Page 27 of Ruthless Vengeance
Lila reaches across the table to squeeze my hand. “You can’t think like that.”
“How can I not?”
“You saved us, Clara.” Her voice cracks as her eyes start to glisten. “You’ve proven where your loyalties are. Marco just needs time to remember that.”
Maybe she’s right. Maybe time is the only thing that will fix this.
But right now, time feels like the enemy.
Chapter Eight
MARCO
I slammy empty whisky glass down onto the table, my fourth of the night so far.
My head is pounding, but this time, it’s got nothing to do with the alcohol making its way through my bloodstream.
“She fucking lied to me.”
After my little talk with Clara, I got straight in my car and drove back to the city, wanting to put as much distance between us as possible.
Hearing her beg like that cracked me open, and I had to get out of that house before I did something stupid, like forgive her right then and there.
I called my brother on the drive over to Nox, asking him to meet me for a drink.
I’m going crazy from the speed at which my thoughts are racing, and Andre is the only person good at talking me down. I figured he would know what to do about Clara because right now, I don’ttrust myself not to do or say something that would sever the last threads that are holding us together.
If it turns out that Clara truly has been conspiring with Tommaso all this time…
Andre sighs as he swirls the amber liquid around in his own glass before downing it. “You already said that.”
“Yeah, and? She lied, Andre. She fuckinglied.”
Andre holds up a finger to signal to one of the waitresses to bring us another round.
The bar is packed, which means our conversation is being drowned out by the buzz of the patrons surrounding our booth.
I should be glad to see the place so busy, but the noise is only making my headache worse.
“I’m just not buying it,” Andre takes a slow sip of the fresh whisky set in front of him.
“Buying what?”
My brother narrows his eyes at me, and I mutter a half-hearted apology under my breath.
I know I’m acting like an ass by treating him like my verbal punching bag, but can he really blame me?
The family I thought I had is slipping through my fingers at an alarming rate.
“The whole theory of Tommaso planting Clara in the hotel bar to seduce you sounds too far-fetched to me,” he says. “And not just because she was blind drunk.”
“She’d just been dump—” I think of Adam, Clara’s ex-fiancé and the guy I beat half to death to teach him a lesson for hurting her.
Was that nothing more than a cover up story to get me talking in the hopes that I would pity her and take her to my bed?
“Fuck. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Andre watches me quietly, waiting for me to keep going, because he knows I will. He knows I’m too fired up to stop now.
