Diary of a Mafia Princess (Saint View Blood and Ink #1)

1. Nyah

NYAH

Dear Diary,

Today, I almost ruined a million-dollar Mafia wedding with a twelve-dollar pregnancy test.

Every moment of the last seven days, I had wondered one thing.

Would the flimsy lace of my wedding dress be strong enough to hang myself with?

If I somehow managed to rip it up into long strips and tied them together, could I make a noose? One that wouldn’t just tear when I fit it around my neck?

The window was another option. From the second-floor bedroom of my parents’ mansion, I could probably do myself a pretty good injury. If I landed on my head, I might even die.

But where would be the symbolism in that?

I didn’t want to kill myself.

But I sure as hell didn’t want to marry my father’s enemy either. And since those were apparently my only two options, death was definitely more appealing.

Perhaps I could push my father out the window instead?

That idea almost brought a smile to my face. I would have taken great pleasure in watching his arms windmill while he tried to regain his balance, and the horror play out across his classically handsome, middle-aged features as he realized he wasn’t going to be able to claw his way back to safety.

I’d record his screams so I could play them over and over, enjoying each one to the fullest before the satisfying crunch of his body hitting the concrete.

But now, a third option had presented itself.

I stared down at the positive pregnancy test gripped in my fingers, and my heart skipped a beat. There were two pink lines in the results window. And a quick check of the instructions confirmed what I already knew.

I was still pregnant.

I’d been so sure I’d lost it. I’d had bleeding a few weeks back, not long after I’d first realized I had a little hitchhiker on board.

I’d been so heartbroken I’d buried my head in the sand.

Pretended I could just forget about it and move on.

Refused to see a doctor, stubbornly determined to pretend everything was fine.

When my father had come for me, ripping me away from the only man who’d ever shown me any kindness, my heart had broken all over again.

But now, a tiny spark of hope glimmered in front of me. That pregnancy test was my key out of the prison my Mafia family had created for me.

The door to my bedroom burst open, and my mother barged in, trailing expensive perfume and in a deep-purple dress that swept around her ankles. Her maid carried a veil that was about as long as a freight train, trying, and failing, to keep it from dragging along the carpet.

My mother peered down her elegant nose at me, like I was something to be studied, rather than her flesh-and-blood daughter.

“Yes,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

She took the veil from Daphne and ran her perfectly manicured fingers over it.

“Try this on. This is going to be stunning when it’s all spread out on the big day.

The garbage that first designer tried to get by me wasn’t even close to acceptable, but this is exactly what I wanted.

The lace is a one-hundred-percent match for your dress.

” She paused in the open doorway of my bathroom and raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow in question, waiting for me to gush over the ridiculous tulle monstrosity. “Isn’t it just stunning?”

I couldn’t say anything. My fingers shook, clenched around the positive pregnancy test. I couldn’t have stopped my gaze from dipping to it even if I’d tried.

My mother’s followed. The veil slowly fell to the floor. “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is?”

I turned the test around and showed her the results.

For a split second, I thought I saw something happy flicker in her eyes.

Something full of excitement and promise, and my heart sped up, anticipating the way she would gasp and fling her arms around me.

How she’d squeal in grandmotherly delight and jump up and down, clutching my arms, so thrilled her only daughter was about to have a baby.

At least, that might have been what she’d do if she’d been a different sort of woman.

A different sort of mother.

Her eyes hardened. She grasped my arm, but it wasn’t in the excited way I might have been stupid enough to hope for.

It was only to dig her nails in so sharply I was sure they would draw blood.

I yelped, flinching back, but her red talons only dug into my flesh harder.

“You stupid, stupid girl! Your father promised the Guerras a virgin! You think he’s going to accept you knocked up? Tarnished by another man?”

I knew full well Carlos Guerra, head of a Mafia empire that stretched across a territory twice as wide as my father’s, would have no interest in me now.

It was exactly why I was smiling. This baby was my ticket to freedom.

It was my ticket back to Saint View.

Back to Dax.

I’d broken his heart when I’d left. I’d lied to him, told him I was taking care of my sick mother, and I couldn’t be with him when he reminded me too much of the baby we’d lost.

My hand hovered over my stomach. The baby we hadn’t lost at all.

My mother slapped my arm so viciously a red mark came up instantly on my olive skin. “Don’t be stupid, girl! Don’t go rubbing your belly like you love that bastard child.”

“I do!” I hissed at her. “Of course I do!”

She shook her head, her condescending pity rolling off her waves. “You fool. You should have known better, Nyah. Should have known your place. We should have never let you out of our sight. Your father…” She darted a fearful look down the hallway.

Jeremiah Matish’s footsteps echoed back, the click of expensive, well-shined shoes on polished wood floors.

Dread pooled in my stomach as each step drew closer.

My mother’s face paled.

“What’s all the squawking about down here?” he asked in his agitated, deep baritone. He glared at the woman who’d been given to him by her father decades before. “I was on a call.”

She pointed an accusatory finger in my direction. “Your daughter is knocked up.”

