Read The Playboy Prince (Piacere Princes, Book One) for Free Online

just refuse to leave until you tell him I’m waiting.”
    “Don’t much care if you do. Gets pretty boring, though.”
    Maggie blew her hair out of her face, glancing down at her watch. Annoyance tripped through her. She needed to get home; her replacement would be there soon and she needed to spend the afternoon training her. “Can I leave a message? Or do you not deliver those, either?”
    “Fine by me. He picks up his mail once a week, so I can leave it with the bills.”
    Magdalena took her sketchbook from her bag, along with a pen, and scrawled a quick message on a piece of paper before ripping it out. She made sure to reference the parcel number on the notice her father received, as well as a few choice words that advised the man in charge exactly where he could stick his offer.  
    The whole time, her mind toyed with the mystery this office presented. Enough of her countrymen had sold their land already that Matrigna had to be legitimate—they’d paid good money to the people who had agreed, and the legal documents that came to the people who hadn’t were from the same law firm the royal family had on retainer.
    This office was a front for…what? Who?
    It was a question for another day, she supposed, since this one was already heading toward lunch. She left the note on the desk and turned to go, pausing with one hand on the glass door when the woman at the desk cleared her throat.
    “Ma’am?”
    “Yes?”
    “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll pick up that note and put it back in your bag.” The woman swallowed, her large blue eyes trembling with fear. The piece of paper Magdalena had left twitched between her manicured nails as she held it out. “You don’t want to mess with this guy. Not unless you want to know what it feels like to be a bug on the sole of a shoe.”
    A stab of fear sliced through Maggie’s belly but she ignored it. It wasn’t stronger than her fury over Matrigna and the way they were corrupting her country. It couldn’t hold a candle to the protectiveness she felt toward her father, and the fact that after years of hard work, he deserved to live out his days on the land he loved.  
    None of those words came out of her mouth. She just turned and left.

    The day had dried out, and by the time she returned home, so had Magdalena. She’d walked, despite the lack of time, because she needed to clear her head and her heart. If no one from Matrigna responded to her message within the week, she would have to figure out what to do next. For today, she could feel as if she’d done something, at least. A first step.
    A tiny red car sat on the dirt lane in front of the cottage where she lived with her father. It sped up her steps, because the last thing they needed was for the temporary hire to get too close a look at just how fast Gabriel Rossi was deteriorating.  
    She dropped her keys on the front table and exhaled with relief. The temp—a middle-aged woman named Kat—was sitting primly in the foyer perusing something on her phone.  
    “I’m so sorry I’m running late,” Magdalena told her, a frown touching her lips at the sight of a creamy, expensive-looking envelope on the front table with the rest of the mail.  
    The swirly writing was done in gold ink, the seal on the back the unmistakable mark of the Piacere family. She frowned harder, and left the envelope where it was. She wanted as little to do with the royal family as possible, especially since they were refusing to do anything about the predation of Matrigna on their loyal subjects. Whatever they wanted to tell her could wait.
    If it were a request for services, someone would have come by directly.
    It could be a second royal child announcement. If the tabloids were to be believed, Salvadore had fathered half a dozen children in the past three months alone. The thought twisted Maggie’s stomach, though she couldn’t say for sure why. It was as if something inside her refused to believe the things she’d