Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3)

by Catherine Doyle

  The gun was molten hot in my hand. Still raised, at the space where Felice had just been. Adrenalin surged up my arm – hammered in my heart, dissolved the moisture from my mouth. My breathing was quick and shallow, my cheeks uncomfortably warm.

  Luca was staring at me.

  I stared right back, my heart climbing up my throat. ‘It was him or you.’

  ‘Sophie.’ One word. Surprise. Relief. And something else. Something I couldn’t place.

  I kept my chin up, tried to squash down the urge to vomit. My teeth were chattering. ‘There was no redemption for him, Luca.’

  His mouth twisted. He shook his head at me. ‘You really are something else.’

  I lowered my gun and came towards him. I knelt down and gripped the knife in his arm. ‘Hold still.’ He groaned as I pulled it out. I grabbed a cloth napkin from the table and wrapped it around his arm twice, tying it tight, just above the wound. I was kneeling in a pool of Felice Falcone’s blood, a hair’s breadth from his lifeless body and surrounded by a host of dead Marinos – most of whom I was related to – and I was entirely focused on Luca and that wound. On what needed to be done. On what was still left.

  I was in soldier mode, and it had come upon me so quickly I hadn’t even noticed. I was a soldato.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, rotating his wrist, clenching and unclenching his fingers. I could tell he was in pain – his face was twisted up and his breathing was ragged.

  ‘You can’t shoot like that,’ I said. ‘You have to see a doctor. You need to get to Vita.’

  He shook his head. ‘My family is here.’

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘I’m not leaving.’

  ‘You’ll get killed.’ Desperation rose in my voice. ‘Please, Luca. Don’t be stubborn. Not now, not like this.’

  He got up, half of him already bloodstained. He offered me his good hand and pulled me to my feet.

  ‘It’s almost over,’ he said, sliding past me, and striding towards the open patio doors. ‘I need to finish this.’

  ‘Luca.’ I ran after him. He pulled me against him, around the side of the house, as we tracked the sound of bullets – of shouts and faraway curses, our feet sinking into the snow. I could see Nic at the other end of the garden, standing over a lifeless body. A white shirt, blue jeans – a Marino. A pool of snowy blood halo-ing him. Dom and Gino were further on, moving into a cluster of trees. Two more bodies littered the lawn. I couldn’t make out who they were. We kept moving towards the others, keeping our backs to the wall as we went, the purposeful crunch of our footsteps filling the silence.

  Another gunshot pealed through the air, and in the distance, CJ went down. A shout rose up. ‘Jack!’ Luca hissed. I couldn’t see well enough – they were too far away. ‘Stay here,’ he called over his shoulder as he took off running.

  A thud from the kitchen startled me out of my pursuit. I turned around, my gun raised. A shadow slipped by the patio doors and around the side of the kitchen, away from view. I shuffled forward, suddenly conscious of just how alone I was.

  The sound of a chair scraping backwards. They could see me through any of the windows. I had no cover, just snow and nothingness. I was a sitting duck out on the patio. I pressed myself against the wall of the house between the window and the door. ‘Who’s there?’ I called over my shoulder. ‘I’m armed. Show yourself!’

  ‘Sophie?’ I snapped my head forward, my attention splitting in two. Jack was coming around the side of the house. The left side of his shirt was covered in blood.

  I pointed my gun at him. ‘Don’t. Move.’

  He straightened, just a little, his gun still by his side. ‘You wouldn’t,’ he said, cautious, afraid. Good.

  I was not afraid any more.

  A fresh surge of adrenalin bolted through me. My cheeks flooded with warmth. I tried to concentrate. I tried to press my finger against the trigger. Come on. Do it. Do it or he’ll kill you.

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’ I said, as coolly as I could make myself sound.

  ‘I’m your blood.’

  ‘You killed my mother,’ I hissed.

  His smile was patronizing, his gold filling glinting at me in the frigid sunlight. ‘She was in my way. In fact, she was always in my way.’

