Felice was bent over himself, his words muffled by his fingers.
Paulie was beside him, perched on the armrest of the couch, one hand clapped on his brother’s back. ‘… time and time again. You have to let him lead the way he sees fit.’
Felice rolled his head around, venom oozing from his voice. ‘He is a child, Paulie. He will derail this family.’
Paulie sighed. ‘Killing Libero was the right choice strategically. And to have a Marino do it … well.’
‘Nonsense,’ Felice spat. ‘The whole thing is off. He has his soldati wrapped up in cotton wool – all of us barricaded in the same place.’
‘I think,’ said Paulie, edging lower, on his hunkers now, so he could look at Felice straight on, ‘perhaps you are indulging a little too hard right now.’
‘Stai zitto,’ Felice hissed like a rattlesnake. ‘You know why I’m drinking.’ He dropped his head back and closed his eyes at the ceiling. ‘I. Hate. This. Time. Of. Year.’
‘I know it’s hard for you, but self-medicating is not helping,’ Paulie said. ‘You’re not angry with Valentino.’
Felice waved Paulie’s words away, almost swatting his brother on the cheek.
‘You’re mad because she left you,’ Paulie added, his voice turning soft.
‘Say it,’ said Felice, looking at the mantelpiece, at a photo of him and Evelina laughing and toasting each other with champagne on their wedding day. I edged backwards, pressing myself against the wall so I was hidden behind the door. ‘Say the rest.’
‘Brother …’
‘She’s not coming back.’ He cursed. ‘She’s never coming back.’
‘It’s been a long time.’
How long ago had she been taken from him? How long did a broken heart last? I thought of my own grief, the constant ebb of it at the edges of my awareness. It hadn’t lessened; I had just accommodated it. It was part of me now – this blur of sadness. Maybe in five years’ time, I would be like Felice. Still angry, still questioning … still baying for revenge. His mask was almost perfect. Maybe mine would be too.
‘I want to see my child,’ Felice said.
‘Look forward.’
‘I built her a palace,’ said Felice. His voice was vibrating with emotion – it was strange to see him so vulnerable, to see beneath that carefully polished veneer of his. ‘I gave her the world and she walked away from it without so much as a goodbye.’
‘Look to the future.’ Paulie gripped his brother’s arm, but Felice wasn’t even looking at him now, he was looking at his expensive shoes.
‘It was Angelo’s fault,’ he said quietly.
I caught my gasp on the palm of my hand. Did he know Evelina was dead? Did he really think his own brother killed her? If only he knew the truth. If he knew about my dad, or the safe, or the ring …
I told myself to leave, to get the hell out of that room before he caught me spying, but I had never seen Felice so … vulnerable, and I was compelled by it.
‘I know he helped her to leave. I know he convinced her.’
‘No.’ Paulie was shaking his head. ‘He would never do that to you.’
‘We’ll never know,’ said Felice bitterly. ‘We’ll never know what he did with her.’
‘You are talking nonsense.’
‘I know what I know,’ said Felice. ‘Angelo was a snake.’
Something cold rippled up the back of my neck. Felice wasn’t talking about Angelo as a brother … but as an enemy. I was starting to wonder just how deep his resentment ran, and whether he had felt like this the night he watched him get shot. Was that why he hadn’t intervened?
‘He was your brother. He was loyal to you.’
‘If he was loyal then I would have been his underboss, not his useless—’ Felice stopped himself, swallowing the slur. ‘Angelo destroyed this family’s prospects long before he got himself killed.’
‘Careful,’ Paulie warned. ‘Clean yourself up. Try and sleep. Don’t let the others hear you speak like this.’
‘Why?’ Felice looked like he was about to pass out. ‘Because his little bastards run this family? They take in strays and undermine our safety, and I should worry about voicing the obvious opinion of—’
‘Enough!’ snapped Paulie, losing the last dregs of his composure. He gripped his brother by the shoulders and shook him. I couldn’t imagine ever doing that to Felice; I’d get my head sawn off. ‘Get a grip.’
