Page 73 of Diary of a Mafia Princess

“I had bleeding early on.”

“Earlier tonight?”

She shook her head. “No, just after I found out. I thought I’d lost it. I only recently realized I hadn’t.”

The nurse nodded. “Bleeding in the first trimester isn’t uncommon. It doesn’t always mean you’re miscarrying.”

“I didn’t know that,” Nyah said quietly.

I didn’t either. But then again, I didn’t know shit about pregnancy and babies. I’d never given either more than a passing thought.

“Are you booked in with us here at the hospital for the birth and checkups?” the nurse asked.

“No.”

The woman frowned. “We’ll definitely want to get that sorted before you leave, and you should be taking prenatal vitamins, getting lots of rest, eating well…” Her lecture gentled into sympathy. “But your baby looks completely healthy to me. Your head is actually my bigger concern right now. Any pains you were having were probably just gas. I can see it on the ultrasound.”

I snorted on a laugh.

Nyah slapped me. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“Why not? All that worry and stress and all you needed was to fart?”

“Shut up!” But there was a smile on her lips, one that was full of relief.

I was happy for her. I really was. Only it was short-lived. Because if Carlos or Luca found out she was pregnant with another man’s baby, I was really fucking scared about what they’d do.

When the nurse came back and said it would probably be another hour until they could glue up Nyah’s cut and get her head scanned, I told them to take their time.

Because the longer we were here, the longer she was nowhere near the Guerras.

23

DAX

Dear Diary,

I told a Mafia kingpin I don’t care about his wife’s pussy. That might be my obituary headline.

The walls felt like they were closing in on me. My skin was too tight, my muscles too tense. Fighting was supposed to ease all of that, and yet tonight, it hadn’t. I needed a shower, but the thought of standing in one with my brain screaming at me was too much to bear.

Despite it being nearly midnight, I cracked open a beer and wandered through my house, into the back sunroom I used as a studio. Canvases lined the walls. Oil paints littered the table. Brushes were scattered about haphazardly, no organization in this room whatsoever.

Completely different to the shop, where everything was sterilized and in order.

I loved tattooing. It paid the bills. But this was where I came when I needed to switch my brain off. Out here where I could get paint on my hands, on the floor, and where what I created was only for me.

Or for her.

The canvas on the easel had been there ever since the first night she’d slept here. The morning sun had streamed through my bedroom window, covering her in golden light, and I’d known, without a doubt, she was the only woman I wanted in my bed for the rest of my life.

That image of her there, naked, wrapped in my sheets, smelling like me, was so burned into my brain it was all I’d been able to paint ever since.

I slumped down in my armchair, sipping my beer, staring at that painting, inhaling the scent of her that still clung to my skin.

That was the real reason I didn’t want to have a shower.

I didn’t want to lose the tiny bit of her I’d been given tonight.