Page 12 of Surprise Twins for the Mafia Prince
“And my mother? Did she deserve to pay a price for her husband’s crimes? Did she deserve to lose everything after my dad died? We had nothing without him. Certainly not enough money to keep our house or my mom’s business going. She had to close her boutique and we fled Vegas in fear. She even changed our last names. Did we deserve that?”
I want to tell her that her family was collateral damage, that she’ll have to get over it because it’s the past and she’s certainly not getting an apology from me or anyone in my family.
It’s what I’d say to anyone else, but for some reason I can’t explain, I hesitate. I feel unsettled, and I can only assume it’sbecause I wasn’t expecting her to have a connection to my family like this. It’s throwing me off.
No. It’s not only that. It’s the pain radiating from her, raw and real in a way that I’m not used to seeing. Most people hide their emotions from me. They’re too afraid to show weakness. But Paige. She’s laying it all bare, like she doesn’t care what I think.
“Do you know that my mom suffered from depression for years? She couldn’t get over the loss of my dad and the life that we lived with him. She lost everything, and when I was seventeen, she decided that she just couldn’t take it anymore.” She pauses to swallow hard, and I find my mouth going dry at the raw anguish in her eyes. “She killed herself. Overdosed on pills.”
She turns away from me, and I know she’s trying to hide her tears as her shoulders tremble. I reach for her without thinking, nearly placing a comforting hand on her back before I snap out of it.
What the hell is that?I don’t comfortanyone, especially not a woman that stole from me.
It must be because she’s pregnant. I don’t hurt kids and knowing that she’s carrying one is unsettling.
But it doesn’t matter. I can’t go soft with this woman. She could still be connected to my enemy. In fact, it seems even more likely now, considering that she has reason to hold a grudge against my family.
I won’t kill her now, but she doesn’t need to know that. She needs to fear me.
“I hope you learned a lesson from all of that,” I say coldly. “Because if you don’t return my flash drive, I promise that you’ll end up exactly like your father.”
7
PAIGE
My tears stop flowingat his cold words, and I shudder with fear.
I haven’t felt this scared since I was a kid and my mom frantically packed us up to flee the city. I remember my brother Gabriel whining about having to leave his flat-screen TV and video game systems behind, but I was too focused on the tremor in my mom’s hands and haunted look in her eyes to care about my possessions.
We’d buried my dad two days before, and she’d been in a state of complete misery ever since. We all had been grieving, but at ten years old, it was my first time ever seeing my mom as anything other than a strong, put-together person.
She was a superhero to me, and witnessing her fall apart was awful, but the fear I saw in her eyes as she told us we were leaving our home was horrifying. It made me feel insecure for the first time in my life, and a part of me still feels that way. Maybe I always would.
Now, I’m in their crosshairs again, and I don’t understand how I ended up here.
“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” I tell him. “I don’t have your flash drive.”
“My cup,” he says impatiently. “You took my cup.”
I think about that morning when I left his hotel room. It was hot out and I was hungover with dry mouth from hell. I forgot all about taking that stupid cup. I try to remember what I did with it when I left Vegas.
“I think...I think I left it in my car.”
The drive back from Vegas was long, and I remember finishing off the water I had in the cup before we stopped at a drive through and got soda. I tossed the cup in the back seat and never thought of it again.
I wince as I think about the fact that I haven’t cleaned out my car in so long. I really should get into the habit of keeping up on that before the baby is born.
Dario moves past me, heading for the front door, and I’m confused for a moment, thinking that he’s leaving, but he stops at the side table and digs around in my purse.
“Hey, that’s rude, you know. Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to go through a woman’s purse? It’s private.” I sound ridiculous even to my own ears. Like I’m scolding a toddler for coloring on the walls, not confronting a mafia enforcer who’s invaded my home.
He shoots me a look that suggests he thinks I’m an idiot, and maybe he has a point. He’s already broken into my home, after all. My boundaries aren’t exactly his top priority.
He’s out the front door in seconds, and it’s probably too much to hope that he’ll just take the stupid cup and leave.
I could probably call the police while he’s out there, but I don’t want to go against the Andrettis in that way. It would be like signing my death warrant.
I go to the open door and watch as he leans into the back of my car. It doesn’t take him long to find it. I’m still standing there when he comes back, brushing by me with a scowl on his face. What’s his problem now?
