Hold Him Like Gravity (Lombardi Family #4)

Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Kick

Oh, God.

I couldn’t do this.

Not when my entire freaking world had just exploded around me.

I needed time to think about what I was going to say to him, to plan, to…

It was useless thinking about what I needed right then, though, with Rico standing there, tension holding his shoulders back and making a muscle tick in his jaw. With pure betrayal in his eyes.

I stumbled back a step, alarm bells in my mind going off, reminding me how dangerous an animal a man could be when he was angry. And even from several feet away, I could feel the sizzle of Rico’s rage.

“Seems like we need to have a talk,” Rico said, moving inside of the apartment and closing the door behind him.

A choked sound escaped me as I scurried back another few feet, instincts telling me to put as much space between us as possible.

He advanced another step, and I rushed to put the couch between us, adrenaline burning through my veins, making me feel racy and hot.

“Christ,” Rico said, straightening as he watched me, seeing something, but I couldn’t tell what. “I’m not going to hurt you, Kick,” he said, brows drawing together.

“I’ve been stealing from you,” I reminded him. I’d been hurt for far less in the past.

“Still ain’t gonna hurt you,” he said, spreading his hands out in an appeasing gesture. “I don’t put my hands on women,” he added.

I wanted to believe him. He’d never been anything but gentle with me. You know, save for times when we both wanted something harder.

But I knew better than anyone that men’s evil could be lying in wait, just looking for the right opportunity to use it against you.

“Kick,” he tried again, voice softer. But I couldn’t trust that his rage and betrayal had just dissolved like that. “What the fuck is going on?” he asked, his voice still gentle.

“I’m so sorry.” The words sobbed out of me. My eyes flooded at the same time, making him blurry until I blinked the tears out, feeling them stream down my cheeks and drop off of my jaw. “I didn’t want to do it!” I added on a loud, pathetic sniffle.

“Okay,” Rico agreed, nodding as he watched me. “Okay. I see that,” he said. “You need to talk to me.”

He was being too nice.

Too understanding.

After all I’d done was lie to and betray him.

Weeks worth of misery bubbled up and boiled over, drowning me in it.

A loud sob escaped me as I dropped down onto my knees, pressing my face against the arm of the couch, and just… purging it all.

The shock, the confusion, the stress, fear, and—worst of all—the guilt. God, the guilt. I’d been drowning in it. Day and night. Knowing what I was doing to the man whose arms I slept in, whose lips I kissed, whose hands now held my heart. Even if, after all this, all he would want to do was throw it away.

“Christ,” Rico said, sounding taken aback.

I couldn’t blame him. I was a mess right then. Loud sobs that racked my body escaped me, uncontrollable, unstoppable.

It all just needed out .

I’d been holding it all in for too long.

And after finding out about Jake’s betrayal, Rico finding out about my own was just… too much.

“Kick, come on,” Rico tried, sounding closer, but I refused to look up. “Come on. Nothing can be that bad,” he said.

But it could.

It was.

“You’re gonna make yourself… sick or something,” he said, sounding horrified by my display.

I couldn’t blame him. Rico was a good man. But he wasn’t exactly the softest man. I couldn’t imagine he was used to, let alone good with, crying women. And I wasn’t just crying. I was hysterical.

“Alright, come on,” he said. Then he was reaching for me, grabbing me under the arms and pulling me to my feet. “Come on. It’s gonna be fine,” he insisted as he pulled me with him onto the couch, pulling me against him, wrapping his arms around me.

Which only made me cry harder.

It seemed like it was never going to end.

Slowly but surely, I ran out of tears to cry. Leaving me just sniffling pathetically.

Rico bent forward, grabbing a handful of take-away napkins and handing them to me.

I blew my nose then slowly untangled from him, embarrassment mingling with everything else.

“Okay. Now that that’s out,” he said, and his casual tone almost made me want to laugh. “You ready to talk about it?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“Gotta pick somewhere.”

“I killed my ex,” I blurted out, turning to watch his reaction. I expected shock, disbelief, even terror.

I got none of that.

Instead, he just gave me a little nod.

“Yeah? Bet he had it coming.”

