Page 60 of Vendetta
‘Crystal.’
‘Do I frighten you?’ He tilted his head.
‘Yes,’ I said weakly. ‘Are you proud of yourself?’
He looked at me for a long moment before replying. ‘No, I’m not,’ he said, so faintly I had to strain to hear him. Then he turned from me and made his way back to the house.
‘Wait!’ I called as the rational part of me screamed in protest.
Luca turned around slowly.
‘You make a point of keeping your brother away from me and then you bring me to the hospital to make sure I’m OK. And you don’t tell the nurse who you are in case I would think you are asemi-decentguy. I don’t get it.’
‘You don’t have to get it. You just have to deal with it.’
‘Why did you botherscraping me off the sidewalk, then? Why do you even care if I was roofied or not?’ The question hurtled across the space between us. He blinked twice and his mouth dropped open into an O. For a second, he looked young and innocent, like his twin.
‘Are you kidding?’ He was dumbfounded. ‘I’m not a monster.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose and inhaled like he was about to say something. But then he didn’t. Instead, he just shook his head. ‘You should go, Gracewell.’
‘I have a name, you know!’
He laughed, looking up at the sky, like the maniac he clearly was.
‘It’s Sophie. S-O-P-H-I-E.’
He continued to laugh, but when he returned his attention to me, his voice was utterly flat. ‘Are you sure about that?’
I blanched. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
Before I could process the uneasiness grumbling inside me, he spoke again. This time his voice was disturbingly quiet. ‘Don’t you get it? You’re aGracewell. That’s all you’ll ever be to us.’
‘What does it matter toyouif I’m a Gracewell?’ I demanded.
For an interminably long moment, he regarded me pensively. When he finally relented, it was with a determined exhale, like some internal decision had finally been made. He crossed the driveway and reached me in four strides.
‘You really have no idea why you’re not welcome here?’ he hissed. ‘Are you seriously that ignorant?’
I swallowed against the sudden dryness in my throat. ‘What are you talking about?’
Luca frowned. I didn’t understand his question and he didn’t understand my response.
‘Cazzo.’ He studied me with an almost violent confusion – it pinched the hollows in his cheeks, making them gaunt. ‘I’m not dealing with this.’
‘I want answers!’ I protested.
‘You won’t get them here.’
‘Then where?’ I said half-pleadingly, exasperation sinking into my voice.
Luca ground his jaw in slow clicks, whatever shred of patience he had for our conversation rapidly diminishing. ‘Go ask your father, Gracewell. You probably owe him a visit.’
A familiar feeling of dread crept up my spine.My father. Everything always came back to my father. Of course it had something to do with him – I would never outrun what he’d done. I would never live it down. But there was something more to Luca’s words, something deeper, and it was twisting my stomach. What had my father done to the Priestlys? Before he was arrested he never put a foot out of line. As far as I knew, at least.
