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Nico took the boy in his arms, and Matty’s cries subsided to quiet sniffles. The Bad Samaritan picked up the toy snail and held it out.
“Here.”
Nico snatched the toy and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “I have to get to Kaylin.”
“No, you don’t. Decker Langdon is more than capable of handling the situation.”
Cesare was still lying motionless, and the Bad Samaritan bent to check his pulse.
“Is he alive?” Nico asked as she began rifling through Cesare’s pockets with gloved hands. The man was carrying a pistol, and she released the magazine before tossing both items to the side.
“Da, he’s alive.” Next, she dropped a knife onto the ground. “This is a nice switchblade. Expensive.”
“So, what happens now? You just walk away like you did all the other times?”
“That depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“How much have you changed, Nicolai? In Moscow, you used to do the dirty work yourself.” She offered him her gun, butt first. “The way I see it, there are three options. Either you kill him, or I kill him, or you call your friends in the sheriff’s department and ask them to take him away.”
She’d done her research, hadn’t she? It was disconcerting, the way she knew so much, not only about Nico’s life in Baldwin’s Shore but about his former existence in Russia. But she was right. Two decades ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated to put a bullet through Cesare Cavallaro’s head.
“Would you lose sleep if you killed him?” he asked.
“Beyond the time you’re wasting while you make up your mind? No.”
The right thing to do, the lawful thing, would be to call Colt or Luca and let them take this motherfucker into custody. But then Kaylin would have the trauma of a trial to get through, years of legal wrangling and perhaps even a custody battle. As it was, her secret would come out. She’d still have to fight the charge for killing the cop in Virginia. Nico would hire the best lawyers money could buy, and it would be her word against Alonzo’s and a pile of circumstantial evidence.
No, Kaylin had enough to deal with.
And the Bad Samaritan was right: when it was within his capabilities, Nico did his own dirty work.
“I don’t need your gun. Take the boy.”
“Do I have to?”
But she held out her arms, and Nico screwed the suppressor onto his pistol as she put distance between them. Cesare groaned as he began to stir. This man thought he could walk into Nico’s town and turn Kaylin’s life upside down again? No way. No fucking way. Nico had promised Kaylin that Cesare was gone from her life, and he didn’t break his promises. Not to people he loved.
Yes, he loved Kaylin. Perhaps he always had.
“Get up.”
“Fuck…you.”
“That’s your wife’s job.”
Anger fuelled Cesare’s recovery. Nico gave the man a moment to roll to his knees, then shot him in the face, nothing too neat seeing as he’d claim to have acted in self-defence. Cesare crumpled onto a carpet of pine needles, his mouth gaping open and blood and chunks of brain matter spilling from the back of his head.
“Consider that a divorce.”
The Bad Samaritan was waiting in a clearing fifty yards away, jiggling the snail in front of Matty as he smushed his fingers against his reflection in her visor. At least he wasn’t crying again.
“Dada!”
This time, there was no need to correct the boy. It was a role Nico intended to embrace. He settled Matty onto his hip and faced the woman who both unnerved and fascinated him.
“Now you walk away?”
