Vendetta (Blood for Blood #1)(57)

In an instant, Nic was beside me, curling my huddled body into his and enveloping me in his arms until he was all around me. He rested his head on mine and whispered into my hair, “Please don’t cry, Sophie. Please don’t cry.”

He held me for a long time, until the rage of tears subsided into quiet streams, and I began to catch my breath again. Then he guided my head into his chest and I buried it in his neck, inhaling his scent.

“How could you not hate me?” I mumbled into his skin. “You’d be inhuman not to look at me and see what my father did.”

He stroked the back of my hair, his words soft against it. “It’s not like that, I promise.”

“He didn’t mean it, Nic. It was an accident,” I sobbed quietly. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“I know,” he whispered. “Please don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry.” My words were so garbled I could barely understand them.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Yes, I do. Luca said —”

“Look at me … Please just look at me.”

Slowly I raised my head, which was dizzy and heavy all at once. He wiped the wetness from my cheeks.

“Listen to me, Sophie. I want to be very clear about this. Luca had no business saying whatever he said to you. It has nothing to do with you or him, and he knows that. What happened with my father was an accident. It’s over now.”

“But it’s not over.” I thought of Valentino’s drawings, and my father’s gaunt, tired face. It would never be over.

“Well, it’s not raw anymore,” he replied carefully. “And it’s not something I blame you for. When I look at you, I feel happy.” He nudged my chin with his finger again. “I don’t care where you’ve come from or who you’re related to, I knew from that first night when I held you that I didn’t want to let go of you. But then you jumped away from me, so I had to …” He trailed off and smiled. “And I felt empty.”

“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “Why would Luca say it if it wasn’t the reason you were avoiding me?”

“Because he was trying to get rid of you,” he admitted. “And he knew that would work.”

“I’ve never done anything to him,” I protested weakly. “How could he hate someone he hardly even knows?”

“I know things changed when Dom told him who you were, but Luca doesn’t hate you. He’s just protective.”

I rolled my eyes, which were damp and sore from crying. “What’s he protecting you from?”

“It’s not just about me.” Nic stroked my cheek again. I swallowed hard. I had never wanted to be kissed so badly in my life, and yet I had never felt this desperate for information before.

“Do you always do what he says?” I heard the bitterness in my voice.

Nic tightened his lips; it accentuated the shadows beneath his cheekbones and the circles under his eyes. “Mostly.”

“Why?”

He pulled his hands away, knitting them together. “It’s complicated.”

“That’s why you can’t be around me anymore,” I pressed, watching his hands and missing their warmth on my skin. “Because he said so?”

Nic’s expression turned rueful. “You make it sound so simple.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand.”

Nic shook his head. “I know you don’t.”

Edging away from him until our bodies were no longer touching, I steeled myself and regarded him coolly. When I spoke again, I said the words as slowly and as clearly as I could so he would understand I knew more than he thought I did, and that I didn’t need to be protected from it.

“I guess it must be a Mafia thing.”

The silence that followed was resounding. Nic reacted like I had hit him; his chest was rising and falling unsteadily, his mouth twitching uncertainly. I watched him carefully, keeping my expression blank.

“What do you mean?” he said at last, but the words barely made a sound.

I kept my voice steady. “I think you know what I mean.”

He glanced over his shoulder, like he was afraid someone was going to jump out of the bushes. He turned his gaze to the grass beside me. A click of his jaw and then — “I don’t.”

“The Angel-maker.” It was a statement, not a question, and it made the balmy summer air seem colder once I’d said it.

He blinked hard. It had wounded him like I knew it would, and I instantly regretted it.

“So it’s true, then?” I asked, fearing and yet needing to hear him say it. “Your family is part of the Mafia?”

He plucked a long, thin blade of grass and tried to split it in two. “I do not deny it.”

A familiar wave of nausea rose in my stomach, but it was weaker this time. I had come to terms with most of my horror before falling asleep, and now, his confirmation of something I already knew was more like a dull punch in the gut.

When I didn’t answer him he grabbed my hand with violent speed, like he was afraid he had lost me in that one quiet moment. I left my hand in his and pressed on, as carefully as I could.

“Does Felice tell you to hurt people? Do you answer to him the way you answer to Luca?”