A ray of warmth tickled my chest. Everyone was enraptured by Millie – that lilting British accent, the elaborate hand gestures, the whirring confidence with which she spoke. Even Luca was listening intently.
‘It was winter and it was pretty dark, not to mention the streets were deserted because of the rain. After about five minutes, Soph noticed there was someone trailing behind us. A man in a long trench coat was following us! He’d come out of nowhere, and his hood was up so we couldn’t see his face. We upped our pace, and when we looked over our shoulders, the man had sped up too. So we ran, hand in hand, as fast as we could, splashing in and out of puddles until we finally got to the store. I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack. After all that commotion, and the risking of our lives, the cute boys weren’t even there! The place was deserted.
‘Well, naturally I was livid. Soph actually thought it was funny, but she always has had a warped sense of humour. So in the end, we bought a couple of milkshakes, drank them way too quickly, and then ran all the way home, the Trench Coat Villain still hot on our heels!’
A laugh bubbled out of me as the memory crystallized, and for the first time, Luca shifted his attention from Millie to me.
‘When we got back, we slammed the front door behind us and tumbled into Soph’s kitchen. We were panting so hard, we couldn’t even speak, and then the door flew open and who should come in but the Trench Coat Stalker!’
Mrs Bailey actually gasped, grabbing Luca’s arm in her moment of shock, then releasing it in the same instant with an even bigger and much more dramatic gasp at having actually touched a Falcone. Luca didn’t seem to care.
‘And then the stalker lowered his hood, and who was it?’ Millie’s teeth flashed. ‘Celine!’ Laughter filtered through the crowd. ‘She wanted us to have our adventure but she didn’t want us to be in any danger, so she tried to follow us to the store in her own stealth-like way to make sure nothing happened to us.’
‘Only it didn’t work,’ I chimed in. ‘Because her raincoat was terrifying and the hood covered her whole face and made her look like something from a horror movie.’
‘It scared us half to death,’ said Millie, shaking her head, a half-smile still playing on her lips. ‘But it was so funny.’
I remembered how much we had all laughed after that. How hilarious my mother found it that she had been chasing to keep up with us without realizing we were running from her the whole time.
‘But that was Celine,’ said Millie. ‘Kind and protective, and fierce when she had to be. She would do anything for her family. And even though she’s gone now, she’s still here.’ Millie gestured around her, at the air and the trees and gentle sway of the leaves. ‘She’s here.’ She pressed her hand to her heart, and when she spoke again, her words were watery. ‘And most importantly, she’s there.’ She gestured towards me, trying to smile as we locked eyes. ‘She’s in you, Sophie. All the goodness in her is in you now, too. You made her so proud, and I know you always will. You are her heart. Her memory will live on in you.’
A ripple of agreement travelled through the huddle. I swallowed the thickness in my throat. Well, damn. If Millie wasn’t the queen of speeches, I didn’t know who was. She should write for the president. She should be the president. Or the prime minister. Whatever.
I did my best to stand straight and not crumple, because if I let myself ponder Millie’s last line – of my mother’s pride in me, of her place in my life and my future, I would rip my hair out. Today was about saying goodbye. Tomorrow was about revenge. Nothing had changed that. Nothing could change that now.
‘Thank you for all those wonderful tributes,’ I said, picking up the urn and brushing past the heart-crushing sincerity of my best friend’s speech before it demolished me. ‘I’m going to scatter her ashes and then I’m going to say goodbye.’ I turned from them, the urn heavy in my hand, and walked to the edges of the hill before it sloped downwards again. Silence fell across the clearing, the only sounds the distant rumbling of a car engine and the rustling of leaves overhead. I peered at the river below, the wind sailing across my cheeks, as I unclasped the urn.
I love you. I’ll love you for ever.
The wind whipped the ashes into the air and pulled them downstream, to where the river flowed freely, and in that moment, I felt nothing but her, around me, within me, and it was a quiet, fleeting second of happiness that I knew I would not feel again for a very long time.
