Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3)

by Catherine Doyle

  ‘Evelina,’ I said. Emilia had skipped into a different room. ‘My father is dead.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, softly. ‘I saw it on the news. I am sorry, Sophie. He was a good man.’

  I swallowed the lump. ‘And Felice, too,’ I said, my voice turning to a rasp.

  Her expression changed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was there,’ I whispered. The guilt was flooding through me and the words were tumbling out before I could stop them. I couldn’t stand in her kitchen and pretend to be innocent. I couldn’t lie to her face, not while his child was one room away, humming and skipping, her paper butterflies flying around above me. ‘He was going to kill Luca,’ I said. ‘He was going to kill him. He had the gun pointed at his head, and – and I had to do something. I didn’t set out to do it. I didn’t want to harm him, not really, but he was going to kill Luca, and I had to stop him.’

  ‘You saved a life,’ she said.

  ‘I took a life.’

  Evelina took a step closer, a glass of lemonade held out in offering. I took it from her, held it tight against my chest. It felt bigger than it was. Another life raft.

  She took a sip of her lemonade, swallowed hard and then looked right at me when she said, ‘I have known both Falcones, Sophie. You made the right choice.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, because there was nothing else to say, and I could still hear his daughter singing to herself in the other room.

  Evelina nodded. ‘It is a kindness to us,’ she said, quietly. ‘That we no longer have to live in fear of him. And a kindness to Luca, whose life you saved.’

  ‘I love him.’ My voice was wobbling. ‘I couldn’t lose him.’ Evelina’s face creased, a whisper of empathy lowering her brows. ‘I can see why. Luca is very easy to love.’

  ‘And he loved you,’ I said, remembering my conversation with Luca about the stars, about possibility, about all the things she made him believe he could be.

  And he’ll never know, I realized. He’ll never know you made it out alive.

  A rogue tear slid down my face.

  Evelina rubbed my arm, her fingers grazing my bullet wound. ‘It’s OK,’ she soothed. ‘I once lived in that world. It is a cruel, unforgiving place, where good men suffer and bad men thrive. It is filled with loss and regret, and guilt. I understand what you’ve been through.’ She waited until I raised my gaze again. ‘It’s been hard for you. For both of us. But you are all the better for being here right now, with us. Will you stay?

  For a while?’

  Emilia was laughing at something in the other room. It was such a beautiful, foreign sound. I found myself nodding. ‘Yes.’

  ‘A new year starts tomorrow,’ she said gently. ‘A new beginning.’

  But first there was tonight. And I couldn’t get tonight out of my head.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  MIDNIGHT

  I was sitting beside Evelina Falcone with a half-drunk glass of red wine in my hand, watching the New Year’s Eve countdown on a local news station, when the massacre began back in Chicago.

  The screen changed, and footage of fireworks in Colorado was replaced by a BREAKING NEWS bulletin. Bile gathered in my throat as the words flashed across the screen: ‘DISTURBANCE AT CHICAGO MAYOR’S YACHT PARTY’. The cameras were zooming in on a huge white yacht on Lake Michigan, and several police boats were already racing towards it. The scene shifted, and a reporter flashed on-screen, the yacht behind her right shoulder, horror etched across her face.

  Evelina and I fell into silence, and I tried my hardest not to rip the skin from the backs of my fingers as I stared, barely blinking, at the final scene of my worst nightmare.

  ‘MASS SHOOTING ABOARD MAYOR’S YACHT PARTY’ scrolled across the screen.

  Evelina covered her mouth with her hands, her scream trapped inside her. I was gripping the seat so hard, my fingernails were ripping into the leather. I stayed like that, glued, as the headlines changed, and slowly, slowly, the death toll mounted. All of them nameless.

  I was still staring at the screen when Evelina got to her feet aeons later.

  ‘Sophie,’ she said, a hand laid on my shoulder. I barely felt it. ‘I think we should call it a night.’

  ‘Seven,’ I said, my mouth so dry the words croaked out of it. ‘And bodies in the water, too, they think.’

  ‘Sophie,’ she said.

