Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3)(42)
Then another sound echoed around us. Felice froze, the empty gun still pressed against my neck as the sound of a hammer being pulled back filled the small space. A black gun appeared beside Felice’s head, the pressure of the barrel puckering the skin around his temple.
His face drained to a ghostly white.
Luca stepped into the alcove and brought his lips right up to his uncle’s ear. ‘That gun might be empty, scarafaggio, but this one is loaded,’ he growled. ‘If you ever threaten her again, I’ll blow your brains out.’
The shark grin died, and real, chilling fear consumed Felice’s face. His eyes grew lidless and wide. Luca kept the gun pressed against his uncle’s head, and slowly, Felice lowered his own from my neck. My jaw clicked back into place and cool air rushed down my throat. I gulped it down. Without turning around, Felice addressed Luca, his grey eyes still trained on me.
‘So,’ he said, his lip curling. ‘There are some things you deem worthy enough to kill for, Gianluca.’
Luca’s reply came in one steady breath. ‘Only one.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HOMEWORK AND HEADSHOTS
The next few weeks passed by in a blur of classes, endless assignments, nightly phone calls about the upcoming Masquerade Ball, and meetings back at Evelina, where I learnt the names of every Marino in existence and watched as the Falcone boys disappeared at random times of the day and came back in the dead of night. They were in the city, scoping out Donata’s usual haunts, collecting information, turning Marino allies into snitches, dispatching those that couldn’t be persuaded. The house was busier than an airport at Christmastime. Donata and her remaining children, Marco and Zola (Franco, I learnt, was still in prison) had come back for Libero’s funeral – the most heavily guarded procession in Chicago’s history.
My father was still on the run, but I hadn’t heard so much as a peep from him. The police were patrolling Cedar Hill, on the lookout, following fruitless tips and making nuisances of themselves. I almost felt bad for them. It wasn’t hard to guess where my father was – at least if you knew what I knew. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was planning, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was going to do when I came face-to-face with him again. I wasn’t sure he truly wanted to protect me by sending me away to Colorado, but I knew he wouldn’t harm me, not deliberately. But if he was with Jack when we tracked him down, then we were going to have a problem.
The anniversary of Evelina’s disappearance passed and Felice sank back into his usual cartoon-villain self. I found it harder to be around him, knowing what he was capable of, and seeing how close he had come to actually doing it. He had left a ring of bruises around my neck, and I knew if I ever found myself alone with him away from Evelina, it might be the last thing I ever did. He could never know what my father had done to his wife, or I’d be dead for certain.
Luca spent all his time with Valentino, painstakingly planning and dispatching Falcones to far-off places in the state. For now, I had one duty and one duty only: go to school, stay in school. In the afternoons, I sat beneath the oil painting of Evelina Falcone in the library and forced myself to complete assignments I didn’t care about. As time wore on, Evelina’s eyes seemed to grow deeper, the sadness behind them rising to meet me like a terrible wave. Her face haunted my dreams, her lips twisting as she whispered to me in the night, I see you, Sophie Marino. I see your fate.
I knew Luca was against my role in the family’s violence, but he knew, too, that when the time came to face the Marino family in earnest, he wouldn’t be able to keep me away. I still had to prove myself. It was the only thing I cared about, the only thing I spent my nights thinking about. I was not going to be afraid. I was not going to hesitate. I was not going to fail again.
I spent the weeks getting myself ready mentally, honing my shot, preparing to face my uncle and Donata again, and hoping against hope that my father would be caught and hauled back to prison before then. At school I was a different Sophie – upbeat, engaged, innocent. The mask slipped on so easily, sometimes it was hard to take it off again.
A couple of days before Halloween, I was loitering in the Falcone foyer reluctantly waiting to be chaperoned to school, when Nic barged through the front door, a half-eaten breakfast burrito in one hand.
‘Hey,’ he said, lighting up. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ I said, shaking my head as he held out the burrito in offering.
‘You sure?’ he pressed. ‘It’s delicious.’
‘I’m sure you need the energy more than me.’ You’re killing people; I’m studying poems and doing calculus.
‘I don’t mind sharing with my girl.’
He had taken to doing that a lot – referring to me as ‘his’, despite my repeated protestations to the contrary. Sometimes I wondered if he was just doing it to wind me up. ‘I’m not your girl,’ I reminded him. ‘As we’ve been over several thousand times.’
Nic rolled his eyes. ‘Right, right. I’m still in the friend-zone, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hop the fence.’
‘Actually, that’s exactly what it means.’
‘For the record, I disagree,’ he said, taking another bite of his burrito and laughing at my grimace.
‘What’s got you so giddy so early anyway, platonic male friend? Where were you last night?’