The Ice Prince Read Online Free

where she could jam it into a bin, or that she had to fight her way back like a salmon swimming upstream?
    Or that the guy in the window seat bore a scary resemblance to Hannibal the cannibal, and the woman on the aisle was humming. No discernible melody. Just a steady, low humming. Like a bee.
    Anna took a deep breath.
    “Excuse me,” she said brightly, and she squeezed past the hummer’s knees, tried not to notice that part of Hannibal’sthigh was going to be sharing her space, shoved her bulging briefcase under the seat in front of her and folded her hands in her lap.
    It was going to be a very long night.
    At 30,000 feet, after the usual announcement that it was okay to use electronic devices, she hoisted the briefcase into her lap, opened it, took out her laptop, put down the foldout tray, plunked the machine on it and tapped the power button.
    The computer hummed.
    Or maybe it was the woman on the aisle. It was hard to tell.
    The computer booted. The screen came alive. Wasting no time, Anna searched for and found the file she needed. Clicked on it and, hallelujah, there it was, the most recent document, a letter from Prince Draco Marcellus Valenti to her father.
    The name made her snort.
    So did the letter.
    It was as stiffly formal as that ridiculous name and title, wreathed in the kind of hyperbole that would have made a seventeenth-century scribe proud.
    One reading, and she knew what the prince would be like.
    Old. Not just old. Ancient. White hair growing from a pink scalp. Probably growing out of his ears, too. She could almost envision his liver-spotted hands clutching an elaborate cane. No, not a cane. He’d never call it that. A walking stick.
    In other words, a man out of touch with life, with reality, with the modern world.
    Anna smiled. This might turn out to be interesting. Anna Versus the Aristocrat. Heck, it sounded like a movie—
    Blip.
    Her computer screen went dark.
    “No,” she whispered, “no …”
    “Yup,” Hannibal said cheerfully. “You’re outta juice, little lady.”
    Hell. Little lady? Anna glared at him. What she was, was out of patience with the male of the species … but Hannibal was only stating the obvious.
    Why dump her anger on him?
    Sure, she was ticked off by what had happened in the lounge, but her mood had been sour even before that.
    It had all started on Sunday, after dinner at the Orsini mansion in Little Italy. Anna’s mother had phoned the previous week to invite her.
    “I can’t come, Mom,” Anna had said. “I have an appointment.”
    “You have not been here in weeks.” Sofia’s tone of reprimand had taken Anna straight back to childhood. “Always, you have an excuse.”
    It was true. So Anna had sighed and agreed to show up. After the meal her father had insisted on walking her to the front door, but when they were about to pass his study, he’d stopped, jerked his head to indicate that Freddo, his
capo
and ever-present shadow, should step aside.
    “A word with you alone,
mia figlia,
” he’d said to Anna.
    Reluctantly she’d let Cesare lead her into the study. He’d sat down behind his massive oak desk, motioned her to take a seat, looked at her for a long moment and then cleared his throat.
    “I need a favor of you, Anna.”
    “What kind of favor?” she’d said warily.
    “A very important one.”
    Anna had stared at him. A favor? For the father she pretended to respect for the sake of her mother but, in reality, despised? He was a crime boss. Don of the feared East Coast
famiglia.
    Cesare had no idea she knew that about him, that she and her sister, Isabella, had figured it out when Izzy was thirteen and Anna was a year older.
    Neither could remember exactly how it had happened. Maybe they’d read a newspaper article. Maybe the whispers of the girls at school had suddenly started to make sense.
    Or maybe it was their realization that their big brothers, Rafe, Dante, Falco and Nick, had struck out on their own as soon as they could and