Inferno (Page 77)

‘Linda’s family hid them. They were already in Milwaukee before the murders. Your grandfather suspected there was a hit out on him and he didn’t want to take any chances. Linda wouldn’t leave her husband’s side.’

‘And she died for it.’

‘She did.’

She died for love.

For stupidity.

‘Do you call Dad “Vince” or “Michael”?’

‘He’s only ever been Michael to me.’

I laughed, but there was no amusement in it.

‘Sophie …’

‘Why did Dad come back to Chicago?’ I cut in. ‘Did he have a death wish or something?’

She sighed. ‘I was in college here when we met. I wanted to stay and raise a family, and by the time I found out about his past, he said the danger was over. The Falcones would never find out who he was.’

‘Still, why risk it?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’ She sat down on the bed, disturbing a group of photographs. I picked up the key underneath. It was heavy and brass, with a thick loop at the end, where the metal broke away into connecting swirls. ‘He wanted to be Michael Gracewell. He believed we’d get away with it.’

‘Well, we haven’t,’ I said, bitterness twisting my voice as I twisted the key in my hand. It was fancy, important-looking. It opened the safe in the diner – I’d bet my life on it. Something lurched inside me. What the hell was it doing in my father’s closet?

‘Just because Donata told you doesn’t mean the other families will find out.’

I lifted my gaze. ‘Donata didn’t tell me.’

She screwed her face up. ‘What?’

I stood up, still clutching the key. ‘The Falcones did.’

I don’t know why I revelled in the surprise on my mother’s face in that split second, why it made me feel good to know that there were secrets she didn’t know either. It was petty and small, but that’s how I felt. Stupid. Untethered from my own identity.

She shot to her feet. ‘No.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘But how?’

I crushed the key in my fist and threw the rest of the photos off the bed. Anger surged in me now that I had seen it all, now that I knew for sure. ‘Because I went to them,’ I said, hot tears welling in my eyes. ‘Because I thought they were our only hope! Because I thought we had to be protected from the Marinos! I went to them thinking they would help us, and I left with Felice Falcone screaming “Marino” at me.’ The sobs came thick and fast, choking me.

‘No,’ my mother half-shrieked. ‘They can’t know.’

‘Everybody knows!’ I yelled. ‘Everybody knows and we’re stuck here like rats, waiting to be killed or used in this stupid blood war! You should have told me!’

‘I wanted to protect you!’ She was shouting too. Panic had seized us both. We saw our fate mirrored back at us – hopeless, inevitable. We had burnt all our bridges. The secrets had cut us down. ‘I’ve been tearing my hair out thinking about it. How could I risk telling you? After the warehouse … after how close they got to us, and you were so brave and so good. The Falcones weren’t looking at you any more – they owed you. I thought we could walk away. I thought our secret was still safe. How could I tell my baby girl the family she comes from is sick and twisted, after everything we’ve come through? How could I break your heart like that?’ She was crying harder than me.

‘I never had a choice,’ I said, a violent sob rattling my shoulders. ‘All this time I was living a lie. I never had a way out, and you all knew it!’

‘We wanted to give you a way out,’ she insisted. ‘I wanted to more than anything, sweetheart.’

Something shifted inside me as Nic’s forgotten words rose to the surface, wrapping around me. The world got very dark all of a sudden. ‘I’m bound by blood, Mom.’ My voice fell deathly quiet. ‘There is no way out.’

‘Oh, Sophie.’ She dragged her hands across her face. ‘Do you know that you’re the most important thing to me in the whole world? I love you.’

‘I know,’ I said, defeated. ‘I know that. I love you too.’

I sank to the floor and she sank with me. The key fell to the carpet between us. ‘I was trying to protect you,’ she said, clasping my hands in hers.

‘And I was trying to protect you,’ I told her. ‘And now we’re screwed.’

She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands. ‘No.’ She got up and pulled me with her. ‘We’re going. We have to go. We have to go tonight.’

‘They’ll find us, Mom. There’s no way out of this life. Don’t you get it? Jack’s got all that money in the diner. He’s got all the resources in the world.’ I picked up the key and brandished it between us. ‘He’s got his damn safe in our diner. Donata’s watching us. I don’t know what the Falcones are going to do any more than you do, but I know we don’t have enough to get away from them. We won’t be able to hide. I was supposed to choose, and I chose wrong.’

Nic’s words rang in my head. She’s a fucking Marino.

The look on Luca’s face.

My mother took the key from my hand. ‘Well, then, let’s get the resources,’ she said, her voice spiking. ‘If they’re going to treat us like Marinos then let’s act like them.’