Mine to them was to send them to hell.
I shuddered, remembering how the knife that had cut through my flesh like a hot blade through butter had so effortlessly gone into that man’s neck. While the second one had been surprised by the ease with which I had killed his partner, I’d jumped onto his back and broken his neck.
Just like Anya had shown me on our last Paris trip the day after Christmas.
Without those trips we told everyone were shopping sprees that my best friend’s mother treated me to each year, I would have been dead, and those bastards would have been the ones with a kill under their belts.
No one believed that I’d killed two men, however. And that was the way Anya wanted it to stay. How could sweet, little Nova Hannigan, who was so tiny and fragile, possibly have broken the neck of a man who was triple her weight?
Luck, was what I’d heard Ben telling Uncle Bash earlier at the hospital. Pure luck and the skills Aunt Raven had taught me from the time I could toddle around. I hadn’t disabused them of the reality, and I never would. That would mean breaking my promise to Anya and letting everyone—including Ryan’s enemies—know that I could take care of myself.
According to Ryan’s mom, it was better if no one but she and I knew of the skills she taught me. Let the world think that I really was sweet and fragile. That I needed a big, strong man to watch over me twenty-four seven. It would give them a false sense of security if they ever took me.
Let them continue to think I was easily broken, until I could break them instead.
“She’s fine,” my brother said now, with a drunken laugh.
“Where were you?” Dad asked again, his voice becoming calmer and causing all the fine hairs on my body to stand up in alarm.
Garret shrugged carelessly. “With friends.”
Dad dropped his hold on him, causing my brother to stumble back. Thankfully, the recliner was right behind him, and he fell back into it like he’d meant to do it.
“Friends,” our father repeated. “You mean the lazy fuckers who use you for the cash in your pockets to pay for the drugs you smoke?”
“They don’t use me,” Garret told him. “I didn’t even pay for the…” His voice trailed off, and he coughed before clearing his throat and then blinking at me. “Hey, Nova, what happened to your lip? Wait, are those fingerprints on your neck?”
“Gar, you should probably shut up now,” I cautioned. “Do you notice Mom isn’t here?”
He blinked again. “Yeah. Where is she?”
I lifted a finger to my mouth, silently urging him to keep his mouth shut.
“She went for a walk with Raven,” Dad informed him, his voice still calm but full of ice. Not that Garret realized that. His hazy mind was too out of it for him to understand that Dad was at his most dangerous like this. Or that Mom was on a walk in order to calm down enough so that she didn’t kill her son the moment she set eyes on him.
I didn’t blame Garret for what happened to me that afternoon. How could he possibly have known that the enemy of my best friend’s family would send his men to deliver a message? He was just doing what he always did, fucking around and trying to ease by until he graduated and could go to New York to work for Ciro and Cristiano. He hated it in Creswell Springs—honestly, we both did, but for completely different reasons.
For Garret, he couldn’t stand the small-town life.
For me, I hated it because it was so far away from Ryan.
Mom and Dad, however, blamed Garret. Instead of having to ask River for a ride home, I should have been able to ask my brother. But I’d learned he wasn’t exactly the reliable type. If I’d asked him to wait around and give me a ride home, even if he’d said yes, I knew it would have been a wasted effort. He would have forgotten about me the instant one of his friends suggested skipping their last class and heading to someone’s house to get high.
Our parents expected him to think of protecting me first and foremost. Only once I was home in the safety of our four walls did they consider him free to do as he wanted. But they hadn’t realized yet that Garret only thought about one person, and that was himself.
He was selfish and still had a hell of a lot of growing up to do. I was hoping when he moved to New York to start working for the Vitucci family that summer, it would be a good thing for him. Ciro and Cristiano wouldn’t put up with his crap like Dad did. But in my heart, I knew it wasn’t going to change anything.
Without warning, the front door flew open, and I tensed until I saw the man-boy standing in the doorway. His breathing was coming in heavy pants as he scanned the room until his eyes landed on me. As soon as our gazes locked, he stumbled forward briefly before righting himself.
I jumped up and threw myself into his arms. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he caught me, holding me against his heaving chest as he pressed his forehead to mine. “Tell me you’re okay.”
“I am,” I whispered. “But I told you not to come.”
As soon as I’d snapped out of my daze at the hospital, I’d realized that River had spoken to Ryan when I called to warn him about Ramirez. I’d called him back as soon as I could from Mom’s phone, telling him that I was safe, that I was fine, that everything was going to be okay. He needed to stay in New York. Ramirez would expect him to run to me and be waiting to ambush him.
Of course, he hadn’t listened. There was no talking to Ryan once he thought I was in danger. Or sad. Or angry. If I so much as had a sniffle when he called, he was on his way straight to California just to make sure I wasn’t sick. It was what made him such a great best friend.
But it also made him predictable to his enemies.
“I had to see with my own eyes that you were okay,” he said before kissing my forehead.
I hugged him, enjoying just having him close for a moment. But all too soon, he was setting me on my feet and then guiding me back to the couch, where he pushed me onto the cushion and then crouched before me. His thumb stroked over my swollen, scabbed-over bottom lip before brushing my hair over my shoulder so he could examine my neck better.
At the sight of the damage done by his enemy’s hands, Ryan’s eyes began to glitter with a rage I’d rarely seen from him. It scared me, because I knew when he got that look in his beautiful dark eyes, he got reckless. And reckless was dangerous.
I caught his hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “I’m okay,” I told him again.
“Yeah, man, she’s fine,” Garret said with a laugh as he propped a leg up on one of the recliner’s arms.
I closed my eyes, praying my brother would grow a brain in the next ten seconds.
Of course, he didn’t.
Ryan stood slowly, his eyes raking over Garret dispassionately. “Where were you?” he asked quietly.
The same question that Dad had asked only minutes before, but it was a hundred times more dangerous coming from Ryan Vitucci.
My parents—hell, everyone in my family except for my brother—were so over-the-top overprotective of me that it was annoying. I couldn’t sneeze without people feeling my forehead to make sure I wasn’t running a fever. If someone looked at me wrong, they were instantly put in their place. If someone bullied me, their life was turned upside down until they realized the error of their ways and made amends.