Page 53 of The Viper's Wife

“Who else would it be? They have every reason to hate us, and now they’re finishing the job. I think there was a fight in Dad’s bedroom. He left his phone and wallet, but he’s gone. He ran, or they took him.” Stefano’s voice drops low. “Val, it isn’t safe here. They’re picking us off one-by-one.”

I look around the place. None of the windows are broken, and the front door works.

“How did they get in?”

“Who the fuck cares?” Stefano stands and walks over to me. “You need to go live with Nico, now. We aren’t going to be safe until you and him are married.”

I’m too stunned to register fear at Stefano’s nearness. “I’m not moving in with Nico. He… doesn’t want me to move in yet.”

Nico would probably demand I move in. Part of me wants to call him—he’d know what to do, right?

I swallow. I was supposed to move out next week.

Stefano grabs my arm and shakes me. “Then you need to fucking change that.”

I try to pull my arm away, but his grip is firm. “Stefano, you’re hurting me.”

Normally, that might make him laugh, but he lets go of me like he’s been electrocuted. For a moment, we just stare at each other.

Then, I realize—he’s scared. He’s scared of Nico.

The paradigm shift dawns on both of us at the same time.

He shakes his head with disgust. “I’m going to the bar. Do whatever you want.”

He storms out of the house, slamming the door behind him. The second he’s gone, I race to my bedroom.

Whoever came destroyed my room too, though not as extensively as the living room. My desk has been overturned, and my lamp, broken, but that seems to be it.

A lump swelling in my throat, I approach my mattress.

It looks untouched.

I lift it, and the moment I see green, I choke out a sob of relief. I lift it all the way. All the cash I’ve saved up for the past several years is sitting in one place, untouched.

Thankgod.

I sit on the edge of my bed and take a minute to compose myself, scrubbing my face with my palms.

Stefano says the Russians came here, but I don’t fully trust him—whether he’s lying or jumping to conclusions, it doesn’t make any sense. If they wanted to take us out, they could just do that. This feels more like a scare tactic.

It feels like a message.

I tie half of my hair into a ponytail, go to my overturned desk, shimmy out one of the broken drawers, and pull on a pair of gloves.

I start with Dad’s room.

It’s been months since I’ve been inside his room, maybeeven longer. It’s a little strange to step over the threshold, and stranger still to see it in such disarray. I wonder what Mom would say if I called her, if she would even acknowledge this in any way.

I could call Nico. I have his number now.

A part of me is worried he would tell me it’s nothing.

And an even bigger part of me is worried he would come pick me up, that he’d whisper sweet reassurances in my ear as he brought me to his place. I can’t live with him. I wouldn’t ever be able to shake us apart.

I tug up the edge of my glove. I don’t even know if I can trust him—if he wasn’t a part of this in some way.

It’s too much of a coincidence that all this happened while we were at the café.