Page 39 of Where the Wicked Reign

“I was.” He glared out at me. “Until a certain aggravating interruption at the worst time possible.”

“You know it was right on time.”

“You could’ve hurt her,” Milo told him. “And you never would have forgiven yourself for it.”

“He wouldn’t have hurt me,” Caterina said.

“You don’t know—” I started.

But she cut me off, telling us all, “I have the means to stop him.”

“How so?” Milo asked, intrigued.

“I told you, you wouldn’t have made it to that gun safe in time,” Nico told her.

“I don’t need a weapon. Iamthe weapon.” She blew out a breath and eyed him. “You don’t know everything about me. I made sure of that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A couple of years back, Carlo Benzino tried to make a deal with outsiders to expand his heroin op. It was ratified by the other two families, so that wasn’t an issue. But the gang leader he was trying to close the deal with got greedy. He wanted more out of it than Carlo had offered. So he tried to make a point by sending some of his goons to attack the Leones and the Marchettis. The first target was you, Nico. The four of them sent to blindside you were killed by a mysterious interloper en route.”

“I remember,” he said.

“That interloper was me.”

“What? How the hell?” Milo exclaimed.

“They were completely brutalized. Their bodies were only identifiable by dental records,” Nico said.

“Yeah, well, things took a turn when one of them stabbed me. It set me off.” She lifted the hem of her tank and showed us a nasty scar on her left side. She told Nico, “You would’ve seen this if you’d ripped my slip all the way down instead of stopping at my breasts.”

“You weren’t in the hospital. I would’ve known,” he said.

“I stitched it up myself.”

I whistled. “Jesus, that’s hardcore.”

“Like I said, I’m far from fragile.”

Nico frowned, deep in thought. “That was the long weekend when you were visiting Levi.”

“Yes, stalker. I came back into the city covertly a day early.”

“You protected me from that hit?”

“I protected us all. If the hit had gone ahead, it would have been suspected as betrayal from the other two families, before they’d been able to see reason and figure out that it was actually an external threat. It would have brought war upon us. And we all would have been dragged into it—including me.”

“Why are you revealing this to us?” Milo asked. “It’s a risk. You just admitted to murdering people and interfering in the business of the three families.”

“It can’t be proven. Believe me, I made sure of that. It’s just my word.”

“And this is a test,” Milo realized aloud.

She nodded, then opened her laptop. “One of them.”

“One?” I asked.

“Yes.” She looked at Nico. “I can’t just blindly trust that your goal is to destroy the three families for your freedom, for all of ours, or that you’ll do right by me just because you say you will. I need proof that I can believe in that.”

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