Mafiosa (Blood for Blood #3)(71)

‘Oh.’

Valentino went on. ‘Evelina hated how active Felice was in the family, and how much he enjoyed the theatrics of bloodshed. They argued constantly. Felice can’t seem to love in a healthy way. He hit her in front of everyone one Christmas Day. My father ended up knocking him out. He wasn’t going to stand for that in his family, under his rules. My father was a decent man. Felice was always somewhat of a … challenge. Believe it or not, this version of him is much more palatable than the old one.’

‘And just when I thought Felice had reached the lowest ebb of my respect,’ I said sourly. ‘What a creep.’

Valentino didn’t disagree. ‘It doesn’t surprise me that he would suspect my father in her disappearance. My father was always kind to her, and Felice never liked that.’

‘That was his own fault.’ I could feel myself getting riled up. ‘He didn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve anyone if that’s the way he carries on.’

‘Well, he doesn’t have anyone,’ Valentino said, pointedly. ‘Not any more.’

And there it was – the sting in the tail. Felice might have been horrible to Evelina, but my own father had been worse. He had taken her life from her. Did Valentino suspect she was dead? Or did he really think her missing all these years?

‘She and Luca were close, weren’t they?’ I remembered what he had told me about her, how she had made him believe he could be anything he wanted to be. How she had made him believe in possibility. I looked at my lap, suddenly unable to look Valentino in the eye.

I could sense him nodding. ‘He idolized her. She was less like a mother and more like … a kindred spirit, I think. When she left, she took a piece of his heart with her.’

I couldn’t untangle the emotion in his voice – was it regret, or sadness, or something else? Empathy for his brother, for the closest person to him in all the world? Guilt surrounded me, tinged my words, as I tried to keep them even. ‘That’s so sad,’ was all I could say, because Maybe she’s better off would have been a lie, and I wouldn’t lie, not about this.

‘She was a dreamer,’ he said evenly. ‘She wasn’t meant to last in our world.’

There was something about the way he said it – the finality behind the words. He knew – or heavily suspected – she was dead, but he couldn’t have known it was my father who did it. I would have felt it, and there was only sadness, heavy and dark, between us now. No suspicion, or resentment. I was careful not to look at him, careful not to push for answers I already had.

She was a dreamer.

There it was: the simple truth.

Wasn’t Luca a dreamer too? Or had he stamped down that part of him just enough to claw by, to do what had to be done, to sacrifice a little part of himself every day? Or was he destined to meet the same fate as Evelina some day, at the hands of someone just as depraved as my father?

‘Try not to worry about Felice,’ Valentino said. ‘He’s capable of a lot of bad things, but he would never turn on us. He’s too interested in self-preservation. Besides,’ he added, ‘if he truly was that angry at my father, then why did he never stand up to him?’ He didn’t wait for me to guess. ‘Because he’s a coward. And cowards might dream of higher planes but they know their place, and they don’t step outside of it. Felice talks a big game, but he doesn’t stand behind his words.’

I wasn’t so sure. If Felice was truly loyal to Angelo despite his resentment, then where the hell was he the night my father shot him? He saw the entire thing, and yet by the time the ambulance came, he had already absconded. There was something not right about it – a niggling feeling at the base of my spine that had been growing ever since that night I overheard him ranting to Paulie. But what good would it do to bring it up? Angelo was dead and, like Evelina, it was my own father who had been the killer.

‘So, Sophie,’ Valentino said, ‘here we are, with the truth between us.’ He moved around the other side of his desk, and started rummaging in a drawer. I watched him in silence – the frown puckering at the edges of his lips, the way one eyebrow arched higher than the other. After a moment, he pulled back, with a box. ‘And now I’m going to give you something.’

‘A gift … ?’ I tried to decide what could possibly be in the box.

‘You don’t have to look so scared,’ he said. ‘Haven’t we already established that we’re on the same side?’

‘I thought that once before,’ I said.

Valentino sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘A fair point.’

He rounded the desk and handed me a knife. I took it, and stared at the switchblade – now so familiar to me – as it sat innocently in the palm of my hand.

‘Your switchblade?’

Valentino rolled his eyes. ‘Obviously not my switchblade.’

I turned it over.

Persephone, June 30th

‘Oh.’ I traced the perfect calligraphic letters, the flourishes, the etching of a falcon, wings half-spread.

‘A Falcone switchblade,’ I whispered. ‘My own switchblade.’ I glanced up at him, a smirk twisting my lips as a flurry of giddy energy rushed through me. ‘Val, you simply must stop giving me weapons like this, you’re absolutely spoiling me.’