Page 20 of All’s Fair In Love & War (The Bulgari Cartel #2)

Dangerous

Felicity

Footsteps could be heard stomping down the long hallway. I quickly sat up and scooted to the middle of the bed. Legs crossed, I dropped my head, thinking about my father, Enzo, his death, and all the time we'd lost, just to bring on the waterworks.

It didn’t take but a single thought about my father calling me his princess before deserting me for years to make my throat tighten and tears roll down my cheeks.

I knew which memories to tap into, and which parts of myself to press down on to make them come.

They weren’t fake, not really. The pain was there, buried beneath resentment, grief, and feelings of betrayal, but it was also something I could weaponize.

“Do you want to be the prey or the predator?” I hadn’t stopped thinking about Tandy’s question since she’d asked it.

At the time, I brushed it off, pretending to be unbothered, but it stuck like blood under my nails and regret in the back of my throat.

Most days, I felt like both. Prey, because of how easily men tossed me around.

I’d been dragged, drugged, traded, and dressed up in diamonds to flaunt around like a timepiece, never something to protect. Never someone to love.

One would think that my father would have been my first love, but he wasn’t.

He was an ass just like the rest of them: power-hungry, emotionally vacant, and allergic to softness.

If he ever looked at me like I was his daughter, it was only because it meant I could be used to settle his debts or secure his throne. But not Dallas.

He was the only person who ever made me feel like I mattered.

With Dallas, I was just Felicity, his little sister, nothing more, nothing less.

To me, he was everything: my protector, my confidant, the only one who ever looked at me, really looked at me, in that cold, lifeless house full of staff and parents who only showed up for photo ops.

I used to push limits just to feel something. I’d set curtains on fire, climbed out of second-story windows, picked fights at charity galas, whatever it took to break the perfect little image they tried to paint of me. I was loud, messy, and always doing too much.

When I stole the Maserati at ten just to get their attention, it was Dallas who took the fall.

When I got caught snorting crushed Adderall in the back of a town car at eleven, it was Dallas who cleaned me up before anyone else found out.

He never tried to tame me, just tried to keep me safe, and maybe that was why it hurt so damn bad when even he gave up on me.

However, my parents? They didn’t send me to boarding school because they were scared for me. They sent me away because they were embarrassed. Dallas had begged them not to, even promised he’d keep an eye on me, but they didn’t give a damn about what he said.

After they shipped me off, everything changed. Dallas never visited, and eventually stopped calling, and I stopped pretending I wasn’t broken. I used to think he left me. Now I wonder if they made him. Either way, I will never forgive him for letting me go, or for selling me to the Bulgari.

I blinked, letting the tears slip down my cheeks, enough to blur my lashes and leave a soft sheen across my cheeks. Khalil wouldn’t get the tantrum he expected. I wanted sympathy, and to get out of this room.

When the door slammed open, I jumped and threw my hand over my heart for dramatics. “You scared me,” I whispered, my voice so low and soft, he instantly paused as if someone had yanked the fury out of him mid-step.

“Hi,” I whispered with my chin tilted high and my lower lip trembling as I studied his posture.

Khalil’s hands were clenched at his sides, and his jaw was tight, but his eyes told me he was conflicted, that I’d caught him off guard with my little display of vulnerability.

They scanned my face and dropped to the way I sat, all small and fragile, staged right in the center of that stupidly oversized bed.

His mouth parted slightly, like he wanted to say something but didn’t trust what would come out, so instead, he took a step forward, then stopped again.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, curling my arms around my waist like I needed to hold myself together. “I know you probably thought I’d be up here throwing shit, cussing people out, and threatening to throw myself out the window.”

He didn’t deny it.

“But I’ve been thinking about my father… Enzo,” I added, in case he needed the reminder. “And how we never got a real goodbye. I just… I just needed to cry. That’s all. But if you’re busy, you can leave.”

Khalil stayed silent, but his shoulders dropped half an inch, maybe less, but I caught it.

He exhaled sharply through his nose, still not moving, still watching me like I was a loaded weapon dressed in silk and crocodile tears.

“Mrs. Deleon said you demanded I come home.”

“I didn’t demand it,” I said, blinking up at him. “I asked.”