  ‘And injured. Lots of injured.’

  ‘Sophie,’ she said again. ‘Look at me.’

  I tore my eyes away from the screen, stared up at her. She was wearing a long pink robe – she had pulled all the threads from the ends, and now they were frayed around her fingers. ‘This is part of your new life, Sophie. Learning to walk away. You can’t look back. We can’t look back. No matter how much we want to.’

  Her mouth was moving but all I could hear was the word ‘seven’. Seven. Seven dead already. Seven was a big number. Too big. One was too big.

  ‘I have to know.’ I lurched forward, willing the screen to change. There were no names released, just faraway images of body bags and police in riot gear rushing to and fro. Ambulances on standby. Sirens blaring. ‘I have to know how many of them are … I need to know who …’

  Evelina stood in front of the TV, head tilted to one side as she looked down on me. ‘No, you don’t. Not now. Not tonight.’

  Something was heaving inside me, clawing against my insides. ‘He could be dead,’ I told her, my pitch rising. ‘Or in the water, and if he’s one of the bodies in the water then he won’t survive because it’s almost below freezing over there right now and—’

  ‘Sophie.’ Evelina hunkered down until we were at eye level. Over her shoulder, a helicopter panned over the scene of the shooting – the distant sounds of screams filling up the background. Seven. That was all of them. All the ones I cared about. Luca, Nic, Dom, Gino, Paulie, Elena, CJ.

  ‘There won’t be much more news tonight, Sophie. A good night’s sleep will do you a world of good. Tomorrow is a brand new day.’ I knew she wasn’t trying to sound like a song from a Disney musical.

  Evelina’s hand on mine – warm, firm. ‘Do you understand that this is part of your journey? Part of your recovery? We need to turn off the television, and you need to turn off your mind, and get some sleep. You need to start looking forward, to the future. You need to start concentrating on yourself again.’

  ‘I – I need to know.’

  ‘It won’t change anything now.’

  And that was the awful truth. It didn’t matter. Because I was here and he was there. We had made our choices. We had said our goodbyes.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, quietly. ‘There’ll be nothing tonight.

  You can’t be in this with them. You can’t do anything. You’re out.’

  I was a statue, barely breathing. ‘I’m out.’

  ‘You’re out.’

  She shut the TV off – all the disturbing images and squealing sirens disappearing in one sudden blink. ‘You’re out,’ she said, standing up again. ‘You’re out now.’

  ‘I’m out,’ I repeated, hoping to harness some kind of relief. There was nothing, just horror and grief, and fear.

  ‘Go to bed, Sophie. Tomorrow is a new day.’ She swallowed the unsteadiness in her voice. ‘Keep walking away.’

  She left me in the dark, staring at a blank screen, all the images bound up inside my head. Seven – and maybe more to come. Dead, dying, freezing in Lake Michigan. All of them. My family.

  And what of the Marinos? Had they won in the end with the mayor behind them? Would they come for me next – the final notch on the Falcone belt? Suddenly Colorado didn’t feel like nearly far enough.

  The blood war was coming to an end. My family, my identity was gone. And so was the boy I loved.

  And me?

  I was out.

  There was no solace in that.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  PURSUIT

  Isank into the cavernous silence, waiting for my legs to move. I fiddled with the bracelet on
my wrist. Hope. I didn’t feel any hope. We hadn’t even done the countdown.

  Was it even midnight in Colorado? All I could think about was that death toll, creeping up my throat, choking me.

  Evelina pottered somewhere overhead, getting ready for bed. Emilia had been asleep for hours.

  Outside, a headlamp bathed the street in a sudden flash of bright light. I curled my fingers in my lap, my breath catching in my throat. The light vanished as the car rounded the bend, headlamps shutting off as quickly as they had appeared. The engine rumbled towards the house.

  I crossed towards the window, peeked through the curtains at the Mercedes sitting outside Evelina Falcone’s house and felt my knees go weak.

  Was this my father’s final coup? Was it a trick all along? Or had fate come to punish me for Felice’s death?

