I stayed rooted to the spot as every inch of me turned to rage and ice, as thoughts of revenge surged into my mind and swept me up inside them. I stared and stared, and then I screamed so loud that my voice cracked and my throat felt like it was bleeding. It was a raging cry, a response to their message, so loud and unavoidable now. Because that was when it hit me. They had stood here and looked up at Evelina, through the gates, and laughed – I’d bet – laughed as they destroyed my mother’s car. They had brazenly come to our door and hurled the threat directly at me. Remember what happened to your mother? Look and see. Remember what we did to her? Here is your reminder. Here is what we do to rats. Here is what we will do to you.
You are a rat, Sophie Marino, and we are coming for you.
’Sophie.’ Luca’s hand on my arm, holding me back, as though I would leap at the car and burn myself against the scalded metal. ‘Come away from it.’
I rounded on him. ‘Why should I?’
This message was for me. Why should I hide from it? The immediate world began to fade – the edges of it blurring black and quiet around me. I had never known animosity like this. I had never felt so passionate about anything.
I stared at the car again. I could feel my anger pounding in my ears, heating the tips of my fingers. It was catching in my chest. Pooling underneath my tongue. Prickling up the back of my neck.
Calm down.
Your time will come.
You’re going to make them pay.
CHAPTER TWO
ALLY
In the library at Evelina, I collapsed into an armchair and tried to massage the headache from my temples. Even after three showers, I could still smell the dead rats, the lingering smoke. It was making me sick.
I tried to quell the rush of heat surging through me, pushing my heart rate up, tripping through my breathing. I lay back, counted out a seven-second exhale. Bookshelves lined every wall and climbed right up to the corniced ceiling. Three stained-glass windows peered on to the gardens at the front of the house.
An oil painting of Evelina Falcone, Felice’s dead wife, hung over the stately fireplace, her half-lidded gaze turned towards the windows, her lips curving into a small smile. Her dark hair was piled high on her head, coming loose in tendrils around her face. It was like something out of the past – a da Vinci recreation, the makings of a shrine. I had no doubt that Felice had commissioned it, that he had bought her the diamond choker around her neck. And yet, for all the wealth she must have had, her eyes held only sadness.
The library was like a place of worship, with low lighting and an array of sumptuous leather chairs, and yet there was a staleness about it too. In this palace full of game rooms, flat-screen TVs, consoles and acres of land to lose yourself in, there were few Falcones who chose to seek out solace in the library, and so it had become like a time capsule from another era. Dusty and forgotten. Silent.
Silence was exactly what I needed.
A knock at the door roused my thoughts before they could spiral somewhere violent. Nic slipped inside, his hands shoved in his back pockets. ‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
His hair was wet, dark strands sticking to his forehead. He smelt like shampoo – not smoke, not like me. He sank into the chair opposite me. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘Oh, you know, just seething in a fresh vat of my own vengefulness.’
He offered me a half-smile. ‘Sounds productive.’
I shrugged. ‘What’s up with you?’
He tilted his head, his mouth quirking to one side. ‘Just looking for someone to get vengeful with.’
‘You sound like you’re being serious,’ I pointed out.
‘I am.’
We looked at each other for a long moment. It was comfortable – the silence between us. It felt nice to have an ally, someone who could see the ugliness inside me and didn’t expect me to shy away from it.
I broke the silence. ‘So they know where I am.’
‘They’re an embarrassment to our culture,’ he shot back.
‘I’m going to make them pay.’ My breath hitched, but I smoothed my features. I wanted him to believe me; I needed him to believe me.
‘Of course you are.’ Nic’s features had hardened into a mask of conviction; his jaw set, his eyes blazing. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘It will be a bloodbath, Sophie. Donata won’t know what’s coming. We’re going to take everyone from her. It will get rid of your sadness, when you know she’s not out there terrorizing innocent people. We’re going to stand over her and show her just how wrong she was to mess with—’
‘Nicoli.’