My brows knitted at his reaction, but I had to keep going. I owed him the truth.

“He was abusive,” I admitted. “I kept trying to leave. But he just… it never worked. Then, it did. For a while. Until he found me at work. Cornered me in the alley when I was taking out the trash. And I just… lost it,” I told him.

“Good. Hope it hurt,” Rico said.

“That was why I fled Brooklyn. I thought the cops might be coming for me. But then… they never did. I didn’t realize until a few weeks ago that they didn’t because I didn’t kill him.”

“He tracked you down?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“That’s the complicated part, I guess.”

“I got time.”

“The night of the robbery…”

“Yeah?”

“When the one guy… had me in your office, another guy came in to pull him away, telling him that I’d hit some silent alarm and the cops were coming.”

“Okay…”

“That second guy? He had a tattoo on his arm that I recognized.”

“Your ex?”

“My brother,” I clarified. “I went looking for him. But he was missing. Had been for a while, it seemed like. And then one night, I came home to find that guy from the office in my apartment. And then my ex walked out of the hallway. And… and they had Jake.”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean had him?”

“Like kidnapped. Or held hostage? I saw a video. He was all beaten up.” Except, of course, judging by his face I’d seen earlier that night, he’d never been beaten. It had just been, I don’t know, really good makeup, I guess.

“Okay,” Rico agreed, strangely calm at such shocking news. “I’m assuming your ex wanted money?”

“Yes. He said I had to start skimming off of the register and paying him each week.”

“To what end?” Rico asked, sitting forward, elbows going to his thighs.

“He didn’t really have an end. It was weird. He didn’t seem to think I would get caught. The register has to be balanced out.”

“Keep going,” Rico said, voice a little tighter. “Is that the whole thing?”

“I mean, I started taking the money. I didn’t want to, I swear. It was killing me to keep—“

“Babe,” he cut me off. “Right now, facts. We can do feelings later.”

“O…kay,” I agreed, unsure about his recent change in demeanor. Feeling antsy, I started to pace a bit. “But I just… I couldn’t be under his thumb forever. I started to try to stake out parts of the Bronx where I thought he might be.”

“Did you find him?”

“Not until tonight,” I told him. “I just… got lucky, really. He was coming out of a Chinese restaurant. I followed him home.”

“And then?”

“Then I snuck in and went to the basement. I thought that if I could confirm that my brother was there, I would call the police and tell them that Kyle was holding Jake against his will. Torturing him.”

“But you didn’t call the police,” he concluded.

“The basement was empty. So I was glad I didn’t call. I figured I could maybe follow Kyle to the location where he was keeping Jake. But… but then…” I broke off, taking a few deep, steadying breaths.

“Finish it. What happened?”

His head was ducked, so I looked at him, my heart shattering in my chest, knowing I’d broken something that had been rare and precious, something I didn’t think I’d ever get again.

“I was leaving and I saw someone.”

“Your ex?”

“No,” I said, sucking in a deep breath as the metallic taste of bitterness filled my mouth. “It was my brother.”

“What?” Rico asked, head lifting, pinning me with his dark gaze.

I was frozen in the spot, incapable of moving as he stared at me.

“It was Jake. He was walking out of Kyle’s building,” I told him, lower lip wobbling with my still-fresh anger. “And as I was leaving, I saw an email from my brother’s roommate, saying Jake had paid him for the rent and he’d picked up some of his stuff. He was never kidnapped. They were working together.”

“Your brother and your abusive ex .”

It wasn’t exactly a question. But I found myself answering anyway.

“Yes.”

Suddenly, that carefully-contained air about Rico disappeared as he flew off of the couch quickly enough to make me go back a step.

“Do they know who the fuck I am?” he raged as he stalked away from me, moving toward the kitchen. Like there was too much rage inside of him to stay still. “Do they know who they are fucking with?”

Did I ?

This wasn’t the Rico I’d known for months, who I’d been intimate with for weeks.

This wasn’t someone I recognized at all.

“Rico,” I called, voice soft, almost trembling. The sound seemed to break through whatever was going on in his mind right then, making him turn back, watching me.

“Yeah?”

“Who are you?”