‘No,’ he said, quickly. ‘No way.’ Well, that answered the question of whether he had heard of the Marinos before. ‘Jack would never be so stupid. He would never openly consort with the Marinos.’
‘He is,’ I insisted.
My father shook his head.
I pressed on, determined to push Jack from whatever pedestal my father had placed him on. ‘I don’t know what he’s offering Donata Marino but he’s with them, I swear. He’s not even hiding it.’
‘God,’ my father exhaled. He looked like he was about to pass out. He raked a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. ‘After everything. To do something so dangerous. What is he thinking?’
It didn’t really feel like he was talking to me any more, but since I had the answer, I figured I’d supply it.
‘Protection,’ I said. ‘That much is obvious. The Falcones want Jack dead, so he’s hiding with the one family who will happily go against them.’
My father’s eyelids fluttered at half mast. He looked genuinely ill rather than angry. I slid my hands across the table as close to him as I could without touching. I willed my strength into him. ‘Do the Falcones … do they know where Jack is?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ My brain flashed with scenes from Eden. ‘They’ve known for about a week. There was a … showdown of sorts … It was on the news,’ I tacked on, deciding that telling my father I was actually there would be the world’s stupidest mistake. He’d freak out, even more than he was now. ‘I know Jack was there, though … someone I know saw him.’
He recoiled from the information, his eyes growing wide. ‘He was at the Eden shoot-out?’
‘You heard about it?’
His eyes were darting, panicking, as he processed the information that his only family in the whole world apart from my mother and me was now in the middle of the city’s most dangerous blood war. Jack was courting violence and murder, and my father couldn’t get to him – he couldn’t be the protective big brother he was used to being. Jack was on his own.
‘Of course I heard, Soph. Donata Marino’s teenage daughter was just murdered by the Falcones.’ My father indicated behind him in the general direction of the prison. ‘Franco Marino is serving his sentence here. He howled the walls down. A Falcone was murdered in his cell yesterday morning, but nobody’s talking.’ My father composed himself, his mouth turning hard. ‘Listen to me, Sophie, I need you and your mother to leave Cedar Hill immediately.’ He lurched forwards, his hands thudding on the table. ‘Leave the house, leave the diner and get as far away as you can.’
‘What?’ I hissed. ‘But that’s your place. That’s our place. I can’t just leave it.’
He grabbed my hands and squeezed them. ‘Soph, right now, I need you to leave it behind. And I need you to do it tonight.’
A prison guard shouted at us to separate. I snapped my hands away.
‘When you get home, pack your bags, pack your mom’s bag, get in the car and drive.’
I could have crushed the table beneath me. Here was the father I needed, the man who wanted to keep us safe, and he was stuck behind bars barking orders at me. I was so frustrated, so scared. And I felt utterly alone. I was starting to feel wobbly, like my head wasn’t properly attached to my neck. He had just asked me to do the impossible. We had no money, no destination. All we had in the whole world was our house and the diner. That was it.
‘Mom won’t leave. She’s just getting her life back on track.’
‘She’s not.’ His expression turned grim. ‘She’s not sleeping, she’s not eating properly. Her conversations are erratic. She’s having flashbacks. She’s afraid to leave the house. She’s not holding it together, Soph.’
Every word was like an ice pick in my heart. If he had managed to tell how shaken she was without even seeing her, then maybe she was even worse than I thought. ‘She won’t listen to me,’ I repeated.
‘You’re the only person she’ll listen to. You’re her reason to get up in the morning.’
‘Dad,’ I said, half-hushing him. I watched the veins in his temples bulge. ‘You’re panicking. You just need to calm down.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said, clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘You don’t understand how powerful these families are, how close you are to everything now Jack’s tied up in it all.’
‘I do understand,’ I insisted, my own voice turning hard to match his. ‘Trust me, I get it.’
‘Then leave,’ he urged. ‘Before it’s too late.’
