Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3)(27)

The less I thought about it the better. I could drive myself crazy with all these what-ifs.

There was a knock at my bedroom door. I snapped my head up, then checked my phone. No messages. No missed calls. Usually they called me if they wanted me.

‘Who is it?’

‘Nic.’

I was in teddy bear pyjama pants and an oversized hoodie. A part of me wished I looked better. The other part of me told me to shut up and stop being so superficial. I smoothed my hair back from my face and tugged my hoodie down.

‘Come in,’ I said, brushing the homework aside until it fell on to the floor in a heap.

Nic shut the door behind him. He swept his gaze across the floor, an eyebrow arching at the little bundle of notes, at the big fat poetry book squishing half of them. ‘Yeah, I don’t envy you right now, Soph.’ He stepped over them like they were toxic and plonked himself on the end of my bed. ‘I never was one for poetry.’

I gestured at the discarded poem. ‘So, I guess you can’t help me pick a deeply emotional poem to identity with for this stupid assignment?’

He pulled a face, his features growing almost cartoon-like with faux horror. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Oh well. At least I tried.’

‘I’ll ask Luca for you when he gets home. He’s a real nerd for shit like this.’

I tried not to react to the mention of Luca’s name. The truth was, I hadn’t seen him since he had almost come to blows with my father at my mother’s ceremony. He had just disappeared, and had been gone all day. I guessed he needed some time to cool off, but that didn’t do much to soothe the squirmy guilty feeling in my stomach.

Nic arranged himself model-like on the end of my bed, like I was about to draw him à la Rose in Titanic. He was dressed casually in a black T-shirt and dark blue jeans, his hair swept away from his face in finely gelled waves, a gold cross around his neck. Strictly speaking, Nic probably should not have been in my room, but I had bigger things to worry about right now. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked him. ‘Are you looking for a bedtime story?’

‘I’d usually request a lullaby, but I heard you singing in the kitchen the other day and I saw the milk curdling.’

I slammed my pillow into his face. ‘You rude man-pig. How dare you.’

His hands shot up in surrender. I rearranged the pillow behind me and lay back against it. ‘What’s really up?’

Nic grinned at me. ‘Well, my excitement levels for one.’ At my confused expression, he gestured to the nightstand, where Libero Marino’s face was staring at the ceiling. ‘Valentino just gave me the good news. You got your target. Finally!’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ I tried to smile but my cheeks were twitching. ‘I did.’

‘Libero Marino.’ Nic laughed his name. ‘He was a real piece of shit when we were younger but he’s a joke now. He’s always high on something. You could pick him off with your little finger.’

I swallowed hard, tried to ignore the ten thousand butterflies taking flight in my stomach. ‘Great.’

Nic edged towards me, crumpling the duvet into little peaks and valleys between us. Concern swept across his face. ‘You OK, Soph?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I said, in the least convincing attempt at a lie ever.

‘I thought this was what you wanted?’

I looked at my hands, knotted my fingers together. ‘I do. I’m just getting used to it. I didn’t think—I didn’t expect it to be Sara’s brother, that’s all.’

‘Oh,’ he said softly. ‘You thought it would be someone you didn’t know.’

I nodded at the bedspread. ‘Yeah. I guess I did. It just feels a bit more personal than I was expecting …’

‘The Marinos are your family,’ Nic said.

‘Well, when you put it like that, I sound pretty dumb right now.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he added. ‘Really, I do. It’s natural to have doubts, Soph.’

I stared at all that honeyed warmth swimming in his dark eyes, and felt the knot in my chest loosen. He was silent for a minute. I soaked it up, waited for my breathing to return to normal. He moved his hands a little closer. Instinctively, I pulled away, not wanting to fan the embers of desire still inside me, not wanting to complicate an already complicated situation. ‘Nic …’

‘I heard about your mother’s ceremony yesterday,’ he cut in. Maybe I had imagined his nearness, the way his body seemed to be inching closer. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I would have gone if I had known.’

I studied his face for clues of what Luca might have told him. Did he know about my father? His placid expression suggested otherwise. Another secret Luca had kept, then … another reason to feel grateful to him and guilty all at the same time.

‘How was it?’ Nic asked, his fingers still close to mine, a line of fresh bruises colouring the knuckles on his right hand. City work.

‘It was depressing,’ I told him.

He nodded knowingly, and just like that, my mood migrated from resigned to angry, my thoughts turning to everything Donata had taken from me. She had reduced my mother to a vase of ashes, a trail of memories that most people would soon forget. That was the truth of it. The cold, harsh truth.

I balled my hands into fists, released the fire inside me. ‘I want to hurt her so badly. I can’t even put it into words, Nic. I want her to suffer the way she’s made me suffer.’