He raised a brow, calling my bluff without a word.

“Okay,” I admitted, letting my voice grow breathy, “I asked... loudly.”

He almost smiled—almost.

“I’m not trying to be difficult,” I went on. “I just—I feel like I’m being punished. You locked me in this room like I’m dangerous, when really, I’m just... grieving.”

Khalil’s gaze dropped to the floor, just for a second, and in that second, I slipped in deeper.

“You think I’m unstable,” I whispered. “You think I’ll run, or ruin something, embarrass you, or hurt myself, but I won’t—not if you just let me breathe.”

Khalil stepped further inside my room, stopping at the edge of my bed. “I don’t trust you,” he said plainly.

“I know.”

“But I believe your grief.”

I nodded, eyes dropping. “Thank you. I don’t want much,” I said softly. “Just... please let me roam the halls and sit outside. I need to feel human again.”

Khalil studied me long enough to make my skin prickle. “Fine,” he snapped, his jaw ticking as if he didn’t want to say his next words. “You can move around the house.”

I looked up, eyes wide with gratitude that I didn’t have to fake. “Really?”

“But if you so much as breathe wrong—”

“I won’t,” I said quickly, cutting him off. “I swear.”

He nodded once and turned to leave, but before he made it to the door, I called out, softer than before.

“Khalil?”

He stopped, not turning around.

“Thank you.”

He didn’t respond, but I didn’t need him to.

He’d given me the first piece of what I wanted, and now the real games could begin.

“Mrs. Deleon, I’m homeeee!” a woman sang as she strutted into the estate, her heels clicking like gunfire against the marble tile. “I came to get some peach cobbler and some of that crawfish étouffée you made me the other day.”

I didn’t have to see her face to know she was smiling. Anyone bold enough to enter this house singing like that had to be comfortable and know who they were dealing with.

Mrs. Deleon, the only person in this mansion I was genuinely afraid of, appeared in the foyer with a hand on her hip and a look that could stop grown men mid-sentence.

“Don’t come in this house with all that hollerin’.

And take your narrow behind back to that door and get them shoes off. You scuffin’ up my floors.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Don’t pull out the belt,” the woman giggled, already backtracking.

From where I sat curled up in the study, I watched it all unfold through the crack in the door, even saw the moment Mrs. Deleon leaned in and whispered, “You met that crazy girl your brother got layin’ up in here,” once the girl returned barefoot, voice lowered but not low enough.

Crazy girl. She meant me.

Mrs. Deleon and the mystery woman were still whispering when both of them turned at the same damn time and looked directly toward the study, right at me.

Shit.

I leaned back like that would somehow erase the fact that I’d been caught watching, but it was too late. The door creaked open wider, and Mrs. Deleon tilted her head with a knowing smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“There she go,” she said, turning to the woman beside her. “Told you she don’t stray far from where she can eavesdrop. She nosey.”

The other woman raised an eyebrow, her lips curving like she was both intrigued and amused. She stepped forward first, hips swaying with confidence you couldn’t fake.

“I hear you’re a friend of my brother’s,” she said, her tone smooth, but not sweet. “I’m Sophia.”

Ah. The infamous little sister.

She didn’t offer her hand, so I didn’t stand. Instead, I adjusted my robe slightly, crossed my legs, and looked at her over the way she was looking at me.

Sophia Bulgari looked like she belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine and a Most Wanted list at the same time.

She was tall, maybe five-nine without the heels, and had the build of a woman men started wars over.

She was tall, maybe five-nine without the heels, and built like the kind of woman men started wars over.

Mixed, Black and Mexican, if I remembered the rumors right, with smooth bronze skin, high cheekbones.

Thick lashes framed her almond-shaped eyes, their color somewhere between honey and fire, depending on how the light hit. Right now, they were on fire.

Her hair was long, dark, and slicked back into a low braided ponytail that hit the center of her back.

Not a single strand was out of place, like even her flyaways knew better than to act up.

She wore a pair of black leather pants that fit like they were painted on, hugging every curve of her hips and legs with a grip that left nothing to the imagination.

On top was a cream silk blouse, deep plunge, no bra, gold chains layered across her collarbone.