His Mafia Prince
Chapter 259: Someone’s Watching Us

Chapter 259: Someone’s Watching Us

(TYLER)

I can tell right away when we get to the hotel that there’s something wrong. I mean, it wouldn’t take a genius. Sasha shepherds me into the tiny, deserted reception area with his arm tight around me, eyes darting everywhere.

"What is it?" I pant as he pulls me up the stairs to our room, double-time. We get inside, and he locks the door, then hustles me into the bathroom. When I look out the door to see what the fuck he’s doing, he’s leaning up against the wall next to the window, peeking down at the street through the curtain. He switches sides to look up the other side of the street, and then I see him looking carefully at the buildings opposite us.

"What the hell is going on?" I ask.

He holds up a hand without even looking at me, a please be quiet hand—there fucking better be a "please" in there, anyway—and I sigh loudly until he’s finished being paranoid and leaves the curtain.

Only he hasn’t finished being paranoid, not yet.

"We need to leave." He pulls over my suitcase, brushes past me into the bathroom, and gathers up all my hair product in one big sweep.

"Whoa, there," I squeak, and follow him out to the main room, where he dumps my stuff into the case. I put a hand on his arm and make him look at me. "What’s going on? Nope—" I sidestep in front of him as he tries to move past. "You need to tell me first. Then I’ll help you pack.

For a second he glares at me, all heavy Sasha-brows and laser eyes. Then: "There is someone following us," he says between almost-gritted teeth. "So we need to get out of here, then lose the tail."

"Screw that. Let me at him. I’ll murder that asshole myself." "That’s not funny."

"You think I’m kidding? No one is going to fuck up my third honeymoon!

He doesn’t even crack a smile, and that’s how I know it’s serious. "Come on, Sasha. You really think someone’s on us so fast? We haven’t even been in Rome for twenty-four hours."

He grabs me by the shoulders. "Tyler," he says, and then takes a breath. "Don’t you think," he says in a more normal voice, "that I know by now when someone’s following me? I need you to trust me on this."

He stares down at me. I can feel the seconds ticking by, and I know he’s counting every one of them.

"Alright," I say. "Let’s bolt."

We packed light—way too light, in my opinion—so it’s easy enough to throw everything back in the cases and carry our bags down to the reception area. We ask the desk clerk to call us a taxi, and all Sasha will tell the driver when we first get in is, "Just drive around for a while."

Sasha spends the first few minutes twisting around in his seat and staring out the back window, but after that he relaxes a little.

"Keep driving, another ten minutes," he says to the driver in Italian. "And then after that, we need a new hotel. Very close to Naples. Can you recommend somewhere?"

"We need the best hotel," I add firmly, in slightly less-fluent Italian. If I’m being made to go on the run yet again, I’m doing it in style.

The driver assures us his sister-in-law is a chef at the best hotel in Rome, which happens to be just in the direction where we are headed. "There’s a view from the terrace garden for tomorrow—that’s why you’re here, eh?" He says all that in English. I guess he’s clocked me.

"Sure," I say vaguely. "Who doesn’t like a view?" I shift around on the hard seat, wishing that maybe Sasha hadn’t gone quite so hard on my ass back there in the alley. It’s been a while since we’ve fucked like that, and I’m aching.

But Sasha’s gone into alert mode. "What’s happening tomorrow?" he demands from the driver.

The driver stretches his neck to look at him in the rearview. "Sunday," he says, like that explains anything. "The Angelus."

I can see Sasha processing that. "It’s Sunday tomorrow," he says blankly, and then under his breath adds, "The days are melting together. Sunday. Shit."

He seems not to like the idea. Me, I’ve never much liked Sundays. On top of that, I have no idea what the "Angelus" is, but the taxi driver looks so expectant that I just nod and smile. "Yep," I say. "That’s, uh. That’s why we’re here." I rub at my sore neck, over the bite Sasha gave me, and wonder exactly how bruised I’m going to be in the morning.

It was hot, though. Making me tell him I belonged to him, slapping my ass like that... Yeah, it was exactly what I needed. And for a little while there, as we walked back to the hotel, everything felt so joyful.

Sasha was affectionate and loving, his arm around me or his hand in mine, and I stared up at him in adoration, and it felt like what this vacation should have been: the passionate, danger-free honeymoon I’ve always wanted with him.

But it didn’t last. It never could last, never will. I know that; I’ve always known it. I accepted it the day I married him, that our happily ever after would have its ups and downs. Its terrors and its triumphs.

I have to hang on to those moments of sweet joy when they come around, hang on to them for as long as I can, and never take them for granted. I sneak my hand into Sasha’s, and he squeezes it, holding it up to his mouth to kiss.

My husband spends the rest of the drive doing sudden twists in his seat to check out the back window, but he seems satisfied that we’ve made a clean getaway. And even I, find the sight of St. Peter’s rising up before us at the end of the street as impressive a view as ever when we finally get there.

It’s begun to rain during the drive, a light sprinkling that gilds the cobbled streets around Naples as the city lights shine off the wet surface.

The hotel really does hug the edge of Naples; when the taxi pulls up in front of the small entryway—the only sign that it’s a hotel is the discreet plaque above the door—I only need to look to the right to see through the colonnades of St. Peter’s Square.

"Nice pick," I tell the taxi driver, as Sasha pays him.

We get our bags and duck quickly into the doorway before we get too wet.

"What if there’s no room at the inn?" I murmur to Sasha as we approach the desk.

"They’re giving us a room if it has to be a fucking closet." "You’re very certain of yourself."

"We have your charm and a lot of cash. I’m certain."

Great. When I’m the secret weapon, we’re fucked. But I paste on my best smile and try to look like a weary-but-excited traveller with big dreams of touring Naples.

Our hopes are almost dashed. "No, signore," the receptionist mourns, "we have limited space—the Angelus is tomorrow, you understand?"

There’s that damn Angelus again. What the hell is it? "Any room will do," Sasha insists.

"We have no standard rooms left, and I’m sorry to say that only the most expensive—"

"We’ll take it!" I blurt out

"It is...very expensive, signore," she repeats, her eyes hovering over our dishevelled appearance with disapproval.

I get it. I probably look like a street rat about to service a customer. To be fair, I do still have Sasha’s cum oozing out of me, and we both stink like the alley we fucked in. My ass is sticky and sore, making me shift uncomfortably.

I try to arrange my face into an expression of enlightened delight. The even-more-suspicious stare the clerk gives me suggests I got it wrong.

"A view of the Angelus from such a beautiful location is priceless," Sasha says, and puts a slab of cash on the counter. "Sign us in. Please."

She eyes the cash with the same scepticism she gave me. "I will need to record your passports."

Sasha feels inside his jacket and then slaps two passports down next to the money—mine and his, only not the ones we travelled on. We took a range of options to use while we’re here in Italy.

"Hm," the clerk says dubiously, after scrutinizing our passport photographs and then our faces. "Just one night, signore?"

"I’ll pay for three," Sasha says, and at last we seem to be getting somewhere.