Page 10 of Daddy's Little Mafia Princess
She has so many more interesting places I could be inspired to nibble and kiss. Starting with the peaks of her nipples, thrusting so beguilingly against the cover of her thin bra.
“Please don’t do that again,” she says primly. “We need to talk about what to do next.”
Ten steps ahead. I already know.
Reaching into my jacket, I pull out the folded contract my lawyer drafted shortly after I learned of Alviero’s betrayal.
“This is what we’ll do.”
She looks from the contract in my hand to me. God, her eyes are so much easier to read now than they were in the banquet hall when she was seated by her father’s side.
Too late, she dons her poker face.
“What’s in it?” she asks, folding her arms as if to make herself feel more in charge.
“An offer you can’t refuse,” I joke, winking again to help her relax. Holding out the contract, I wait for her to take it. Unfolding the crisp pages, she reads. A standard marriage contract, it came complete with a prenup that protects me entirely and her very little, but with any luck, she won’t understand the legalese.
She didn’t read farther than the first paragraph. That made it easier on me, but it was appalling. I need to teach her better.
“You can’t seriously still want to marry me?” She glances up, surprise widening her dark eyes.
“As my wife, I can protect you more,” I said honestly. “Without the protection of marriage, you are extremely vulnerable to kidnapping.”
Surprise melting into disgruntlement, she says, “So I’ve discovered.”
“Your father needs you back again, and his first inclination will not be to cooperate with me.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
There was the mouth her father warned me about.
Closing the contract, she tries to hand it back.
“I don’t want to marry. It’s unnecessary. No one will come for me. All you’ve done today is kidnap the one person my father hates more than,”—she flounders, eventually shrugging—“you, I guess. He doesn’t care about me. I’ve done nothing but humiliate him all my life, starting at my birth when I had the audacity not to be a boy. He—”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not he loves you.” I brush those unimportant details aside.
“Yes, it absolutely does,” she insisted. “You don’t know him. It matters.”
“You’re his daughter,” I cut in bluntly. “A man who can’t—or won’t—take care of his family can’t be trusted to take care of business.”
“I’m a business interest?” she echoes, her cheeks flushing with affront.
“You’re a business asset,” I correct. “You are his best assurance that he won’t be prematurely murdered for what he has or what he’s done. At least, that’s what he thinks. Before the end of tonight, he will put every business venture he has in your name.”
Her eyes widen, then she coughs a startled laugh. “No, I promise, he won’t do any such thing.”
“He will,” I assure, showing her a hint of my claws. “If he doesn’t, his business associates will receive all the proof they need that he’s been embezzling from them for his own fun and amusement. When that happens, he won’t have twenty-four hours before they come for him.I promise,” I emphasize, “they’ll kill him, and he knows it.”
She stares as if I’m crazy. “If he knows that, then why would he risk it by giving me to Miguel Morales?”
“Because he thinks I’m bluffing, because he was offended, I wouldn’t let him spend my money wherever he felt like it, and because the Morales’ picked the right time to make the same offer—marriage to you in exchange for a piece of the hotel. Iwant my restaurant in a prominent part of his casino. Morales wants a percentage of the business in exchange for investing in bringing the Crown up to date. They think having you will guarantee a bigger percentage of his empire once Alviero dies. They just have to wait.”
“How long before they kill me?” she asks bluntly.
“If they’re smart, they’ll wait until your father is dead, and they have as much as they can get from his estate.” I knew the question was coming by the way her jaw clenched.
“How long before you kill me?”
