Rita Bailey, long-time resident of Cedar Hill, was visibly stunned as she visited the site to see the destruction, commenting, ‘I’m reeling. How could anyone have seen this coming? This is such a tragic thing to happen.’
Details of Celine Gracewell’s memorial service have not been released. It is not known whether the diner will be rebuilt.
PART V
‘I come to lead you to the other shore;
into the eternal darkness;
into fire and into ice.’
Dante Alighieri, ‘ Inferno’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
DARKNESS
They told me I was in shock.
I didn’t feel the shock. There was just emptiness, like someone had tipped me over and rattled me until everything fell out. My arms were red, the skin behind my wrists rising in angry blisters towards my elbows. I couldn’t feel it. I studied the white gauze as it encircled my flesh, pressing against the angry wound. A nurse cut the ends of my singed hair. They put salve on my ears. I hadn’t noticed they were burnt. They gave me tablets and I took them.
When they talked to me, their tones dipped, and I watched chapped lips moving around exaggerated syllables. Is there someone we can call? Brows creased. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Sophie? A gentle hand laid on top of mine. Do you have someone you can stay with?
A policewoman escorted me to my house. I don’t remember what time it was when I shut the door behind me. I trudged upstairs, my brain still thick with fog. I sat beneath the showerhead, feeling cold beads sprinkle away the smoke that clung to my skin. My body was blotched with red. The shampoo lathered away the rancid scent of rotting and I emerged, naked and zombie-like, into an empty house without understanding why it was empty.
As morning dawned, grief reached its fingers inside my head and plucked me from my deadened sleep. Understanding hit me like a slash of sunlight through my curtains and I sprang into wakefulness, coughing black sludge across my pillow.
Screams ripped from my chest as the pain soared, every memory colliding at once until she was everywhere, her face etched behind my eyelids when I blinked.
I collapsed on to the floor, curling my arms tight around my knees until I was as small as I could make myself. Tears pooled inside me, blooming across my chest, but I couldn’t get them out. I couldn’t weep or cry and the tears bled inside me, icy and unshed.
I slept alone. I missed the soft padding of my mother’s slippers in the hallway, the appearance of her face at my doorway wishing me goodnight. The darkness was a gift, but the silence that came with it was crushing.
CHAPTER FORTY
THE PHONE CALL
The ceiling blurred in and out of focus. I rolled out of bed and stood in front of my wardrobe. The grief resurfaced with sharp urgency, jabbing at my sides. I sank to the ground, anchoring myself against the carpet, and waited for the tears that never came. Instead they puffed up inside my chest, pushing outwards like a thousand tiny hands.
There were voices downstairs. It was late and the sun was starting to dip. It took me a minute to recall what day it was – Saturday. I used to love Saturdays. Pots were clanging in the kitchen. Mrs Bailey was making dinner again. She wasn’t a good cook but she had come by every day since it had happened. She had rallied, and I felt bad for judging her so harshly in the past. Millie was downstairs. She had stuck by me every day and even though I could find little to say to her – to anyone – the familiarity of her accent wafting through the house brought me some comfort in the darkest moments.
I scrolled through my phone. They had found it in the parking lot after that night. They said it got separated from me in the blast – the technology somehow miraculously surviving intact – but I knew better. He had left it there for me. Don’t think about him.
I had four missed calls from an unknown number. I clicked back into the home screen. My mother and I stared back at me, flashing identical cheesy smiles, our heads touching against each other so that our hair blended into one golden halo.
The pressure on my chest tightened. I stowed my phone away and scrambled back into bed. There was no point in getting up when the day was already disappearing. I turned on to my side and stared unblinkingly at the wall. Flames started to creep into my mind, the searing hotness pulsing through my bandaged arms. I blinked until my head pounded from the effort and the flames melted away.
The house phone was ringing downstairs. A fit of coughing seized me, and I spluttered into my pillow, trying to stifle it. I came away from the fabric feeling woozy. The pressure intensified, closing around my chest until my lungs felt like they were being crushed into small papery balls. I shrivelled up, pulling my knees into my chest and bowing my head against them.
‘Are you asleep?’ Millie was at my door. I raised my head and blinked her into focus. Her hair was piled on her head, her face drawn tight with exhaustion.
‘I’m awake.’
She edged inside, the phone clutched in her hand. ‘It’s your dad again …’
‘No.’
She perched against my bedside table. ‘Soph, you need to talk to him.’
I shook my head. My voice was unsteady. ‘I can’t, Mil.’
Her face crumpled, the concern turning to anguish. ‘You need each other right now, Soph. You can’t go through this alone. You shouldn’t have to.’
I imagined what it would be like to have my father there with me, to hug him and not have to worry about prison guards pulling us apart. What a wonderful thing to stand against the tide of grief and anchor ourselves to each other. But that was before everything. Now, when I pictured him, I saw Vince Marino. I saw a liar.
‘I’m not alone,’ I mumbled. ‘I have you.’
She clutched my hand in hers. ‘I don’t know what to do, Soph. I don’t know how to make it better. Please.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘You need to let him in.’ It sounded reasonable, but Millie didn’t know what I knew. She hadn’t seen what I had seen inside the diner. The switchblades. The ruby ring. My father had been feeding me lies my whole life. He wore his mask so carefully I had never thought to look beneath it.
