Mom and Dad, however, blamed Garret. Instead of having to ask River for a ride home, I should have been able to ask my brother. But I’d learned he wasn’t exactly the reliable type. If I’d asked him to wait around and give me a ride home, even if he’d said yes, I knew it would have been a wasted effort. He would have forgotten about me the instant one of his friends suggested skipping their last class and heading to someone’s house to get high.
Our parents expected him to think of protecting me first and foremost. Only once I was home in the safety of our four walls did they consider him free to do as he wanted. But they hadn’t realized yet that Garret only thought about one person, and that was himself.
He was selfish and still had a hell of a lot of growing up to do. I was hoping when he moved to New York to start working for the Vitucci family that summer, it would be a good thing for him. Ciro and Cristiano wouldn’t put up with his crap like Dad did. But in my heart, I knew it wasn’t going to change anything.
Without warning, the front door flew open, and I tensed until I saw the man-boy standing in the doorway. His breathing was coming in heavy pants as he scanned the room until his eyes landed on me. As soon as our gazes locked, he stumbled forward briefly before righting himself.
I jumped up and threw myself into his arms. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he caught me, holding me against his heaving chest as he pressed his forehead to mine. “Tell me you’re okay.”
“I am,” I whispered. “But I told you not to come.”
As soon as I’d snapped out of my daze at the hospital, I’d realized that River had spoken to Ryan when I called to warn him about Ramirez. I’d called him back as soon as I could from Mom’s phone, telling him that I was safe, that I was fine, that everything was going to be okay. He needed to stay in New York. Ramirez would expect him to run to me and be waiting to ambush him.
Of course, he hadn’t listened. There was no talking to Ryan once he thought I was in danger. Or sad. Or angry. If I so much as had a sniffle when he called, he was on his way straight to California just to make sure I wasn’t sick. It was what made him such a great best friend.
But it also made him predictable to his enemies.
“I had to see with my own eyes that you were okay,” he said before kissing my forehead.
I hugged him, enjoying just having him close for a moment. But all too soon, he was setting me on my feet and then guiding me back to the couch, where he pushed me onto the cushion and then crouched before me. His thumb stroked over my swollen, scabbed-over bottom lip before brushing my hair over my shoulder so he could examine my neck better.
At the sight of the damage done by his enemy’s hands, Ryan’s eyes began to glitter with a rage I’d rarely seen from him. It scared me, because I knew when he got that look in his beautiful dark eyes, he got reckless. And reckless was dangerous.
I caught his hand and gave it a firm squeeze. “I’m okay,” I told him again.
“Yeah, man, she’s fine,” Garret said with a laugh as he propped a leg up on one of the recliner’s arms.
I closed my eyes, praying my brother would grow a brain in the next ten seconds.
Of course, he didn’t.
Ryan stood slowly, his eyes raking over Garret dispassionately. “Where were you?” he asked quietly.
The same question that Dad had asked only minutes before, but it was a hundred times more dangerous coming from Ryan Vitucci.
My parents—hell, everyone in my family except for my brother—were so over-the-top overprotective of me that it was annoying. I couldn’t sneeze without people feeling my forehead to make sure I wasn’t running a fever. If someone looked at me wrong, they were instantly put in their place. If someone bullied me, their life was turned upside down until they realized the error of their ways and made amends.
And then there was Ryan. If I sneezed, he flew the smartest doctors with him to make sure I had the best care. If someone looked at me wrong, they were instantly put on their knees before me and made to apologize. If someone bullied me, they no longer had a life to be turned upside down because they had a bullet in their skull.
It was because of those facts that my father had no problem with my friendship with Ryan. Even if he’d groused and grumbled for years over it in the past, he knew
that next to himself, no man in the world would protect me more fiercely than my best friend.
As Ryan took a step in Garret’s direction, Dad took a seat beside me on the couch, getting comfortable—and putting himself between me and the chaos that was about to ensue.
Garret laughed. “Why is everyone hung up on where I was? Jesus, people, I was out with friends.”
The distance between the two was gone in a blink. Ryan grabbed Garret by the throat and dragged him to his feet. “You were with friends while Nova was being attacked by hired killers? You left your sister at school to get high and party, while Ramirez’s men tried to take her from me?”
Understanding finally filled Garret’s eyes, but it was coming too late. Ryan’s hold was so tight, my brother’s air supply was completely cut off, and his face was quickly turning purple from the lack of oxygen.
The men in my family were wide-shouldered giants. Garret was no different, but he was on the leaner side. My male cousins spent about as much time working out and lifting weights as my brother did messing around and getting high. He may have been a few inches taller than Ryan, but he sure as hell didn’t have the muscles Ryan spent hours every day perfecting in the gym.
Ryan held Garret an inch off the ground, his entire body vibrating from his rage. “You are supposed to protect her, with your life if necessary,” he snarled viciously. “I have told you, repeatedly, that her life is more precious than anyone else’s in this world. She is worth a hundred of you. A million. And you just left her there. Alone. With no one to help her. No one to protect her. No one to—”
Dad didn’t seem worried that Ryan was choking the life out of his only son, and I knew in that moment that he’d been waiting for Ryan to react just like this. To punish Garret without Dad having to lay a single finger on his firstborn. I’d been worried about how calm he’d been, but really, he’d been expecting this all along. He knew how explosive Ryan was. How my well-being meant everything to my friend and he would be just as filled with rage as my parents were. But I couldn’t just sit there and let Ryan kill my brother. Tears in my eyes, I jumped to my feet and did the only thing I knew would calm him.
As small as I was, it was easy for me to dip under his arm and squeeze between their bodies. Lifting my hands, I cupped each side of Ryan’s face. “Ryan, please let him go. Please. You’re going to kill him. Please stop. For me. Please, for me, let him go.”