Nico’s lips curled in what could only be spite. “I thought you were better—wethought you were better—but you’re a goddamn monster.”
“Excuse me?” Guerra’s question sounded light, but it felt like it was reflected on glass—light of weight, but sharp enough to slice open a vein.
“He’s dead,” Nico said. He practically gasped the words, and Reiko wasn’t sure she’d heard them right until he repeated them, stronger. Angrier. As an accusation. “My brother is dead because of you, and you’re out here fucking around with some”—he swept an arm in her direction—“random Asian whore?”
The words hit her like a punch to the gut. She felt a little woozy. Her fingers found and twisted in the material around her abdomen.
She almost didn’t see—didn’t comprehend—Guerra’s arm shoot out, or his hand take hold of Nico’s throat. She definitely did not hear the low, visibly dangerous thing he said as he moved in closer. But there was no mistaking the widening of Nico’s eyes.
Armando shifted again, this time drawing enough of Reiko’s attention for her to see he held a pistol low at his side.
Her eyes widened. He wasn’t really considering shooting Nico in the middle of the zoo, was he?
Guerra shoved Nico back and took a single half-step backward himself. “I’m taking a personal day, so consider that your warning, Nico. I don’t want to hear you disrespecting your brother’s memory with this bullshit again.” He turned, not waiting for Nico’s response.
Nico lowered the hand he’d raised to rub at his throat and spit loudly at Guerra’s back, the phlegm large enough for Reiko to glimpse as it sailed through the air. She even saw it splatter on the concrete a sparse inch from Guerra’s shoe.
Armando tapped his finger against the side of his gun.
Guerra stopped, his gaze turned downward, toward the spot on the sidewalk. “Nico.”
“Fuck you,” Nico said harshly. “Fuck you, and fuck your stupid alliance.”
Reiko felt her brow furrow.
She watched Guerra close his eyes, something like resignation passing across his face for an instant.
Nico wasn’t done, his voice escalating as he continued. “And long live the Segreti family!” He raised a gun Reiko hadn’t seen him reach for.
Everything happened in slow-motion after that.
She reacted on an instinct she didn’t recognize in herself. Terror at the sight of the weapon blended with fear over what the angry man might do with it. Fear, specifically, that he might take away the person she was only beginning to think she had. She didn’t want that. Having someone, even one person, was a lifeline she’d craved for so long. The very last thing Reiko could do was sit quietly and watch it be snuffed out.
She leaped to her feet, a cry of some type leaving her lips that was meant to be a warning but may not have been articulate at all. She had no experience shouting warnings about shooters.No training. If she made any noise of alarm, that was a raging success. But it wasn’t enough. She needed to get Guerra out of the way before the angry man could shoot him.
She heard someone shout“Gun!”in a voice that didn’t sound like hers.
People screamed.
Something exploded. Multiple somethings exploded.
Arms banded around her as her center of gravity was lost, her vision becoming swallowed up by a striking shade of lilac-blue that was, it turned out, quite soft. It glided against her skin like the gentlest touch. Very much unlike the hard, scraping ground suddenly at her back. Her elbow burned, stinging in a bizarrely settling way, and Reiko sucked in a breath.
Guerra was above her, so close her entire body lit up the moment she realized it. They were chest-to-chest. He had an arm tucked behind her head, another around her back, in a near crushing grip. Their legs were intimately tangled. Given their natural size difference, she was surely lost beneath him as far as anyone else was concerned.
She shouldn’t have liked that. She shouldn’t have liked any of it.
Wait, the gun!
His eyes crinkled with warmth as if he’d read her mind. “We’re going to have to talk about that, beautiful,” he said, his voice a little rough. “But for now, I appreciate the gesture.”
Reiko blinked, tears stinging her eyes and blurring her vision as the fear returned in a rush. “What? Are you—”
“Christ,” he muttered. Then he lowered his head and the next thing she knew, his tongue was trailing up the swell of her cheek. “Don’t you cry for me. No one deserves these tears.” He murmured the words against her skin as he tilted his head and repeated the process of licking her escaped tears off her skin.
She had officially lost the ability to comprehend everything spiraling through her. All she could do was latch on to the pieces she recognized—which apparently meant literally latching on to him, as her fingers found and curled into more fabric. Fabric that was not her own for once. “You,” she gasped, “you’re not hurt?”
She felt him smile against her skin before he lifted his head just enough for her to see it. “I think I lost three years off my life when you jumped off that bench. Does that count?”