Felice shrugged his brother off. His suit was crumpled, his slacks turned up at the bottom.
Paulie crossed the room, pausing in the doorway that led directly into the study. ‘I’m going to take a nap, and then I have the girls for the afternoon. Pull yourself together before the others wake up. I can’t keep babysitting you like this.’ He disappeared, shutting the door behind him with a quiet thud.
Felice raised his head so suddenly I didn’t have time to jump backwards. We locked eyes, and he shot to his feet so fast he became one big streak of silver hair and spidery limbs uncramping themselves. I stumbled backwards out into the hallway, heading for the first room I could find.
I was halfway into the library when I was yanked backwards, my feet dragging against the floor as I struggled upright. Felice spun me around and shoved me into the alcove in the hallway, his left hand crushing my windpipe.
I grappled at his fingers. ‘Get off me!’
‘Eavesdropping were we, Marino?’ He tightened his grip and pushed me further into the alcove, until the shadows fell across us both.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ I choked out. ‘I’m just trying to do my homework!’
There was a strong whiff of whisky on his breath. He peeled his lips back, his teeth glistening at me like fangs. ‘I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you, Persephone.’
I blinked dumbly at him, trying to convey innocence.
‘You walk around here like you belong, like these floors are yours to traverse, but they don’t belong to you, nor does this family. You will always be an outsider to us.’
If I wasn’t concentrating so hard on dragging tiny morsels of air into my bruising trachea I might have said something about his own botched loyalty, but I couldn’t force the words out.
‘I don’t know what went on in Valentino’s office on Friday night, but if you think I believe the diatribe Luca spun about Libero Marino, then you’re sorely mistaken.’ He relaxed his hold an inch, and I gulped down a breath of fresh air. I thought he was going to relinquish me, but instead he whipped his gun out of his jacket, cocked it, and pressed the barrel into the underside of my jaw. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
‘As far as I’m concerned, Persephone Marino, you are still an active threat to me.’ The gun was cutting off my oxygen supply. Felice’s eyes were wild, his lips quivering violently. Even his hands were shaking. ‘If you even consider breathing a word about anything you think you just heard to anyone, you will be facing your death at my hands. Mark my words, I will show you the depth of my wrath if you so much as tiptoe out of line.’
I had frozen in place, my pulse vibrating against the cold metal, trying not to move a muscle. Any wrong move, wrong word, could set him off. The truth was, he was crazy – drugged up and strung out. If he wanted to, he would kill me right there and then, and I would only get half a strangled scream out before he did.
‘I’m never going to stop watching you, Persephone.’ Spittle foamed at the sides of his mouth, the words coming in heaving gasps. ‘If you presume to undermine me in any way, or do anything that places this family at risk, I will put a bullet in your head.’ He dug the barrel of the gun in further, and I gagged, trying to suck in air. I was about to pass out.
‘Just. Like. This,’ Felice whispered.
The click was as loud as a bomb. It echoed inside the alcove, and grew louder and louder inside my head.
Nothing happened. There were no bullets in his gun. A warning.
He bared all his teeth at me – that shark grin, full of malev
olent amusement – and as unsightly as it was, I almost fainted in relief.
Then another sound echoed around us. Felice froze, the empty gun still pressed against my neck as the sound of a hammer being pulled back filled the small space. A black gun appeared beside Felice’s head, the pressure of the barrel puckering the skin around his temple.
His face drained to a ghostly white.
Luca stepped into the alcove and brought his lips right up to his uncle’s ear. ‘That gun might be empty, scarafaggio, but this one is loaded,’ he growled. ‘If you ever threaten her again, I’ll blow your brains out.’
The shark grin died, and real, chilling fear consumed Felice’s face. His eyes grew lidless and wide. Luca kept the gun pressed against his uncle’s head, and slowly, Felice lowered his own from my neck. My jaw clicked back into place and cool air rushed down my throat. I gulped it down. Without turning around, Felice addressed Luca, his grey eyes still trained on me.
‘So,’ he said, his lip curling. ‘There are some things you deem worthy enough to kill for, Gianluca.’