There was a scuffle behind me – a low rumbling intruding on the quiet reverence. I set the now-empty urn at my feet and turned around, ready to glare at whoever had the audacity to talk during such an important moment. I was all puffed up, irritated and heated, the words ready on my tongue … but in their place, only one slipped out.
‘Dad?’
I froze on the hill over the river, my jaw unhinged, as my father made his way through pockets of mourners. I scanned him, a part of me thinking he wasn’t real, that the grief had finally driven me mad.
It was really him.
Scruffy and thin, and dressed in one of his old suits, the sleeves gaping, the collar of his shirt unstarched. A tracking bracelet around his ankle, a prison guard twelve feet to his left, arms folded across his chest as he waited under a tree. And that word – one of the last he’d said to me before I’d smashed the phone – flashed inside my head. Furlough. I’ve applied for furlough.
Well, holy crap. They had let him out. Someone had obviously told him about my mother’s ceremony, and the prison had decided to let him come.
Those idiots.
I froze as my father dipped his head in reverence, low words exchanged with a couple of my mother’s friends, whose eyes were bugging just as crazily as mine. I froze as he smiled and embraced Ursula, as he shook hands with Mrs Bailey, as he stood there, accepting condolences as if they were prizes.
I stayed stock-still, gaping, right up until the moment Millie leapt from her place on the far side of the huddle and pushed herself in front of my father, so that he couldn’t come any closer, so that he couldn’t see what I could see from my vantage point. Then my brain fissured, and understanding hit me like a lightning bolt.
Oh, shit.
Michael Gracewell, aka Vince Marino Jr, heir to the Marino crime family, was unwittingly hovering ten feet away from Luca Falcone, the active underboss of the entire Falcone dynasty.
Horror roiled in my stomach, my head swivelling to where Luca was standing.
No. No. No. No.
Luca was staring right at my father.
His whole body was pressing forwards, leaning across that infinite space between them, and I swear in that moment I could feel the anger rolling off him. If looks could kill, my father – my ignorant, oblivious father – would have dropped dead on the spot.
Luca wasn’t moving. He was holding himself together, all his energy bound up in keeping still as he crushed his hands in and out of fists at his sides. His nostrils flared, shallow breaths swelling and falling in his chest. His lips were moving, but there was nothing coming out.
I had seen Luca angry, and I had seen Luca calm, but I had never seen him struggle so hard for composure. I had never seen him so scarily unhinged. He was trying to hold it all inside him, but all it would take was one thing, one tiny thing, to unleash it.
I stared so hard at him my eyes began to hurt.
Just look at me. Don’t look at him. Look at me.
But he was glaring, unblinking, at my father, assessing him with the deadly quiet of a lion stalking its prey. And why wouldn’t he be?
Here was the man who had killed his father. Luca knew the truth – he had seen Evelina’s ruby ring. He knew my father’s protested innocence had been a farce. Here was the murderer, standing unprotected not ten feet away from him, with a single uninterested prison warden sulking underneath a faraway tree. He wouldn’t be quick enough to stop anything, not if Luca pulled a gun.
Not if Luca lunged for my father. It could all be over in a heartbeat. His reve
nge was there for the taking.
Please don’t, I implored. Please don’t do anything.
Millie was embracing my father, inching him back into the circle, away from Luca’s glare.
Do something, Sophie. Do anything.
Everyone was staring at my father – the great mystery of Michael Gracewell, who was once again walking like a free man among them. No one was looking at me any more. No one was thinking about my mother. The day had been turned on its head.
Say something. Say anything.
I had to make my father disappear. I had to pull their focus from him. I had to redirect Luca’s thoughts. I had to calm him down, somehow, without drawing attention to any of it.
The words came flying back to me, from the only poem I knew, and the only one that would work just then. Thank you, Mary Elizabeth Frye.
‘Do not stand at my grave and weep,’ I said, my voice croaky with fear. I cleared my throat as, one by one, heads turned back to me. ‘I am not there. I do not sleep.’
