Page 56 of Inferno
‘And what about you?’ I asked, knowing he wasn’t safe in prison after all. Even inside, they could get to each other if they wanted to. A dead Falcone attested to that. And if Jack slipped up, then who better to punish for it than his only brother?
‘I’m keeping my head down, Soph.’ He dipped his head as he said it, too.
‘Five minutes!’ shouted a guard.
Dammit. There was never enough time.
‘Promise me, Soph.’ He took my hands in his.
We were yelled at for contact and I pulled away, scrunched my hands into fists.
‘I—’ I paused. I was thinking about Millie, about the diner, about my bedroom, about the garden that was just beginningto look like a garden, about my school, about my father stuck inside these dangerous walls… ‘I’ll try.’
‘You won’ttry,’ he snapped, the urgency of everything catching in his mood. ‘You’ll do this for me, Soph. This whole shitstorm has only just begun. If you stay in Cedar Hill, you’ll be swept up in it. You need to lie low until they burn out from coming at each other. Until a boss is dethroned, until there’s a ceasefire. Until they get the hell out of your town.’
He was right. This was the advice I had come for – what I needed. I had allowed myself the illusion of walking away, but I hadn’t taken any steps; I had only shut my eyes. The truth was, I was stuck between the two sides of this Mafia war, caught up in their murders, in their plans, in their anger, and my heart clenched fearfully for both of them. Something was coming. I could feel it, as though the earth was bubbling underneath my toes, and sooner or later it would burst through.
‘OK.’
The guard was calling time on our meeting. All around us, chairs were screeching away from tables. We stood up. ‘I don’t know when I’ll get to see you again, Dad.’ I felt a sudden overwhelming sense of desperation at the thought of being so far away from him. My breathing started to hitch and I had the most unpleasant sensation in the backs of my eyes.
He pulled me into a hug. ‘I love you, Soph.’
‘I love you, too.’ They were wrenching him off me and pushing him into line. I stumbled backwards. I didn’t notice the tears until they started dripping down my neck. My palms were sticky and it felt like there wasn’t enough space in my lungs to inhale.
I ended up outside the prison without remembering how I made it there. The humidity enveloped me, creeping into my hair and underneath my clothes. My legs felt like lead as I walked.
I sat down on the bench and waited for the bus. The air was heavy and it wasn’t just the promise of rain. Jack and Donata were on the move, and that meant I had to be too. I couldn’t be a sitting duck.
I was so caught up in a stream of anxiety and fear, trying to come up with the right thing to do and the best way to tell Millie – how we would afford it – if we evencoulddo it – that I wasn’t paying attention when the bench creaked and someone sat down beside me. He slid an arm behind him and lazily tilted his body towards me, until the sudden flash of black hair and olive skin in my peripheral vision, coupled with the familiar waft of his aftershave, struck me.
‘Sophie Gracewell, fancy meeting you here.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWOSPARK
‘So,’ Luca said. ‘Do you think you and I will ever run into each other in a movie theatre or a shopping mall, or will it always be prisons and cemeteries for us? Is that our thing?’
Where was that goddamn bus?
Anger surged inside me, but if I opened my mouth to say the things I really wanted to say I’d explode, and right now I just wanted to be at home with my mother, coming up with a plan. I folded my arms, like that could keep it all inside me. ‘I donotwant to talk to you, Luca.’
I could feel the cold prick of his stare on the side of my face. I watched his hands in my periphery, picking at a thread in his dark jeans, settling and unsettling on his lap. ‘I didn’t kill her, Sophie.’
I turned away so my ponytail whipped out behind me and almost slapped him in his face. ‘You may as well have.’
‘No.’ His voice turned hard, and I imagined frustration drawing his brows together. ‘You do not get to paint me as a guiltless monster. Don’t give me a label I haven’t earned. I have enough deserved ones already.’
I didn’t answer. After a couple of seconds he got up, rounded the bench and hunkered down on the other side of me so I was looking right at him. His hands gripped the wood beside my thigh. Every time I tried to look somewhere else, he jerked his head and held my gaze. ‘Look at me. Listen to me.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ I snapped. ‘How many times do I have to tell you: I don’t answer to you!’
‘I don’t care who you answer to. I just need you to know this.’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I tried to release Sara. Valentino wanted her as a bargaining chip, not collateral damage. She was still a teenager.’
‘She was innocent,’ I said, hearing the faintest quiver in my voice.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Una innocente.She wasn’t supposed to die. OK? I promise.’ His voice turned to a growl.‘I promise.’
I swallowed hard. There was something earnest resonating in Luca’s promise – a realness that was always absent from the ones Nic made – but still, how could I believe him? Sara was dead and Luca was an assassin – convincing and dangerous. He was a rose with thorns, just like his brother. I had fallen for that before.
