Thankful when he pulled into her driveway and parked, she almost couldn’t get out of the car fast enough, but the boogieman didn’t let her go that easily.
He dropped his voice an octave and gave her his final words. “Don’t prove him right by being exactly how he thought you’d be, Katarina.”
Swallowing what had risen in her throat, she got out of the car and slammed the door shut, knowing she had done just that. Proved the Luciano blood was tainted, and that we’re nothing but trash.
Dominic came out on the front porch. “What’d you do?” he asked, seeing Lucca had gotten out of the car to lean up against it to smoke a cigarette, knowing it must have been bad for him to drop her off.
“I gave him hell,” she told him as she stomped onto the porch.
Dominic stared at her for a second before he proudly smiled, raising his hand as she passed for a high five. “That’s my girl.”
Pushing the curtain out of the way when she entered the house, she looked out the window and watched her brother talk with Lucca.
“Why is he here?” Matthias asked after coming over to see what she was looking at.
“I may or may not have done something bad.”
Matthias got a nervous look in his eyes.
“What’d you do?” Cassius asked, coming up behind her.
“I took a baseball bat to Drago’s apartment.”
“Badass.” Her little brother took a glance at the two outside before he walked away.
Her other brother, however, looked like he was going to be sick.
Kat knew it was because Angel was still in their grasp. “It’s going to be all right.” Now, her stomach turned. Seeing him like this made her feel remorse. “Dominic always makes everything better.” At least she hoped and prayed. For his sake, not hers.
“Did you see him?” he solemnly asked.
Her mouth ran dry, wishing he had forgotten to ask while she nodded her head.
The lightness in his eyes finally returned. “How is he?”
Never in a million years could she have the heart to tell him the truth. To tell him that while he sat here dying a little more every day, the one who was captured was surviving just fine without him. “He’s okay.”
And just like that, the light evaporated from his eyes.
Grabbing his hand, she gave it a squeeze, knowing he needed to hear something, anything to feel closer to his twin. Kat needed to reassure him his brother was still just that, his brother. Even if it meant she had to lie. “He misses you.”
That was all he needed to return the light and give him hope. She wondered what would happen to Matthias… when he realized all hope was gone.
* * *
Drago was still heated when he was called into Lucca’s office, and he knew fucking exactly what he wanted to talk about. About that little psycho math witch.
“The deal will not work if you mistreat her,” Lucca told him with a puff of smoke escaping from his lips.
Was he hearing him fucking right? “Me, mistreat her?!”
“Yes.” His underboss was harsh, knowing exactly what he had done.
The truth was, it was hard for him to admit it. He didn’t have a damn reason not to like that cute pink-haired smartass, except for the last name she carried, and that scared the fuck out of him. As bad as it sounded, the only way this worked for him was if he hated her.
He had excused himself to the bathroom because he felt something different under the itching of his skin. Making him take a hard look at himself in the mirror, knowing when he came out, he needed to be who he truly was to her, a fucking asshole. Or that itch just might never go away.
Lucca could probably see the turmoil going on in his head. “What do you want to do, Drago?”
It was tempting to tell him to hell with Katarina and choose someone, anyone else from the Luciano family, but the man inside of him they had killed knew there was only one choice to satiate his need for revenge. At least that was what he was going to choose to believe… for now.
“You can choose someone e—”
“No.” Drago stopped his underboss right there with a boom from his chest. There was going to be no going back anymore, or what ifs. This was it. “Katarina is mine.”
* * *
Kat sat up in bed when the light entered her room and her oldest brother came in. When she saw the worried lines on his face by the glowing light, her heart sank for him.
Taking a seat on the edge of her bed, he gave her his back, unable to look at her. She was unsure of how many minutes had passed when he finally spoke into the darkness. “Did I ever tell you about when I first saw you?”