Page 94 of Vendetta
‘There are certain mistakes I can afford to make,’ he replied evenly. ‘And certain mistakes I can’t.’
‘Do you mean they’d kill you if you tried to help him? But they’re your family.’
‘I mean I wouldn’t try,’ he said plainly.
I swallowed my words. Not only could Luca not help Jack, I knew he wouldn’t. In his heart, he believed he should die, and there was nothing I could do to change that. How could a boy who was raised to believe that bad people are wholly bad possibly understand the idea that within bad there can be good and, more important, the potential for good? Luca and his family were looking at the world in black and white.
With a quick glance over my shoulder, Luca pulled his switchblade out of his pocket and cut the ties around my wrist. I watched as they fell apart limply. He pressed the handle of the blade into my hand and closed my fingers around it. ‘You stolemy knife and took it with you in case you needed protection.’
I looked down at the inscription:
Gianluca, March 20th
He was really giving me his blade, his personalized blade. And what’s more, he was trusting that I wouldn’t use it against him. It felt cold and unnatural in my hands, but I kept it, stuffing it in a pocket of my shorts alongside the fifty dollars.
‘Thank you,’ I said, because I couldn’t manage anything else. I didn’t know whether to be grateful or horrified. I was exhausted, I was numb, and I was shaking. But he was setting me free, and whatever else was happening around us, that meant something. He was going against his family. He was giving me my life back.
‘You’ll never see us again, Sophie.’ There was a devastating finality in his words, but there was still nothing in his expression. It was, as ever, carefully controlled.
Before I could respond, the handle of the passenger door clicked and I turned to find Nic standing there, in the small parking lot at the back of the service station, holding it open for me. I stepped out of the car. We looked at each other, and I could see every shred of heartache bound up in his dark eyes.
He studied me – the bruising on my face and the lopsided way I was holding myself, my hands clutched beneath my ribs. He shut his eyes, there was a sharp intake of breath, and I swore both our hearts cracked just a little in that moment.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, opening his eyes again.
I couldn’t tell him it was OK. It was a million miles away from being OK. But I offered him something small: a soft, waterysmile for the boy who had kissed me like I had never been kissed before. He had goodness in him, even if it was buried far beneath the codes he lived his life by.
I stood back from Nic and he brushed by me, taking his place beside Luca in the car. He reached out for my hand and I gave it to him. He held it carefully, like it was made of porcelain, and traced the red marks on my wrist with his thumb. Then he lifted it to his lips and kissed it. ‘Riguardati,’ he murmured against my skin.
And then the Falcone brothers were gone from me, and I was doubled over on the ground, crying so hard I could barely breathe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINETHE WAREHOUSE
The more I cried, the more I thought about everything that had happened, and slowly my resolve grew steadier than all the pain swimming inside me. If all the Falcones did was put people in the ground, then how could they know the benefits of second chances and what they can do for someone? How much good were they doing by ripping the potential out of a man before he could find the good in himself?
Luca and Nic might not have had a choice about killing Jack, butIdid. I didn’t know his number to call him – never mind that my phone was presently in the possession of thug-in-training CJ – but I knew where they were going, I had a weapon, and I had money to get there. If I abandoned my uncle now, I would never forgive myself, and I would never think of Nic with anything other than contempt. I had made a promise to myfather to look after Jack, and if his brother died like this I knew he would never recover. He was barely hanging on already.
But there was still time, I could still do something. I could stand between Nic and my uncle, I could stop him from killing him. I might not have been able to convince Luca, but I knew Nic would listen to me. He wouldn’t devastate my family so completely, not after everything we had shared with each other.
I picked myself up and did my best to clean my face, wiping the blood from my chin and pulling my hair around my eyes to hide the bruising. I forced my body to straighten, walked into the service station, and broke the fifty-dollar bill so that I’d have one measly quarter to call a cab. I waited in the service station bathroom until it arrived, studying my reflection. I pulled my matted hair back from my face and stifled a horrified gasp. Deep bruises pooled out from under my swollen eyes. The bridge of my nose was crooked, and my cheeks and chin were raw from where I had scrubbed the blood away. I gripped the sides of the sink as the pain in my ribs surged. A few weeks ago, my biggest problem was the stifling July humidity. How had it come to this?
Somewhere along the way, there had been a gross misunderstanding. Everything had spiralled out of control. I couldn’t just think about the drugs or the money or the dark parts of my uncle’s soul without thinking about the good parts of him too, the parts I knew existed. My uncle was not the one-dimensional villain the Falcones thought he was – how could they make allowances for themselves and not him? It wasn’t right. Even if I couldn’t convince them of that before it was too late, I still had to try.
Twenty minutes later, and to the bewilderment of the cab driver, I got out at a vacant lot on the outskirts of Old Hegewisch. Along the periphery, plastic bags floated like ghosts over sideways shopping carts. The old auto warehouse was halfway across the lot; it was a huge, faceless structure, its cracked concrete walls stained with rust and pigeon crap. On either side, shipping containers were precariously stacked like giant Lego bricks, orange, beige and blue. Along the top, a worn sign reading GREENE’SAUTOSUPPLIESswung precariously from its final screw. I walked briskly towards it, feeling less scared than I should have been. I was running entirely on adrenalin now, and I could feel my pulse in my fingertips.
I walked along a row of corrugated steel containers until I found an alley barely wider than a car. It was pitch black and completely hidden from the entrance to the parking lot. At the end of the alley, I turned right and found two of the Falcones’ SUVs, parked and empty. So Luca and Nic were here already, but who had come in the other car? It was obvious why they had chosen the spot. It gave them a secret entrance and an immediate upper hand for when Jack arrived.
At the back of the warehouse, a small door was hidden behind several stacks of wooden crates. It was partially ajar. The lock had been broken, but I doubted its necessity – the door itself was already crumbling at the edges, and probably could have been kicked in by a child.
I tiptoed between the crates and slid through the door. The space inside was mostly empty; it was cold and dirty, and damp. The smell of mould hung in the air, and more stacks of termite-eaten crates were piled haphazardly around the edges, regurgitating strips of plastic packaging. A single wire cagelamp illuminated a circular space at the front, and another smaller light bulb had been strung near the centre, where the Falcones were standing, partially shielded by a tower of crates that came up to their chests. Luca was arguing with Felice, while Gino and Dom hovered behind them, fidgeting with their guns. Nic was several yards away, waiting just inside the front entrance. If only I could get his attention, maybe he would listen to me without being influenced by his brothers.
I started moving around the side of the warehouse, clutching at my sides as I bent low behind the boxes. Rats scurried in and out of crates, and I had to bite hard on my tongue to keep from yelping every time one skittered by my sneakers.
I stopped creeping and listened as the faraway rumblings of a car grew louder.
The activity in the warehouse fell deathly quiet.
The engine cut somewhere beyond the front entrance. I heard a car door shut.Jack. My heart was pounding hard and fast in my chest. Suddenly all I could think about was my uncle’s face when he walked into the guns that were about to be levelled at his head.
