His Mafioso Princess

by Terri Anne Browning

  When something came up that needed Adrian’s attention, I mourned the loss of him beside me in bed, but I was thankful for it, as well.

  I hadn’t had the chance to check my blood sugar in almost twenty-four hours. Hadn’t eaten at all during that time. It was a wonder I could even put two coherent thoughts together with how crazy my levels were bound to be when I checked. I was playing fast and loose with my illness, but once I had succumbed to what I felt for Adrian, I had lost track of time and any rational thought.

  I realized I should have told him about my diabetes by now, but I hadn’t been ready to show him just how imperfect I actually was. I had to do it soon, though. When he got back, I promised myself.

  On shaky legs, I climbed out of bed, my body complaining from the ache that Adrian had left as a memento. I smiled at the memories of how my body had become so sore as I slowly walked to the bathroom.

  As I reached the bathroom door, the world seemed to spin, and I knew I had fucked up.

  “Shit,” I moaned as I sunk to the floor and glanced around half-blindly for my clutch that had my things in it. “Shit, shit, shit.” I crawled weakly toward the vanity where I had placed the small purse.

  This was bad. So, so fucking bad. I was such a stupid idiot.

  “Please, God,” I whispered into the empty room. “I won’t do it again. I swear. Please …”

  I had never left it this long between doses of insulin. I had been reckless, I would gladly admit that much, but I wasn’t usually this stupid.

  Right then, in that moment, I was terrified for my life.

  I reached the vanity and breathed a small prayer of thanks. I didn’t even bother with the tester. I had already wasted too much time.

  Pulling out the bottle of insulin and a clean syringe, I tried to load it with the dose I needed, but I kept missing each time I tried to stick the needle into the vial.

  “Oh, God,” I whimpered, then gave a cry of triumph when I finally got the needle to go in.

  Pulling back on the plunger, I loaded the syringe to the max capacity, but the world was going fuzzy and dark around the edges. I knew I was out of time.

  I quickly stuck the needle into my lower belly, not caring where it went in as I hit the plunger just as I lost the battle against the darkness that was trying to swallow me whole.

  Adrian

  The men who were patrolling the grounds of the house knew something was up with me as soon as I pulled into the garage. I barely put the car in park and turned it off before I was stepping out. The look on my face had those concerned and brave enough to approach me backing up before they could even ask what was wrong.

  I tossed the key fob at the nearest man then stormed inside.

  I still had Klara’s phone, with the picture of Victoria shooting up in the bathroom at Valor lighting up the screen. My hand clenched around it, making the plastic case protest.

  I climbed the stairs two at a time, still unsure if I was angry or disappointed with my kotyonok.

  I had thought I knew her, had thought the two of us could start a family with Theo, but if she was into drugs, I wasn’t going to let her near my nephew. I had just paid his mother an obscene amount of money to get out of his life and stay out. I wasn’t about to subject him to yet another addict.

  The sight of the picture still had the power to turn my stomach, but the thought of pushing her out of my life was like being flayed alive. I couldn’t walk away from her. My only hope was that she could accept going to rehab, getting clean and staying clean. Otherwise …

  Otherwise, fuck. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I loved that woman too much to just give up on her.

  Reaching our bedroom, I pushed the door open angrily. It slammed against the wall, the sound echoing through the otherwise quiet room. My eyes went to the bed, but it was empty. Then my gaze went to the slightly ajar bathroom door. The light was off and I couldn’t hear her in there, so I walked farther into the room.

  As I stepped closer to the bed, I saw her foot close to the vanity I had bought for her. Something told me not to waste another second, just as something in the pit of my stomach told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw on the other side of the bed.

  I crossed the room in long stride, but there was nothing that could have prepared me for what I found. A sight that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

  Victoria was lying on the floor, her body completely motionless to the point that I couldn’t tell if she was even breathing. She was completely naked still, but what killed me was the used syringe lying between her legs and the small smear of blood on her lower abdomen that was blaring proof of where she had injected herself.

  “No!” I yelled, falling to my knees beside of her, hurriedly looking for a pulse in her wrist. Fear, an emotion I had only ever felt a handful of times in my life, clawed at my sanity. When I found one, I wasn’t relieved, because it was barely detectable.

  Her skin was cool to the touch when I felt her chest to check her heartbeat, but it was just a small flutter under my fingers.

  “Victoria, open your eyes. Look at me.” I tapped her cheek with one hand as I dialed 9-1-1 with the other. I barely heard the dispatcher’s voice in my ear as I watched her take in a slightly deeper breath.

  “I need an ambulance,” I interrupted the woman and gave her my address. “Hurry.” That was all I said, all I could get out through the jumble of shit flooding my brain right then.

  Victoria’s head tipped to the side, but she remained completely unresponsive.

  Fuck no, this wasn’t going to end like this. I wasn’t going to lose her. Not now and sure as fuck not like this.

  I was free now, free to make her mine if she would just open her eyes and look at me.

  “Victoria, please. Dammit, open your fucking eyes.”

  A small, weak moan came from her. At first, I didn’t believe my ears. Then it came again.