Come on, Luca. Come on.
‘I am a thousand winds that blow.’ My father stopped whispering to Millie and looked up at me. ‘I am the diamond glints on snow.’
Stay with me. Don’t look across the circle. Don’t look at Luca.
‘I am the sunlight on ripened grain.’ Millie nodded at me as if to say Keep going. ‘I am the gentle autumn rain.’
Luca was pulling his gaze from my father, slowly, slowly, like the weight of it was a great, hulking thing. ‘When you awaken in the morning’s hush,’ I said, my voice cracking, ‘I am the swift uplifting rush.’
Please don’t hurt him. ‘Of quiet birds in circled flight.’ Please don’t take this day from her. ‘I am the soft stars that shine at night.’
Luca was looking at me again. His features had clouded over. ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep.’ My eyes were swimming with unshed tears. ‘I am not there, I do not sleep.’ And then my dad was breaking rank, crossing the grassy mound, coming towards me with arms outstretched. ‘Do not stand at my grave and cry.’ Everyone was watching us. A father reuniting with his daughter, and I realized I couldn’t push him away, no matter how much I wanted to. ‘I am not there.’ I blinked and the tears streamed down my face. ‘I did not die.’
‘Oh, Sophie, sweetheart.’ My father flung his arms around me. He pulled me into his chest, and I collapsed into him, staining his shirt with my tears. I hated him with a passion so fierce it burnt inside me, but I needed that hug – that embrace – and all the lies that went with it, because beneath all the anger, beneath every shred of betrayal, I still loved him. I still wanted him to be OK. I needed that hug because it was keeping him from Luca. It was keeping my dad safe.
We stood like that for a long time, my back to the others, my body a shield between the murderer who had lied to me my whole life, and the assassin who had been watching over me in his absence.
When my father pulled back from me, and the cold air rushed into the space between us, drying icy tears on our cheeks, everyone else was crying too, and Luca Falcone was gone.
That was the greatest gift he could have given me. The willingness to walk away. And I knew, had I been faced with the same dilemma, I would have failed.
CHAPTER NINE
WARNING
‘Who told you?’ I was trying very hard to keep my voice under control, conscious of the prison guard hovering nearby.
My father patted the empty seat beside him. ‘Can you sit down and we can talk about this properly?’
I kept my arms folded across my chest, my feet planted in the grass in front of the granite slab. ‘Who told you?’ I repeated.
He tilted his chin so he could see my whole face, the entirety of my disgust. His eyes were impossibly large from this angle. ‘Ursula wrote to me,’ he admitted. ‘She was afraid you had forgotten to tell me about it.’
‘If I wanted you here, I would have told you.’
‘I know.’ He had knitted his hands together on his lap, and was digging his fingernails into his knuckles.
‘And yet you came. You came and you made a scene out of it.’
‘She was my wife,’ he said, as if I needed to be reminded. ‘I love her and I grieve her. And you are my daughter, and I have every right to be here with you.’
‘No,’ I said, leaning closer and dropping my voice to barely more than a whisper. ‘I’m the daughter of Michael Gracewell, and Michael Gracewell is gone. I am not your daughter, Vince.’
My father jerked backwards. ‘Don’t act like this, Sophie. This isn’t like you.’
‘You don’t know me,’ I snapped. ‘And evidently, I don’t know you. All I know is a collection of lies you told me, and all those horrible things you did. All those lives you took!’
‘Keep your voice down!’ Colour rose to his cheeks; his eyes, just like mine, grew dark with warning. ‘Are you trying to get me locked up for the rest of my life?’
I could have punched him. Right then, I could have punched him, but I didn’t because some stupid, vulnerable, childish part of me was still seeing my dad in front of me. The one who used to read me Dr. Seuss before bed, the one who would lift me on to his shoulders and spin me around when I needed cheering up. ‘Do you realize just how much you’ve hurt me? How much you’ve betrayed me?’
He slumped in his seat, the black suit seeming to swallow him up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand what I’ve done. What I’ve lost.’
