Vendetta(74)

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “That was a service to society. Stenson is the type of character who won’t stop at just one girl. It was everything I could do shy of actually blowing his head off.”

I gasped. “Can you not be so graphic?”

He scraped his hands through his hair. “Sorry.”

“I don’t think you are.”

He wasn’t looking at me anymore and I knew I was right. He wasn’t sorry; he was sorry I had seen it. “I know I have no right to ask anything of you,” he said, “but please don’t tell anyone about what you saw. It will make trouble.”

“No kidding. I witnessed a crime. And even if the victim was someone I hate, it still doesn’t make it right. I won’t keep it a secret. I won’t be your accomplice.”

“Then wait at least.” He grabbed my hands and closed his around them before I could pull them away. I tried to avoid his dark eyes. “Sophie, I’ll break the vow. I’ll tell you as much as I can,” he whispered urgently. “I need you to understand who I am. Please just give me the chance to show you.”

“It’s too late,” I said, but my resolve was as unsteady as my voice.

He moved my hand to his heart so I could feel it hammering in his chest. “I’m not a bad person. I know you can feel it. I admit I lied to you by letting you believe what you wanted to. I needed you to feel happy and secure, and I didn’t want to take that feeling away from you after everything you had discovered about our fathers. I’m not ashamed of who I am or where I come from, but I was afraid of you knowing about it and not giving me the chance to help you see what it really means. I was terrified that the truth would change the way you look at me. But you deserve it all, and I’ll give it to you if you’ll let me.”

My defiance was crumbling and we both knew it. I pulled my hands from him and folded them. I knew there had to be more answers, but I didn’t think he would admit it so freely after lying to me for so long. Now, the way he was convincing me was working — he was pushing all the right buttons. He had me right where he wanted me. I hated it and I burned for it.

“You get one chance.”





Nic offered me a ride to his house from the park but I decided to walk with Millie instead.

“Ah, a lovers’ tiff,” she had assumed on our way home. She wasn’t half-wrong, but she wasn’t completely right, either. I didn’t tell her the truth about the argument in Rayfield Park for the same reason I didn’t tell her why I was going to Nic’s house after we went our separate ways at Shrewsbury Avenue. I wasn’t ready to organize my thoughts about everything, and until I did that, I wanted to make sure she would be safe. The less she knew, the better.

When I turned into his driveway, Nic was already standing in the doorway. “You came.”

I approached him in silence. He stood against the open door so I could sidle past him. I tried not to notice when I brushed against him, but I could see it register on his face.

The front of the house was entirely different from the modern kitchen at the back. Now, I was hovering in the setting of every horror story I’d ever heard, and it was exactly how I’d imagined it.

A crystal chandelier, still covered in spiderwebs, hung from the high ceiling. The wooden floors in the large foyer were discolored and uneven, creaking with each step. Ahead, a grand staircase lined with a thick burgundy carpet turned sharply to the right and up toward the second floor, while paneled wallpaper fell away from the walls in tattered strips. The hallway continued down the left side of the stairs, branching off into a line of closed rooms with narrow doors. The right side was distinguished by huge, newly varnished doors with heavy brass handles.

“Sophie?” I turned to find Nic looking at me expectantly. “Do you want to follow me through here?” He led me into a large sitting room, where two dark red leather couches rested around a stately fireplace.

I seated myself on one of the couches; Nic chose the other. I noticed, without an iota of surprise, that there was no TV, just a leather footstool, an old clock on the grand mantelpiece, and a built-in bookcase that spanned the entire length of the far wall. It was filled to the brim with Dickens, Defoe, Twain, Swift, and every other great or intimidating novelist I could have imagined. Above the fireplace, an oil painting lorded over the room. It was some kind of avenging angel, rendered in sweeping dark colors and framed in gilded gold. It stretched the entire width of the mantelpiece.

“That’s one of Valentino’s,” Nic said, following my gaze.

“It’s incredible.”