  ‘Any last words before I kill you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, stepping towards me. ‘I hope we meet in hell.’

  I smiled at him. ‘Save me a seat.’

  I pulled the trigger.

  It clicked, but the bullet jammed. I pulled it again. Nothing.

  Jack started laughing. He looked at his gun, and then at me. ‘Looks like you’ll get there before me, Persephone.’

  There was nowhere to run. He was going to kill me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of my fear. I would not cower before him. I was stronger than that. I was stronger than them.

  I took a deep breath.

  The snow crunched as he came towards me.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  BROTHER

  ‘Jack.’ That voice. Cautious. Near. ‘Stop.’

  I snapped my eyes open. My father stepped out of Donata Marino’s kitchen, and my knees nearly went from under me.

  Jack stopped walking. ‘Mickey?’ he said, the word sucked into an inhale. ‘Where the fuck have you been? We’ve sent word out for you!’

  My father stepped in front of me. I faltered backwards, using the shield, trying to calm myself. ‘In hiding,’ he told Jack.

  ‘Just not with your family?’ Jack replied, distrust starting to seep into his voice. His gun was still half-raised. I scanned my father. His hair was scruffy, his clothes a bit too big for him. He had a gun, too. ‘You know we have the resources to hide you, Mickey. You should have come here first.’

  ‘I’m coming to you now,’ my father said evenly.

  There was something between them – something cold and dark. It wasn’t camaraderie.

  ‘Good,’ Jack grunted. ‘It’s about time.’ He lowered his gun.

  My father raised his, just a fraction. ‘Were you about to shoot my daughter?’

  ‘No!’ Jack spluttered. ‘She was about to shoot me! I was just going to immobilize her.’

  ‘And what about my wife, Jack?’ My father’s words were acid on his tongue. I could feel his anger in my bloodstream. ‘What about Celine?’

  Understanding dawned across Jack’s face. ‘An accident,’ he said quickly. But my father was already pointing the gun at him.

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jack said, his voice frantic. ‘Mickey, what the hell are you doing?’

  My father took one final step towards his brother. ‘Killing you.’

  He shot him, right there on the Marino lawn, in the house they both grew up in another lifetime ago. Jack careened backwards, falling heavily, like a beached starfish, his face turned towards the afternoon sky. And my father, who I had once thought kind and gentle and good, didn’t even flinch. He looked at the body of his dead brother for no more than three seconds, then he turned around to me.

  His shoulders slumped, the gun dangling uselessly at his side.

  I just stood there, a mixture of horror and relief, a half-painted grimace plastered across my face. ‘Dad.’

  He kept the distance. Perhaps he thought I was scared. Perhaps I was scared. ‘It had to be me, Sophie. Do you understand?’ he said. ‘I had to do it.’

  ‘That’s why you came out,’ I realized. ‘To get to him.’

  My father nodded. ‘And now it’s done.’

  ‘I was going to do it.’

  ‘Better me than you,’ he said.

  ‘He’s gone.’ I looked at Jack’s lifeless body, half-sunk in the snow, and tried to process what that really meant. ‘He’s finally gone.’

  My father was still looking at me, his eyes glassy now. ‘And I’m sorry, Sophie. For not being there when you needed me. For not protecting you.’

  I looked up at him. I couldn’t think of anyt
hing to say. I was still struggling to understand it all, to resist the sadness filling me up.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again. ‘For everything.’

  The air exploded and he fell to his knees. He grasped at the space between us as another gunshot slammed into his side.

  I whipped my head around. Nic was running and shooting.

  ‘Nic!’ I screamed. ‘Nic, don’t!’

  Another gunshot. My father’s face pressed towards the earth. I went to him, lifting his head in my hands, so I could look into his eyes as the life was leaving him.

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ I said quickly. ‘Dad, I’m sorry, too.’

  His lids fluttered. He opened his mouth but no words came out, only blood.

  ‘I love you,’ I said, my voice growing shriller, the fear vibrating in it. ‘I love you, Dad.’