No. Not this conversation. I was already teetering on the verge of tears, every last emotion from the day lining up inside me, pressing tiny hands against my heart. I stood back, widening the gap between us. ‘Where’s Jack?’
He looked up at me, something sparking in his gaze. He knew. He knew.
‘Do not lie to me one more time.’
He raised his chin, defiance meeting my own. ‘Sophie—’
‘He killed Mom.’
‘I know what happened, Sophie.’
‘He’s the reason she’s dead!’
He flicked a nervous glance towards the prison guard.
‘I know what happened, Sophie. Your uncle—’
I bent at the waist, bringing my face close to his. ‘You weren’t there!’ I hissed. ‘You don’t know. You have no idea. Now tell me where he is so he can pay for what he did!’
And then I saw it. A smoothening of his brow, his eyes dulling, his lips resetting into a thin line. Commander mode. Here was Vince Marino, the skilled assassin. Finally. He was showing himself to me. He was showing me his steeliness, because he had no intention of ratting his brother out.
‘Sophie,’ he said, emotionless now. Calm when he should have been immersed in rage, like I was. ‘Where have you been staying? I know you haven’t been at home.’
‘How do you know that?’ I challenged. ‘Because your scumbag family killed Mom and then came back for her car to burn it out at the entrance to Felice’s driveway?’
Something flickered across his face – a chink in his armour. ‘So you are at the Falcones’,’ he said, distaste curling his lip.
‘I’m not at the Falcones’,’ I returned evenly. ‘I am a Falcone.’
He dropped his head into his hands. I watched him fold over on himself, and tried to quench the tiny flame of anxiety that sprang up at the sight of his anguish. ‘Oh, Sophie,’ he said, raising his head and dragging his palms along his cheeks. ‘What have you done?’
‘Now, there’s the question of the hour. I’ll tell you my answer if you tell me yours.’
‘They’re going to hurt you,’ he said, leaning towards me. ‘Don’t you understand that, Soph? They’re going to hurt you.’
‘They can’t hurt me as much as the Marinos already have.’
‘Why?’ he asked, crestfallen. His voice was weak, his commander facade seeping away like water. This was my father, the man I knew. ‘Why did you go to them?’
I dropped my shoulders, my anger petering into resignation. ‘Where else would I have gone?’
His silence wa
s answer enough.
Nowhere. There was nowhere else to go.
A furtive glance over my shoulder showed me the prison guard was more interested in his phone than in us. Millie was waiting by the car. Everyone else had gone home.
My father buried his face in his hands again. I spoke to the crown of his head, where grey hairs mingled amongst the mousy brown. ‘If you don’t tell me where Jack is, and what he’s doing, I’m going to turn around and walk away, and this conversation will be over for good. I know you know. I don’t know why you’re hiding it after his involvement in Mom’s death, but if you refuse to tell me, then I’ll consider it a betrayal to her as well as me.’ I could hear the cruelty in my voice, but I pushed on, knowing this was the only way forward. He had been cruel, too, only he was too afraid to show it. I would be transparent at least.
‘I loved your mom, Soph.’ He was speaking to his feet as I glowered at his head. ‘She was the best thing that ever happened to me. Her and you.’
‘You lied to her. She had no idea about all the people you had killed … about your quest for retribution. She didn’t see what was in the safe. The Falcone switchblades. The ring. The names. But I did.’
He snapped his head up. ‘The Falcones took everything from Jack and me. Sophie, they murdered our parents. They shot my mother. My mother. Can you not understand how I’d be angry about that? Can you not understand why I would want to avenge her?’
I wavered, just for a split second. This was dangerous. This was resonance, and I couldn’t afford to feel any empathy with my father. I couldn’t afford to let him draw a link between what he had done and what I wanted to do … unless I could use it to my advantage.
I hunkered down until we were at eye level. ‘Can you not understand why I would want to do the same to the people who killed Mom? Can you not understand why I’m looking for Jack? For Donata?’
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