He shut his eyes. ‘This isn’t the right path for you, Sophie.’
‘And yet it was for you?’
He flicked his gaze over my shoulder, towards his prison chaperone. ‘Look where it got me, Soph.’
‘Where is he?’ I pressed.
‘Leave them,’ he said at the same time as me. ‘Get away from the Falcones before they hurt you, Sophie. Because they will hurt you. Felice Falcone is mentally unhinged. You won’t survive under the same roof as him. And Angelo’s boys … they have it in for me, Sophie. They’ll have it in for you too.’
‘And go where? The Marinos’? Should I have Thanksgiving dinner at Donata’s house? Sit shoulder to shoulder with Jack? Jack who did nothing as Mom lay unconscious at his feet in the diner?’
My father sucked in a breath. ‘Of course not. I don’t want you anywhere near the underworld, period. It makes corpses of good people, and survivors of the worst. There’s no justice there, Soph. If you trust nothing else I’ve ever said, trust that. It will destroy you.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s too late, Dad.’
‘It’s not too late, Sophie.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. ‘This is not your world. It’s not your path. I made damn sure to keep it from you for this long, I won’t falter now.’
‘He killed her.’ I was beginning to sound like a parrot, but I needed to be heard, and my father was refusing to listen. ‘He had a hand in her death, no matter what he told you.’
‘This is not your fight.’ He held the paper out. It hovered between us, a small white flag. ‘Take it.’
I eyed it with suspicion. ‘What is it?’
‘An address,’ he said. ‘Someone who will help you. Go to them, and they will hide you. Take your life and run with it. If not for me, then for your mother. She would have hated to see you turning to darkness. It would have broken her heart in two.’
I snatched the paper from his hands and opened it, reading the top of the address. ‘Who the hell is M Flores?’
‘Someone who will help you,’ he said simply.
I read the address. ‘Colorado?’ I looked up at him. ‘Are you serious? You want me to go to Colorado to stay with some guy I’ve never met?’
‘That’s exactly what I want you to do.’
‘Well, that is ridiculous.’ I brandished the paper between us. ‘You have seriously lost your mind.’
He raised a hand. ‘Put that away. Don’t show it to anyone else. When you go, you have to disappear. Don’t tell another soul the address on that piece of paper.’
I narrowed my eyes at the hurried script. ‘Who is this? And why would they owe you anything?’
He pursed his lips together. Another secret he would not relinquish. He was a fool to give this to me. As if I would ever listen to him. As if I still cared for any of his stupid, reckless advice. My fight was here, in Chicago. My fight was in the underworld, just as his was.
‘I’m not a monster, Sophie.’
I blew out a sigh. I had reached my threshold for this particular genre of conversation. All assassins were the same – deluded – and I was done being the resident counsellor. I was done with second chances, third chances. I could make up my own mind about who to trust from now on; that much had become very clear. ‘How long are you out for?’ I said, eyeing the prison guard.
‘They granted me furlough for the ceremony.’
‘Well, it’s over now. You can take off again.’
I was still inching away, trying to distance myself from the love I used to have for this man, from all the admiration and respect that was now smouldering inside me – a wasteland of childhood affection. ‘Soph, will you do what I said?’
I looked down at the note. I looked at his face.
‘If you prove your loyalty.’ I kept my gaze as steely as his own. ‘Show me that after everything, you’re on our side. Mine and Mom’s. Tell me where Jack is hiding.’
He drew in a loaded breath, his chest puffing out. ‘I won’t do that.’
I crumpled the note and threw it at his feet. ‘Then I can’t trust you.’
CHAPTER TEN
TARGET
‘Sophie.’ Valentino’s voice cut through my mental assessment of his office. The velvet drapes, the mahogany desk, the expensive leather chairs, the dark wood cabinets. ‘Are you ready to pay attention to me now?’
I turned back to him, dragging my gaze from a particularly opulent lamp in the corner of the room. ‘I was just … taking it all in.’ I tried to get comfortable in my chair, but I couldn’t. The leather squeaked under my attempts, drowning out Bach or Vivaldi or Beethoven or whoever was needlessly upping the dramatics.