  A whisper of a smile, his lips wobbling as the blood painted them red, and then he closed his eyes and slumped forward, and I caught him, pressing my head against his and letting my tears soak into his hair.

  I pulled myself out from underneath him, laying his body across the grass just a couple of yards away from his brother. Half red, half white. Bullet-riddled and pale as the snow around him. I got to my feet. Nic was standing there, his gun holstered, his expression unreadable.

  I turned my face to his, all the things I wanted to say suddenly evaporating into nothingness. My legs were shaking. Luca was racing back up the garden towards us.

  Nic held my gaze. ‘He had to go, Sophie. I’m sorry, but he had to go.’

  Luca was beside us. He slammed his fist into his brother’s face, screaming at him as he went down. ‘You fucking idiot! You fucking idiot!’

  I stumbled backwards, across the bloodstained snow and into the kitchen. I couldn’t see properly any more. My vision was blurring, my head was swimming. Everyone sounded impossibly far away. It had been less than ten minutes, surely, since we had arrived, but it felt like hours. Painful, slow hours. I must have dropped my gun somewhere. I was all wet now too, and my hands were dark red. I was freezing. My teeth were chattering and my legs were shaking so violently I could barely stand.

  I reached the sink and anchored myself to it, my stained fingernails clawing at the metal. I bent over it and vomited until I couldn’t stand any longer. Then I sank to my knees and waited for the shaking to stop.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  ESCAPE

  Paulie lifted me to my feet. I grabbed his arm and pulled myself up. My face was prickling uncomfortably, and my mouth had run so dry my lips felt like they might crack open. My mind was a tornado of thoughts – too quick to grasp, too loud to shut off.

  ‘We’re going,’ he said quietly. ‘Donata and Romano got away. All the others are dead.’

  I nodded at the ground, my fingers still clutching at his sleeve. All the others were dead. Now there was only Donata. Only Donata. I tried to focus on that one thought, but the others were roaring inside my head. My father’s eyes, his last attempt to smile. Nic, standing there with gun in hand. Felice crumpling to the ground, that knife in Luca’s arm. Jack, staring, unseeing, at the sky.

  All the others were dead.

  All the others were dead.

  And I was alive.

  Did I want to be alive?

  ‘Come on now.’ Paulie slipped his arm around my back. His voice was gentle but firm. We passed by the Marino casualties, and Felice in between them all. My kill. Paulie didn’t look back. Did he know he was dead? Did he know why?

  Did it matter?

  The Falcones were swarming in behind us.

  Behind me, Elena and Nic were arguing in Italian. Luca and Dom were holding CJ up between them. He was bleeding badly from his left leg.

  I looked at my feet.

  One foot in front of the other.

  One foot in front of the other.

  Just keep going. Just keep going.

  Walk it off.

  Walk it off.

  I climbed into an SUV and laid my head back until my face was tilted towards the roof. I didn’t want to look at anyone or anything. Someone climbed in beside me. I shut my brain off. I ignored my surroundings. I pictured a white, blank page.

  We sped off, one car after another, away from the perfect row of houses, away from all those dead Marinos, away from Felice, away from my father and my uncle lying side by side on snow-tipped grass, and every last crimson shred of my old family.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  HOLLOW

  The second I set foot in Evelina, I climbed the three flights of stairs to my bedroom, grabbed a towel and locked myself in the bathroom. I stood under the shower, and watched the steam rise up off my skin, the red smears fall away with the soap. I washed my hair so many times I lost count. I opened my mouth and swallowed the water. I sat down and curled my arms around my body, and let the beads slide down the back of my neck. I wanted to be clean.

  I couldn’t make myself clean.

  After an eternity, I shut off the water, wrapped myself in a towel and padded back towards my room. The house was eerily quiet. Paulie had said there would be an immediate debriefing when we got home. I had shunned it.

  I slipped into sweatpants and a hoodie and climbed into bed. I didn’t know what time it was. The sky was beginning to dim outside. I tried not to think about what they were talking about downstairs. I tried not to think about my father, about Jack, about any of it.