‘And what about you?’ I asked, knowing he wasn’t safe in prison after all. Even inside, they could get to each other if they wanted to. A dead Falcone attested to that. And if Jack slipped up, then who better to punish for it than his only brother?
‘I’m keeping my head down, Soph.’ He dipped his head as he said it, too.
‘Five minutes!’ shouted a guard.
Dammit. There was never enough time.
‘Promise me, Soph.’ He took my hands in his.
We were yelled at for contact and I pulled away, scrunched my hands into fists.
‘I—’ I paused. I was thinking about Millie, about the diner, about my bedroom, about the garden that was just beginning to look like a garden, about my school, about my father stuck inside these dangerous walls … ‘I’ll try.’
‘You won’t try,’ he snapped, the urgency of everything catching in his mood. ‘You’ll do this for me, Soph. This whole shitstorm has only just begun. If you stay in Cedar Hill, you’ll be swept up in it. You need to lie low until they burn out from coming at each other. Until a boss is dethroned, until there’s a ceasefire. Until they get the hell out of your town.’
He was right. This was the advice I had come for – what I needed. I had allowed myself the illusion of walking away, but I hadn’t taken any steps; I had only shut my eyes. The truth was, I was stuck between the two sides of this Mafia war, caught up in their murders, in their plans, in their anger, and my heart clenched fearfully for both of them. Something was coming. I could feel it, as though the earth was bubbling underneath my toes, and sooner or later it would burst through.
‘OK.’
The guard was calling time on our meeting. All around us, chairs were screeching away from tables. We stood up. ‘I don’t know when I’ll get to see you again, Dad.’ I felt a sudden overwhelming sense of desperation at the thought of being so far away from him. My breathing started to hitch and I had the most unpleasant sensation in the backs of my eyes.
He pulled me into a hug. ‘I love you, Soph.’
‘I love you, too.’ They were wrenching him off me and pushing him into line. I stumbled backwards. I didn’t notice the tears until they started dripping down my neck. My palms were sticky and it felt like there wasn’t enough space in my lungs to inhale.
I ended up outside the prison without remembering how I made it there. The humidity enveloped me, creeping into my hair and underneath my clothes. My legs felt like lead as I walked.
I sat down on the bench and waited for the bus. The air was heavy and it wasn’t just the promise of rain. Jack and Donata were on the move, and that meant I had to be too. I couldn’t be a sitting duck.
I was so caught up in a stream of anxiety and fear, trying to come up with the right thing to do and the best way to tell Millie – how we would afford it – if we even could do it – that I wasn’t paying attention when the bench creaked and someone sat down beside me. He slid an arm behind him and lazily tilted his body towards me, until the sudden flash of black hair and olive skin in my peripheral vision, coupled with the familiar waft of his aftershave, struck me.
‘Sophie Gracewell, fancy meeting you here.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SPARK
‘So,’ Luca said. ‘Do you think you and I will ever run into each other in a movie theatre or a shopping mall, or will it always be prisons and cemeteries for us? Is that our thing?’
Where was that goddamn bus?
Anger surged inside me, but if I ope
ned my mouth to say the things I really wanted to say I’d explode, and right now I just wanted to be at home with my mother, coming up with a plan. I folded my arms, like that could keep it all inside me. ‘I do not want to talk to you, Luca.’
I could feel the cold prick of his stare on the side of my face. I watched his hands in my periphery, picking at a thread in his dark jeans, settling and unsettling on his lap. ‘I didn’t kill her, Sophie.’
I turned away so my ponytail whipped out behind me and almost slapped him in his face. ‘You may as well have.’
‘No.’ His voice turned hard, and I imagined frustration drawing his brows together. ‘You do not get to paint me as a guiltless monster. Don’t give me a label I haven’t earned. I have enough deserved ones already.’