I settled under his gaze, and wished he had asked one of the others to come in with me. A one-on-one meeting with the Falcone boss was not high on my bucket list.
He tapped his fingers along the desk, a careful drumming, perfectly in time with the music.
‘How was school?’ he asked blithely.
‘Do you really care?’ I asked. Valentino didn’t do small talk.
He was leaning back in his chair. He picked up a pencil and twirled it around, catching and releasing it between his fingers. ‘No, not especially.’
The pencil was quite captivating. ‘Your dexterity is commendable.’
‘How are you settling in?’ he said, the pencil still moving round and round. It was like he was trying to distract me. A test. I kept my gaze forward.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Felice notwithstanding.’
‘Unfortunately, Felice’s presence here cannot be helped.’ So Valentino didn’t think too highly of Felice either. Interesting. See also: unsurprising. ‘Nic says you’re a natural shooter.’
‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ I said, trying to sound modest. Luca hadn’t come home the night before, so Nic and I had managed to squeeze in another session out in the barn. ‘I’m a quick learner.’
‘It’s obviously in your blood,’ Valentino said.
‘Must be.’ Dimples and marksmanship. Thanks, Dad.
Valentino flipped the subject. ‘You went walkabout yesterday.’
‘I was having a ceremony for my mother.’
He clamped the pencil in his fist. ‘Don’t do that again.’
‘In my experience you can only scatter ashes to the wind once. They’re very hard to collect after that.’
‘Do you think you’re funny?’
‘With the right audience.’ My heart was hammering in my chest.
‘I don’t enjoy sarcasm,’ he said pointedly. ‘Just so you’re aware.’
Well, then, you are not going to enjoy me very much. ‘Right,’ I said, shifting again in my seat. The leather was cold on my hands. I tucked them under my legs to keep them warm. ‘Is that why I’m here? Because of yesterday?’ I studied his reaction – that stony impassivity. Did he know that my dad had been there? That we had spoken? How much had Luca said to him?
Valentino shook his head. ‘I thought it would be best to get that little matter of housekeeping out of the way first. Don’t go walkabout again without telling us first. It’s a drastic waste of time and manpower, and given that we’re in the middle of a blood war, I’m sure you can see how unfathomably stupid it was.’ He pinned me with those sapphire eyes, and then pulled his lips back a fraction, so I could see a hint of his canines. ‘Can’t you?’
Relief flittered like a bird inside me. So Luca hadn’t said a thing. Man, that guy was a vault. A vault I would have to thank whenever he resurfaced. ‘It won’t happen again.’
Valentino pulled the drawer of his desk open and took out a single sheet of paper. ‘Now we can proceed to more important matters.’ He dropped the sheet between us, and slid it across his desk so that it was facing me. I pulled my hands from underneath me and scooted forward.
Oh.
It wasn’t a slip of paper, it was a photograph.
An eerily familiar photograph.
Oh.
‘This,’ he said, pressing his index
finger across it, ‘is Libero Marino, the son of Donata Marino.’
I stared at the photograph of Libero Marino. He had those wide, dark eyes. His head was shaved in the photo, but he had a thick black goatee, and an unsightly scar right across the bridge of his nose. He didn’t seem like someone who was used to smiling. I imagined all his teeth, if he bared them, would be gold.
My throat felt like it was about to close up.
‘That’s Sara’s brother,’ I said, without taking my eyes off the photo. Underneath, a few details had been scribbled in. His height: 5’8”, his age: 22 years old. His skills: knife and hand-to-hand combat, and his ranking: Marino Capo, son of Donata Marino.
Valentino nodded. ‘He’s back in the city now, trading with clients on Donata’s behalf.’
I lifted my gaze, and tried to swallow the waver in my voice that was about to give away my sudden onslaught of nerves. ‘Is he … is he my target?’
Valentino had steepled his hands in front of him, fingers touching against his lips, hiding his mouth. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Libero Marino is your target.’