My father didn’t react for a long, bone-chilling moment.

He stalked closer, stopping barely a foot away, towering over me. “Is this true, Nyah?”

I refused to back down. Refused to take a step back, even though everything inside me screamed to get away from this man.

He might have been my father, but that didn’t make him someone safe.

But I wouldn’t cower in front of him like he wanted either. I’d already done that once. “Yes, it’s true.”

I expected him to shout. Waited for him to kick me out of his house and demand I never show myself in his presence again. Which I would have happily agreed to.

What I didn’t count on was the sharp slap of his palm across my face or the brutal way he grabbed my chin, yanking it up so I had no choice but to stare into his almost black eyes.

This man had never cared about me. But he’d never hurt me either.

Apparently, those days were gone. My face stung with the proof of it. I clutched my belly protectively, like my arms could stop him attacking me.

My head knew better.

My father could kill me if he wanted to. I wouldn’t be the first person who had stopped breathing at his hands.

“I promised Guerra a blushing virgin, Nyah. He’s old-school and demands that. And instead, you’re telling me I have to deliver him a slut who got herself knocked up before she could even walk down the aisle?”

I pressed my lips into a hard line. “So give him someone else.”

Lord knew I had enough cousins who might actually relish the idea of being a Mafia queen.

Though my stomach sank to even truly consider throwing one of those clueless women under the bus like that.

They might think they wanted it, but they didn’t know what it truly meant.

They just saw the money, the expensive trips, the fancy clothes.

I saw everything else. The danger. The fear. The brutality. The daily pain my mother went through as the wife of a Mafia don.

It was a life I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and yet it was one my father was selling me into.

He yanked me in so close his warm breath brushed over my skin. “I promised him you.”

“I won’t abort the baby,” I practically spat in his face, struggling to get free of him.

My mother gasped and made the sign of the cross. Like that might ward off the evil my words had brought into the room.

My staunchly religious parents didn’t believe in sex before marriage. Abortion. Birth control. Apparently, overlooking the whole, “Don’t murder thy neighbor,” part of the Bible was easily done, but heaven forbid they support gay rights or a woman’s right to choose.

“You only have one choice as I see it, daughter.” He let my arm go.

I nodded. “I’ll be out of your house by tomorrow.”

“You’re right, Nyah,” he agreed. “You will be.”

A rush of relief filled me, followed by pure joy.

I had nothing here I wanted to take with me.

I just needed to get out, away from the fences my father kept me locked behind.

I would find a phone. Call Dax. Tell him I was so damn sorry for everything I’d said.

That it was all lies. That I loved him and I was having his baby.

That we could be together.

I went to move past my father, desperate to get out from beneath his roof.

He stepped in front of me, his mouth twisted into a cruel scowl. “You’ll leave this house tomorrow. And you’ll go back to Providence. You’ll go to the Guerra mansion and live there until your wedding.”

“What?” My heart stopped at the mention of Providence, with its huge houses and flashy wealth.

Not because I cared about those things, but because it was the town that neighbored Saint View, where Dax lived and worked and where we’d met.

Saint View was the wrong side of the tracks, where the average person lived beneath the poverty line.

And I’d been happier there than anywhere else.

Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll do as I say, Nyah. You won’t like the consequences if you don’t. We’ve talked about what those are.”

My blood ran cold, and hate solidified itself in my heart. “Don’t you dare touch him.”

My father’s cruelty knew no bounds. He wouldn’t think twice about hurting Dax to control me. His threats to end Dax’s life if I didn’t obey weren’t idle. He had me, and we both knew it. I’d made a vital mistake in caring for someone else.

That realization sank down on me so heavily my knees buckled.

My words were bitter when I managed to get them out.

“This was why you let me go, wasn’t it? You let me go just long enough to find people I loved, to find friends and a partner I would give up everything to protect. All so you could control me.”

I suddenly understood exactly how little my father cared for me. How willing he was to hurt me to get what he wanted.

He narrowed his eyes. “When you get to that house tomorrow, sweet daughter of mine, you had better find Carlos Guerra and show him exactly how sweet you are. Show him those titties, and your virgin fucking pussy, and hope he takes the bait.”

I recoiled, disgusted by my own father speaking about me like that. In the doorway, my mother turned away, a quiet sob falling from her lips.

I wondered if she was reliving the night she, too, had been given to a monster.

“I won’t,” I spat back at him.

He grabbed me again, twisting my arm until it felt like it would snap.

“You have no choice, you stupid slut. You need Carlos Guerra to fuck you so there’s even a half-plausible explanation for why you’ll have a baby in your arms in less than nine months’ time.

Maybe if it’s small enough, the old prick will actually think it’s his. ”

I shook my head, tears streaming down my face. I was supposed to have more time. Months before I had to take up the role I’d always known I would be forced to fill. I was to be the bridge between our two families that my father so desperately needed if he didn’t want the Guerras to obliterate him.

But now he was telling me my time was up. That he was sending me to them so I could seduce a man twice my age and then marry him.

And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.