Nic bit the rest of his sentence off. Annoyance clouded his expression as he turned around. Luca was standing in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest.
‘What?’ Nic asked, exasperatedly.
‘Can you go upstairs?’ Luca said, in what I assumed was his attempt at politeness. It was not remotely polite. ‘I want you to check on Dom and Gino.’
‘We’re in the middle of a conversation.’
‘I can see that,’ said Luca, nonplussed.
‘So?’
‘So, now I’m telling you to go upstairs.’
There was a wavering silence. Nic looked at me and then at Luca and then back at me. He paused, deliberating. Luca didn’t do anything; he just waited, irritatingly sure of Nic’s concession. Nic huffed a sigh, pulled himself to his feet and marched past his brother, leaving a ‘Fine, whatever,’ behind him.
We watched him go, his shoulders sloping away from us.
Luca stepped inside the library, and I wondered if he could smell the smoke as keenly as I could. It was fused to every part of me, stuck inside my nose and my brain.
‘Don’t let him get into your head like that,’ Luca said, his tone turning reproachful. ‘You’re smarter than that.’
‘So now you want to talk to me?’ I said, trying to act casual when I was ten seconds away from imploding.
‘What?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘You’ve barely talked to me since I got here,’ I said, looking at the collar of his shirt, avoiding his bright blue gaze. ‘You leave rooms to avoid me. You don’t even look at me most of the time.’
‘You mean the way you’re looking at me right now?’ he shot back.
I raised my gaze, cut my eyes at his stupid, perfect face and scowled. ‘You know what I mean, Luca. You’ve been ignoring me.’
He lowered himself on to the arm of the chair across from me. ‘I didn’t come in here to argue.’ I let the silence linger, determined that he would fill it, not me, not when I’d spent the last two weeks trying to get his attention, trying to find out what the hell was going on in his head. I had had to find out about today’s initiation from Gino.
‘Don’t let Nicoli paint his intent with false glory. Don’t fall for his rhetoric.’
‘Says the guy who constantly sounds like he’s quoting poetry.’
‘I’m giving you advice.’
‘Do you want some in return?’ I offered. ‘Next time you’re going to eavesdrop on my conversations … don’t.’
‘What about when I see my brother wrapping you around his little finger? Should I let him finish manipulating you, or should I intervene?’
‘Don’t, Luca.’ I let my voice lag, the weariness seeping through. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘He doesn’t have the cure for what you’re feeling right now. No one does.’
‘That’s a message for me.’ I gestured at the window. Somewhere beyond it, the skeleton of my mother’s car was heaving in the driveway. ‘And I want to kill Donata for it.’
He shook his head, a frown rippling across his forehead. ‘This is exactly the response they want. They want to draw you out, towards them.’
‘When do I get to kill my Marino?’ I asked.
Luca gaped at me. I studied his chest, his uneven breaths pushing it upwards. The silence grew. I decided to slice into it. ‘I’m not really up to date on proper assassin
etiquette yet, but judging by this dramatic reaction of yours, I’m getting the sense I’ve just committed some kind of faux pas?’
He dragged a hand across his cheek. ‘Look, I get that you’re angry right now. I get—’
‘When?’ I interrupted him. ‘Valentino said I’d get my target soon, so how soon is soon, Luca? When?’
The act of having to kill a Marino just to test my loyalty had dropped into my stomach like a block of lead, but with the heat of those flames still burning inside me, I realized I wanted to hit back at Donata. I wanted to show her I wasn’t afraid, that she would pay for all that she took from me, that this was only the beginning. I wanted the target. I wanted my target. I wanted somewhere to direct all the rage festering inside me.
Luca shot to his feet, and shut the door to the library, sealing us inside. He came towards me, his voice so low I could barely hear it. ‘Sophie … you don’t seriously think I expect you to kill someone, do you?’