I didn’t answer. After a couple of seconds he got up, rounded the bench and hunkered down on the other side of me so I was looking right at him. His hands gripped the wood beside my thigh. Every time I tried to look somewhere else, he jerked his head and held my gaze. ‘Look at me. Listen to me.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ I snapped. ‘How many times do I have to tell you: I don’t answer to you!’
‘I don’t care who you answer to. I just need you to know this.’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I tried to release Sara. Valentino wanted her as a bargaining chip, not collateral damage. She was still a teenager.’
‘She was innocent,’ I said, hearing the faintest quiver in my voice.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Una innocente. She wasn’t supposed to die. OK? I promise.’ His voice turned to a growl. ‘I promise.’
I swallowed hard. There was something earnest resonating in Luca’s promise – a realness that was always absent from the ones Nic made – but still, how could I believe him? Sara was dead and Luca was an assassin – convincing and dangerous. He was a rose with thorns, just like his brother. I had fallen for that before.
‘Did she jump into that lake by herself, Luca?’
He fell back on his haunches, a shadow falling across his features. ‘CJ just snapped. Delayed grief, or whatever. Felice had riled him up and then he had the gun pointed at her and she was gone and I couldn’t help her and I have her blood on my hands, and I know that. I know what Sara was at her core – she was nothing like the rest of us. Believe me, I hate myself for playing a part in her death, for not being able to stop a twelve-year-old with a gun, a twelve-year-old who shouldn’t even have a gun, the same way I couldn’t stop my brothers when they were twelve, so you can take your anger and hatred and pile it all the way up on top of mine if you want … but don’t for a second think it’s not eating me up inside.’
He got up and crossed back to where he was sitting, but this time he didn’t look at me when he dropped on to the bench. He dipped his chin to his chest and stared at his hands, and I saw in him the boy I had seen in Valentino’s portrait a long time ago. The person he really was – someone at odds with his life and trapped by a family much bigger than his dreams and desires. Grief surrounded him, and the only thing to do was keep on killing until the tallies were even. But that was the thing: they never would be.
I relented, not wanting to twist the knife any further, knowing now that he was already twisting it himself. ‘You’re not a monster.’
I caught the curl of his lip, the way his teeth nipped hard on it as though to draw blood. ‘What would you know?’ he said, his voice quiet.
‘I know you’re kind,’ I said, feeling a strange urge to comfort him, to soothe the emotional wounds he was inflicting upon himself.
‘Only in comparison to the others.’
‘No,’ I said, feeling surer now that what I was saying was true. ‘You’re like her.’ I remembered the last conversation I had shared with Sara, the way her eyes blazed when she spoke of a different life, another kind of existence she would forever be denied. He must have seen that in her, too. That’s why he picked her up that night, why he wanted to set her free. ‘You have the same heart.’
He snapped his head up and his eyes were so blue I almost lost my train of thought. ‘Are you trying to make it worse, Sophie?’
I offered him a sheepish smile. ‘I’m actually trying to make it better.’
‘You are not doing a good job.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s not exactly my forte. I’m good at changing the subject, though. Speaking of which, what the hell are you doing here?’
‘My grandfather’s brother was murdered in here yesterday.’ He gestured behind him. ‘Paperwork. I got the short straw.’
‘I heard about that.’ I tried to ascertain his level of grief but he seemed calm, his expression matter-of-fact. ‘I’m sorry.’
He tipped his head back so he was staring at the sky. ‘I’m sure you can guess what I’m about to say.’
‘“It is what it is,”’ I said, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. ‘It’s a pile of crap, is what it is.’
‘You’re so eloquent,’ he murmured.
‘You were right about the war,’ I said, wishing he would look at me and engage with the actual seriousness of his possible impending death.
‘Donata’s getting stronger by the day,’ he sighed. ‘There are rumours that the missing Marino twins have resurfaced. They’re rallying.’
I felt myself go pale. ‘What?’
‘Marino morale is high.’ Luca paused, chewing on his lip, before adding grimly, ‘and that is never a good thing.’
