He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 339

Chapter 339

t really. I’ve heard from plenty of people. You saying it just barely moves the needle. Maybe adds a solid zero–point–zero–one percent.”

$

I smacked his arm, and he shifted, entirely unbothered, staring back at me with the calm, steady warmth that had somehow become one of my favorite

things in the entire world.

We both smiled for a second.

Then, slowly, the air shifted into something heavier.

‘How confident are we about this?” I asked after a moment.

DeLuca turned to look at me properly, something almost amused crossing his face.

“You’re really asking me that?”

Fair point. Confidence was basically his baseline setting, the way breathing was mine. But I needed the actual words out loud, not just the smirk that came

standard with him.

“How confident,” I repeated.

“Confident. He shrugged, returning to his gear. “We have more men than they do. We don’t even need confidence for this one.”

Cool. Great. Very reassuring, from the man currently strapping a knife to his own leg like it was a fashion accessory.

1 let that settle before moving to the question actually sitting underneath it.

“And are we sure about this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father.”

He went still for half a second, just enough that I caught it, and when he spoke again his voice carried a new, careful stiffness.

I’m sure,” he said. “He won’t be easy to kill. He taught me everything I know. But I won’t hesitate. I’ll kill him. For being a monster. For taking away the only angel we ever had.”

I didn’t have a joke ready for that. I didn’t want one, either. Something in his voice had gone somewhere I couldn’t follow him into, somewhere that made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with me. I already had my answer, clearer now than it had ever been, even though some part of me had known it all along. Knowing it that plainly still worried me.

Revenge always sounded simple right up until the person carrying it out actually reached the end of it. And there was still Nico somewhere in the middle of this once his closest friend, which meant this wasn’t even a clean two–person tragedy. It was a three–person one, minimum.

dim ask anything else.

All night.” Deluca said, straightening. Tets move.”

OLG

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15:04 Fri, Sep 401

Chapter 339

His voice carried across the space, and every scattered conversation folded itself down into motion at the sound of it, like he’d flipped a switch nobody cise

could see.

Tned the other way, toward my mother.

I found her seated where we’d left her, and I crouched in front of her, letting her hold my face between her hands like I was still eight years bid and this was

just an ordinary school morning.

“You look tense, she said

“I am. I met her eye

She smiled,

I appre

my

How you will.”

enuinely, but it also threw me a little- I’d braced myself for worry, tears, maybe a dramatic last–minute plea to reconside

I got calm. Actual, functional calm, from a woman who twelve hours ago had drop–kicked a man into unconsciousness. She on before I could form it, her gaze sliding past me toward DeLuca.

now he won’t let anything happen to you.”

anding completely.

too, right, Mom?”

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