I tried to ignore the sudden roaring in my ears. Libero Marino was Sara’s brother. One of Jack’s right-hand men. Why had I thought it would be someone I didn’t know? Why had I thought it would be easier than this? The Marinos were my blood – well, most of them – so of course I would likely know my target. ‘When?’ I asked, the faintest flutter in my lashes.
‘Saturday night.’
Five days. I had five days to prepare.
Did Luca know? Would he try to stop it? Had he finally given in to the idea of me taking control of my own destiny?
I forced myself to answer, ignoring the desert in my throat. ‘OK.’
‘Nic will have all the necessary details when the time comes.’
I smiled weakly. ‘Good.’
‘He’s keen to be the one to do it with you,’ he added, something else creeping into his voice – discomfort, disapproval? ‘He wants the opportunity to … mend old wounds.’
I felt myself go pale. Nic wanted to win me back, and he thought this was the way to do it. I swallowed hard, unwilling to deal with that part of the equation – not while I had a life to take, my own character to prove. I was done putting boys first.
Valentino misread my hesitation. He dropped his hands. ‘You don’t need to take Libero down, Sophie, you just have to deal the killing blow. You can use a knife if you prefer.’
‘No,’ I said, forcing my lips into something that didn’t resemble a horrified grimace. ‘I’ll use a gun. I like … I like guns.’
I like guns? Really, Sophie?
Amusement swept across his features. ‘That makes two of us.’ He sat back in his chair, those canines glinting at me. ‘If you do this, the next time you have a gun pointed at someone, it will be your uncle.’
‘Good,’ I said, baring my teeth right back. I didn’t have to force that one.
He opened another drawer and withdrew a wooden box. The lid, when it came up, was made of cherry wood, the outline of a falcon etched into it. The Falcones really did like to keep everything on-brand. He flipped the lid over and it landed on the desk with a dull thud. ‘This is for you, Sophie. This is for Saturday.’
He lifted a gun out of the box and slid it across the table. It was black and silver, like Nic’s, but it was smaller and the handle was curved. I picked it up, rotating it in front of my face. In such a short time, I had come to handle a gun with ease, the fear that I might accidentally shoot myself no longer holding me back.
I studied the sleek lines, the feel of the handle on the pad of my hands. ‘It’s nice.’
‘It is.’
‘It’s light.’
‘It’s empty.’
I glanced at the box. ‘Where are the bullets?’
Valentino offered me a half-smile. ‘You overestimate my trust in you.’
I frowned at him. ‘You think I’d shoot you? And in this house, of all places?’
Probably shouldn’t have added that last part.
Another glint of those canines. The more time I spent in his presence, the less like Luca he appeared. They used their features completely differently. Valentino didn’t wear empathy, or sympathy, or understanding. He wore astuteness and wry amusement. ‘I don’t take chances,’ he said. ‘Even in this house.’ He tapped the photograph of Libero Marino. ‘Maybe after Saturday, I’ll think differently.’
‘You will,’ I said, focusing on Libero’s dark eyes. ‘After Saturday, everything will be different.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARINO BLOOD
Fear is a relative thing.
‘Don’t hang up whatever you do. Don’t you dare hang up on me during my hour of need, Sophie.’
It was 9.15 p.m. on Monday night, and I was in my bedroom on the third floor of the Falcone mansion. I was sitting cross-legged on my bed, my unfinished poetry assignment in my lap, my cell phone pressed against my ear. I had just finished two hours of shooting practice with Nic, and even though my trigger finger hurt like hell and my arm was aching, it was worth it.
‘I’m here,’ I assured Millie. ‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’
‘Stop laughing at me!’ she whined.
‘I’m not laughing at you.’
‘I can hear the amusement in your voice!’ she said, before descending into another bout of shrieking. It sounded like she was on a rollercoaster. ‘Oh my God, he’s coming right at me! Oh my God, OH MY GOD. HELP ME SOPHIE!’
Millie had been trying to kill a daddy-long-legs for the last fourteen minutes. ‘Run!’ I said, faux panic raising my pitch. ‘Run before he turns you into one too!’
‘Oh Jesus, I think there’s two of them, Soph!’ She fell deadly quiet, and then a gasp dragged in her throat. ‘I think they’re having sex mid-air! Oh, that is so gross.’
