Savage Prince (DeSantis Mafia Book 2) by S. Massery

Author:S. Massery [Massery, S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-29T18:30:00+00:00

16

Aiden

She sits beside me, her hand on my leg, and tells me stories about her family. I don’t know any other time she’d volunteer this information, but we’ve opened the floodgates, and it all comes pouring out.

Family trips, the way her mother and father would swing her as they went down the sidewalk, riding horses through Central Park. They got as close to normal as a Mafia family could get, it sounded like. She lived carefree until the day I came along.

After that, everything changed. I can hear it in her voice.

No more spur-of-the-moment outings. Guards followed them through Central Park, accompanied them on trips. They moved Gemma to their Manhattan home and homeschooled her. She was the vulnerable one, she guessed. While Colin got to learn how to shoot and fight—her cousin, Kai, taking him under his wing—she was pushed toward academia.

And probably, eventually, marriage.

I didn’t expect to care—I didn’t expect to be hanging on her words. I wanted her to talk so she wouldn’t slip into a numb shock—talking keeps her present. But it’s grounded me in the present, too. Here we are, driving toward Hillshire County, and I want to know everything. I crave it.

“You don’t want to hear about her death,” she says quietly.

“I do.”

It was eighteen months ago. She was already gone and buried by the time the newspapers got wind of it. A nice little tribute in the New York Times, a professional photo of her from her wedding. It gathered a lot of sympathy around the city. Even if she wasn’t very well known, she was a West.

Her impact was clear by her last name alone.

Faith West just had something about her.

“I met her once, before the feud between our families got out of control,” I tell her.

Gemma stares blankly ahead. Maybe she knows this already, or maybe she’s trying to hide her surprise.

“I was pretty young. I don’t know why my parents insisted on bringing Wilder and I to a charity dinner. She caught me drawing on the underside of a table with a permanent marker.” I chuckle at the memory of her lifting the tablecloth, trying to suppress her grin. “She treated me with kindness.”

“She had an aneurysm,” Gemma says. “Doctors said she was born with it, and it was a ticking time bomb in her head waiting to go off. I was with my tutor, and Colin was out. I don’t know where Dad was. By the time we realized it wasn’t just a migraine she could sleep off, it was too late.”

She quickly brushes a tear from her cheek.

“It wouldn’t have been my play to take away your remaining parent.” I feel… agonized over it. And I don’t know why. Lawrence West has been a thorn in our family’s side for years. His family loves to cause trouble. Yet the guilt rides through me in steady waves.

“You just sat there.” Her voice is barely audible. “You sat there and let Jameson hold a knife to my throat, then a gun.

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