  I pressed a kiss to her lips, struggling to breathe as my fear tried to defeat me. I couldn’t lose her.

  “Kotyonok, I need you to open your eyes. You have to look at me.”

  “A … drian,” she whispered, her voice so faint I struggled to hear her over the rushing of blood through my ear. “Anya …”

  “Fuck, Anya,” I snapped. “What did you take?”

  “Purse,” she slurred. “Call … Anya.”

  I grabbed her purse and turned it upside down, shaking out the contents. Lipstick, syringes, and several other things came out. When the small clear, vial landed beside me, I picked it up and read the label. Novolog. What the fuck was that? I had never heard of that on the streets before. This wasn’t heroin, at least not any that I had ever seen or heard of.

  “Please … Anya.” She was starting to sound more alert now, her lashes lifting as she looked up at me for a few seconds before they fluttered closed again, but she was fighting it, and they snapped open again for a little longer. “I … need you to … call her.” Tears fell from the corners of her eyes into her hair, and she turned her hand over in mine, clutching at it with what little strength she had.

  I was just glad to see her eyes open.

  “What is this shit, Victoria?”

  “Insulin.”

  Her answer surprised me so much that I actually jerked back a little, but it was with relief.

  Insulin. Not heroin or any other kind of drug that had the potential to kill her, to take her away from me …

  Insulin.

  I felt the blood drain from my face as realization hit me.

  “Insulin? As in, you’re a diabetic?”

  She nodded, her tears falling faster.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Fuck, Victoria, you should have told me.”

  Instead of answering me, she closed her eyes and turned her head away. “I need Anya.”

  Swallowing back my curse, I called my sister. The phone rang three times before she picked up.

  “I’m in the middle of somethin
g. I’ll call you back.”

  “Don’t,” I told her before she could hang up. “Victoria says she needs you. How quickly can you meet us at the hospital?”

  That had Victoria’s head snapping around, her eyes lifting to me. “No. I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’m fine now. Just give me a few more minutes. It’s a fast-acting insulin. I’ll be back to normal soon.”

  “Christ,” Anya groaned in my ear. “Well, it’s good she finally told you. You don’t have to freak out, though. If she says she’s okay, she probably is.”

  “She didn’t fucking tell me anything,” I snarled at her, pissed that she had known about Victoria’s illness yet I had been left in the dark. She could have fucking died and I wouldn’t have known how to help her, goddammit. “I came home and found her passed out on the floor. I thought she was dead. Meet us at the hospital. I hear the ambulance in the distance now.”

  “What’s the closest hospital to you?”

  “Fuck if I know. I’ll tell you when I know. Just start this way.”

  Anya sighed exasperatedly. “I’ll see you soon. Don’t yell.”

  “Don’t, Anya. Just fucking don’t.” I hit the disconnect before she could say more and quickly called the guards at the gate. “Let the ambulance through. It’s for Victoria.”

  “Yes, pakhan.”

  Victoria was trying to sit up. Tossing my phone aside, I helped her to lean back against the bed then reached for the shirt I had left on the floor the night before.

  “I won’t go to the hospital.”

  “You will.” I wasn’t going to argue with her about it.

  I helped her put her arms through the sleeves then buttoned it up until her beautiful body was covered.

  “I asked you why you didn’t tell me. I want an answer.”

  “Because I didn’t want you to look at me differently,” she muttered, looking down at her hands in her lap.

  “Look at you differently, how?” I didn’t understand what she was saying.

  She sighed heavily and pushed her tangled hair back from her face, which was thankfully getting more color to it by the minute. “I grew up with this disease overtaking my entire life. Every hour of every day from the time I was three-years-old. It controls me. I didn’t want you to see that part of me. Not yet. Definitely not like this. I knew …” There was a catch in her voice, and I watched as another tear spilled onto her cheek. “I knew once you found out, it would change how you felt about me.”

  She was insane. There was no other explanation for that way of thinking.

  I sat down on the floor in front of her and pulled her onto my lap. Cupping her chin between my thumb and index fingers, I forced her to lift her head. “Nothing could change how I feel about you. Do you hear me? Nothing.” I pressed a kiss to her forehead and finally let relief fill me after the scare she had given me. It was going to take a while before my heart slowed down, though.

  “The reason I had to go out earlier was because Klara was refusing to sign the divorce papers unless I met with her. She knew about you—us—which didn’t matter to me, but then she started running her mouth. She had a picture of you in the bathroom at Valor.” I saw understanding darken her eyes, and then angry fire began to blaze from them. “You can guess what it looked like.”

  “I’m not an addict,” she gritted out between clenched teeth. “And if that bitch tries to say otherwise, she’s dead. I didn’t have a choice but to give myself a shot of insulin that night. I saw her. She made a point to make sure I saw her. And she was high as a kite. Her eyes were bloodshot and her pupils were dilated—”

  I pressed my lips to hers, silencing her. “You don’t have to explain. I know how she is, kotyonok. She’s into coke. But she took the picture of you using the needle, and to me, it looked like you were an addict.”

