“Dante! Stop. Don’t do this.” I thrashed against his back. Fought to get free. But he only tightened his grip on me as he rushed out of the house. “Dante, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“We can discuss the matter of me not knowing what I’m doing later.”
Within seconds, Dante shoved me in the back seat of a car and got in next to me. Kate climbed into the front passenger seat while the other guy slipped in behind the wheel. The engine started, and I immediately grabbed the handle of the door, but it wouldn’t open.
Dante looked my way. “Child lock.” I glared at him, and he shrugged. “Safety precaution.”
The car swerved onto the road, the force shoving me to the side, and I glowered at the driver.
Dante noticed. “Layla, meet my cousin Lucio.”
Lucio glanced in his rearview mirror. “It’s nice to meet you, Layla. I’m sorry about the…you know.” He gestured with his fingers around his face reminding me that I was still covered in blood. A chill ran down my spine, and I had to suppress the bout of nausea that crept up my throat.
I turned my attention to my best friend crying in the front seat. “Kate, are you okay?”
“No,” she whimpered. “No, I’m not okay. I’m definitely not fucking okay.” She turned in her seat to look at me. “I just saw a man get shot right before I was hauled out of my own damn house. I can’t do this anymore, Layla. I just can’t.” She shook her head. “If I had known how deep this shit went, I never would have agreed to any of this. Goddammit! I should have taken both of you straight to the police station the day you showed up at my fucking doorstep!”
Dante glanced from Kate to me. “Both of you?”
I kept staring at my sister, silently begging her not to say anything more, but she ignored my plea. “I’m not doing this anymore, Layla. Either you tell him, or I do.”
“Kate, don’t.”
Lucio sped up. “Since this sounds like a serious convo, I suggest you continue once we get home. Dante, we have three tails on our asses.”
Lucio barely finished his sentence when a car smashed into the rear of our car, causing Kate and me to yelp as we jerked forward. Lucio and Dante let out a string of f-bombs.
Dante spun around to look out the back window. “Fuck! Goddamn Mancusos. They’re trying to force us off the road.”
Fear and panic tightened like barbed wire around my lungs. “Dante, you need to let me go. Stop and let me out.”
“Not a chance.”
“Dante, please. I’m begging you.”
His gaze cut my way, the intensity in his dark irises conveying the message that there was no way in hell he was letting me go, no matter how much I begged.
I sank back in my seat, instinctively wrapping my hand around my elbow—the elbow where the vein was starting to itch with need.
I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on my breathing. I needed to calm down. I needed to regain control. There was too much at stake for me to lose my shit now.
The car swerved to the right, then to the left. Dante pulled out his phone.
“Antonio, we have a situation. I need help getting tails off our asses.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “I swear to God, seriously, Antonio. Jesus. Can we bicker about this like old goddamn ladiesafterwe manage to handle this situation? Yes. Track my phone, and you’ll know where we’re moving.” Dante hung up. “Fuck!”
“Big bro giving you a hard time?” Lucio glanced in his rearview mirror.
“Something like that.” Dante sighed. Obviously, things hadn’t changed between him and his brother. I remembered how they used to fight all the time—and I knew it was mostly because of me. Antonio was definitely not chairman of the Layla fan group, that was for sure. Dante never knew, but I once overheard a conversation between them. Antonio told Dante I was making him weak, causing him to choose between me and his family. I never truly understood why Antonio thought that way, but after I found out who his family were—whatthey were—I understood. For families like theirs, loyalty was everything. They lived for loyalty. Killed for loyalty. That was why Antonio never liked me. He knew being with me would make Dante leave, and we planned to…until the day our fate was sealed with one moment. One revelation. One secret.
“I can’t be here with you,” I said softly. “You have to let me go back.”
“Go back to Matteo? There’s a better chance I’d let hell freeze over.”
I closed my eyes and lightly shook my head. “You don’t understand.”
Lucio swerved the car to the left. “Big bro might be pissed off at you, Dante, but the man sent us what we need just in time.”
Both Dante and I glanced out the back window. Two Audis came from either side of the road, turning in behind us and blocking our tails from following.