That night I lay awake in bed imagining a car rumbling down my street, every hour, like clockwork.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SHADOW IN THE GARDEN
I was lost in a thick dreaming fog when Nic’s voice floated into my consciousness.
‘Sophie?’
The sound perforated the vision, filling up the endless space around me.
‘Are you here?’
The Nic in my nightmare wasn’t speaking to me. He was standing, like he always did, over the dying figure of my uncle, as blood coated the floor beneath them. I was across the blackness, leaning over Luca, with my hands pressed tight against his torso. He looked the same as he always did, as I had come to remember him even in my waking moments – paper-white and utterly still. I knew every shadow on his face, the quirk of his lips, the length of his lashes. I stared at him every night in this dream while his blood lapped around my hands. When I tried to call out, the sound always vanished into a puff of nothingness. And Nic? Nic never spoke to me. He wasn’t speaking now, either. He wasn’t even facing me.
‘Sophie? I’m sorry, I know it’s late.’
But still, that voice, so insistent, so familiar … Where was it coming from?
‘Sophie?’
I sat up in bed, half expecting Nic to burst out of my closet. I grabbed my phone and flung open my curtains, peering into the garden. Below me, Nic was lit up by the sensor light above the kitchen window. He was waiting for me with all the innocence of someone who didn’t know any better. But Nic did know better, and being in my garden at 1.12 a.m. meant he was way out of bounds.
My window was already open. ‘Nic?’
I was still groggy with sleep, halfway between incredulity and reality, and my heart and my head were doing a thousand flip-flops a minute.
He raised his hands, palms facing outwards. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m breaking all the rules.’
‘The only rule,’ I hissed back, conscious not to speak too loudly and wake my mother. Since she hadn’t shooed him out of the garden already, she wasn’t downstairs.
‘Come down?’ he said, his eyebrows lifting.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked, the dregs of sleep leaving me. ‘Has someone been hurt?’ A sea of possibilities rushed through my mind.
‘No,’ he said, lowering his voice to a less audible whisper. ‘It’s nothing like that. No one is hurt.’
I could almost hear the yet in the pause that followed.
‘Oh.’ I hadn’t realized how hard my heart had been thumping until it dulled again. ‘Then what is it? What’s going on?’
His smile was tight. ‘Can you just come down, please? I’m starting to feel self-conscious.’
I knew I shouldn’t. That was a no-brainer. But it’s hard to avoid something when it’s right in front of you …
‘Stop weighing it up, Sophie. Just come down, I have to talk to you.’
His expression, steeped in moonlight, held a level of anxiety I hadn’t come to associate with Nic. He was rattled. Something had happened.
‘Fine,’ I conceded, curiosity and something else – something mutinous – pushing me from the window. ‘But only to see that you’re all right.’
I grabbed the switchblade and shoved it in the pocket of my sweatpants. It settled me, and as I descended the stairs with light footfall I relaxed in the feeling of it thumping against my leg.
The night was surprisingly cold. Now that I was close to Nic I could see just how jumpy he really was. There were rims of darkness underneath his eyes, and he shuffled uncomfortably on his feet as we stood apart from one another.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘I miss you,’ he said in one long, heavy sigh. ‘I hate not knowing what you’re doing or if you’re OK … after everything that happened. It doesn’t feel right.’
The more I studied him, the more dishevelled he appeared. His hair was more messy than tousled, curling strands brushing across his forehead and dipping into his eyes. There were days of stubble shadowing his jawline. ‘This is what we agreed,’ I said softly. ‘This is the right thing.’
The only thing.
‘I don’t like it, Sophie,’ he repeated. ‘There should be another way.’
How easily he could compartmentalize everything – separate the girl he wanted from the family she came from. For me, everything came in one big jumble. ‘There isn’t another way,’ I told him. ‘And if there was, it probably wouldn’t be the right one. You can’t just come around here, Nic. It makes it harder for both of us.’