I kept my voice at level pitch. ‘That’s what Valentino said at the initiation. We all agreed, remember?’
‘I didn’t agree,’ he said, pointedly.
‘Well, he outranks you.’
‘I don’t care,’ he said, unruffled. ‘There’s no way in this life or any other that you are holding a gun to anyone’s head and pulling the trigger.’
How cavalierly he seemed to control my life, how strange he seemed to find it that I would expect to be treated just like the rest of them. ‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘Well, what do you expect to happen when my uncle and Donata finally crawl back into the world? Do you really think I’m going to stand by and do nothing?’
Luca raked his hands through his hair, pulling the unruly black strands away from his face so he could ensnare me with that hypnotizing azure gaze. It felt almost deliberate, like he knew how paralysing it was. ‘Sophie, I think there has been some confusion between us on this matter.’
I tried to keep my voice level. ‘And that would be?’
‘I didn’t let you stay here because you promised to kill your uncle, I let you stay because you had nowhere else to go and I was worried about you.’
‘But even Nic said he would help me. He promised we would—’
‘I’m not Nicoli,’ he cut in.
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But he—’
‘The decision wasn’t his. It was mine.’
‘And Valentino’s.’
‘Mine,’ he said simply, without elaborating.
All this time I had thought I’d bargained my way in that day I showed up on their doorstep, but here Luca was, telling me the reason I was sitting before him now was out of pity. It twisted inside me – this feeling of uselessness, of weakness, of the idea that my grief had not made me strong or capable, but pitiable.
‘You expect me to sit tight while they send things to this house that directly threaten me, while they call me out like they did today? What if I want to harm them? What if I want to actually contribute to this family?’
‘I said no.’
‘Then why have a damn initiation at all?’ I snapped. ‘Why waste my time?’
‘To keep you safe,’ he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I gaped at him, flinging my arm out in the direction of the driveway. ‘Do you feel safe right now? Does anyone?’
A shadow flitted behind his eyes, so quick I might not have noticed if I wasn’t searching them so intently. ‘Not just from the Marinos,’ he said, after a beat.
‘From the rest of you, you mean.’
He didn’t say anything, but we were both thinking it. From Felice.
‘Luca, I want to prove myse—’
‘I said no,’ he cut in.
‘Don’t pull rank on me,’ I fumed.
He took a step towards me, enough that I had to tilt my chin to look up at him. I watched the hardened edge of muscle in his arms, the thick heel of his boots as he ground them into the floorboards. ‘Of course I’ll pull rank on you. I’m the underboss of this family.’
‘I don’t care what your role is. I’m not going to bow to you, so you shouldn’t expect it.’
‘Dio mi aiuti.’ He shut his eyes tight. ‘You, Sophie Marino, are single-handedly aging me before my time.’
Had I really been psyching myself up for nothing? For how much longer was I expected to be a spectator in my own life? How much longer would I feel the squirming, guilt-ridden uselessness of my role in my mother’s death? ‘It’s not up to you. It’s up to Valentino. I’m going to prove myself to this family, and then I’m going to avenge my mother.’ I got to my feet, cutting the height difference in half, determined to make him understand. ‘This is my cause too. This is my vendetta.’
Luca spluttered a laugh – it was hard and sharp. ‘Your vendetta,’ he repeated. ‘Do you know what it feels like to kill another human being? Just because we don’t talk about it doesn’t mean we don’t feel the guilt. Just because the people who die are not good people, does not make it any easier. You don’t get used to it. Sophie, the guilt is relentless. It drowns you. It becomes you. It’s all you are in the end – a collection of taken lives and the mask you wear to pretend you’re OK with it.’
I thought of Jack, of Donata as she flicked the lighter into the diner kitchen and sent my mother to the afterlife. The white-hot edge of rage still burnt inside me. I was already in the darkness, and I couldn’t conceive of a feeling worse than the one Jack had bestowed upon me, worse than the sick, creeping feeling of grief that woke me up every morning and rocked me to sleep at night, worse than seeing that car explode in front of me, of letting it throw me backwards, cover me in blood and ash. ‘I could handle doing to Donata what she did to me.’
