Nic offered me a ride to his house from the park but I decided to walk with Millie instead.
“Ah, a lovers’ tiff,” she had assumed on our way home. She wasn’t half-wrong, but she wasn’t completely right, either. I didn’t tell her the truth about the argument in Rayfield Park for the same reason I didn’t tell her why I was going to Nic’s house after we went our separate ways at Shrewsbury Avenue. I wasn’t ready to organize my thoughts about everything, and until I did that, I wanted to make sure she would be safe. The less she knew, the better.
When I turned into his driveway, Nic was already standing in the doorway. “You came.”
I approached him in silence. He stood against the open door so I could sidle past him. I tried not to notice when I brushed against him, but I could see it register on his face.
The front of the house was entirely different from the modern kitchen at the back. Now, I was hovering in the setting of every horror story I’d ever heard, and it was exactly how I’d imagined it.
A crystal chandelier, still covered in spiderwebs, hung from the high ceiling. The wooden floors in the large foyer were discolored and uneven, creaking with each step. Ahead, a grand staircase lined with a thick burgundy carpet turned sharply to the right and up toward the second floor, while paneled wallpaper fell away from the walls in tattered strips. The hallway continued down the left side of the stairs, branching off into a line of closed rooms with narrow doors. The right side was distinguished by huge, newly varnished doors with heavy brass handles.
“Sophie?” I turned to find Nic looking at me expectantly. “Do you want to follow me through here?” He led me into a large sitting room, where two dark red leather couches rested around a stately fireplace.
I seated myself on one of the couches; Nic chose the other. I noticed, without an iota of surprise, that there was no TV, just a leather footstool, an old clock on the grand mantelpiece, and a built-in bookcase that spanned the entire length of the far wall. It was filled to the brim with Dickens, Defoe, Twain, Swift, and every other great or intimidating novelist I could have imagined. Above the fireplace, an oil painting lorded over the room. It was some kind of avenging angel, rendered in sweeping dark colors and framed in gilded gold. It stretched the entire width of the mantelpiece.
“That’s one of Valentino’s,” Nic said, following my gaze.
“It’s incredible.”
“It’s kind of dramatic.”
Dramatic. The thought of Nic holding a gun to Robbie Stenson’s head flittered across my memory. “Well at least he puts his time to good creative use.”
Nic cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Well, I’m here,” I said, keeping my thoughts focused on what I needed to know. “Start talking.”
He leaned across the corner of his couch, pinning me with his dark eyes. “What I’m about to tell you is not for the fainthearted,” he said. “Discussing my family like this is not something I do lightly, and I need to know that you won’t use it against me. Against us.”
I hesitated, and he seized my silence.
“Once it’s been said, I can’t take it back, and I’m risking a lot already.”
I thought about it for a long moment, really considering what he was asking of me, and what he was offering me in return: the unvarnished truth. I didn’t want to betray his trust, but I was afraid to offer my silence if what he told me was too big to handle. But I had to know. He wanted to let me in, he wanted to trust me, and despite everything, I wanted to let him.
“OK,” I said. “I promise.”
“It won’t be everything. It can’t be.”
“I just need enough to understand, Nic.”
He watched me for a moment more, like he was trying to read something in my eyes. Then he leaned back and sighed, finally, after all this time, surrendering. “Sophie, my family and I are in the business of protection. And what that means is, sometimes we have to hurt people, and sometimes we have to kill people.”
And there it was — out in the open at last. My unspoken fear had come to fruition. Like father, like son: Nic was an Angel-maker, too. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand and concentrated on steadying my breathing. I couldn’t speak. I felt sick.
“Let me explain,” Nic said. He reached out to me, but I edged away and he dropped his hand. And then he hit me with a fresh bombshell: “We only go after people who deserve to die.”
I gaped at him. “Is this some sort of sick joke?” I managed, my mouth still covered by my hand. “Because it’s not funny.”
He just looked at me — defiantly standing by the craziest thing I had ever heard come out of his mouth.
“You mean you go after people like Robbie Stenson?” I pressed after a beat.
He nodded — calmly. Too calmly.
“Would you have killed him if Luca hadn’t been there to stop you?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Without hesitation.”
I thought about getting up and bolting, slamming the door behind me and running far away. But I didn’t, I couldn’t — not when there was more to know. “Can’t you see how crazy that is?”
This time, Nic looked away from me, his expression twisting. “He deserves worse than what he got … If Luca hadn’t been there …”
“You’d probably be in jail,” I finished dryly.
“And he’d be six feet under.”
I dropped my hands and ground them into the leather to keep my anger at bay. “That’s what the police are for, Nic. Not normal gun-wielding citizens like you and Luca.”