He was scrutinizing me. Eventually he dropped his shoulders and his fists went limp at his sides. ‘So this is really what you want?’
I knew I should say ‘yes’, but somehow I couldn’t. ‘I don’t know,’ I told him truthfully. ‘I just know I don’t want to be afraid any more. I don’t want my mother to be afraid either …’
He nodded, a frown twisting on his lips. ‘But you’re not afraid of me.’
‘Maybe not of you,’ I said, feeling out my answer. ‘But I’m afraid of what you’ve done. Where you come from. You know that.’
He raked his hands through his hair. He seemed so out of it, so tired.
‘I’ve never seen you like this,’ I said, pulling back.
‘Stress,’ he said, exhaustion softening his voice. ‘I’m stressed.’
‘Stress?’ I repeated, studying him.
He raised his face towards the sky, to the blanket of stars that stretched overhead. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Family stuff.’
‘And you never think about leaving it behind? For college? For normality?’ For good?
He simply shook his head. I remembered his mother’s words: He would never choose you over his family. It was true, and I knew it. Nic would never leave the family, not for me, not for him, not for anything. The only way out was in a coffin.
When he spoke again, his gaze was no longer on the stars and his voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘Do you remember the last time we were here together?’
‘Everything was different then.’
‘You let me kiss you,’ he said, his gaze unwavering.
‘Even though you shouldn’t have.’
I felt the warmth of his breath in his response. ‘I never could follow the rules when it came to you, Sophie.’
‘We should have followed them, Nic.’
He shut his eyes tight, inhaling sharply. ‘Don’t say that. Please.’
‘It’s the truth.’
He fell silent, and I felt compelled to fill up the space.
‘You moved house,’ I said, changing the subject. I was trying to ignore the intimacy that still lingered between us, trying to remind myself why I should be upstairs in bed, away from him.
‘Did it surprise you?’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just strange to think of the Priestly mansion empty again after it was so … full of life.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, clearing his throat. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, and in a flicker he was boyish again, a grin pushing against his cheekbones. ‘Do you miss me, Sophie?’
I looked away from him, at the new flowerbeds blooming in the darkness – my mother’s anchor to her sanity. An anchor she needed because of this boy and his family. ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ I said quietly. ‘Please, Nic.’
He flinched. ‘OK,’ he said, his voice small and quiet now – barely as audible as the branches rustling around us. ‘Look, I know I shouldn’t have come here tonight, but I was worried about you. I wanted to see you, and sometimes when I get an idea in my head it sort of has to play itself out. It doesn’t mean I’m not still aware of everything that’s happened, all the pain you’ve suffered because of me. Because of my weakness.’
I could almost pinpoint it – that feeling of falling back into him. Already, I had inched closer. I could sense his warmth pressing against the air, his eyes the only thing I could focus on. It was dangerous. It was the opposite of what I was supposed to be doing. ‘If
we can only be together at night, hidden like this, whispering so no one can hear us, then we shouldn’t be together at all.’
‘There’s always the future, though.’ His lips parted, his breath hitching as the idea took over him.
I pressed my thumb into my palm and felt the dull sting of the blade’s cut, trying to clear my mind. ‘There will never be a future where my father didn’t kill your father. Where you didn’t try and kill my uncle.’ My voice hardened. ‘After I screamed at you not to do it.’
He shook his head angrily. ‘There will be a future, when this is all behind us.’
‘Behind you, maybe,’ I told him, stepping back so that my back grazed the stray branches of a bush. ‘But not behind me.’
