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Sam’s face tightened on a feral smile. “I wish you’d have told me that’s what you were coming here to do. I’d have helped you. I have a mean left hook.”
It felt like she’d used that left hook and hit me in the solar plexus. All the breath left my body and I felt like I couldn’t get any oxygen.
“Hey,” she crooned softly, as she scooted next to my side and rubbed my back in small circles. “Breathe. It’s okay, Lyn.”
I was calming down. It started with small sips of air and we sat quietly while I pulled myself together. “Havoc,” I finally told her.
“Huh?”
I laughed softly. “That’s my new name—Havoc.”
She scrunched up her face. “It’ll take some getting used to.”
Laughter poured out of me. This was the kind of friend she was. Completely cool with hearing that I killed my family’s murderers—hell she’d probably offer to help me bury the bodies—but she wasn’t fond of my new name.
“Tell me everything.”
I told her—leaving out the gory bits. She didn’t actually need to know those parts.
By the time I was finished she was just sitting there in silence. “They deserved it.” There was anger and defiance in her gaze. She certainly wouldn’t get an argument from me. “Why didn’t you tell me that was what you were coming here to do?”
“I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it,” I admitted. “And I didn’t want to get you in trouble if the cops came sniffing around.”
She cocked her head and considered that. “Then why tell me now?”
“Nico has…a lot of pull,” I said hesitantly.
“Yeah, okay. What’s his deal?”
“Well, he kidnapped me.”
Her poor jaw was getting a workout from all the dropping and lifting it was doing. “You’re here against your will?”
“Not anymore. We made a deal.”
Her lips pursed together as she tried to puzzle out what was going on.
“He decided he wanted me, so he took me. Then threatened not to let me go with him to kill the rest of the men responsible for the murder, unless I agreed to stay here with him—permanently.”
The look on her face was comical. I’d had time to come to terms with this, but I imagined this was what I looked like when Nico first told me the terms of this arrangement.
“That’s…insane! He can’t just kidnap people,” she sputtered.
Welcome to my world.“That’s what I said, too.” We locked eyes. “Turns out…he can.” My voice was serious enough that I could see in her eyes that she believed me.
“Now that I say it out loud I know how it sounds.” I’d spent the first few days after Nico brought me here thinking the cops were going to show up, or at the very least, Dante. When neither did I realized Nico’s sway over law enforcement was as absolute as he claimed. I’d thought for sure his brother would’ve figured out what was going on and try to find me. He probably thought I moved away. We’d started to become friends, but we weren’t that close. Plus, I turned him down multiple times. I likely hadn’t even been a blip on his radar when I went missing. I hadn’t been interested in him romantically, but I’d felt a connection to him so the realization that it wasn’t reciprocated upset me.
“Who the hell is he that he can do this shit?” Sam asked, pulling me back into our conversation.
“A Mafia Don.”
She shook her head slowly. “Is this real life? I didn’t think this kind of stuff actually happened.”
I snorted. It was hard for me to remember how many times those words went through my head after Nico grabbed me. “It’s real and I agreed to it. It was that or he just kept me here anyway.”
She huffed out a breath. “And here I thought he was a nice guy.”
We grinned at each other.
