Vendetta(79)

“You didn’t run away.”

“Not yet.”

His smile was a soft tug at the lips.

I was beginning to feel intoxicated again; dizzy with desire. “You do bad things,” I reminded myself aloud, making the mistake of looking into his eyes. How many people had spent their last seconds on earth looking into those eyes?

“Only sometimes,” he said quietly.

“Do you have to be so casual about it?”

“I don’t feel bad about what I do.” He brushed his finger along my neck, and my spine started to tingle. How many necks had he broken with those fingers? “But I feel bad that you dislike this part of me, and this part is almost all of me, Sophie.”

“But there’s so much kindness in you, Nic,” I whispered.

“Kindness for the right people.” He watched my lips as he trailed his finger beneath them. “For people like you.”

I felt a familiar rush in the air. Don’t get distracted. What were all those things I’d wanted to say? Suddenly I couldn’t remember a single one. “You shouldn’t break the law.”

He pulled my chin toward him and brushed his nose against mine. “I know,” he hummed against my lips. His breath was as unsteady as mine. “Bella mia,” he moaned softly into my mouth, and that was all it took to make my resolve implode.

This time, our kiss was deeper than before. Nic tangled his hands in my hair, pulling me into his body and molding my shape to his. He dragged his mouth along my skin, intoxicating me with his kisses. “Staying away from you is too hard,” he groaned into my neck. “I don’t want to be good anymore.”

“Then don’t be,” I said, clutching him tighter and feeling the muscles in his back flex against my fingers. Gently, he dipped my head back and found my mouth again, parting my lips with his tongue as he pushed me down across the couch, holding me beneath him.

When the sound of the front door slamming against its hinges made the couch jump under us, we were shocked back into reality. I pulled myself up just in time to see the look of unbridled horror on Nic’s face. He shot up, his cheeks flushed with pink, his eyes darting.





Luca stalked into the room.

“Nic, have you heard from Val — What the hell is she doing here?” The beginning of his sentence differed drastically from its end, which grew substantially in pitch.

Nic raised his hands in the air like he was surrendering to a police officer, positioning his body protectively in front of me as though Luca might lunge and tear my throat out.

He came to tower over us. Fury and shock mingled in his eyes, but there was something else there, too, something I couldn’t place. “Nic, I am going to rip your heart out and make you eat it, you stupid …” His sentence descended into the worst combination of expletives I had ever heard in one single breath.

Nic jumped to his feet and squared up to his brother. “I had to explain what she saw.”

Luca’s icy blue eyes flashed with fury. “So you brought her here?”

Nic balled his fists. “Don’t start.”

Feeling dangerously close to losing it, I sprang to my feet and pushed past Luca. I couldn’t handle being on the edge of a conversation that would undoubtedly slide right over my head, but still be close enough to drive me insane with questions. I shouldn’t have been there with them anyway, and now that my clarity was back, I was going to use it. “I’m going to get out of here.”

Nic reached for me, but Luca slapped his hand away. “Let her go,” he warned. “Unless you want this whole thing to get worse.”

Nic didn’t protest, and I wondered why. I stepped away from him, sliding across Luca’s stiffened frame without another look at either of them and banging the front door behind me in my own display of hostility.

As I crunched through the gravel of the driveway, my mind revolted with questions about how I had gotten back into the same situation all over again. I had just begun to move on and now I was back at square one, feeling confused and jilted by a mafioso who was as good for me as a syringe full of poison.

I started to run, skidding over the gravel, but I didn’t get far before something wrapped around my arm and I was twirled unceremoniously into the unyielding frame of the last person I wanted to see.

I removed myself from where I had landed against Luca’s chest. He gripped my shoulders and pushed against me until I was backing up against the stone wall at the end of the driveway, pinned between his hands just like before. His face adopted the angry, feral appearance I was already so familiar with. “I thought I told you I don’t ever want to see you in my house again.” He was so close I could see a small white scar above the right side of his lip. It occurred to me, pretty inappropriately, that I was probably one of very few people alive who knew it was there.