“What are we, a bunch of pussies?” Dante stared them all down. “We did this. We can handle it.”
She took them in with her gaze, and knew she’d do anything to make sure they stayed safe.
Anna pulled Dante to face her again. “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you. To any of you. You saved my life. God only knows what that…guy…would have done to me if you hadn’t showed up.”
Tears fell down her cheeks. She didn’t bother trying to swipe them away.
Dante folded her against him. “Anna, it’s okay. You’re okay. We’ve been through worse.”
She pushed on his chest and shook her head. “No. I won’t let anything bad happen to you because of me. Please, just do this for me. Please.”
“Let’s go inside.” He wrapped his arms around her and led her back inside.
“What do you want to do about him?” Roman asked.
Dante looked over his shoulder at the dead guy. “I guess we leave him there for now.”
“What if somebody comes?” Roman asked.
“Not much we can do about it.”
Once inside the shop again, Dante checked Anna’s wound. The bleeding had stopped and all she felt was a raw throb she was determined to ignore. She wished she could ignore everything that happened. Concentrating on something other than herself would help. She wiped her face and hands, lifted her chin and stared them all down, determined they were going to see things her way.
“I want you all to go. Now. Hurry, before someone finds the body. I’m going to call my dad and we’ll figure out what to do.”
“That’s not right,” Dante said. “You shouldn’t have to deal with it.”
“I’ll have my dad. He’ll help. I’m not going to have you be charged when it was you all who saved me. Now go. Please.”
“She’s right,” Roman said. “You know what they’ll do to a group of juvies who beat a guy to death, even if he did attack a girl first. We could have just pulled the guy off her, held him and called the cops. We didn’t have to beat him up. We didn’t have to kill him.”
“Come on, Dante,” Jeff said. “We can’t handle any more on our records. We’ll lose the house, our family. I can’t do more time.”
Dante paced the shop. “It’s not right for this to come down on Anna. Hasn’t she been through enough?”
She stopped him, cupped his face with her hands. “You saved my life tonight, Dante. All of you. Let me do this for you.”
The pain in Dante’s eyes, the guilt she saw there, hurt her more than that jerk outside did. “He hurt you. We had to make him pay.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “I know. Now let me thank you the only way I can. Go on. I’ll handle this.”
Dante shook his head. “No, Anna.”
Roman gripped Dante’s shoulder. “She wants to do it. Let her.”
Anna grasped his hand. “I’ll call my dad right away. Dante, please.”
No way was she going to have him take the fall for this. She’d stand here all night if she had to and argue with him. But finally, he nodded and she exhaled.
“Fine. We’re outta here.” He pressed his lips to hers, soft and gentle. “Call your dad right now.”
“I will.”
“We’ll head out the back door. We’re going to move the…body…behind the Dumpster so no one sees him.”
“Okay. And I’ve got his knife.”
The other guys walked out the door. Dante stood there, his fingers wrapped like glue around it as he looked at her. “Lock it behind us.”
Anna bolted the back door as soon as the guys left and ran for the phone. Her father picked up on the first ring.
“Daddy?”
“Anna? What’s wrong?”
As soon as she heard his voice, she fell apart.
“Daddy, someone hurt me.”
One
Present Day
He shouldn’t have come home. He’d promised to stay away, but maybe it was finally time.
Nothing much was different in the old neighborhood. The only thing that had changed in twelve years had been him.
A lot had changed for Dante Renaldi in twelve years. The last time he’d been here had been the night he and the guys had killed someone in an alley. He’d left town right after that with Anna’s father’s help—more like his insistence—and he hadn’t been back since. And in those twelve years he’d mastered the art of killing.
So maybe he hadn’t changed much at all.
He vowed he’d stay away. Nothing was going to bring him home again. But one person could bring him home—his foster mother, Ellen Clemons.
Anna’s father, Frank Pallino, might have asked him to walk away after that night—and never come back. And he had. But he owed everything he was to George and Ellen Clemons. Those were two people he could never walk away from. He trusted them.
They knew where he’d gone after that night, where he’d been all these years. They didn’t know what had happened that night—he owed Anna that much. But he’d stayed in touch with George and Ellen over the years so they’d never think he’d walked away from them after everything they’d done for him.
So when Ellen contacted him and asked him to come home for her and George’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, there was no way in hell he was going to say no.
Twelve years, thousands upon thousands of miles and a few wars since then, he figured it was time to come home. He’d earned that right, especially after Afghanistan. If Frank Pallino didn’t like it, too fucking bad. He’d kept his part of the bargain. He’d left, he hadn’t tried to get in touch with Anna in all this time, or with any of the guys. And he had no clue what was going on with Anna.
Coming home could finally give him some answers.
Anna was the big question he was tired of wondering about. He needed to know, had spent too many nights bedding down on foreign soil, staring up at the stars and thinking about her. The only visual he could drum up was her in a shredded pink-and-white blouse, that damn heart-shaped carving on her chest and all that goddamn blood.
Seemed like the only thing in his head these days was blood. He saw plenty of it when his eyes were open, and he saw Anna’s when his eyes were closed.
