Page 127 of I'm sorry, Princess

He thought I turned my back on our blood.

Two years ago, he came to me, offered a seat at his table, brought up the Moretti legacy, our family’s long-standing ties with the Cosa Nostra. I told him I didn’t want the fucking life. Not the mafia, not the oaths, not the weight of generations of blood and business.

But now he knows I’m with the Bratva. And that changes everything.

I asked him once if my father was involved in all this.

“There’s so much you don’t know about your father.” That sentence has haunted me ever since. And now? Now I’m starting to believe him.

The ride back to CURSED is dead silent. The only sound is the hum of the engine and the thrum of my thoughts banging against my skull. I don’t know what’s worse, the shitstorm we just caused, or the fact that Andres isn’t acting like himself.

Where the hell did I lose him today?

He’s always calculated. Cold. Brutal when he needs to be, but never impulsive. That kill shot back there wasn’t strategy. It was rage.

And it might’ve just kicked off a war.

“Care to explain what the fuck happened there?” I snap at him, eyes locked on the road, my knuckles bone-white on the wheel.

He doesn't answer. His jaw is tight, his stare empty, distant. Like he’s not in the car anymore, like his mind is still at the warehouse with Luciano’s brains splattered on the pavement.

Fuck.

I grip the wheel tighter, cut through traffic like it owes me money, and make the forty-minute drive back to the club in twenty. The Lambo growls beneath us like it feels my mood.

As I pull into the private lot behind CURSED, I clock them, four girls posted at the entrance like they own the place.

We must look like hell.

Blood streaks my shirt. Bruises bloom across my face and neck like ink stains. My hands are a mess, cuts splitting open across the knuckles, dirt and dried blood caked under my nails. One of those fuckers had fists like bricks.

And Andres?

His face is wrecked. A raw, fresh scar slices down his cheek from where that blade nearly took his eye. Blood’s still crusted to his temple. But he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even touch it. Classic Andres. Silent. Stone. Dangerous.

And then,

I see her.

Serena.

She’s standing there like a vision I don’t deserve. Wearing that little tennis skirt that shows just enough of her legs to drive a man mad, and a cropped tank top that barely holds back temptation. Twin dragons curl around her chest, one black, one gold, like they’re guarding treasure.

And fuck me, she is treasure.

Next to her, Sienna, looking both confused and amused. The other two girls I don’t know, but one of them’s practically naked, Lev’s favorite dancer, if I had to bet. Makes sense.

But it’s Serena I can’t tear my eyes from.

Even after the blood, the fight, the war we just sparked, my gaze finds her, needs her. Like a fix. Like a calm I haven’t had in years.

I slow my steps beside Andres, both of us wrecked but walking tall. We pause at the door, just feet from them.

I speak low to him, my voice carrying only enough for him to hear “I need more information about my father.”

He lifts a brow, waiting.

“I need to know what the fuck happened.” I’m tired. Tired of being in the dark. Tired of guessing what legacy I was born into, what shadows my father left behind.