Page 43 of Broken Mafia Prince
“Wow!” she cuts me off with mock shock. “A mafiosoanda doctor? Impressive.”
“You’re coming with me.”
“No, thanks,” she says through clenched teeth. “But I’ll be sure to send you a postcard when I’m back in my city to let you know I didn’t die from my ‘injury.’”
No one talks to me like this—not even my father dares anymore. But why am I surprised that Giulia Montanari, a woman who travels without security despite the risks, is reckless? Why should I expect her to have any self-preservation now?
“You’re really willing to get on that plane?” I ask, my voice low. “How do you know there isn’t a ticking time bomb on it, ready to blow you to pieces at thirty thousand feet?”
“I’ll take my chances,” she says with a saccharine smile, brushing past me.
Dealing with Giulia Montanari is the surest way to die of heart problems before thirty. When she steps around me, I decide I’ve had enough. If she wants to act like a child, I’ll treat her like one.
Before she can react, I grab her waist and sling her over my shoulder.
Her outraged gasp nearly makes me laugh. “You asshole! Put me down!” She beats her fists against my back. “Help! Someone help me! I’m being kidnapped!”
Tommaso clears his throat, failing miserably to hide his amusement. “What about him?” he asks, nodding toward the restrained shooter.
“You know what to do.”
In a flash, he draws his gun, turning to face the assailant, and fires without hesitation. Straight in the middle of his forehead. The man’s body collapses to the ground with a dull thud, blood pooling beneath him.
The gunshot sound makes Giulia go silent for a second, but the silence doesn’t last; in fact, her screams and struggle to wiggle out of my hold only triple after the man drops dead.
“Take care of the witnesses,” I order Tommaso. “Bribe them, threaten them—whatever it takes. No one talks to the cops.”
“Yes, boss,” Tommaso replies smoothly.
“You murderous Neanderthal!” Giulia screams, thrashing against me. “Put me down! I’m not a bag of flour you can just carry off! My father and grandfather will find me, and you’ll regret this.”
Her words hit me like a bolt of electricity. I’m familiar with Enrico Montanari; in fact, I think I may have spoken to him once or twice indirectly at a function, but then there’s her grandfather. Lucio Sanna? As far as I know, the old man hasn’t set foot on American soil in decades.
“I’m not kidnapping you, settle down,” I bark, climbing up into my plane. I buckle her into the seat facing mine. “Don’t bother trying to run, Giulia. You can’t slip through all my men, and I’m hoping you won’t try.”
She glares at me, her pink lips pressed into a defiant line. I try to ignore how striking she looks, even with her hair disheveled and her eyes blazing with fury.
I don’t want to spend this journey keeping a close eye on her. I want to try to figure out what Father’s playing at before I walk into his study.
As we take off, I lean back in my seat, pretending to relax. But my mind is racing, in our line of work, trying to unravel my father’s twisted plans. This isn’t just about family grudges anymore. In our world, even if you want to keep women and children out of the fight, the bloodshed always touches them in the end.
The point is, I’ll never hold a gun to a woman or a child. That’s not something I’m willing to do—not even for my father.
It was naive of me to think he would share the same principles. How is a man who never cared a damn for his own wife magically supposed to develop a conscience for someone else’s innocent relative?
I try to get someone to look at her arm as soon as the plane takes off, but to my surprise—and suspicion—she insists on doing it herself. And she does it well. Too well. Her hands are steady, movements precise, as though she’s done this before.
For the rest of the flight to Chicago, a thick silence wraps around us. She glares at me. I pretend not to notice, but my focus keeps drifting back to her, and I can’t seem to help myself.
I shouldn’t be looking at her, but there I am, watching how the light plays off her shiny, dark hair, how her eyes shift from green to gold like sunlight over a forest. I note the curve of herlips, the way her upper lip is just a little fuller than the bottom, setting her mouth into a permanent, unintentional pout.
All these years, I’ve fought against the urge to seek her out, to remind her about the scarred boy from the orchard, even though I know she’s the enemy.
It turns out, I wouldn’t have had to remind her. She hasn’t forgotten. But it doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t change the fact that we may as well be worlds apart.
Eventually, she breaks the silence. “What happened today?—”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
