Vendetta (Blood for Blood #1)(70)

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.

I blew a stray strand of hair from my eyes, rustling his in the process. Now armed with the knowledge that he wouldn’t hurt an innocent girl, I felt fractionally more confident about how I could speak to him. “Nic invited me.”

“I don’t care if the Pope invited you. You’re not welcome here.”

“Well, take it up with your brother. I don’t respect your authority.”

My reply provoked his temper, which was etched above his eyebrows in deep dents. “You know you shouldn’t be with him.”

“I can handle it.”

“You can’t.”

“I know you won’t hurt me.”

Luca’s eyes flashed in warning, but when he spoke again it was quiet — gentle, almost. “That doesn’t mean you won’t get hurt.” He scrunched his eyes in frustration, and when he opened them again they were blazing. “Just tell me what I need to do to get rid of you, since rehashing your father’s crime didn’t help!”

I pushed my face forward and clenched my jaw. “Tell me what you’re doing in Cedar Hill.”

Luca regarded me warily, hesitating, then — “No.”

“Then I guess I’ll just stick around here.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he threatened.

“What are you going to do, Luca?” I clenched my fists at my side. “Pull a gun on me?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“How brave!” I exploded. We were so close to each other now. “You can’t use your words, but you’re more than happy to use your gun.”

“I’m not going to be responsible for ruining your innocence!”

I tilted my face toward him to show I wasn’t afraid, or as innocent as he clearly thought. “Go ahead,” I whispered. “Shatter it.” We were nose-to-nose. “It almost worked last time, when you told me about my dad.”

“I don’t care,” he replied resolutely. “I’m not punching Bambi in the face.”

I raised my voice again. “Tell me what you’re doing in Cedar Hill!”

Luca moved his unblinking stare from my eyes to my lips and then shook whatever thought was forming out of his head. “No,” he said calmly.

I prodded him in the chest, pushing him away. “I know you’re in the Mafia. If you think I can’t handle that, then you’re wrong.”

He shook his head again, in disbelief, his voice pulsing with a level of anger that far eclipsed my own. “Of course he told you. That idiot. And you’re still here, which doesn’t make you any smarter than him.”

I glowered at him. “I know you don’t hurt innocent people. You’re all about ‘honor’ and ‘morals’ … skewed as they are,” I added venomously.

He pulled back, his expression suddenly unreadable. There was a beat of silence and then, in a cold, calculated voice, he said, “And revenge.”

“What?”

He narrowed his eyes. “You forgot about revenge.”

“What about revenge?” I faltered, thinking about my father. His father. Our history.

Luca’s sudden smile sharpened his cheekbones. “Oh, Nicoli left that part out? Figures he’d be selective.”

I started to chew on my lip, searching internally for the bravery I had just summoned, but I had spent it all screaming in his face. “He said you’re different from the other families.”

“Yes.” Luca remained perfectly still, watching me like a hawk circling its prey. “Except when it comes to revenge. Like the other families, the Falcones always exact revenge, regardless of whether it’s morally sanctioned.”

“No,” I said, jutting out my chin and shaking my head.

“No?” Luca laughed freely; I gathered it was his real laugh, and it was a strange, silvery sound. “Gracewell, you really are something else. What did you think?” he asked bemusedly. “That we’re gun-toting, knife-wielding avenging angels without fault or sin? You saw Nic put that gun in Robbie Stenson’s mouth. You heard him cock the trigger. Do you really believe that the idea of revenge is above a dynasty of temperamental, hot-blooded, territorial assassins who have appointed themselves the underworld distributors of a kind of karma that shouldn’t be policed by anyone else on this earth? Do you think that everything we do is the right thing?”