She replaced her hand in mine with the cordless phone. ‘Talk to him,’ she urged. ‘He doesn’t get a lot of time on these calls and he’s been trying you all week, Soph. Please talk to your dad.’
She left, and I looked at the phone in my hand, listening to the faint droning of a man I didn’t really know at all.
‘Soph? It’s Dad. Are you there?’
I opened the locker drawer and took out Evelina’s ring. I had stuck it in my pocket during a moment of madness at the diner. It was the only thing that had made it home with me. Everything else was rubble and ash.
‘Soph? I know you’re there. Can you pick up, please?’
I studied the ring as it glinted in the palm of my hand. The ruby was blood-red. Sempre. But nothing lasts for ever.
‘Come on, Soph.’
I pressed the receiver to my ear. ‘Hello, Vince.’
I caught the end of his sharp inhale. ‘Soph—’
‘Hey, here’s a funny thing,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m a Marino.’
‘I know you’re angry—’
‘And did you know,’ I continued, my voice rising, ‘there was a secret safe in the diner?’
My dad’s breathing quickened, and I could almost feel his panic thundering down the line. ‘Listen, I’ve applied for furlough. I’m going to try and get out so we can—’
‘And did you know,’ I said, my voice rising higher still, ‘that before your Marino family burnt down our livelihood, I found a bunch of Falcone trophies? A switchblade for every unmarked grave, I’d bet.’ I drowned out his answers, getting shriller and louder. ‘Did you know there was a ruby ring in there? Did you know that ring belongs to Felice Falcone’s missing wife? Did you know there’s a list of Falcone targets written in your handwriting? Did you know Angelo Falcone was actually murdered? And did you know that all my life you’ve been one huge fucking liar?’
>
His reply was lost in the air. I hurled the phone at the wall and it broke, falling to the floor in bits of plastic.
I slammed the ring down on my bedside table. I thought that would have made me feel better, but it didn’t.
But at least now he knew.
Now there were no more lies between us.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE UNWELCOME
Millie crept into my room half an hour later. Her eyes flicked to the broken phone, narrowing in understanding as she stepped over it. ‘So … that didn’t go well, then,’ she surmised.
‘You have no idea.’
She huffed a sigh and cocked her head, studying my pathetic, crumpled form. Eventually she said, ‘I think you should try and get out of bed.’
This was not the first time she had suggested this. It wasn’t even the tenth time.
I stared at the white flecks in my fingernails. ‘What’s the point?’
She sat down at the end of my bed. ‘Living, Soph. Living is the point.’
‘I am living,’ I mumbled.
‘No. You’re existing.’
I flicked my gaze up, but I couldn’t manage the half-smile I was going for. ‘What’s the difference?’
‘You know the difference,’ she said softly. She seemed so small and tired at the end of my bed. Her hoodie sleeves were pulled over her hands and her face was drawn. Guilt swelled inside me.
‘You don’t have to spend all your time here with me, Mil.’ I gestured around me – at my messy room, my messy life. ‘I know it’s depressing. I know I’m not exactly performing in the friend department. I haven’t been for a while.’
‘Soph,’ she chastised. ‘You know I’m not going anywhere. What kind of friend would I be then?’
‘The kind I’m being?’ I shrugged. ‘You shouldn’t have to be in the darkness with me.’
‘I think the whole point of being a good friend is being in the darkness. I’ll be your light, until you can be it yourself again. How about that?’
I mustered a smile, and for a moment it felt like my heart was swelling just a little. ‘You’re very good at this,’ I told her.
‘Well.’ She flashed me a grin. ‘I do like to overachieve at all the important things.’
I leant back against my pillow and let the silence fall around us. Millie shifted, examining me in the falling light, and I knew it was coming even before she said it – the inevitable. ‘So,’ she began, tracing circles on the duvet. ‘School starts back next week.’
She might as well have dropped a fresh heap of trash on my face. I grimaced. ‘I’d rather gouge my eyes out and eat them.’
‘It’s our senior year. It’ll be fun.’ There was little, if any, conviction in her reply.
I imagined the dull thud of my feet in the hallways, the thunderous clanging of lockers between classes, the mindless nattering filling the air, the soul-destroying existence of my life inside those walls. If I was a source of interest before, I’d be the main attraction now. ‘I’m not ready.’
Millie gripped my leg through the duvet. ‘You have to make yourself ready, Soph. You have to grit your teeth and do it, you know? It’s the last year. And then everything changes. You can do it. We both can.’
I didn’t answer her. The conversation had tired me out, and I didn’t feel like wading into the matter of school just then. After a while Millie accepted defeat and rolled off the end of my bed. I burrowed further in, feeling vaguely embarrassed by my petulance. She got up and crossed over to the doorway. I could feel her hovering, her fingers scratching lightly on the wood.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
She measured her words, starting out slowly like she was still unsure of whether to say anything at all. ‘I know you told me you don’t want to talk about that night yet. And I’ve tried to respect that. But I don’t see how I can keep this from you any longer …’
I sat up. ‘Keep what from me?’
