Inferno (Page 57)

Something swelled in my chest. They were half-wilted, ripped from the earth and strewn with stray blades of grass that were probably covered with tiny bugs, but they were the first bouquet of flowers I had ever got. And they were beautiful.

‘I earned these,’ I said, beaming at my bounty as I held them in my lap.

Luca nodded at the road, his lips stretching to reveal a flash of white teeth. ‘You definitely did.’

The start of the afternoon – the prison, the highway scare, the gun, the terror – faded with the fields behind us.

Luca dropped me off at the end of my street just after six p.m. I scooped my flowers up and hopped out, turning to wave them at him. ‘Thanks for the ride.’

‘You’re welcome.’

I gestured down the street, in the direction of reality as it came creeping back in. ‘Anyway, I’m sure you have … diner business to attend to.’

He shook his head, his expression turning sombre as his seriousness returned with thoughts of his family. ‘I don’t watch the diner, Sophie.’ He sighed, just a little, and his brow furrowed. ‘My responsibilities are closer to home.’

‘Oh,’ I said, realizing that Luca’s presence in Cedar Hill really was just a favour to me. An act of kindness that had saved me from melting on that bus. ‘Thank you for going so far out of your way for me.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t have to seem so surprised.’

‘Hmm,’ I teased, pretending to consider him. ‘Maybe you’re not so bad after all.’

He leant across the seat, jabbing his finger in the air. ‘If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it. I have a reputation to uphold, you know.’

‘Oh, you mean the whole asshole thing?’

‘And speaking of reputations, don’t do anything stupid,’ he added, leaning back into his seat and releasing the parking brake. ‘Fight your natural urges.’

I frowned at him. ‘And it almost ended so well.’

He shrugged as I shut the door. Through the open window I heard him say, ‘Well, then it wouldn’t really be us, would it?’

He didn’t wait for my answer and I didn’t stand watching his car as he took off, back to Evelina and the underworld. My thoughts skipped to the safe and all the secrets it held, to his brothers who were lurking somewhere nearby. I turned for home, my bouquet of blue violets held tightly in my hand.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I never would have expected eleven flowers and half a doughnut to lift my mood so high. But that was before Jack, before the diner, before the Marinos, before the Falcones. That was before my father told me to get the hell away from Cedar Hill.

My footsteps slowed as I realized that to honour my father’s wishes, I would have to ask my mother to do the impossible. I was caught between them – between everything – and all the roads were hazy and grey, and I didn’t know which one to choose. The sky was grey too, heavy with a distant rolling storm, and it pressed down on me as I walked, suffocating me slowly under its heat.

The violets were electric blue, and I held them tightly. I was still holding them like a perverse life raft for my sanity when I shut the front door of my house and found myself face-to-face with Donata Marino. She was perched, like a Gucci-fied vulture, on the threshold of our kitchen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ALLEGIANCE

In the giant game of human ping-pong that was fast becoming my life, Elena Falcone held one bat, Donata Marino held the other, and I was a small, white ball, whirring back and forth.

And I was so over all this.

My mother was hovering behind Donata, her hands curling around the kitchen sink edge as she leant against it. Donata was rigid, squared shoulders cutting her neck in half, hands fisted at her sides as she stood between us. She wore all black for her daughter. Sara Marino had been dead less than a week.

My body deflated in a mixture of shock and fear. The flowers went limp at my side, their blue heads drooping towards the floor. I forced myself to look at Donata as memories of her bony grip at Eden brought a phantom sting to my wrists. She moved aside, granting me entrance to the kitchen.

‘Well, here you are, Ms Gracewell.’ She lingered over my name as though it burnt her mouth. Her darkened lids fell heavy over bloodshot eyes.

‘Sweetheart.’ My mother said the word on an inhale. Her brow was creased, the sun-tanned skin rippling. She looked like she was trying to figure out a riddle.

I put the flowers on the countertop beside me, tossing them with forced casualness, the irrational part of me worrying that Donata might sense where they had come from, who they had come from. In that moment, those flowers felt as incriminating as a giant neon sign on my forehead flashing FALCONE SYMPATHIZER.

The atmosphere was strange – loaded, like the entire room was tilted on a knifepoint, waiting for the plunge into something darker.

‘Mom?’ My fingers clutched my phone inside my pocket. I was already unlocking it. ‘What’s going on? Did she hurt you?’

She shook her head. The circles under her eyes were moistened. ‘No, sweetheart … she was just telling me about …’

‘About my daughter,’ said Donata, peering at me through black-rimmed eyes. ‘I was telling your mother about what the Falcones did to my nineteen-year-old girl.’

‘Dreadful,’ whispered my mother. ‘Those boys … it’s just dreadful.’

‘I was telling your mother how it might have happened to you …’ Donata paused, calculated, waiting … and then, ‘how it still might.’