  The engine cut out and silence descended once more. My pulse raged in my eardrums. My family was dying hundreds of miles away and a Marino was sitting less than twenty yards from me, ready to complete the final task.

  I knew instantly what I had to do. I crept into the hallway and pressed my forehead against the front door. I had done a lot of stuff I wasn’t proud of, committed acts that would haunt me for ever, but in this I could be brave. I could do the right thing.

  I slipped outside and shut the front door behind me, hearing the lock shift into place. I marched towards the end of the driveway, until I was close enough to the car and the shadows inside it. Close enough so they could see their final target standing in front of them.

  The driver’s door swung open, and I did the only thing I could do. I turned on my heel and ran as fast and as far away from Evelina’s secret as I could, forcing the air into my lungs, waiting for a bullet in the back of my head.

  Just not here. Not outside Evelina’s house. Not in their world.

  Somewhere on a yacht in Chicago, the Falcones were dying, and somewhere in the middle of a snowy mountain town in Colorado, so was I.

  Maybe this was how it was always meant to go down.

  I sprinted hard, spurred on by the sound of footsteps behind me.

  There was no room for fear, just intent.

  I wasn’t running for my life. I was running for Emilia’s life. For Evelina’s life.

  And I wasn’t afraid, not any more.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  INTO THE LIGHT

  ‘Sophie?’ That voice, so familiar and ragged with exhaustion, cut through the night. ‘Sophie, stop!’

  Impossible! My mind was playing tricks on me.

  I kept running, my heart climbing into my throat.

  ‘Sophie!’ he huffed, his footsteps almost in time with mine now. He was so close I could hear his breathing on the wind. ‘Please! Sophie!’

  I wheeled around in time to see him skidding to a halt, almost slamming into me. He stopped himself just in time.

  I was screaming his name inside my head, but when the word formed on my tongue, it was a pathetic thing, huffed out with the last of my breath. ‘Luca?’

  Luca was standing right across from me, our footsteps side by side in the snow-tipped pavement behind him. His black hair was mussed across his forehead, his bright eyes shining in the darkness. We reached for each other at the same time. I tugged him towards me by the collar of his jacket, and he pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around my waist and burying his face in my neck.

  I rose on to my tiptoes to get closer to him, pressing my cheek against his, as relief burst me open and I sobbed so hard my body shook. He was alive. He was here. He was here.

  ‘I want this life.’ Luca’s words hummed against my skin, his tears sliding against my cheeks. I could feel him shaking. ‘I want possibility.’

  I clutched him harder, feeling the dull roar of his heartbeat against my own. ‘I thought you were dead,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’

  He pulled back from me, his hands coming to my face, his thumbs wiping the tears from underneath my eyes. His laugh was shaky, his words wobbly. ‘Gee, thanks.’ He ignored his own tears. They glistened against his skin.

  ‘The yacht party,’ I said, trying to explain. ‘I thought—’

  He shook his head, his words tumbling out in short breaths. ‘I walked away,’ he said. ‘I walked away, Sophie.’

  I was crying so hard all I could do was nod until my neck hurt. ‘I’ve been driving all day to get to you. I’ve been driving for fifteen hours,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t take any chances. I couldn’t lead them to you. I rented a car, and broke every speed limit in the country. And then I got here, and I didn’t know what to do, whether you would be asleep, whether you were even still here, so I thought I would wait until the morning. And then you came out and you got scared and I thought I would have to chase you all the way to Denver because damn if you aren’t abnormally fast, Sophie!’

  My laugh was just as shaky as his, the tears still streaming down my face. I pushed the words out, garbled and half-formed. ‘I was awake. I couldn’t bear to sleep. The yacht party, Luca. There’s been casualties. A lot …’

  ‘I know,’ he said, his face crumpling. ‘I was listening to it on the radio.’

  ‘Do you know who … ?’

  He shook his head, heaved a breath. ‘Not yet.’ He shut his eyes, tight, and when he opened them, they were clear again. ‘I made my choice, Sophie. I made my choice.’

  I pressed my palm against his heart. ‘The choice to live.’

