Page 101 of Mafiosa
It clicked, but the bullet jammed. I pulled it again. Nothing.
Jack started laughing. He looked at his gun, and then at me. ‘Looks like you’ll get there before me, Persephone.’
There was nowhere to run. He was going to kill me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of my fear. I would not cower before him. I was stronger than that. I was stronger than them.
I took a deep breath.
The snow crunched as he came towards me.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONEBROTHER
‘Jack.’ That voice. Cautious. Near. ‘Stop.’
I snapped my eyes open. My father stepped out of Donata Marino’s kitchen, and my knees nearly went from under me.
Jack stopped walking. ‘Mickey?’ he said, the word sucked into an inhale. ‘Where the fuck have you been? We’ve sent word out for you!’
My father stepped in front of me. I faltered backwards, using the shield, trying to calm myself. ‘In hiding,’ he told Jack.
‘Just not with your family?’ Jack replied, distrust starting to seep into his voice. His gun was still half-raised. I scanned my father. His hair was scruffy, his clothes a bit too big for him. He had a gun, too. ‘You know we have the resources to hide you, Mickey. You should have come here first.’
‘I’m coming to you now,’ my father said evenly.
There was something between them – something cold and dark. It wasn’t camaraderie.
‘Good,’ Jack grunted. ‘It’s about time.’ He lowered his gun.
My father raised his, just a fraction. ‘Were you about to shoot my daughter?’
‘No!’ Jack spluttered. ‘She was about to shoot me! I was just going to immobilize her.’
‘And what about my wife, Jack?’ My father’s words were acid on his tongue. I could feel his anger in my bloodstream. ‘What about Celine?’
Understanding dawned across Jack’s face. ‘An accident,’ he said quickly. But my father was already pointing the gun at him.
‘Liar.’
‘What are you doing?’ Jack said, his voice frantic. ‘Mickey, what the hell are you doing?’
My father took one final step towards his brother. ‘Killing you.’
He shot him, right there on the Marino lawn, in the house they both grew up in another lifetime ago. Jack careened backwards, falling heavily, like a beached starfish, his face turned towards the afternoon sky. And my father, who I had once thought kind and gentle and good, didn’t even flinch. He looked at the body of his dead brother for no more than three seconds, then he turned around to me.
His shoulders slumped, the gun dangling uselessly at his side.
I just stood there, a mixture of horror and relief, a half-painted grimace plastered across my face. ‘Dad.’
He kept the distance. Perhaps he thought I was scared. Perhaps Iwasscared. ‘It had to be me, Sophie. Do you understand?’ he said. ‘I had to do it.’
‘That’s why you came out,’ I realized. ‘To get to him.’
My father nodded. ‘And now it’s done.’
‘I was going to do it.’
‘Better me than you,’ he said.
‘He’s gone.’ I looked at Jack’s lifeless body, half-sunk in the snow, and tried to process what that really meant. ‘He’s finally gone.’
