Page 27 of Bitter Prince
Reina Romero had angelic features, but her eyes were what ate at my soul. Maybe even her own soul. Tonight, I’d caught flashes of something haunted, and it was so damn hard to ignore.
I stroked a stray strand of soft, silky hair away from her face. She’d grown from that fourteen-year-old girl with braces. Her beauty was the kind that blinded men, and I feared she would put a spell on me. It would be ironic if I turned out to have hearts in my eyes now.
I inhaled her cinnamon scent and wondered if she tasted like cinnamon too.Fuck, I’m a goner.
“Reina.”
She slowly stirred, her eyes opening to look at me. A dreamy smile curved her full lips and her eyelids fluttered as sleep pulled her back under. That protective surge shot through me again.
I reached out, tucking her golden curl behind the ear. “Come on, sleeping beauty.”
She sat up, rubbing her eyes and running her fingers through those unruly curls. They were too wild, too rebellious, yet somehow perfectly fit the girl who slid across the marble floors of my father’s castle in her socks.
Along the way though, she’d begun to hide, to mold herself into something different. She was still outgoing and full of life, but there was something different about her. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was, but something about her had changed, and I intended to unravel the truth.
“Do… do you want to come up?” she offered.
I studied her face, those eyes glimmering even in the darkness of the night.
“Do you know what a man thinks when a girl asks him up to her apartment at this hour?”
She let out a chuckle. “I live with four other girls. So think again, Amon Leone.” The sound of my name coming from her soft lips gave me so many ideas. Wrong fucking ideas. She waited, watching me, a vein pulsing faintly along her elegant neck.She wants me to kiss her.As if she could read my thoughts, her eyes flitted to my lips, her own mouth parting slightly. She waited another moment, then said, “Anyhow, thanks for dinner.”
She stepped out of the car, shutting the door behind her. And somehow, I had a distinct feeling that one day, the door would shut between us permanently.
* * *
“Hiroshi,” I said, finding my advisor in the back room of the warehouse in Le Havre’s seaport. He sat on a stool, his attention on the phone. “How did they know the girl would be there?”
While Reina stretched and meditated and bent her body every which way, I sent a message to Hiroshi to get to the bottom of the attack. It was only thanks to a last-minute surveillance check that I’d spotted Yakuza men loitering in the parking garage of Reina’s yoga studio. And it was only due to sheer luck that we were nearby and got there in time before they could lay a hand on her.
“I don’t know,” he answered in Japanese. “But I’d guess it’s Itsuki’s order.”
For years, I played my cousin’s second-in-command and acted as a delicate alliance between the Yakuza and the Omertà. Of course, Itsuki was a greedy bastard and looked for any way to take over our world.
But stalking Romero’s daughter was crossing the line. It was my only condition when I agreed to join him. Reina Romero was off-limits. Yet here he was, sending men to do exactly that. He had always seemed the most interested in the Romeros. It made no sense, because they were the weakest family in the organization. Unless it boiled down to the shitstorm Romero started three years ago when he stole from my cousin, but that debt was considered repaid when I joined the Yakuza under Itsuki.
“Did you look into Romero?” I asked. “Maybe he made another bad deal.”
“That was my first thought too,” he admitted. “But he hasn’t had any contact with them.”
“Fucker shouldn’t have put his daughters on the Yakuza’s radar in the first place.”Idiot.
Although, he had been holding up his end of the bargain. He’d stopped flesh trading, unbeknownst to anyone else in the business, and passed on the contacts of fuckers who were still involved. Dante and I handled those and intercepted shipments full of women and children before it could even hit the shore. They then lost a shipandtheir cargo. It was a hefty hit, making it difficult for them to recover financially.
I had gotten under Romero’s skin for intel and, in our world, that was deadlier than any weapon. I learned that from my mother. I learned from my psycho father that using strategy for long-term gain was the way to go. Of course, he backstabbed and used any means necessary to get ahead of everyone else.
My mother taught Dante and me to fight with honor, but never accept losses. So that was what I focused on: winning. Over Romero for fucking my mother over. Over my father for treating her poorly. Over my cousin for stealing my crown.
Romero had taken my mother away from her world, her family, and then left her at the mercy of my father. The lines might have blurred over the years, but I hadn’t lost sight of my mission.
The door to the back room opened and Dante strolled in.
“Did you find anything out?” he asked. “I bet Reina Romero is already eating out of your hand.”
The picture of her lips parting around my sushi flashed in my mind and I released a long sigh. It wasn’t an image I needed in my head.Underage,I reminded myself.
Hiroshi glared at him. “You need to learn the time and place for jokes.”
