Vendetta (Blood for Blood #1)(30)

“Grief,” he replied.

“It must be difficult to look beneath the mask,” I said, my throat suddenly tight.

Valentino raised his chin. “No more difficult than it is to wear one.”

I pulled my hands back and straightened up as a wave of something unpleasant washed over me. I didn’t want to look at the portraits anymore. It was an uncomfortable feeling, staring into the darkest moments of someone’s soul without them knowing. “Do you think you wear a mask?”

“I’m wearing one right now.” Valentino smiled softly. “We both are.”

“It’s a sad thought.”

“Yes,” he said. “But sometimes I wonder about the alternative. Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves?”

The idea swirled around my head. Hello, I’m Sophie. My uncle’s a paranoid loon, my father’s in jail for murder, and my mother buries herself in work to distract herself from her broken heart. I’m pretty sure I prefer cartoons over real life and I only have one real friend. I’m terrified of storms and I’m deeply suspicious of cats. I obsess over the cuteness of sloths and sometimes I cry at commercials.

“It would be terrible,” I confirmed.

Valentino smirked as though he had just listened to my embarrassing inner monologue. “Absolute chaos.”

I nodded, feeling subdued. Somewhere deep down I was trying to fight the sudden urge to burst into tears. As if sensing my inner struggle, Valentino afforded me a moment of privacy. He deflected his gaze and started to rearrange his sketches into a pile, until I could only see the one he was still working on. It was a man in maybe his midforties, dressed impeccably in a glossy dark suit and staring right at me from the page. For a heartbeat it felt as though I already knew him, that I had seen him somewhere before, but the moment passed, and I knew it was his son I was seeing. He was so like Nic it hit me like a punch in the gut. He had the same dark eyes with lighter flecks swimming inside, the same straight, narrow nose, and the same curving lips. His hair was gray in parts and receding, revealing a forehead etched with worry lines. His expression was grim.

“Seriousness?” I ventured.

“No,” Valentino said without looking up. “This one is Death.” I watched him smudge the edges. “I draw my father every day so that I’ll never forget him. But there’s nothing more to find in him now. He’s with the angels and he doesn’t need to wear a mask anymore. Everything he was is gone.”

“I’m sorry,” I offered weakly. It really was the only thing I could think to say, and still it didn’t seem like half enough.

Valentino shrugged, his expression matter-of-fact. “You can’t avoid the inevitability of death. It comes at you one way or another, and takes us all to the same place in the end. To apologize for it is to apologize for the sun shining or the rain falling. It is what it is.”

I wanted to tell him he was lucky for his pragmatism, but I didn’t get the opportunity. A door opened behind me. I noticed the smell first: a faint sweetness in the air.

“Valentino?” A man’s voice, crisp and gentle, followed.

I turned to find a slim, middle-aged man staring at me with surprise. His skin was olive and his hair the brightest silver I had ever seen. His eyebrows were so light I could barely detect them, but by the way they were denting his forehead, I could tell they were raised.

“Oh my,” he said in a faint accent. “Hello there.”

He advanced toward me like a well-dressed beanpole, his head tilted to one side. I didn’t know much about men’s clothing, but I could recognize an expensive suit when I saw one. It was black with thin pinstripes, and beneath it he wore a shiny gray shirt and a silk neck scarf. If he was burning up in the humidity, he didn’t show it.

He stuck out his hand and I took it; his handshake was cold and firm. The sweet smell was stronger now that he was so close; it was almost cloying. There was something vaguely familiar about it, too, but I couldn’t place it.

“And you are?” he asked, a slow smile forming.

“I’m Sophie, and I just stopped by to — ”

“What a pleasure,” he said, silencing me with politeness and releasing my hand militarily.

I tried not to stare at the red marks all over his face: not quite pimples, more like pinpricks — hard to spot when far away but difficult to ignore at close range. It was like he had fallen into a rose garden face-first.

“Please excuse my intrusion. I do hope I’m not interrupting anything. I’m Felice,” he said, pronouncing the “leech-ay” part with a distinct Italian roll. “Valentino’s uncle.”

The switchblade buyer. I tried not to curl my lip in disgust.

“You’re not interrupting anything,” Valentino answered from over my shoulder. There was a hint of indignation in his voice.

Felice rounded the table in wide, graceful strides, taking most of the perfumed scent with him. “I wasn’t aware you boys had time to make friends in the neighborhood.”

“That’s not remotely the case,” Valentino replied, his tone acidic. “Sophie is just returning something.”

I held up Nic’s hoodie in a bid to ease the strange tension that had descended upon us.

Felice looked at it sharply. “Is that Luca’s?”