He came towards me, pushing the warmth back into the air. ‘Do you want to talk about it, then? I’ll talk about it until my voice runs out. Do you want me to tell you I’m sorry a thousand times? I am sorry that it hurt you and that it changed the way you look at me. I hate that you look away when I try to get your attention. I hate that you pull away from me when I get close to you. I hate that I can see the moment when you remember your uncle and your voice turns cold. I hate that what my family stands for drove a wedge between us. I hate that that’s how we were brought together. I hate that I’ll always question whether it would have worked if we had been from the same world. I hate that I hurt you, but I had to do what I did. I can’t apologize for that. Jack would have killed Luca. He would have killed me. It was about my family. It was about protection. It’s no different to what your dad did.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ I reeled from his final words. ‘You can’t compare the two like it will get you off the hook or something. You know what my dad did was an accident. That was different.’
‘Was it?’
Had the wind stopped blowing? Suddenly I was back at Felice’s house, staring into Valentino’s cold cerulean eyes, listening to him question everything I knew about my father, about his intentions, about his soul.
Venom dripped from my answer. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
A shadow flickered across Nic’s face, bleeding deeper into the pools beneath his eyes. He ground his jaw and swallowed the words forming in his throat.
My voice went deathly quiet. ‘Do you have something to say?’
‘Never mind.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m tired. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’
‘You’re not the only one who’s tired, Nic.’
‘I know,’ he said, switching back to the Nic I was used to. Calm, quiet, focused. He lifted his arm as if he was going to reach out to me, but then caught it in mid-air and curled his hand into a fist again. ‘It’s hard seeing you and knowing it can’t last. I just … I had to.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I guess we can’t go on pretending the warehouse didn’t happen.’
I shrugged. ‘He survived. You all did. For that, at least, I’m thankful.’
Nic unclenched his teeth. ‘Do you know where he is?’
‘What?’
‘Do you know who’s hiding Jack?’ he repeated, his voice softer. Honeyed. As if softness could ever mask his meaning.
I blanched. ‘Nic, this is not something I’d ever discuss with you.’
Something happened – so quick I almost missed it – but his chin snapped up, and his eyes flashed with something. ‘Just give me something, Soph, so we can be prepared. Please.’
‘No,’ I cautioned. ‘Don’t put me in this position.’
‘Is he with the Marinos? That’s what Valentino thinks. But I said there’s no way they’d take him in. It’s Eric Cain, isn’t it? He’s got connections with the Irish mob in Boston. Or are there more? Has the Golden Triangle Gang re-banded?’
‘Is that why you came here?’ I asked. ‘To sweet-talk me into revealing my uncle’s hiding place?’
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Of course not.’
‘Then why ask when you know how sour it will make things?’
‘Because if we don’t know who’s hiding him, we don’t know who might be coming for us.’
‘Has your family been following me?’ I asked, as the purple-haired girl dropped into my mind. ‘Do you think I’ll lead you to him or something?’
‘What are you talking about?’ he countered, bewilderment creasing his forehead. ‘Of course we haven’t. I promised you we’d never do that again.’
‘And yet here you are, still trying to get information out of me!’
Nic muttered an Italian curse. ‘Come on, Sophie. I was just asking.’
I turned from him. ‘I’m going inside now.’
‘Wait.’ He skirted around me, his frame suddenly wide and tall in the doorway. ‘This kind of went off-track.’
‘Did it?’ I asked, crossing my arms in front of me. ‘Or did you just forget to be less obvious about it this time?’
He took a step, and before I knew it, his hands were on my arms. His shoulders slumped, defeated. ‘I’m an idiot. I’m the world’s biggest idiot. I just wanted to see you.’
I knew if I stayed this close to him for another minute, if I let my defences drop any further, then I’d be the world’s biggest idiot. ‘Goodnight,’ I said, sliding out from beneath his grip.
By the time I’d shut and locked the kitchen door behind me, he was gone and the sensor light had flickered out. I pressed my forehead against the window and wondered how badly he had wanted to see me tonight and how deeply he needed to know about Jack. Had it been desperation or longing that drove him to me?
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE MANSION
The next phase of my mildly successful social rehabilitation was to meet Millie at the diner after her morning shift ended. I had texted her about Nic’s garden visit right after it happened. The entire incident was, in my best friend’s measured response, a ‘giant no-no’, a mistake that necessitated ‘further and immediate action’. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get the Falcones out of my head, but I was glad she was willing to help me.