  I was bone-tired. Without triumph or contentment. There was no joy in watching Jack fall. There was no relief, as I had hoped. I just felt hollow; empty. I felt broken.

  Irreparably broken.

  Luca had been right. This wasn’t the answer. But I was so wrapped up in it now, it didn’t matter any more. I had cast my die. I had taken a life. I had lost every last tether to my old identity.

  My mind slowed down, and the blackness crept in.

  A quiet knock at the door. Luca. I peeked at him from underneath the covers. He had changed into a T-shirt. His arm was bandaged all the way up to the elbow. He was pale, his black hair stark against the rest of him.

  He just stood there.

  We watched each other, everything we might have said communicated in that one long look.

  I’m sorry.

  He sat down on the side of my bed, and brushed the hair from my face. ‘You were brave today.’

  I blinked up at him. I thought this would unite us, but I could feel the hollowness in him, just as I could feel my own. This was no victory. Even if we had gotten Donata too, the emptiness would have stretched on, devouring the rest of me, until I was nothing.

  I was nothing.

  I was worse than nothing.

  I had nothing.

  Luca traced his fingers along my hairline, waiting. Waiting.

  I was so tired.

  ‘I feel empty,’ I told him.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  You were right. I wanted to tell him he was right, but of course he already knew. He was wearing the anguish of today on his face, too. It was deep in his eyes, in every careful breath. There was no respite from Valentino’s passing, no feeling of a great wrong being righted. There was no relief in knowing my mother’s betrayer was in the ground, in seeing my father fall the way I once believed he deserved to.

  I pushed the covers back and moved over. Luca lay down beside me, his arm around me as I rested my head on his chest, and listened to the sound of his heartbeat thudding beneath me. He curled his hand around mine.

  ‘Sleep,’ he said. He pulled the covers over us, and pressed his lips against my hair. ‘I’ll be here.’

  I drifted into the blackness, into oblivion, as exhaustion swept over me like a wave.

  Hours dragged by, when evening turned to night, and slowly, dawn crept in, flashing streaks of orange and pink across the sky.

  When I woke up, Luca was gone, and I was alone again.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  BY THE SWORD

  ‘Have you packed yet?’ Dom was staring quizz
ically at me in the hallway. ‘Also, why does your hair look like a bird’s nest?’

  I ran my fingers through it and felt the tangle. ‘I just woke up,’ I said defensively. ‘What do you care, anyway?’

  Dom whistled under his breath. ‘Wow, killing really doesn’t agree with you, Sophie.’

  It was only then that I noticed the duffel bag in his hand. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You obviously haven’t checked your phone,’ he surmised. ‘We’re moving to a safe house. The police are looking into the Marino murders and Luca wants us to lie low. Donata’s still at large, so we could be in danger …’ He trailed off, his brows lifting, the silver scar stretching to white.

  ‘What?’

  He shrugged. ‘I suppose it seems kind of inappropriate to stay in this house … you know, what with you having shot its owner.’

  I crossed my arms over my chest and held his stare. ‘He was going to kill Luca.’

  ‘I know,’ said Dom. ‘We had a debriefing.’

  ‘There wasn’t any other option,’ I added, feeling like I had to defend myself, feeling like no matter what I said, it wouldn’t wash the guilt from my hands.

  Dom laid a hand on my shoulder and I faltered with surprise. ‘You did the right thing, Sophie. We all know that.’

  I clamped my mouth shut. I was afraid of what I would say next – of all the things still unsaid between us in that moment – Jack, my father … ‘So, we’re going into hiding?’

  ‘Until New Year’s Eve.’ A glint had returned to Dom’s eyes. ‘Donata’s expected at the mayor’s yacht party for the countdown. If she shows up, we’re going to take her head.’

  I swallowed back my revulsion. ‘Another coup.’

  ‘We keep pressing forward,’ said Dom, confidently. ‘When you have the advantage, you run with it. We’ve almost won.’