Luca’s reply came in one steady breath. ‘Only one.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HOMEWORK AND HEADSHOTS
The next few weeks passed by in a blur of classes, endless assignments, nightly phone calls about the upcoming Masquerade Ball, and meetings back at Evelina, where I learnt the names of every Marino in existence and watched as the Falcone boys disappeared at random times of the day and came back in the dead of night. They were in the city, scoping out Donata’s usual haunts, collecting information, turning Marino allies into snitches, dispatching those that couldn’t be persuaded. The house was busier than an airport at Christmastime. Donata and her remaining children, Marco and Zola (Franco, I learnt, was still in prison) had come back for Libero’s funeral – the most heavily guarded procession in Chicago’s history.
My father was still on the run, but I hadn’t heard so much as a peep from him. The police were patrolling Cedar Hill, on the lookout, following fruitless tips and making nuisances of themselves. I almost felt bad for them. It wasn’t hard to guess where my father was – at least if you knew what I knew. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was planning, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was going to do when I came face-to-face with him again. I wasn’t sure he truly wanted to protect me by sending me away to Colorado, but I knew he wouldn’t harm me, not deliberately. But if he was with Jack when we tracked him down, then we were going to have a problem.
The anniversary of Evelina’s disappearance passed and Felice sank back into his usual cartoon-villain self. I found it harder to be around him, knowing what he was capable of, and seeing how close he had come to actually doing it. He had left a ring of bruises around my neck, and I knew if I ever found myself alone with him away from Evelina, it might be the last thing I ever did. He could never know what my father had done to his wife, or I’d be dead for certain.
Luca spent all his time with Valentino, painstakingly planning and dispatching Falcones to far-off places in the state. For now, I had one duty and one duty only: go to school, stay in school. In the afternoons, I sat beneath the oil painting of Evelina Falcone in the library and forced myself to complete assignments I didn’t care about. As time wore on, Evelina’s eyes seemed to grow deeper, the sadness behind them rising to meet me like a terrible wave. Her face haunted my dreams, her lips twisting as she whispered to me in the night, I see you, Sophie Marino. I see your fate.
I knew Luca was against my role in the family’s violence, but he knew, too, that when the time came to face the Marino family in earnest, he wouldn’t be able to keep me away. I still had to prove myself. It was the only thing I cared about, the only thing I spent my nights thinking about. I was not going to be afraid. I was not going to hesitate. I was not going to fail again.
I spent the weeks getting myself ready mentally, honing my shot, preparing to face my uncle and Donata again, and hoping against hope that my father would be caught and hauled back to prison before then. At school I was a different Sophie – upbeat, engaged, innocent. The mask slipped on so easily, sometimes it was hard to take it off again.
A couple of days before Halloween, I was loitering in the Falcone foyer reluctantly waiting to be chaperoned to school, when Nic barged through the front door, a half-eaten breakfast burrito in one hand.
‘Hey,’ he said, lighting up. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ I said, shaking my head as he held out the burrito in offering.
‘You sure?’ he pressed. ‘It’s delicious.’
‘I’m sure you need the energy more than me.’ You’re killing people; I’m studying poems and doing calculus.
‘I don’t mind sharing with my girl.’
He had taken to doing that a lot – referring to me as ‘his’, despite my repeated protestations to the contrary. Sometimes I wondered if he was just doing it to wind me up. ‘I’m not your girl,’ I reminded him. ‘As we’ve been over several thousand times.’
Nic rolled his eyes. ‘Right, right. I’m still in the friend-zone, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hop the fence.’
‘Actually, that’s exactly what it means.’
‘For the record, I disagree,’ he said, taking another bite of his burrito and laughing at my grimace.
‘What’s got you so giddy so early anyway, platonic male friend? Where were you last night?’
I was really asking who did you kill? But I had quickly learnt that at the Falcone mansion, it is terribly uncouth to come right out and address the elephant in the room. They didn’t speak so openly of their murders. They were implicit things that happened beneath the fabric of their family.
