She glared at me, cursing, but then she looked away, as if she couldn’t stand to look me in the eye after I exposed her intentions. “How did you know?”
“I had my doubts from the beginning, more last night after you went bonkers on Ravenna, but the look you gave me right before we got on the boat told me everything. That conscience of yours always gives you away.”
“You sounded so sincere when you said you’d protect me from Enzio, and what you said before we took off… I can’t believe I felt guilty about you when you were gonna screw me over all along.”
“You were gonna screw me over first. Why, Nicky?”
“It was just a backup plan. The main reason I got you out has always been to kill Tino. I want him dead more than anything or anyone, even more than I wantyoudead.” She darted a glare at me. “But you’ve just changed that for me.”
“Then why don’t you shoot me? I’m unarmed and there’s no one else here.” I left the helm and captured the gun between my palms, pushing the muzzle on to my forehead. “Go ahead.”
She shook, her nostrils flaring, her eyes bulging at me. “You’re insane.”
“Remember what I said. I told you don’t hesitate. This is the time. Kill me, Nicky. Then trick Enzio to bring you Lina, and then run for your life because this is the only chance you’re gonna get.”
A deep scowl knotted her face as her fingers trembled around the trigger. I looked her in the eye, daring her to take that final leap. The first time she thought she took a life, it was an accident. The second time she was about to, I stopped her. Now, what was it going to be?
Time froze between the two of us. Even the wind seemed to have stopped blowing to stare and witness. I waited, holding my breath that might be the last.
She screamed in my face, but it didn’t turn off the constant voices that welcomed this moment more than any. “I can’t,” she cracked in tears. “I fucking can’t. How could you do it? How can anybody just take a life? If I could, I would have taken Frank Baldi’s. I would take Tino’s. I’d have taken yours, but I just fucking can’t.”
I stepped away and returned to steer the boat. “Liar. If it were Tino standing here, and you knew Lina wouldn’t know it was you who was holding the gun, you’d do it. That’s why you wouldn’t kill me. You still hope I’ll do it for you so she won’t hate you. You still want Tino dead more than anybody that you’d betray your own self and take his life. You know why?”
When she didn’t answer, I answered for her. “Because you tried everything, and no matter what you do or who you betray, you can’t get to him. He still has the upper hand, and it makes you feel like a fucking failure. Like nothing!” Just like he made me feel. “That plan of ours, you knew it couldn’t be done the second you answered that call.”
“What call?” she whispered without looking at me.
“It wasn’t Tino who was calling Domenico after you hit him.” The screams blared in my head and echoed in my chest instead of my own breaths. “It wasn’t Enzio either.”
She froze in place, but her tears exploded. “There was… When I answered, no one spoke.”
“But someone was there. You heard the sound of their breath. A sound I bet you’d recognize anywhere.”
Her head lowered, her tears falling on her hands. “I didn’t know for sure until last night.”
“After your fight with Ravenna, you didn’t come back right away. You said you were sick, but you weren’t barfing.”
“The burner rang. I recognized the number.”
“The Lanzas.”
She nodded. “Obviously, the doctor was lying about the phone belonging to her Russian patient. I answered…and he told me everything,” her eyes squeezed shut while she let out a hurting sigh, “offering a deal.”
“You couldn’t say no because it was more of a threat. If you choose to take the Lanzas down, they won’t go down alone. So you stab me in the back and give me back to them.”
“I didn’t believe him.” More tears dropped on her skin. “I didn’t want to believe him.”
“You went to get the meds, but the main reason you went out there was to call her.”
“I had to know for sure. I had to hear it from her.”
“She told you? She told you that all this time…” My own tears threatened to spill, but I held them. I wouldn’t cry over her anymore. “All this fucking time, it was Lina who put me in that cage.”
I’d defied everything to be with her. I gave her my heart and my future and would have given her my own life if she’d asked for it. My wife that I’d almost killed my father for. “The reason I fucking survived in that shithole turns out to be the reason I was there in the first place.”
“It’s because of Tino. It’s always Tino.”
“Don’t!” My fingers clawed at her, but I retracted them forcing my rage down before I unleashed it on the wrong person. “Don’t make excuses for her. She did this on her own. I could see it as if I were there, the whole arrangement she made with the Lanzas.”
