Page 6 of The Bastard Prince

This is life or death.

You have no choice…

My basic need to survive and even stronger desire tonotbe raped prevailed and I slapped on my friendliest smile before strolling into the office.

Well, calling this place an office was a bit of a stretch. This was Crellid HQ and the so-calledofficeI was standing inside was a pretty coverup to keep the feds appeased.

Dirty feds,I mused to myself.

In my relatively young life of nineteen years, I'd quickly learned that everything about this world was dirty.

Dirty parents.

Dirty cops.

Dirty men.

Dirty traitor princes.

As painful as it was to admit, I needed this man's protection. My father's name wasn't enough anymore. Hadn't been since I grew tits and hair.

Since he handed me back to them…

Feuding with Trigger was a bad idea. I knew this because I had barely made it out alive the last time we clashed. But like always, I found myself falling into the same old pattern of self-sabotage and destruction. Because something happened to me when I was around Trigger Laperro.

Something that used to feel an awful lot like growing hope, but had now morphed into growing resentment.

Resentment or not, I needed the man to hear me.

I needed him to stop what was about to happen to me.

Because he was the only one who could stop my initiation.

He had the power to change my fate.

Trig's shoulders were broad and thick and straining against the fabric of his shirt when my eyes landed on him, sitting like the dark prince he was on his throne of power and deceit.

Trigger didn’t look anything like his half-brother Jethro or the rest of his family. He had too much of his Spanish mother in him – her name, too – and it stood out like a sore thumb around his third generation Russian-American family.

Where Jethro and the rest of his siblings were fair skinned and light haired, Trig was tanned with black hair. He was the sole owner of a pair of brown eyes in a family of blue eyes.

He wasn't one of them, not truly, and that used to give me comfort.

Now, I think I hated him more for it.

Because he came back.

Because he left in the first place.

Without me.

I arched a brow at the color of his shirt and sighed.

His soul is too dark to wear white.

He could clean his act up all he wanted, shove his big body into a designer suit, and I would still see the devil lurking underneath – and the tattoos to match his black heart.

At twenty-two, Trigger Laperro consisted of all the things a good girl's nightmares were made of.