  ‘And I’ll live with the consequences. All that I’ve lost.’

  ‘All that you’ll gain,’ I whispered, raising my chin so I could meet his eyes. ‘I’m here for you. Whatever happens, I’m here.’

  He ran his hands up and down my arms, warming my skin. He was mired in grief; it was etched across the planes of his face. I could feel it between us. But there was something else there too – clear and bright and bold. It was shining in his eyes. Purpose, rightness.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘It’s over, Sophie. There is nothing more we can do.’

  ‘How did you know where I was?’ I asked, suddenly struck by the impossibility of it.

  ‘Millie,’ he said, the intensity in his expression flickering into a small smile. ‘She made me promise that I wouldn’t go back if I came here. That neither of us would. She made me swear it was for real.’

  ‘She gave you the address.’ And she hadn’t said anything. Maybe she was afraid he wouldn’t come.

  ‘Not without a lengthy interrogation,’ he said.

  ‘She must have been sure of you.’

  Luca pressed his forehead against mine. ‘I’ve never been so sure of anything.’

  My fingers were curled inside his sweater, clutching at his chest, pulling him closer, closer. ‘My head is spinning,’ I said.

  Luca pulled back so he could look me in the eyes. ‘I couldn’t do it, Sophie. I couldn’t do it, knowing there was another life for me out here with you. I saw what Millie did for you, how she waded into the darkness and pulled you out, and you went because you love her, because you owe yourself a decent life, and the truth is I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. You’re the last good thing in my life – all the hope and joy for a future that I actually want, and when I watched you leave that day, it felt like my heart was splitting in two. I was stuck, balancing on the brink of hell, and then you tumbled into my life and for the first time, I saw the possibility of a life outside those walls. A life with you. A life worth living.’ He inhaled sharply, coming closer until our noses were touching. ‘And once I knew that, I couldn’t let go of it. I’ll go anywhere for you, Sophie. I want to be the person you see when you look at me.’

  ‘That’s who you are,’ I said, knowing in my heart that it was true.

  He pressed his lips against mine. That feeling, familiar and strong, came over me again.

  ‘When I’m with you, it feels like coming home,’ he said. ‘I feel like I finally belong somewhere. You’re my somewhere, Sophie.’

  I pressed his hand against my heart
so he could feel it racing beneath his fingertips. ‘I’m going to go into cardiac arrest if you’re not careful.’

  His laugh was low and breathy. He slid his hand into my hair, his thumb caressing my cheek as I smiled against it. ‘Just imagine how I feel every time you smile at me.’

  I stood in the heat of his gaze and let myself burn. ‘So, what now, Luca?’

  ‘We’ll have to lie low for a while, until the dust settles, until we’re safe to move on.’ He tipped my chin up with his index finger, a slow smile tugging at his lips. ‘But we’ll figure it out. Whatever happens, it will be an adventure.’

  ‘Can we lie low in Disneyland?’

  Luca tried to force a frown, but his lips were still curving. ‘Trust you to lower the severity of the situation.’

  ‘I’m trying to be helpful,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Why don’t you leave the planning to me? I’m ridiculously intelligent, remember.’

  I tapped my chin. ‘But I don’t respect your authority, remember?’

  He grinned. ‘That’s why I love you so much.’

  ‘Because I don’t respect you?’

  ‘Because you infuriate me,’ he said, tapping my nose.

  ‘And I love you,’ I said, brushing my lips against his. ‘Because you’re so easy to infuriate.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he murmured, his mouth against mine.

  ‘Come with me.’ I dragged him back towards the house. I pulled out my phone and composed a quick text to Millie as we made our way back through the darkness.

  Got your gift. He’s a little tired and unkempt, but I think I’ll keep him.

  Her response was lightning fast.

  Glorious news. Enjoy your lover, but don’t forget who your soulmate is ☺

  Never ☺

  We reached Evelina’s house, and I pulled him with me on to the porch and rapped my knuckles against the door. ‘I just want Millie to know that I’m OK. Especially if I won’t be seeing her for a while.’