Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3)(43)

I was really asking who did you kill? But I had quickly learnt that at the Falcone mansion, it is terribly uncouth to come right out and address the elephant in the room. They didn’t speak so openly of their murders. They were implicit things that happened beneath the fabric of their family.

‘You’re damn right I’m giddy,’ he said, shoving the rest of the burrito in his mouth and swallowing it in one giant gulp. ‘You’re not going to believe what I’ve got in the car with me.’ He bounded back outside. ‘Wait there!’

Dom came thudding down the stairs, and I scooted to the side before he shoved me out of the way. ‘Are they back?’ he asked. ‘Do they have the stuff?’

‘The stuff?’

He wrenched the double doors open so Gino and Nic could drag three black duffel bags into the foyer and deposit them on the marble crest. Gino was just as excitable as Nic, and Dom was rubbing his hands together as he stared at the duffel bags.

‘Who wants to do the honours?’ Nic asked, his gaze resting on me. ‘Wait until you see these, Soph. You’ll love them.’

‘Should we wait for Valentino?’ Gino asked.

‘He’s coming,’ said Dom, bending down and unzipping the bags. ‘I texted him. Come on, dig in. I want to pick my one first.’

Like little boys on Christmas morning, the three of them got on their knees and started rifling through the bags, pulling out guns bigger than my arms and legs. The kind of guns you see in war movies. The kinds of guns that spell instant, irrefutable death.

‘Whoa,’ I said, drifting towards the treasure trove of weapons. I knelt down next to Nic. ‘These are huge.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, smirking at me. ‘Eighteen automatics plus ammunition. Let’s see your uncle survive an assault from one of these.’

Before, a comment like that would have shocked me – scared me, even – but it barely registered now. The idea was as commonplace as the guns themselves.

He picked up a gun and hefted it into the crook of his arm, moving his shoulders around to get comfortable. Beside him, Dom and Gino were doing the same. ‘It’ll be heavier when loaded,’ said Dom, aiming his gun at me. ‘You think you can handle that, Sophie?’

Nic grabbed another gun from the bag and handed it to me, nodding at me to take it. I picked it up – it was heavy, even without the ammunition.

‘Relax your shoulders and grip it,’ said Nic, still watching me intently. ‘Here, like this. Look.’

He held the gun lower, at his chest, one hand on the front handle that jutted out almost parallel to the back handle, which he tucked into his ribcage, his elbow pulled back to make it fit. He directed it at Gino.

‘Say hello to my little friend!’ he said, before making a thud-thud-thud sound at him. Gino pretended to clutch at his heart and fall over. I had seen Gino like that before – only with real blood gushing down his shirt, his face as white as snow. Now, he was giggling in that high-pitched voice of his and writhing around on the floor, and I couldn’t help but find it strange how much he had distanced himself from the time he almost died. And yet, I was here, too, holding a machine gun to my chest and practising my aim in a puddle of assassins on a hundred-year-old marble crest that stood for blood and honour. And I don’t really know why, but I was laughing too.

Nic stopped faux-shooting and turned back to me, his smile as wide as I had ever seen it. There was something infectious about his excitement. I wanted to feel like that. I wanted to smile like that.

‘See?’ he said, still laughing a little. ‘Easy as that.’

I adjusted the gun as Nic had done, trying to push away the faint unease inside me. ‘Like this?’ I asked, swivelling to see if the gun was snug enough with movement. It was a little cumbersome.

‘Exactly,’ said Nic, winking at me. ‘You’re a natural with it. I knew you would be.’ Though I knew it shouldn’t, his approval made me smile.

Dom leant towards me, his pungent aftershave mixing with the faint whiff of hair gel that always emanated from him. ‘Maybe with this gun, the next time you shoot to kill, you’ll actually pull the trigger.’

Gino sat up. ‘What?’ he said, blinking at me and then at Dom. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Nic thumped Dom in the side of his head. ‘Io non ci scherzerei tanto, fratello!’

‘Calmati,’ said Dom, returning a jab to Nic’s right arm. ‘It’s a joke.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Gino, still glancing between us.

I glowered at Dom. ‘A bad joke.’

‘A dangerous joke,’ cautioned Nic.

Dom shrugged. ‘She should have thought of that before she—’

‘Dom!’ I shouted, casting a wary glance at Gino. He didn’t know about my cowardice at The Sicilian Kiss, but the way Dom was dangling it in front of him, he was about to. And that would be one more chink in the secret, and one more step towards my eviction. Or worse. ‘Seriously, shut up!’

Dom raised his palms to me. ‘Calm down, tetchy. I’m just kidding around.’

‘What’s going on down here?’ Felice descended the stairs, his loafers padding softly on the stone floors, his grin fixed perfectly in place. Even now he was back to his old impeccably-turned-out self, I would never forget the version of Felice that had cornered me in that alcove, the manic look in his eyes, the thirst in his voice when he spoke to Paulie about Angelo. I would never forget how deeply he despised his role in the family, or how little respect he had for Valentino. He was more dangerous to me now than ever, and no amount of forced pleasantries or blithe indifference on his part was going to change that. ‘A special delivery, and no one thought to call me?’