  “I’m not, but I am dependent on the insulin.”

  “Which I understand.” I kissed her lips again, simply because I couldn’t get enough of her. The taste and feel of her in my arms … Fuck, I would have died with her if I had lost her just now. “What I’m trying to explain to you—and not very well—is that, even though I thought you were into something heavy like that, it didn’t change how I feel for you. If you had been, I would have tried to have helped you, to get you clean. But it wouldn’t have stopped how much I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she whispered with a catch in her voice. “I-I’m so sorry you found out like this. I should have told you sooner. I just …”

  “It’s okay,” I told her, unable to keep myself from kissing her again. “You’re going to have to teach me how to take care of you. I don’t want to do this again.”

  “It’s not hard. I fucked up and forgot to check my glucose levels as I should have. This isn’t something that happens very often. Just when I do something stupid.”

  From downstairs, I heard my men letting the paramedics in.

  She shifted on my lap, her eyes going to the open bedroom door. “Don’t make me go. I’m okay now, I promise.”

  “I’m not taking any chances. Please, just go to the hospital and let them check you over.” I stroked the backs of my fingers over her cheek. “Do it for me, if no other reason. I need to know you’re going to be okay.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “No one can stop me, kotyonok.”

  Chapter 26

  Victoria

  It was late before we returned from the hospital. To give Adrian peace of mind, I had let the doctor poke and prod at me. My numbers had still been high when I had first gotten to the emergency room, but by the time I had been released, they had stabilized. The doctor did nothing that I wasn’t expecting, and I got a lecture from the tetchy old man and his nurse on taking better care of myself before he would sign the release papers.

  Anya had shown up at the ER not long after we had arrived. After she had seen I was in good hands, and that her brother wasn’t in the best of moods after what I had just put him through, she made a quick escape. But not before I made her promise not to tell my brother. That was all I needed right then, for Cristiano to freak out and tell Papa. Then they would both come down on my head for being so irresponsible.

  I got that I had been stupid, that it was dangerous to do what I had done. I had learned my lesson a million times over, and I wasn’t planning on ever repeating the mistake.

  Scaring Adrian, who I knew didn’t scare easily, was enough to show me just how wrong I had been not to have told him in the beginning of our relationship. The look on his face when he had realized what was wrong with me—and not because of some fucking drug overdose—had proven to me that he loved me and had been terrified I was going to leave him forever.

  Now he knew, and although he had told me he wanted me to teach him about my illness and what to look for should I have another episode, the way he normally was with me hadn’t changed. It put my fear to rest about him not wanting me if he found out how sick I could get with my illness.

  “Ready for bed?” Adrian murmured as we climbed the stairs to our room once we were home again.

  “Ready for bed, but not ready to sleep.” I looked up at him from under my lashes, giving him a sassy half-smirk.

  He stopped short halfway up the stairs.

  With a hungry growl deep in his throat, he swept his arm under my legs and lifted me like I weighed nothing at all. He buried his face in my neck, making me giggle, when I didn’t think it was possible to laugh after the night we had just had.

  “I was hoping you weren’t tired, kotyonok. Because I am starving for you.”

  I didn’t remember the rest of the walk to our room.

  As soon as he placed me in the middle of our bed, he was falling onto me. His lips were everywhere, his hands pushing my clothes out of his way in his desperation to get to the skin underneath. I tore at his shirt, needing to touch him, but he had other plans.

  Moan after moan was pulled from me as he lowered himself betwee
n my legs and latched on to my clit. His hunger for me had only escalated after the night before, as if he was just as much an addict for me as I was for him. He licked and nipped and made me cry his name, begging him for more before he was sinking deep into my body.

  Then, he stopped. Just stopped. His breaths came in quick, sharp pants. There was determination in his dark eyes, but underneath, I saw what he probably didn’t want me to see. The doubt, the fear.

  Those two emotions were something I knew he didn’t feel often. I knew, too, that he hated to let anyone see his weaknesses, yet he couldn’t hide it from me.

  I stroked a hand down his cheek, wondering what had put that intense expression on his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Marry me,” he commanded.

  “What?” I laughed, thinking he was out of his mind. He had just gotten his divorce papers signed; no way he would want to rush into another marriage so soon. “You just got rid of one wife, and you want to bind yourself to another?”

  He wasn’t laughing. “I would give anything to bind myself to you for the rest of my life. I love you. I want you as my wife. I want us to give Theo a family. And I want more just like him to fill this house.”

  More kids.

  He wanted more kids. But as much as I wanted to give them to him, I would never be able to.

  Adrian was offering me a lifetime with him, yet my heart was breaking because I would never be able to give him everything he wanted.

  “Get off me,” I whispered, suddenly unable to breathe.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Get off me!” I cried, pushing at his shoulders.

  He pulled out of me and pushed back onto his knees, his face a mask of concern.

  As soon as his weight was off me, I hurriedly climbed off the bed, searching for something to cover my nakedness. Tears spilled silently down my face as I kept my back to him, not sure if I could do this after everything else that had already happened that night.