Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3)(45)

‘With me and Nic, or me and my new gun?’ I asked the side of his face.

His laugh was short and mirthless. ‘Aren’t they one and the same now?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Let’s not do this, Luca. We’re never going to agree about this, so why keep going round in circles?’

He wasn’t looking at me, and I wasn’t looking at him. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you make decisions just to piss me off.’

I glared at the road. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you give yourself too much credit in my decision-making.’

‘Do you have a death wish?’

‘I have a revenge wish.’

‘I have a problem with that.’

‘Then evict me.’

‘No.’

‘Then deal with it.’

He ground his fingers around the steering wheel. ‘And you wouldn’t consider taking a step back from the guns,’ he said, ‘and letting me handle it for you?’

‘What do you mean, handle it?’

‘Let me take care of your uncle and Donata.’

‘And what, I just stay at home, looking wistfully out the window as you go forth and massacre my family?’

‘I’d prefer it to the alternative.’

‘Well, that’s not your decision to make,’ I said, carefully. ‘We’re all in this together now, and I don’t plan on failing again when my time comes.’

He set his jaw, a muscle feathering below his cheekbone. He chewed on the silence, and I fell into it, preferring it over the constant need to convince him, to avoid being convinced by him.

We were pulling up outside Cedar Hill High before he spoke to me again. He shut the engine off and turned to face me. My heartbeat immediately kicked into high gear, but I knew he wasn’t going to kiss me. That side of us was long gone. We were more like adversaries now, with a vague sprinkling of friendship every now and then, when we weren’t arguing.

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Yes?’

‘Sophie.’ His eyes were the purest blue in the morning sunlight, his lips lightly parted so that his breath warmed his words. ‘Can’t this just be enough for you?’

‘W-what?’ I stammered.

‘School,’ he said. ‘Your friends. Normality. Isn’t it enough?’

My face fell. ‘Oh,’ I said, trying to harness myself again. ‘School. Normality.’ I grabbed my school bag, and popped the door open before my embarrassment could swallow me whole. I hopped out and ducked my head inside, towards him, trying very hard not to look at his lips.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t totally disengaged from my old life. I’m doing the most normal high school thing ever tomorrow night. I’m going to the masquerade dance.’

‘The what?’

‘The dance,’ I repeated. ‘You know, Millie’s dance?’ And then I realized I had never once mentioned Millie’s dance to him, because, why would I? We didn’t talk about the light-hearted stuff, the falsities of my second life. ‘Tomorrow,’ I clarified. ‘I’m going. More or less against my will, but Millie was very adamant from the start and I kind of owe her, y’know?’

He was staring at me. It was not in a sexy way.

‘It’s going to be horrible,’ I added, feeling like I needed to play it down, like the idea of me having fun while he was at home helping Valentino with assassination logistics was an unfair one. ‘But I’m going. So there. That’s something normal. Will that tide you over?’

‘This is obviously a joke,’ he said. ‘This is a joke, yes?’

‘What? No.’

His lips parted in surprise. Don’t look at his lips. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Why?’ I asked, a familiar flash of irritation taking hold of me. ‘Is the idea of me in a dress at a dance really so shocking to you?’

He tilted his head to one side. ‘You’re actually serious.’

‘No, duh,’ I snapped.

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No way.’

‘I wasn’t asking you,’ I pointed out.

‘Well, you’re going to listen to me.’

I grabbed the doorframe. ‘Exsqueeze me?’

He came closer, undaunted. ‘I said there’s no way you’re going out at night unattended to a dance while we’re in the middle of an active blood war.’

My fingers tightened on the doorframe. ‘Do you want me to do normal things or do you want me to shoot guns? Make up your damn mind, you yo-yo.’

He glared at me. ‘You’re not going to that dance while Donata has her soldati out looking for you. She’s put a bounty on all of our heads, and I guarantee you, as a former Marino, yours is the highest.’

If he was trying to scare me into submission, it was working, but I was definitely not going to let him see that. ‘I go to school, don’t I? You’ve always been so insistent about that.’

‘That’s different. It’s the middle of the day, full of witnesses, and we bring you here and pick you up.’

‘There’ll be witnesses at the dance,’ I pointed out. I never imagined I’d be fighting this hard to actually attend the stupid dance, but now I really wanted to go, just to prove to him he couldn’t control me. ‘And I’m going with Millie and Crispin, so it’s not like I’ll be on my own anyway.’