Vendetta (Blood for Blood #1)(64)

“Sophie …” he whispered, but it was too late.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even open my mouth I was so petrified. I started to back away.

He stumbled forward.

“Let her go,” Luca cautioned. “She’s terrified.”

I faltered back into the shadows between the trees. My retreat turned to reckless abandon. I careened through the park, racing toward the flickering of the screen. When I passed the final scattering of trees, I sprinted around the taco truck, where I collided with Millie.

“Careful, Soph!” she screeched as I tumbled backward and landed on the grass beside the taco I had just knocked from her hands. Groaning, she hoisted me up from the ground. “Where the hell have you been?”

“We have to go,” I explained, springing forward. “If you knew what I just saw …”

“What’s going on?”

“Come on!” I pulled her toward the grass. I threw everything back into my bag, watching the trees every few seconds for the reappearance of Nic and Luca. “I’ll explain everything when we’re out of here.” And then I was off again, dragging Millie as I raced down the winding paths.

“What’s going on?” she whined in between heaves. “I’m. Too. Out. Of. Shape. For. This.”

“Just come on!” I navigated our way back through the walkways until the entrance to Rayfield Park edged into view.

Before we passed through the arch, Millie stopped and clutched at her sides like she had been punched in the stomach. “Stop,” she wheezed. “I need. A minute.”

“Can we please just keep going?”

“I think. My feet. Are bleeding.” She brushed her hair away from her face, which was glistening with a fresh sheen of sweat. “What’s going on. With you?”

Before I could answer with an explosion of everything I had just witnessed, someone grabbed onto my arm and yanked me away from her.

“Hey!” I protested as Nic pulled me into him.

“Whatever you’re about to say to Millie, don’t,” he urged in a voice so low only I could hear it. He tightened his hands around my wrists and held them against his. “Please.”

Behind us, Millie was noticing the sweat stains pooling out from under her arms and the bleeding along the straps of her sandals. “Gross,” she moaned as she sank to the grass, panting.

“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t tell my best friend,” I snapped, shaking him off me.

“You promised,” he said quietly. “That was supposed to mean something.”

“I promised when I thought you were an inactive member of the Mafia, which you clearly are not! This is completely different. I will not be bound by that!”

“Sophie,” he said, his voice full of strain. “I really need you to be quiet about what you just saw.”

I could feel my face growing hot with anger. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him around the side of the arch. “You lied to me!”

His hands shot up in surrender. “I didn’t lie, Sophie. I just … left out certain things. Let me explain.”

I shoved him. “You made me believe you were good!”

“I am good!”

“No, you’re not!” I shoved him again. “You made me think you were innocent. You made me believe you weren’t part of all that crazy Mafia stuff!”

Cautiously Nic removed my hands from his chest. “I never said that.”

“You had plenty of time to set the record straight.” I wanted to slap him. It took every ounce of my self-control to curl my hands by my sides instead.

“I know.”

“But you didn’t.”

Purpose and defiance flashed in his eyes. “I didn’t have enough time to explain everything. But I didn’t lie to you. Everything I said was true, just not in the way you might have taken it.”

“I asked you if you hurt people! You said no!”

He came closer. “I said it wasn’t like that. And it’s not. Everything I do is about protection.”

“Protection,” I scoffed. “Is that what you tell yourself when you put your gun in someone’s mouth?”

He pulled me into him. “Listen to me.”

“Don’t,” I cried, feeling the tears swarm behind my eyes. “I’m scared of you.”

He recoiled like I really had slapped him. “I told you I would never hurt you.”

“How do I know that?”

He stared at me so hard it took my breath away, and after an agonizing moment, he responded quietly, “Because you’re a good person.”

I glowered at him. “That makes one of us.”

“I’m a good person, too.”

“You just put a gun in Robbie Stenson’s mouth,” I hissed.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, but it was inevitable.”

“How is an assault like that inevitable?”

His eyes darkened, but he didn’t respond.

“You must know how totally unacceptable that was. I have to report it to the police.”

“Sophie, it was for you. How could I let him walk away from me after I found out what he tried to do to you?”

I backed away from him again. “Are you insane, Nic? You know you can’t just go around pulling guns on people for me. I can take care of myself!”