Page 32 of Mafiosa
‘I heard about your mother’s ceremony yesterday,’ he cut in. Maybe I had imagined his nearness, the way his body seemed to be inching closer. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I would have gone if I had known.’
I studied his face for clues of what Luca might have told him. Did he know about my father? His placid expression suggested otherwise. Another secret Luca had kept, then… another reason to feel grateful to him and guilty all at thesame time.
‘How was it?’ Nic asked, his fingers still close to mine, a line of fresh bruises colouring the knuckles on his right hand. City work.
‘It was depressing,’ I told him.
He nodded knowingly, and just like that, my mood migrated from resigned to angry, my thoughts turning to everything Donata had taken from me. She had reduced my mother to a vase of ashes, a trail of memories that most people would soon forget. That was the truth of it. The cold, harsh truth.
I balled my hands into fists, released the fire inside me. ‘I want to hurt her so badly. I can’t even put it into words, Nic. I want her to suffer the way she’s made me suffer.’
‘Good,’ he murmured, sitting up and squaring his body up to mine. ‘That’s the spirit, Sophie.’ He put his hands on my shoulders, dug them in until they started to sting. I ignored it, using the pain as fuel as he poured his strength into me. ‘You need to get fired up about this, Sophie. You need to feel determined and angry, and, most of all, you should feel excited. This is your time to fight back. Don’t you want to fight back?’ That smile again, full and white and dazzling. ‘Don’t you want to take from her what she took from you?’
‘Yes. Of course I do.’ I nodded, siphoning off some of that unbridled optimism, keeping it for myself. ‘I want her to pay, Nic. I’m going tomakeher pay.’
‘And I’m going to help you.’ He was nodding along with me, his fingers digging harder into my shoulders, but I didn’t care. We were in this together. I didn’t have to do it alone. ‘I’ll stand by your side until there’s no one left. Until Donata begs formercy at your feet. I’ll be there right until the end.’
A well of gratitude sprung up inside me. This was what I needed: strength, belief, support.
‘Thank you,’ I told him in earnest. ‘Thank you for helping me. I really needed this.’
‘You really want to thank me?’ He cocked his head, a slow smile curling on his lips. For a second I thought he was going to lean in and kiss me, but instead, he dropped his hands, made the shape of a gun with his fingers and pressed it against my forehead. ‘Thank me by putting a bullet in Libero Marino’s head this weekend.’ He winked at me. ‘Thank me in Marino blood.’
CHAPTER TWELVEMY SOUL
When I got home from school the following afternoon and made my way to the library, there was a piece of paper with my name on it waiting for me on the coffee table. It was sitting on top of a book of poems I hadn’t seen before. I recognized the handwriting on the note as Luca’s.
So Nic really had told him about my assignment, and Luca had decided to help me. I tried not to wonder why, tried not to imagine him poring over this poetry book, thinking about me. It would only drive me insane.
I unfolded the piece of paper, unbearably curious to find out what poem Luca would think relevant to me, and whether I would consider it an insult or a compliment.
‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley. The poem wasn’t familiar to me, but then again, few were. Luca had handwrittenthe words in small black script. It felt… personal. I shook the thought away and read the first line aloud.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
By the time I reached the final verse, my arms were covered in goosebumps.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
I read the poem three times, Evelina Falcone’s oil painting hanging over me, her gaze on the back of my neck. Another one of my father’s victims, another blot on his soul.
In my hands, the words seemed to grow bigger and bigger.
I understood.
I understood then why Luca had chosen this poem the day after Valentino had handed me my first official target.
