Inferno (Page 3)

My mother released her grip on my shoulder and exhaled in a choked puff. My palms were slick with sweat even though Felice hadn’t looked at us once when he was in the room.

‘Well, then,’ said Detective Comisky. ‘We’ll resume.’

The interview was concluded a couple of minutes later. That was on Day Two. Two days since my life had flipped upside down and changed everything I thought I knew. There were so many things that haunted me, questions woven inside the nightmares. And there were people, too. People I never wanted to see again, people I never wanted to meet, and people who still owed me answers. And though I didn’t know it at the time, there was someone just like me, trapped on the other side of that world, trying to get out.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MAFIA QUEEN

At first my mother refused to leave my side. She just watched me, statue-like in her chair, blood-red eyes drooping with tiredness as she clutched my hand in hers and told me it would get better. Her voice shook as she said it, and I wondered at her reluctance to be apart from me – was she afraid of leaving me by myself, or was she terrified of being alone?

When she could barely open her eyes from exhaustion or speak without yawning the ends of her sentences, she agreed to go home and sleep. It was almost over. The next day I was getting out. After that I would never have to set foot in a hospital room again.

The sound of her retreating footfall was replaced by Nic’s surer steps. He was returning from his brother’s bedside, where he spent the other half of his time, his guilt splitting him in two.

‘Hey,’ he whispered. He leant over me, subtly assessing the bruises, like he always did. Maybe he didn’t want me to feel self-conscious about it, or maybe he didn’t want to remind me where they had come from.

‘Hi.’ I was lying down, feeling the weight of my tiredness on my lids. He looked as exhausted as I felt. ‘I’m trying not to fall asleep.’

‘Sleep if you need to, Soph. I’ll be here.’ I didn’t notice him move, but I felt the soft pressure of his fingers as he brushed my hair from my face.

I didn’t want to sleep – sleeping meant dreaming and dreaming meant nightmares, and then before I knew it, I’d be awake and screaming all over again. I shook my head, but I could feel the threads in my brain going slack. ‘You should go,’ I told him, my tongue thick in my mouth. ‘Visiting hours are over.’

I caught the quirk of his lips as he pressed them against my hand, smiling. He had zero respect for visiting hours. Among other things. ‘I’ll wait until you fall asleep.’

I let my eyes close as the feeling of safety surrounded me.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘Forgive me, Sophie.’

I wanted to. It was easy in times like this, when I was too tired to think, too distracted to remember. It was easy to listen to him whispering to me, his fingers stroking mine. If I thought too much about those hands – what they could do, what they had already done – then I wouldn’t have been able to hold them, to let them trail softly along the bruises on my face.

If ‘sorry’ could have made it all better, I would have walked right out of the hospital and never looked back. But deep down I knew the boy who watched over me with quiet attentiveness was the same boy who had put a bullet in my uncle in the warehouse. And yet when Nic looked at me with those gold-flecked eyes, it was hard to ignore the flutter in my stomach, the weakness in my arms when I tried to push him away.

The line between right and wrong was a dark, blurry gap, and I had fallen down inside it.

When I woke up screaming, there was something hovering in the blackness – a strange winged shape upon the walls. I tried to blink it away, but the form grew crisper, taller. Real. I strangled my screams and sat bolt upright, crushing myself against the pillow. ‘Who the hell are you?’

Either this was the creepiest nurse in history, or I was about to get murdered. She edged closer to me until the half-light from underneath the door flickered along her frame. I had only seen Elena Genovese-Falcone twice before – once in Valentino’s portrait of her, and once in a newspaper article about the funeral of Don Angelo Falcone, Nic’s father. She had been in Europe when Nic and his brothers had first moved to Cedar Hill.

In person, she was statuesque. Her frame was narrow and crisp around the edges – a consequence of tight-fitting, tailored clothes. The tip of her nose swooped upwards into a point and her dark hair was wound into a bun. She was gripping the bars at the end of my bed. If we were in a superhero movie, she might have ripped them right off, the way she was tensing her fists around them.

‘So,’ she said. ‘You are the Gracewell girl.’

Her voice was plummy, and edged with a faint Italian accent. It wasn’t a question, more of an accusation, and I had the sudden sense of being caught in a trap. Which was stupid, considering that was my name and she hadn’t exactly jumped any hurdles to figure it out.

‘Yes,’ I said, a tremor tripping through my voice as I reached for the bedside light and flicked it on. ‘That’s me.’

The room lit up and I felt marginally more confident. I could probably duck and roll if I needed to, but as far as I could see she wasn’t brandishing a weapon. Unless you counted the patronizing smirk. The light had enveloped her harshly, illuminating a made-up face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her hooded eyes were a familiar searing blue.

I smoothed the greasy wisps of hair away from my face. Let her take a good look at what her family did to me. Let her see the yellowing bruises, my swollen cheeks. I would stand my ground – I would show her I wasn’t afraid. Even if I was totally and completely terrified. ‘May I ask what you’re doing in my room at this hour, Mrs Falcone?’