Page 103 of When She Falls (The Fallen)
I snap out of it, throwing him to the floor.
He clutches his throat and wheezes for breath.
Fuck.The pain he inflicted on me still runs deep, as does my need to make him pay, but this isn’t the right place or time.
He’ll get what’s coming to him.
I take a step back just as a woman peeks through the crack in the door.
She makes a loud gasp and rushes into the room.
My heart jumps into my throat when I see who it is.
Sara.
“Nunzio!”
She brushes by me and falls to her knees by the man who’s hateful eyes blaze in my direction.
My past slams into me, memories flooding in.
I met her a few months after Nunzio tried to kill me on the playground. She was sitting on her own at a café in the neighborhood, and when I walked by her, she smiled. She had a beautiful smile. Kind eyes that were the same color as the sky. I said an awkward hello and somehow mustered up the courage to ask if I could buy her another espresso. She said yes.
That’s how it began.
I fell hard and fast. So did she, or at least that’s what I thought. Eventually, I told her about Nunzio and what he’d done to me. It was a stain on my life, a painful past that made me feel weak and ashamed.
She listened. Sympathized.
Then a few months later, she left me for him.
I blink, studying the woman she’s become. She’s aged, but from what I can see, she’s just as beautiful. Thick eyeliner frames her light-blue eyes and wavy dark hair—I used to love that hair—cascades down her back.
What kind of a life did she make with Nunzio? I refuse to believe someone like him could be a decent man to anyone around him.
“What happened?” she asks in a panicked voice, reaching for his arm. He jerks it away from her and starts to hobble back up.
“I’m fine, Sara.”
She reaches for him again, and he snarls at her, “I said I’m fine.”
Hurt blooms over her expression.
There used to be a time when seeing her hurt would drive me into a fit, but as I look at her now, I feel nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
She twists her head and looks at me. “Who is that?”
Ten years have passed since she last saw me. I look different now.
Iamdifferent now.
“No one,” Nunzio growls, dusting himself off, but she keeps staring at me.
Finally, recognition flashes inside her eyes. “Cassio?”
I don’t answer. There’s nothing left for us to say to each other, so I turn away and exit through the door.
