Page 16 of His Dark Vendetta

“I am Irish!”

“No… You’reSouth BostonIrish.” He said South Boston like it sickened him to have the words touch his tongue.

“Are we really doing this again?”

He ignored me.

I huffed at his dismissal. “I would love to hear how I lied to you a second time. I can only imagine the story you’ve concocted.”

He sped onto US-1 heading north out of Boston, and I watched the empty stretch of highway emerge through the windshield.

“You didn’t just lie to me. You lied to Marco. And I’ll never forgive you for that. I’ll never forgive you for being a Shaughnessy.”

My stomach dropped through the seat and onto the concrete where the back tires of the Ferrari sped over it like roadkill. Luca knew? How? The only person I’d told was Marco, and he knew better than to tell anyone. Right?

My mind raced.

Being a Shaughnessy was the only thing worse to Luca than being South Boston Irish. He probably thought I’d kept it from Marco. Why would I keep something that huge from Marco unless…

Trepidation morphed into dread. I shifted in my seat to face him. “Luca,” I said as calmly as I could even though adrenaline was tangling my insides into a knotted mess. “Listen to me. I never broke Marco’s trust. Not once. I could never do that to him. He’s family.”

Luca shot me a hard look even as he eased off the accelerator, stomped on the clutch, and downshifted. The orange lights beneath the top deck of the Tobin Bridge reflected off his eyes and made them look like they burned inside his angry face.

Red eyes. Da’s unhinged rambling shot into my mind. The old superstitions latched onto my stomach and squeezed.

“Don’t talk to me about family. A Shaughnessy stole my father from me.” His jaw shifted under the strain of his emotion. “And a Shaughnessy is going to pay the price.”

The acid burning my stomach surged. An eye for an eye. The Cosa Nostra way.

Oh my God. Luca is going to kill me.

I pitched forward and threw up on the plastic floor mat.

“Cazzo!” he shouted over the growl of the engine. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

He downshifted again and pulled over onto the shoulder of the bridge. The car jerked to a stop, and I heaved again, splattering watery puke atop its vintage interior.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve. “What did you expect?” Tears poured down my face as reality sank in. “That I’d be okay with this? That I wouldn’t freak out that you’re going to kill me?”

“You should have thought about that before becoming a rat.” He unbuckled his seat belt and sneered. “Your people may be trash and have no code, but they don’t tolerate rats any more than Cosa Nostra.”

“I’m not a rat,” I shrieked through wild sobs.

“Right, and I’m not Italian.” He opened his door, climbed out, and slammed it behind him.

My vision blurred behind an ocean of tears, but my mind became sharp as a knife, cutting through the shock and fear to save my life. I couldn’t run from him. No way. He’d catch me. There was nowhere to hide on the bridge. I couldn’t hurt him. Luca was huge, and I had no weapon. But I did have my cell phone. I rifled through my purse.

Luca flung the passenger door open, tore my purse from my hands, and tossed it onto the driver’s seat.

Only one option left—beg.

“Luca.” His name came out soft and wavered under the intensity of my terror. “You need to listen to me.”

He unfastened my seat belt, clamped his hand around my arm, and hauled me out of the car, nearly pulling my shoulder out of its socket.

The bottom deck of the bridge was dark, and he’d stopped us between overhead lamps. The only other light came from the docks on the far side of the river. The cold night wind off the mouth of the Charles whipped through his hair, making it dance around the harsh lines of his shadowed face.

I grabbed the front of his shirt. “Listen to me, Luca. I’m not a rat. I never lied to you. Marco knows everything. I told him myself.”

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