‘You insect voyeur, give them some privacy!’
There was a very audible thump on the other end. I imagined her throwing her chemistry book at the wall. ‘Damn,’ she cursed. ‘Missed them.’
I flopped back against my pillows and closed my eyes. I took myself out of Evelina, away from the homework and the guns and the threats and the boys, and imagined I was sitting on Millie’s floral bedspread beside her, watching her nearly twist an ankle as she tried to tackle a couple of harmless insects. ‘Calm down,’ I soothed. ‘They’re more scared of you than you are of them.’
‘Somehow I doubt that, Soph. If they were the least bit scared, they’d stop having sex, but they’re just floating around here, copulating in my face.’
Another thump. Another curse.
I tutted. ‘The nerve.’
‘I don’t think my heart rate has ever been this high,’ Millie panted. ‘I can feel it in my throat. Does that make sense? I can actually feel my pulse choking me.’
‘Why don’t you just learn to coexist peacefully with them?’
‘Oh, shut up, you’re not here,’ she hissed. ‘You don’t know the trauma I’m enduring right now.’
I opened my eyes – the stark white walls seemed to loom inwards, boxing me in. I could hear the distant sound of Elena arguing with someone downstairs. Two rooms over, CJ was playing obnoxiously loud rock music. Little Sal had woken up screaming every night this week. My gaze flicked to the side table, where the photograph of Libero Marino was staring up at me, daring me to look at him. ‘Yeah,’ I said, dispassionately. ‘I can’t possibly imagine it.’
‘You know, I think this is probably the most scared I’ve ever been,’ Millie panted.
‘Really?’
‘Not counting Eden,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘But it’s close.’
Millie was the queen of compartmentalization. Once a thing was over, it was over, in a neat little box in a filing cabinet in the back of her head, never to be disturbed again. I envied that in her. I would need that skill soon.
‘Should I just start vacuuming the air until they get sucked in?’
‘Sure.’ I was loo
king into Libero’s dark eyes, and wondering what Sara would say to me now. But Sara was dead. The blood war made corpses of good people.
Was Libero a good person?
Did it matter?
Another loud thump, and this time, the accompanying sound of triumph. ‘Yes!’ she whooped. ‘Yes! I got him and his lover! Oh, my God! It’s over. I finally did it!’ Millie was an entirely different version of herself now, all the good cheer returning to her voice. ‘I feel so accomplished.’
What would I feel like when it was done? Would it change me for ever, or would it invigorate me, the way it seemed to invigorate Nic?
‘Soph?’
I was still staring at Libero, tracing that silver scar, studying the quirk of his mouth underneath his facial hair. ‘Huh?’
‘I just want to thank you for your support. It can’t have been easy for you, hearing me in such peril.’
‘No,’ I said, pulling my attention from the photograph. ‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘Well, I’m fine now, so I’m going to hang up and watch Grey’s Anatomy.’
‘Sure, Mil, just use me and then discard me.’
She made kissy noises down the phone. ‘Much love, Soph. I’ll see you at school tomorrow!’
When she hung up, I tried to return to my assignment, but my brain had been wiped blank. I was so not in the mood for this. A yawn bubbled up in my chest, and I contemplated forcing myself to sleep. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do, unless I wanted to stay up and further humanize Libero Marino. Maybe he liked chocolate. Maybe he had a dog. Maybe he used to buy his sister a Christmas present every year. Maybe he had cried the hardest at her funeral.
Maybe he murdered innocent people, like his mother did. Maybe he distributed drugs that ended up killing people. Maybe he was coming for me too.
The less I thought about it the better. I could drive myself crazy with all these what-ifs.
There was a knock at my bedroom door. I snapped my head up, then checked my phone. No messages. No missed calls. Usually they called me if they wanted me.
‘Who is it?’
‘Nic.’
I was in teddy bear pyjama pants and an oversized hoodie. A part of me wished I looked better. The other part of me told me to shut up and stop being so superficial. I smoothed my hair back from my face and tugged my hoodie down.
Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3) Page 8