In reality, I knew I was just trying to fill the void. Because when you don't know where you belong anymore, you try to replace that hole in your chest with the next best thing. And I? I didn't know where I belonged. I didn't even know what I wanted to do and whether this was the way my life was supposed to be.
My home country was now just a place where I was born and where I grew up, but it wasn't home anymore. I felt like a tourist walking through the streets of my hometown, pretending I still knew what it felt like living there. And I would always be a foreigner in this country too. Not because people here tried to isolate me, but because I would never be one of them.
I would always be a girl from a small country in the Balkans, dreaming big and succeeding even when everyone told her she would fail.
But right now, this girl was just dreaming of getting the fuck out of here and surviving another day. Then I’d go down to that shelter and adopt a cat, because if this was a sign from the universe, it was literally telling me to give up on men. And I promised myself that if I got out of here without a bullet in my chest, I’d delete every dating app and become a nun.
Well, maybe not a nun. My relationship with religion wasn't exactly the best. But as close to the nun as one could get without having to practice.
My knees throbbed from the position I was in, but I didn't dare move. Even my breathing was as quiet as possible, though there were zero chances of anyone hearing me over all the screaming and ruckus happening outside my little table.
This was nice.
Safe.
No one could get me here.
"You're gonna be fine," I murmured to myself. "Just fine. They aren't here for you. You'll get the fuck out of here, go home, eat that burek you were eyeing before going on this damn date, and in a couple of days you’ll be laughing about thisentire situation. Yeah. That's what you're going to do."
Or at least that's what I wanted to believe.
As if on cue, the shooting stopped, leaving behind the sounds of loud sobbing, screaming, and something that sounded way too much like someone puking, which I didn't even want to think about.
"You're fine, you're fine, you're?—"
But I wasn't fine.
I was as far away from fine as it was possible to be, especially when long fingers appeared in my line of sight, pulling up the curtain the table cloth had become. And then there were the eyes. Eyes I never thought I’d see again, attached to a face that belonged on a cover of some fashion magazine. He appeared in front of me, making me breathless, dizzy and way too fucking scared to immediately realize that he wasn't looking at me like he wanted to eat me this time around.
No. The dark, mysterious stranger no longer had his mask on. And what I’d seen earlier had definitely been a mask.
The cold, harsh look he gave me when the darkness of those eyes collided with mine, sobered me instantly.
"Well, look who's been hiding here allthis time." His voice felt like velvet on my skin, brushing over my bruised knees and my battered heart. But it didn't take me long to realize what his words meant. It didn't take a genius to hear the violence in his voice or the bitterness emanating from the eyes that were filled with heat not so long ago. "I finally found you, kitten."
3
NICOLAS
My entire lifehad been planned from the moment my parents knew they were having a boy. From my name, to which school I would go to, who my friends would be and who my enemies would become. But no one ever planned on me seeing the dark-haired beauty sitting across from the man who was supposed to be my friend.
I didn't expect to see her there with him. Hell, I expected to see those Mancini fuckers with Johnny boy, stealing from me and my family as if they had any right to do so. As if they weren't the ones who ordered the hit on my father one year ago, a move that had effectively put me in the position of Capo at just twenty-four years old. No one was more disappointed than me that I’d been forced to take the reins before I was ready. But that didn't stop theother families from trying to stir up shit or trying to take me down.
Little did they know, I wasn't a kid just because I was younger than them. My father taught me well. Maybe even too well. And ever since he died, I'd been on a warpath, trying to find those responsible for his death.
My mother was a shell of herself, mourning the man she’d spent the last thirty years with. My sisters looked up to me now, hoping they wouldn't end up in the hands of one of the monsters in our world now that our father was no longer here to protect them. The weight of the world rested on my shoulders, but the moment I saw that girl—no. A woman—sitting with Johnny, who was supposedly our finance guy, that weight disappeared. It was replaced by the need so profound, so fucking vicious, that it took everything in me not to get up and rip him apart just for daring to look at her.
But I couldn't do that. I couldn't do whatever the fuck I wanted, at least not anymore, no matter how much I wished to. I couldn't promise her a future when I didn't even know if I had one. I couldn't hold her hand and pretend I was just another civilian when the blood of my enemies rested heavily on my hands.
The blood that deserved to be spilled.
The blood I wouldn't mourn.
One look at her, one look at those bright blue eyes, and I knew she was an angel. Too fucking innocent to be with the likes of me. Now the question was whether she knew anything about his dealings? Was she involved? Could she be the key to figuring out who was behind the entire operation? Because there was not a single doubt in my mind that someone close to us was orchestrating everything.
I've looked into every family surrounding us and I found nothing. But something in my gut told me it was one of them. It had to be.
What I didn't expect tonight was to be attacked as we were leaving the restaurant. Or for the attackers to be as cocky as they were. I always knew Mancini's were fuckers. Sometimes stupid. But I couldn't predict this.