‘Where are they?’ I asked, wondering at the scope of revenge that was no doubt on their minds. Felice must be quaking in his expensive leather shoes.
Luca dipped his head further back, a groan of frustration catching in his throat as he exhaled. ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be lounging on this bench right now, Sophie.’
‘Are you worried?’ I asked, thinking of Donata and her troops, of all the ways she could hurt the Falcones. ‘About this … blood war?’
‘Yes, I am.’ He turned his attention back to me. ‘But I’m not worrying about my family, Sophie.’
‘Me?’ I ventured.
‘I don’t know what you were doing in Eden, or what your uncle wanted from you. I expect you won’t tell me anyway, but as long as Donata has access to you, as long as she feels you owe her something, you’re in trouble. I don’t know what your uncle bargained for that protection, but I’d bet it had something to do with you.’
The air was pressing down on us, and I could feel my back grow sticky with the rising humidity. ‘But what could I offer her?’
His jaw tightened, drawing hollows beneath his cheekbones. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I can’t give her anything.’
He inched forward, so subtly I barely noticed it, until I could make out the scar above his lip. He narrowed his eyes and asked, ‘Are you sure about that?’
Heat erupted inside me. I felt like I had been caught, but I hadn’t done anything. I knew about the safe, but it wasn’t like it had anything to do with me. It wasn’t like I was going to do anything about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Valentino’s looking into you, you know.’
Alarm spread across my face. ‘Why?’
He turned and flopped back on to the bench, exhaling at the sky. ‘My mother’s been in his ear.’
‘Oh.’ What a charmer she is. ‘Well, he’s wasting his time.’
‘Donata’s going to come back for you.’ He said it casually, like it was a conversation about the weather, but it stuck in my throat and I gulped it down, knowing it was true.
‘I’ll be OK,’ I told him. An image of my mother and me cramming our car full of trinkets and duvets popped into my head. ‘I have a plan.’
‘What kind of plan?’
‘The secret kind.’
He pulled himself up. ‘Sophie—’ He stopped, chewing on his words.
‘Yes?’ I prompted.
He frowned at the ground, his lips twisting. He was considering something.
‘What is it, Luca?’
I was abo
ut to poke him when he returned his attention to me. Hesitantly, as if the idea was still forming, he said, ‘If you need help, you can ask for it.’ At my surprised silence, he splayed his hands. ‘I mean you can come to us, Sophie. If you need to.’
I almost fell off the bench with shock. ‘What?’ I asked, my eyes bugging out of my head. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Why would I joke about something like this?’ His expression was stony. ‘I know what Donata Marino does to people who won’t bend to her will. You don’t.’
‘A month ago your family was actively trying to murder me.’
‘I know.’ He paused, his fingers drumming below his bottom lip. ‘But things are different now … We can protect you.’
‘Reluctantly,’ I pointed out, reading his obvious hesitance.
He shook his head. ‘The process will be difficult,’ he told me plainly. ‘I don’t offer our protection lightly. But I offer it nonetheless.’
My shock faded a little, bewilderment rising in its place. I didn’t know exactly what he meant by process, but I could plainly see his offer was real, and important.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why would you want to protect us? It wasn’t that long ago that you hated me.’
‘We didn’t know you then,’ he said, before adding, almost begrudgingly, ‘We didn’t care about you then.’
I clamped my hands together on my lap and felt their clamminess. Something squirmed inside me. ‘So, you care about me now,’ I said, meaning to make a joke of it, but it came out soft and low and full of something guttural that made me embarrassed. ‘Why?’
We both knew what I was really asking. What changed your mind?
Luca angled his body towards me, lost in quiet consideration. We were so close, if I edged forward I’d be right under his chin. Why would I edge forward? What was up with me today? When he spoke I could feel his breath on my cheeks, the only moving air in our bubble of stifling humidity. ‘Because I don’t know anybody like you. You’re like … a rare artefact. And it would be a shame if you got broken.’
Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) Page 16
