Velvet Lullabies

How he was raised.

She thought the words over.

They were all raised like this. She was never going to escape.

???

Adelina clicked her freshly manicured finger nails against the desk. It had been four weeks, a whole month, and she still had one of Lucian’s goons sitting in all of her classes with her, and another one out in the hall.

How was it even possible that this guy not only got into Brown, but was able to get into all of her senior level classes partway into the semester.

Money.

Money could literally buy you anything.

Lucian was in and out of Providence like crazy, the Irish were still at large, and Adelina’s social life was suffering thanks to her body guard’s presence.

She couldn’t be around her friends without questions about Lucian coming up. She was pretty sure they were beginning to suspect her family is a little dirty.

Which they are.

Even so, she liked the anonymity she had at Brown.

Seven months ago, Adelina wanted her senior year to last forever. To avoid having to get married and move away from the one place that become her sanctuary. Now, she was ready for it to end.

“Miss DeMarco.” Ren, her new “classmate” gestured to the room that was slowly emptying. Her enforcers never tapped her, never touched her, barely spoke to her.

“Yeah,” Adelina muttered, “let’s go.”

The second enforcer, Joe, followed along behind them. Both were silence as they walked back to her dorm. She was ten seconds away from pulling her hair out.

“Do either of you speak?” she asked, a little louder than she meant.

Ren looked confused. “Of course.”

She sighed. None of the goons Vinny had put on her were like this. Roberto taunted her endlessly, constantly threatened to tell on her, and generally made her miserable. These two were linebacker sized mutes. In the four weeks Lucian had them following her, they hadn’t even had one single issue. Not even an Irish sighting.

“We’ll be out here.” Ren told her when they reached her dorm room.

“You do that.” She mumbled slamming the door behind her.

“Secret service still at it?” Gemma asked flipping through an issue of Cosmo.

“Yep. I’m going crazy.” She dropped her bags on the floor and ran her fingers through her hair. “And, I’m pretty sure they report everything I do to Lucian.”

Gemma snorted. “Well, they do work for him.”

“I’m going nuts, Gem.”

Gemma dropped the magazine. “Let’s go out tonight, blow off some steam.”

Gemma had been doing better since her mom died. Lately, she’d been acting as if nothing was wrong.

Adelina gestured to the door where they both knew Ren and Joe were on the other side. “With dumb and dumber following me?”

“I don’t think they’re dumb,” Gemma mused. “Come on, Ad. Let’s go.” She whined.

“He’ll just show up and drag me off.” She huffed, laying back on her twin bed.