Luca shook his head. ‘Every life has value, Sophie. They all leave a stain.’
I was so close to him now – when did that happen? His aftershave hung in the space between us. ‘So, when you let me come here, it wasn’t to prepare me to face them but to lock me away from them?’
He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.
‘You’ll have to lie to Valentino,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to trick your own family. How is that going to work?’
He took a step backwards, towards the door, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘It will work because it’s only temporary.’
‘Temporary?’ I wanted to bridge the gap he was making, to tug him towards me.
He levelled me with a dark look. ‘When we’ve taken care of Donata and Jack, you’re going to leave us. And then it will be over for good. For ever.’
‘What will?’ I whispered, feeling like the ground was being ripped out from under me.
He swallowed hard – all the things that lingered on his tongue – and his face re-shuttered, the impenetrable mask coming down once more. ‘This. Us. Everything.’
This. Us.
CHAPTER THREE
COMMON GROUND
Iwanted to say something, anything to distract from the feeling of hurt blooming in my chest, but in the next instant, he was gone, and I was alone again. Dwarfed by the sudden, jarring silence, the realization that I had just been dumped by the only person in this house I felt I could rely on. Dumped by someone who probably never felt a shred of what I felt for him. And what did that mean for my future? If I didn’t have this family, I had nothing. If I didn’t have my cause, then I had nothing to move towards.
I left the library and made my way back into the house. Elena was in the kitchen, soaking tea towels in disinfectant in a basin. She had been tending to Dom and Gino all afternoon. She greeted me by way of a hiss.
‘Save it,’ I snapped. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
She followed me across the room, stood over me as I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. I slowed my movements, tried to show her I wasn’t intimidated, even though I could feel her gaze in the hairs on my neck. ‘Well, maybe I’m not in the mood for a Marino living under this roof, girl. Maybe I’m not in the mood for the gifts your family sends us.’
I slammed the fridge shut and threw her a withering look. ‘Well, maybe you should get over it.’
‘You’re too close to my sister, girl.’
‘And yet it’s you who share her blood,’ I pointed out. ‘I’ll never be as close to her as you are.’
Her expression changed, her eyes narrowing, and then something weird happened. Her lips quirked up, and she offered me a half-smile. ‘You’ve gotten tougher, little Marino.’
‘Trust me,’ I said, returning her smile and matching the faint maniacal undertone in it. There was no happiness in this moment. ‘This is only the beginning of my strength.’ I felt the slow burn of all that rage inside me and kept it there, ready to use as a weapon when the time came. Luca, or no Luca, I would have my revenge. I would finally stand up for myself. ‘I am going to kill your sister.’
Elena’s smile grew, stretching her cheeks wide. ‘Not if I get to her first, Persephone.’
There. My name. Not the ideal version, but still. It was better than ‘worm’. It was better than ‘Marino’.
‘I hate her,’ I said simply. ‘I hate her, and I want her to pay, and I don’t care how or when it happens, but I want to be a part of every second of it.’
‘Well,’ said Elena, stepping closer until the air between us became a potent mixture of her floral perfume and the faintest scent of smoke. ‘There is something, then, that we have in common.’
CHAPTER FOUR
BARBARIANS AND LIBRARIANS
‘This is literally the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do.’ Millie slammed her locker shut, and the clang of metal reverberated inside my eardrums. She hitched her bag on to her back and expelled a dramatic breath. ‘Seriously, Soph. I don’t know why I agreed to do this. I can barely live with the anxiety.’
‘There there, Millicent.’ I patted her on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure you’ll rise to the occasion.’
She clenched her eyes shut. ‘That’s easy for you to say, you don’t have to deal with all this horrible pressure.’
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