Vendetta

“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?”

He shook his head disbelievingly, and I cursed my naïveté. I had been stupid to get swept up in romantic notions of Nic as some sort of vigilante; he was a killer, plain and simple, prone to the same tempers and temptations as the rest of us.

I slid along the wall so I was out from under Luca. He let me, and I felt a pinch of relief. “You’re not going to hurt me …”

“No,” he replied. “I’m not.”

“Then why are you being so dramatic about it?”

Luca’s voice grew dangerously quiet. “Listen very carefully to what I’m about to say.” I had to watch his lips as he spoke because the shards of turquoise in his eyes were suddenly too intense. “I am the underboss of the entire Falcone dynasty, and if I’m telling you to keep your head down and stop coming around here, then you’d better believe I have a damn good reason. You need to get away from this house and as far away from Cedar Hill as you can. Nic might have deluded himself into thinking he can shield you from what’s going to happen, but he can’t. My father was a made man, and that means your family owes us a blood debt, Sophie.”

A blood debt. The air left my lungs in a swift gasp. Luca’s expression faltered, but he twisted away from me before I could catch the real emotion behind it. When he reached the door again, he turned around. I was rooted to the same spot like he knew I would be.

“Do you know what that jar of honey meant?” he asked.

My stomach twisted at his tone, at his knowledge of the honey. Although I think I had always known, deep down, that there was a connection, it suddenly felt more sinister now than I ever could have imagined.

I shook my head.

“It wasn’t a gift.”

“I didn’t think it was,” I lied.

There was nothing in Luca’s voice or on his face now; it was completely void of emotion. He looked past me into the night sky. “There’s a reason people in the underworld call my uncle Felice ‘the Sting,’ you know.”

I didn’t respond. I just stood there, trying to get my legs to work, as memories of his uncle’s bee-stung face crept across my mind.

“When Felice Falcone gives someone a sample of his black-ribboned honey, it means he’s going to come back for the jar.”

I tried to swallow the tightness in my throat, but it was unyielding.

“And when he does, he brings his gun. That jar of honey is the Falcone Gift of Death.” Luca shifted his gaze again, pinning me beneath his stare. “Let that be your final warning. Get out of here while you can.”