could even walk down the aisle?”

I pressed my lips into a hard line. “So give him someone else.”

Lord knew I had enough cousins who might actually relish the idea of being a Mafia queen. Though my stomach sank to even truly consider throwing one of those clueless women under the bus like that. They might think they wanted it, but they didn’t know what it truly meant. They just saw the money, the expensive trips, the fancy clothes.