‘You’re damn right I’m giddy,’ he said, shoving the rest of the burrito in his mouth and swallowing it in one giant gulp. ‘You’re not going to believe what I’ve got in the car with me.’ He bounded back outside. ‘Wait there!’
Dom came thudding down the stairs, and I scooted to the side before he shoved me out of the way. ‘Are they back?’ he asked. ‘Do they have the stuff?’
‘The stuff?’
He wrenched the double doors open so Gino and Nic could drag three black duffel bags into the foyer and deposit them on the marble crest. Gino was just as excitable as Nic, and Dom was rubbing his hands together as he stared at the duffel bags.
‘Who wants to do the honours?’ Nic asked, his gaze resting on me. ‘Wait until you see these, Soph. You’ll love them.’
‘Should we wait for Valentino?’ Gino asked.
‘He’s coming,’ said Dom, bending down and unzipping the bags. ‘I texted him. Come on, dig in. I want to pick my one first.’
Like little boys on Christmas morning, the three of them got on their knees and started rifling through the bags, pulling out guns bigger than my arms and legs. The kind of guns you see in war movies. The kinds of guns that spell instant, irrefutable death.
‘Whoa,’ I said, drifting towards the treasure trove of weapons. I knelt down next to Nic. ‘These are huge.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, smirking at me. ‘Eighteen automatics plus ammunition. Let’s see your uncle survive an assault from one of these.’
Before, a comment like that would have shocked me – scared me, even – but it barely registered now. The idea was as commonplace as the guns themselves.
He picked up a gun and hefted it into the crook of his arm, moving his shoulders around to get comfortable. Beside him, Dom and Gino were doing the same. ‘It’ll be heavier when loaded,’ said Dom, aiming his gun at me. ‘You think you can handle that, Sophie?’
Nic grabbed another gun from the bag and handed it to me, nodding at me to take it. I picked it up – it was heavy, even without the ammunition.
‘Relax your shoulders and grip it,’ said Nic, still watching me intently. ‘Here, like this. Look.’
He held the gun lower, at his chest, one hand on the front handle that jutted out almost parallel to the back handle, which he tucked into his ribcage, his elbow pulled ba
ck to make it fit. He directed it at Gino.
‘Say hello to my little friend!’ he said, before making a thud-thud-thud sound at him. Gino pretended to clutch at his heart and fall over. I had seen Gino like that before – only with real blood gushing down his shirt, his face as white as snow. Now, he was giggling in that high-pitched voice of his and writhing around on the floor, and I couldn’t help but find it strange how much he had distanced himself from the time he almost died. And yet, I was here, too, holding a machine gun to my chest and practising my aim in a puddle of assassins on a hundred-year-old marble crest that stood for blood and honour. And I don’t really know why, but I was laughing too.
Nic stopped faux-shooting and turned back to me, his smile as wide as I had ever seen it. There was something infectious about his excitement. I wanted to feel like that. I wanted to smile like that.
‘See?’ he said, still laughing a little. ‘Easy as that.’
I adjusted the gun as Nic had done, trying to push away the faint unease inside me. ‘Like this?’ I asked, swivelling to see if the gun was snug enough with movement. It was a little cumbersome.
‘Exactly,’ said Nic, winking at me. ‘You’re a natural with it. I knew you would be.’ Though I knew it shouldn’t, his approval made me smile.
Dom leant towards me, his pungent aftershave mixing with the faint whiff of hair gel that always emanated from him. ‘Maybe with this gun, the next time you shoot to kill, you’ll actually pull the trigger.’
Gino sat up. ‘What?’ he said, blinking at me and then at Dom. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Nic thumped Dom in the side of his head. ‘Io non ci scherzerei tanto, fratello!’
‘Calmati,’ said Dom, returning a jab to Nic’s right arm. ‘It’s a joke.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Gino, still glancing between us.
I glowered at Dom. ‘A bad joke.’
‘A dangerous joke,’ cautioned Nic.
Dom shrugged. ‘She should have thought of that before she—’
Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3) Page 13