Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3)(37)

‘Are you mad at me?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation. ‘I am mad at you.’

A part of me wanted to ask why, but I already knew. I was a different person now. I wanted things he didn’t want me to have. I wanted revenge and he couldn’t stomach it. He couldn’t stomach who I was becoming.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly. I didn’t dare look up at him. I could feel the heat of his gaze on my cheeks.

‘Are you sorry that you were prepared to go through with it tonight, or that in the end, you couldn’t?’

I looked at our fingers, almost entwined. ‘I’m sorry that I’m not good enough for this family. I’m sorry you had to fight so hard for me, and this is what you got.’ I hesitated, waiting for my voice to stop wavering. ‘I’m sorry I’m such a coward.’

Luca dipped his chin, the movement dragging my gaze back up.

He was frowning at me. ‘You think shooting someone makes you brave?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘All I know is I couldn’t do it when the time came. All I know is I failed my test.’

‘I’m glad you failed,’ he said.

‘You had to lie for me. You made them all lie for me. You made them lie to their boss.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘But you never lie to Valentino.’

‘This is different.’

‘How?’

He looked at me, nonplussed. ‘It just is.’

‘I don’t understand why,’ I said, my voice just a whisper. ‘I don’t understand why you would do that for me.’

Luca’s lips flickered into a half-smile. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t, do you?’

‘I wish I had just done it.’

‘I’m glad you couldn’t pull the trigger.’

‘You’re happy I’m a coward?’ I said.

‘You’re not a coward.’

‘I’m not a Falcone,’ I pointed out. ‘Not really.’

‘Good,’ he said, his expression turning fierce.

‘If I’m not a Marino and I’m not a Gracewell and I’m not a Falcone, then what am I?’

Luca leant closer to me, intensity burning in his eyes. ‘You’re free.’

I pulled away from him, from his heady scent and the hardness in his voice, and rested my elbows on my knees. ‘Then why am I so unhappy?’

Luca stayed where he was, his gaze prickling along the back of my neck. ‘You just lost your mother, Sophie. You need to give yourself time.’

‘I don’t have time.’ A familiar wave of frustration was rising inside me. ‘I want to make them pay, Luca. I know that’s the right thing, but tonight when I held that gun to Libero Marino’s head, and I listened to him cursing at me and taunting me, and calling me a traitor, I just froze.’

He stayed silent, and I don’t know why, but all the things I had been feeling started to tumble out. ‘I hate that I froze. I hate that I failed. I’m so embarrassed that I couldn’t do it, and then when I really think about it, I find myself feeling terrified that a part of me thought I could. That a part of me was ready to end a man’s life. That a part of me felt so powerful standing there with him shaking in front of me. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I’m capable of, but I know tonight was a failure for me.’

Luca turned to face me so I couldn’t look away even if I tried. ‘Let me uncomplicate this for you, Sophie. You don’t want this. I promise you, this is not the path for you.’

Felice’s words from the study came flooding back to me. Was this really what Luca thought or was it a projection of his own desires? ‘How do you know what’s right for me? I’m not you, Luca. I’m my own person. I want to let my mother know she didn’t die in vain. I want to embrace this life, the blood in my veins. I don’t want to be on my own.’

Luca pressed his palms against his eyes, his fingertips scraping through his hair. ‘You’re wrong, Sophie. You are so deeply, unbearably wrong, and I don’t know how to show you that. And it makes me so angry, I could scream.’

‘That’s why you keep avoiding me,’ I said. ‘I get it. You don’t believe I’m cut out for this life. You don’t think I can do it.’

He uncovered his face. ‘What?’

‘It’s true,’ I said, frustration turning to anger now. ‘You think I’m going to shoot myself by accident or stab myself, or that I’m not strong enough or smart enough to do the things your brothers do. I know you don’t think I’m cut out for this, and you hate that I’m even trying to be, but I have to. I don’t care if it makes you angry with me,’ I lied. ‘I don’t care if you don’t believe in me.’

He rubbed his temples very slowly, and I watched him work his anger into submission. Then he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the whole world, ‘Of course I believe in you.’

‘What?’

‘I believe that you’re smart and funny and brave and determined. I believe that you’re loyal and kind. I believe that you’re a good person, in your heart. In your soul. You’re right about one thing, though. I don’t believe that you’re an assassin. I don’t think you can kill someone and be OK with it. And that is not an insult, Sophie. That I believe you’re too good and too kind to hurt someone, no matter how much they’ve hurt you. That your heart is too big. That your empathy runs too deep. That’s why I believe in you. I believe in you more than I could ever explain, and you expect me to stand by and watch while you destroy yourself right in front of my eyes. You expect me to let you point the gun at Libero Marino and shout at you to shoot him?’