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A smile flickers across his face. “I think so, too. After seeing you with him.”
Something warm unfolds behind my ribs. “Guess I should thank you,” I reply, lamely trying to make light of it. I don’t even know why, I guess I’m just so tired of how serious and wrong everything is.
Paolo nods once, as if he’s decided something, and turns back toward the door. “Take care of yourself, Kira.”
“You too.”
The door clicks shut behind him. The churchyard is quiet again, just me and Vinny and the cold and the distant sound of cars on the main road. I press my palms against the iron railing and let the metal bite into my skin because the pain is something to focus on besides the hollow feeling in my chest.
Vinny’s phone buzzes. He checks it, says something into his earpiece that I don’t catch, and his posture shifts—weight forward, alert. Something’s changed. I can feel it in the air even before he says my name.
“Kira…”
Everything happens so fast that it barely registers.
A gunshot cracks through the cold air.
Vinny drops. One second he’s standing, the next he’s on his knees with his hand clamped to his shoulder, blood already seeping between his fingers.
“Vinny?” I whisper, unable to move.
My body has forgotten how to do anything except stand there with my hands on the railing.
Then my dad steps into view from behind an oak tree at the edge. He looks like shit. Thinning hair wild, eyes bloodshot and sunk deep into his face. His coat is wrinkled, his shoes are muddy, and the gun in his hand is steady in a way that terrifies me.
“D-dad?”
“Get in the car,” he snarls.
Vinny lurches to his feet. His right arm hangs uselessly at his side as blood drips from the shoulder and onto the frost. But his left hand is already moving toward his holster. Before he can get his own gun clear, he tackles Harry around the waist, and they hit the ground together with a sound like someone dropping a sack of cement.
I’m still rooted to the spot, my breath coming in fast pants as I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. But it’s as though my brain’s incapable of processing what I’m seeing, and I just…
Pop!
A second gunshot rings out, this one louder than the first.
Vinny immediately becomes still, and my dad wastes no time shoving him off his body so he can scramble to his feet.
“You bitch!” he growls, quickly closing the distance between us.
Only when his fingers dig into the flesh above my elbow, do I remember how to move. But it’s too late. He’s already dragging me across the churchyard toward a beat-up sedan.
Dad shoves me into the passenger seat so hard my head cracks against the dashboard, and the world blurs for a second—white spots dancing at the edges of my vision. I barely register Dad getting in until the engine roars to life.
Tires squeal, and then we’re moving before I’ve managed to fully close my door. Dad’s foot is jammed against the accelerator, the sedan fishtailing onto the main road with a shriek of rubber.
“They took everything.” His voice is shaking with rage. “Froze every account. Every fucking penny. NovaGen’s clawing back what they paid me, and your husband…” He spits the word like it’s poison. “… your husband made sure there’s nowhere to run.”
The car swerves around a slower vehicle. Dad’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grinding.
“You deserve worse,” I hiss. The words come out before I can stop them. But even though I’m scared, I can’t stop myself. “After what you did to Mom, you deserve to rot in Hell.”
“Ungrateful cunt,” he seethes as he grabs a fistful of my hair at the roots and slams my head sideways. “You think marrying a DeLuca means you don’t owe me anymore? I made you. You owe me every fucking thing.”
My forehead hits the window with a crack that lights up the inside of my skull like a flashbulb. The pain is blinding. White-hot and immediate, radiating from my temple in waves that make everything swim.
Warm wetness tracks down my forehead—blood, I realize distantly. I’m bleeding.
