Vendetta(69)

“I don’t know.” I scrunched up my face in an effort to find the memory that was hovering just outside my realm of consciousness. “I’m trying to remember.”

Millie stuffed another handful into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Don’t,” she said, letting sticky kernels spew across the blanket. “Just try and forget about it. You’re here to unwind, remember?”

I did my best to follow her advice, but still, something wasn’t right …

After almost an hour, the screen blackened to text, which signaled a short intermission. “Taco?” I offered, feeling the need to stretch my legs.

“If you insist,” Millie replied, reclining. “Get me two, please.”

I brushed the crumbs off my clothes and walked across the grass, taking my place at the end of the taco line; soon after, I was wedged between a girl with bright pink hair and an overweight man.

“This register is open!” a pubescent voice shouted. A slew of people from behind me parted and shuffled into a second line, and suddenly I was standing almost side by side with Robbie Stenson.

He glanced at me and then quickly looked away, but not before I caught sight of the yellowing bruising around his eye sockets and along his thick jawline. What the hell happened to him?

The register chimed and the line moved forward, taking me with it. Robbie caught up on his side; he was swirling a red cup in his hands, making the liquid slosh back and forth. He lifted it to his lips, smacked them against it, and began gulping down its contents greedily. The more I saw the red cup bobbing back and forth toward his mouth, the more I fixated on it.

Then it all came flooding back to me.

I remembered going into Millie’s parents’ room and coming face-to-face with Robbie Stenson. I spilled some beer on myself — wasn’t that what he had said? But he had been holding two full cups in his hands. And he told me he hadn’t even been drinking. I grimaced as the memory of the sweet, fizzy liquid glided into my mind, reminding me of how he had urged me to drink it and how, as we sat on the bed, I had become uncomfortable with the way he watched me. And then everything in my memory went dark. I realized, just as the register rang again — echoing the alarm bells in my brain — that Robbie Stenson had drugged me that night and then orchestrated our walk home together so that he could assault me. There was nothing innocent or naïve about it.

And worse, I felt sure that if Luca hadn’t intervened when he did, things would have gone from bad to awful.

The line pushed forward.

“Move,” the fat man behind me whined, but I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot. “Hey, come on.” He prodded me.

Bile rose in my throat. Beside me, Robbie was shuffling forward, dangling the empty red cup back and forth in his hand. It had become a pendulum hurling explosive memories at me, one by one, and before I knew what I was doing, I was shoving him out of the line.

“What the hell?” His stocky frame stumbled sideways. He tripped and landed on the grass, clutching at his ribs.

“How could you?” I lunged again, but this time he was prepared. He pulled himself up and backed away from me, away from the crowds. I followed him.

“What the hell is your problem?” he spat through gritted teeth.

“You tried to assault me!” I hissed.

“No, I didn’t,” he returned so evenly that I might have doubted the memory if it wasn’t pulsating against my brain. “I was walking you home when your boyfriend beat the crap out of me for no reason. You’re lucky I didn’t report him.”

So Luca had caused Robbie’s injuries, and by the looks of things he hadn’t held back. But stranger than Luca’s likely status as a psychopath was the realization that somewhere beneath my conscience, I felt a wisp of satisfaction. Robbie Stenson hadn’t gotten away with trying to violate me.

“I know you drugged me.” I was vaguely aware of hysteria rising inside me. Thanks to Luca Falcone, Robbie might have paid for what he did, but he hadn’t paid for what he’d planned to do. “You set up the whole thing! I remember what you gave me.”

Robbie snorted and his features shrunk into his face. “Do you?” Still holding his sides, he rounded on me like a vulture circling its prey. “Well, I doubt that would stand up in court.”

“So you admit it?” I returned furiously.

He shrugged and then I was hurling myself at him again. A sharp pain rippled through my left shoulder as I landed against his chest with a thud. He grabbed me, his hands digging into my rib cage.

“Stop it!” His face contorted in pain. His hands squeezed tighter in warning. “You’re making a fool out of yourself. Let it go.”