‘The Falcone boys are downstairs. They’ve been here for a while, actually, but I knew you didn’t want any reminders of … of what happened …’ She trailed off, examining her shoes. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you, but I think you should know. They won’t go away. They don’t want to leave you unprotected … in case …’
In case he comes back for me.
Millie had thought me crazy for not telling the police about Jack and Donata. I had considered it, in my darkest moments, but I wanted two things that snitching couldn’t assure me: a fate worse than prison for them, and my own survival.
Millie looked uneasy. ‘Nic says he won’t leave until he sees you. Mrs Bailey has been swatting him with tea towels all week.’
All week.
I frowned at my duvet, zeroing in on the swirls. The pain had regressed to a dull thud in the base of my chest again. I hadn’t thought about Nic much since the fire, but there were things that needed to be said, and maybe it was time to deal with that. ‘Can you tell him to come up?’
Millie bounded into the hallway and down the stairs. ‘Nic?’ she called, and for the first time I registered the low timbre of a new voice and realized it had probably been there all along.
When Nic appeared in my doorway he was paler than I’d ever seen him. His hair was messy and his jawline was marked with the dark shadow of week-old stubble, making him seem much older. He had a bandage running the entire length of his arm and another wrapped around his hand.
He didn’t move to come inside, though I could tell by the quiet shuffling that he wanted to. What must I have seemed like to him? A wild animal waiting to pounce, or something wounded and caged?
He fiddled with the cross around his neck, pulling it up and down the chain so that it made a faint grinding noise in the silence.
‘How are you?’ The words rasped in his throat. The smoke had gotten him bad.
I spread my arms wide by way of explanation: I looked like I had been dragged through a field of manure backwards and then dressed in a dumpster by a blind person.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry she’s gone.’
Don’t think about her. I scrunched my thoughts down and looked at Nic instead. It was impossible not to think about the last time I had seen him. I remembered the dumpster-groove in the kitchen’s metal door, the way Nic’s eyes had flashed as he faced off with my uncle. Don’t think about Jack.
I had dragged Nic’s lifeless body away from the fire that destroyed my life … Don’t think about the fire. I had gone to help him instead of making sure my mother was safe. I should have checked, but I didn’t. I should have helped her first, but I didn’t. Don’t think about her. He had pulled me away from her white sneakers when I was almost close enough to touch them.
‘Sophie?’ Nic’s body was dipping across the threshold, his fingers digging into the doorframe.
‘What?’
He blinked, surprised by my bluntness. ‘I’m worried about you.’
Now that he was standing across from me, I realized I didn’t want to see him. All our memories were bad ones – I couldn’t remember the good ones, couldn’t pretend his kisses would make all the darkness go away. Everything was too clear now.
‘You don’t have to be a Marino any more,’ he said quietly. ‘Not if you don’t want to be.’
‘I was never a Marino,’ I shot back. ‘You know that.’
He looked away, sheepish. He had thought I lied to him all along – I could see it in his expression.
‘And I sure as hell am not a Marino now,’ I added, hearing the venom in my words.
‘Come back with me,’ he said. ‘We’ll avenge your mother together. We’ll kill them for everything they’ve taken from us. You’ll have your revenge, I promise.’
What a way to comfort someone in the depths of grief – to promise death and destruction – and yet I felt charged by it. This was Nic – there were things he could never give me, empathy he could never really feel, but this, this was his world and of all the promises he had ever made and unmade, I k
new he would keep this one. And that brought its own set of complications, because as much as he would do this for me, deep down it would always truly be for him.
‘Gino,’ I remembered. ‘They shot Gino.’
Nic’s expression darkened. ‘He’s in hospital. He’s hanging in there.’
‘Oh.’ I nodded, the barest trace of relief rising inside me. A small mercy. ‘Good.’
‘They’ll pay for that too,’ he said, his voice hard.
I looked at him – at every part of him, really, wholly – for the first time. I looked past the cheekbones, the searing eyes and the gentle curve of his lips. I had seen his body come alive, his fingers constricting around throats, his hand wielding a knife, his actions charged with murderous intent.
His T-shirt was creased slightly above his waistline. Even now, in times of mourning, he carried a loaded gun. He was an assassin – he had killed before and he would kill again and he wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Nic was raw, heart-thudding passion personified, and he couldn’t measure it out for certain parts of his life and deny the others. He cared about me, sure, but he cared about other things, too. And they were darker, violent things that made up who he really was at his core. He had dumped Sara Marino in the lake. He had carved words of warning into her skin. And here he was, glittering in the duskiness – an angel sprung from hell.
Yes, I would say something to him; I would say the only thing pushing against my brain. I would say the thing that needed to be said.
The words came out clear and loud. ‘You hesitated.’
‘What?’
‘You didn’t drop your gun.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Carefully, I extracted the memory from That Night. ‘In the diner, when you and Luca came in through the back door, you both raised your guns. I looked inside the barrel of yours as you aimed it with full confidence at my head.’
Comprehension moved through Nic’s features, relaxing them. ‘But I wouldn’t have shot you.’
Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) Page 27