It was surprisingly difficult to navigate the familiar streets of Cedar Hill, counting the breaths as I heaved them out, trying to make myself look ahead instead of at the pavement.
I clutched the switchblade, trying not to think of my mother who was still at home, tethered to our house. I tried not to replay the watery smiles, the shifting gazes, the way she kept looking past me for the possibility of danger.
At the end of Lockwood Avenue, I stopped walking and peered up at the turrets of the old Priestly house. The driveway was empty and a chain hung around the gates, linking them closed. I pushed them as far apart as they would go and slipped through. I still had time to kill, and even now, after all this time, there was something about the house that called to me. It was time to say goodbye to it for good.
Stray leaves littered the porch. I had to stop myself from brushing them away. They would only gather again. The back garden was as it had been during my last visit. The grass was almost as tall as my knees, and chunks of old fountain and wooden tables were strewn across the lawn. I pressed my nose against the patio doors, studying the kitchen. The last time I was here Valentino was sketching at the table, Felice was pontificating about an Italian murderer and I was hovering in the middle of a lethal family rivalry without knowing it. The family crest was hanging somewhere else now.
I stumbled backwards. My throat had grown tight, and out of habit I clutched at my ribs. I couldn’t tell if my visit was helping or not, but the sudden sense of closure was overwhelming.
I circled the house again. In the driveway I stared up at the old turrets, feeling a stirring sadness in my bones. It felt peculiar, standing alone in the grounds of a place that had brought such great passion and grave danger into my life. Jack’s dealings with the Falcones were forged long ago in the underbelly of Chicago, but my time with the Falcones had taken root here, in the driveway of this lonely old mansion.
I pulled Luca’s switchblade from my pocket and rotated it in my hand.
Underneath, the jagged cut in the centre of my palm glowed red. This knife was the last piece of them. I could leave it here with the rest of my memories, but somehow it didn’t seem right. To drop it in a place they would never revisit seemed like cheating. I would return it to Luca, or at least to somewhere he would find it.
I stuffed it back in the pocket of my shorts and turned for the diner, trailing my fingers along the tree bark as I retreated down the driveway.
I saw it then. Outside the black gates, halfway down the other side of the street, was the black Mercedes. I craned my neck and stood on my tiptoes. Black rims! There was no mistaking it; the car was back and it was getting bolder, following me around in broad daylight.
I marched towards the end of the driveway. Down the street the car door was flung open and the girl with purple hair emerged on to the footpath. She was wiry but small, wearing low-rise jeans and a black tank top. A Falcone, I thought. There were definite shades of Elena Genovese-Falcone in her. She had to be one of them, a spy probably, which only added another lie to the pile Nic had built already.
This had gone on long enough.
I squeezed myself through the gap in the chained gates again. It was harder this time because I had an audience, and I was vaguely embarrassed of my squishing cheeks as I slid them against the metal. My attempts at intimidating her wouldn’t exactly thrive after my compacted-chipmunk display. She waited, propped against her car as I surged towards her. I might not have had any official karate training, but I was damn scrappy – if I needed to, I could probably kick her in the face at least once if she tried to come at me.
‘Persephone!’ A shout rang out behind me. I almost stopped but I registered the voice in time. Mrs Bailey, Cedar Hill’s resident gossip merchant, was not about to mess up my showdown with whoever this nosy Mercedes chick was.
Purple Hair actually looked taken aback as I stomped towards her, but still, she made no effort to approach me. She simply waited, and the arrogance of it just made me angrier. Get out of my life, I wanted to yell. It would be easier to say it to her than to Nic, because I couldn’t look at him without remembering the intensity in his kisses, or the way he looked at me. But this girl was just a straight-up pain in my ass and I would have no trouble telling her exactly where to go.
Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) Page 5