Page 29 of Bitter Prince

“And if they don’t know it?” It was possible. The girls grew up in their grandmother’s home, but they might know where their father stored documents. “If they’re another dead end?”

I glanced out the window, the busy streets of Paris swarming with people making their way to their final destination.

“We kidnap them and use them to blackmail their father.” Our mother would definitely not approve. That was a final resort, but there was nothing morally sound about it.

Dante chuckled, eagerness lurking in his expression. “We should start with that.”

My eyes scanned his face. Sometimes I worried he’d become cruel like our father, especially after the kidnapping and the accident that followed. These days, the eagerness in his expression at the mention of torture gave pause even to me. He wasn’t exactly the same, but he was still my brother and I would always stand by him.

“So eager to get your hands on Phoenix?” I grumbled.

“Maybe I’d rather get my hands on Reina,” he retorted.

I exploded, getting in his face and breathing harshly. “You don’t touch her,” I snarled. My brother and I rarely disagreed, but when it came to the girl with yellow hair, we struggled to find common ground.

Dante didn’t seem troubled by my outburst. He stood there, his hands in his pockets and a bored expression on his face. But the dark gleam in his eyes was enough to send a weaker man running. It was a good thing I wasn’t one of them.

“Seems my big brother is eager to get his hands on someone,” he drawled with a knowing smirk. Damn him. “What’s your obsession with her anyhow?”

I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached.

“There’s no obsession.” The look he gave me said he didn’t believe me. “What’s the deal with you and Phoenix?”

A deep frown pulled his brows together. “I can’t work out whether I’ve met her.”

I offered him a patient smile. It was another thing that had been broken since the accident: his memory.

“We’ve seen her several times, Dante,” I said slowly. “The first time was at the castello—at Miramare. She was only a little girl.”

He shook his head, memories hard to grasp for him. “I remember that. There was somewhere else…”

I assessed him, wondering if there were secrets he kept from before the accident. If he had, those were gone now.

Although I doubted it. The Romero sisters didn’t exactly move in the same circles as us. Each time we saw the Romero girls, we were together, with the exception of the attempted kidnapping at her boarding school, and the time in the garage. I’d dealt with Reina alone those times. Her sister hadn’t been there.

“It’ll come to you,” I said, reassuring him. Ever since the accident, I waited for his memories to return. Some had, but a lot of them still hadn’t. I had to wonder if maybe that was his coping mechanism. “I have to make a call to BlackHawk SF Security.”

“What for?”

“I’ll hire them to keep an eye on Reina,” I said. Dante rolled his eyes. “If Perez Cortes has set his sights on her, he’ll be hard-pressed to give up. The guy has a sick obsession with blondes.”

“I guess it’s a good thing Phoenix has dark hair,” he drawled.

Then he disappeared, leaving me to make my phone call, hoping it would be enough to keep her safe for now.

16

REINA

It had been a week since I saw Amon Leone and his brother kill those men. A whole week since I had dinner with him. A whole damn week of watching the news—much to my friends’ dismay—and being extra vigilant about my surroundings.

Nothing.

It was as if it had never happened. But that wasn’t the worst part. Or maybe I should say, the saddest. I was getting pissed off that Amon hadn’t tried to see me again. We had dinner. I ate off his chopsticks for Christ’s sake. The least he could do was call me. Or visit me. Anything. Instead, I was getting radio silence. Zip. Nada.

My brows furrowed. I hadn’t given him my phone number.But he knows where you live, my mind whispered.

He never really said he’d see me again though, did he? In fact, he didn’t say much at all, but somehow it felt like he said so much. I read a phrase in one of Jodi Picoult’s books a long time ago that said, “His mouth moves like a silent story.” The words were confusing at the time, but now they made more sense. And they fit Amon Leone, my bitter prince, perfectly.