49. SOPHIE
SOPHIE
The door frame splinters, the bell above the door catching and jangling on its way down. Every person in the room flinches, some throwing themselves under their tables.
Vin definitely knows how to make an entrance.
He steps through the hole he put in the restaurant wall, his gaze locked on mine as the dust settles.
“Are you hurt?”
He shouts the question but before I can answer, he draws his gun and drops Rocco with two shots without looking. The gunshots are louder than the door explosion.
Screaming and burnt powder fill the air as Vin crosses to me pulling me out of the booth and into his arms. His hand wraps around the back of my head as he presses my face into his chest. “Don’t look. I’ve got you, princess.”
Don’t look at what? Rocco’s body on the floor behind him? Rocco made his choices. I have zero issues with the outcome. But I’m shaking and stay right where I am.
Vin’s men pour through the open doorway, threading around us as Vin rubs my back in slow circles. They surround Gavin, guns pointed and Gavin slowly raises his hands.
“Vin, this is hardly the step toward peace we all needed,” Gavin says easily.
“Forcing my—” Vin stops short and presses his hand into my back hard. “It wasn’t a very peaceful invitation, fucker.”
Gavin shrugs. “Peaceful left the building when you fucked Ashlyn then broke the engagement.”
I shift in Vin’s arms so I can see Gavin’s face. It’s ashy white, and barely contained rage plays across his eyes. Is he personally offended by this? No, he doesn’t appear to be. He seems more irritated that he no longer has the upper hand.
“I never fucked Ashlyn,” Vin announces, and I snap my head toward him trying to discern if it’s a lie or not. He’s said this before, more than once, but it never quite felt true. “We faked it to make Ronan happy. She’s in love with someone else. And so am I.”
Vin keeps his gaze trained on Gavin but he squeezes me.
“That’s not new information, Vin,” Gavin growls. “Ronan knows. Everyone knows about the little charade you had going with Ashlyn. And no one fucking cares. What they care about is making her look bad to everyone outside our families. It’s not a good look for anyone.”
“Not my problem,” Vin says.
“Do the right thing, Vin. Marry the girl. Ally the families. Who you do on your own time,” Gavin juts his chin at me, “is up to you.”
“Everything I do is up to me. And Ashyln isn’t on the list.
“This doesn’t end here. You know they won’t stop,” Gavin says.
“They, huh. Who’s they?” Vin asks.
“The people I work for,” Gavin says.
Why the cryptic answer? Gavin is Irish; he’s with the Irish. What’s the mystery?
I lift my chin to look at Vin. “Rocco was feeding Gavin and his friends information. Spying for them.”
“I know,” Vin says softly, looking down at me. “Or I suspected. Rocco tried fucking with me about a year ago, but then fell off the planet. Showed back up in your kitchen, but by then….”
I know what he’s not saying. He’s not saying that he was engaged to Ashlyn, so the threat was neutralized.
I stare at him. “That’s information I would have preferred not to learn with a gun in my ribs.”
Alarm crosses Vin’s face, the first emotion I’ve seen from him since he walked through the door. “What?”
I sigh and close my eyes, as other patrons scramble to leave through the wreckage and sirens sound off in the distance. Vin’s men stand up Gavin and tie his arms behind his back.
Vin shakes me, and I open my eyes. “Vin!”
“Who pointed a gun at you?”
My brow furrows. “You don’t think I would lure you into a trap if someone wasn’t holding a gun to me, do you?”
Pure rage floods Vin’s face and in one motion, he pivots and empties his gun into Gavin’s chest. Gavin immediately goes limp, his head lolling, held up only by Vin’s guards.
“Vin!” People are screaming and my ears ring from the gunshot. “Stop doing that! He didn’t hurt me.”
Vin grips both my shoulders, forcing me to look away from Gavin’s lifeless body. “Sophia, nobody—and I mean nobody—ever threatens you. He was going to die anyway for putting his hands on you. But a gun? The fucker doesn’t get to breathe another breath.”
I’m not shaking anymore. I see on Vin’s face his conviction, his dedication to me, to the baby. He is with us unequivocally. But is that enough?
Rocco lays on the floor in a pool of his own blood, eyes wide open. I remember the look on his face when he came to the new Arsenal and asked me to rehire him. The way he worked so hard and stayed out of trouble, and how impressed I was.
I thought he’d changed. But that’s just what I wanted to believe. I look up at Vin who’s gesturing with his gun, ordering his men to start cleanup on the coffee shop.
Just because you understand why someone is broken doesn’t mean you have to be the one to fix them.
It’s too late for me to apply that concept to Rocco, but I won’t make the same mistake twice. I’ll never again believe a man when he tells me he’s changed, when the evidence of his true nature is right in front of me.
“I need to go home, Vin. I’ve got work to do.”
Vin nods. “That’s fine, but we need to make a stop first.”
I blink. “No. Not we need to go home. I need to go home. I have to get back to the restaurant. You can go do whatever you want.”
Vin raises an eyebrow at me, then drops his gaze to his phone and texts while he talks. “I am doing what I want. I have to go see someone, and you are coming with me. When I’m done, we will go back to the restaurant.”
“Again, not a ‘we’ situation.”
He doesn’t answer, still texting and a plume of rage blooms in my chest. Boss me around and blow me off? No, sir. I turn on my heel and head out the big hole in the wall that he left.
“Sophie!” Vin is behind me on the sidewalk, yelling my name but I ignore him and keep walking. “Sophia Bellamorte Demonio!”
I stop in my tracks, the breath knocked out me. I can’t with this man. What is he even thinking?
I’m not able to turn completely around to face him before he’s next to me, turning me, scooping me up in his arms.
I shriek, “Vin!” and beat on his chest but of course, he doesn’t even break stride.
I’m straining to twist and see where we’re going as an SUV pulls up to the curb. Someone jumps out of the passenger seat and opens the back door, and Vin unceremoniously dumps me in the back seat.
“Vincenzo!”
He chuckles and pushes my legs back on the seat to make room for himself and gets in, closing the door behind him.