Page 44 of Mafiosa
He looked at me, nonplussed. ‘It just is.’
‘I don’t understand why,’ I said, my voice just a whisper. ‘I don’t understand why you would do that for me.’
Luca’s lips flickered into a half-smile. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t, do you?’
‘I wish I had just done it.’
‘I’m glad you couldn’t pull the trigger.’
‘You’re happy I’m a coward?’ I said.
‘You’re not a coward.’
‘I’m not a Falcone,’ I pointed out. ‘Not really.’
‘Good,’ he said, his expression turning fierce.
‘If I’m not a Marino and I’m not a Gracewell and I’m not a Falcone, then what am I?’
Luca leant closer to me, intensity burning in his eyes. ‘You’re free.’
I pulled away from him, from his heady scent and the hardness in his voice, and rested my elbows on my knees. ‘Then why am I so unhappy?’
Luca stayed where he was, his gaze prickling along the back of my neck. ‘You just lost your mother, Sophie. You need to give yourself time.’
‘I don’thavetime.’ A familiar wave of frustration was rising inside me. ‘I want to make them pay, Luca. I know that’s the right thing, but tonight when I held that gun to Libero Marino’s head, and I listened to him cursing at me and taunting me, and calling me a traitor, I justfroze.’
He stayed silent, and I don’t know why, but all the things I had been feeling started to tumble out. ‘I hate that I froze. I hate that I failed. I’m so embarrassed that I couldn’t do it, and then when I really think about it, I find myself feeling terrified that a part of me thought I could. That a part of me was ready to end a man’s life. That a part of me felt so powerful standing there with him shaking in front of me. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I’m capable of, but I know tonight was a failure for me.’
Luca turned to face me so I couldn’t look away even if I tried. ‘Let me uncomplicate this for you, Sophie. You don’t want this. I promise you, this is not the path for you.’
Felice’s words from the study came flooding back to me. Was this really what Luca thought or was it a projection of hisown desires? ‘How do you know what’s right for me? I’m not you, Luca. I’m my own person. I want to let my mother know she didn’t die in vain. I want to embrace this life, the blood in my veins. I don’t want to be on my own.’
Luca pressed his palms against his eyes, his fingertips scraping through his hair. ‘You’re wrong, Sophie. You are so deeply, unbearably wrong, and I don’t know how to show you that. And it makes me so angry, I could scream.’
‘That’s why you keep avoiding me,’ I said. ‘I get it. You don’t believe I’m cut out for this life. You don’t think I can do it.’
He uncovered his face. ‘What?’
‘It’s true,’ I said, frustration turning to anger now. ‘You think I’m going to shoot myself by accident or stab myself, or that I’m not strong enough or smart enough to do the things your brothers do. I know you don’t think I’m cut out for this, and you hate that I’m even trying to be, but I have to. I don’t care if it makes you angry with me,’ I lied. ‘I don’t care if you don’t believe in me.’
He rubbed his temples very slowly, and I watched him work his anger into submission. Then he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the whole world, ‘Of course I believe in you.’
‘What?’
‘I believe that you’re smart and funny and brave and determined. I believe that you’re loyal and kind. I believe that you’re a good person, in your heart. In your soul. You’re right about one thing, though. I don’t believe that you’re an assassin. I don’t think you can kill someone and be OK with it. And that is not an insult, Sophie. That I believe you’re too good and too kind to hurt someone, no matter how much they’vehurt you. That your heart is too big. That your empathy runs too deep. That’swhyI believe in you. I believe in you more than I could ever explain, and you expect me to stand by and watch while you destroy yourself right in front of my eyes. You expect me to let you point the gun at Libero Marino and shout at you to shoot him?’
He was really asking me, waiting for me to answer. ‘I want you to want what I want,’ I said slowly. ‘I want you to support me…’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not raise you up and give you a gun. I will not take you shooting and fawn over how great your aim is. I won’t tell you how brilliant you can be or how many Marinos you can murder if you really put your mind to it. I won’t walk you into danger and clap as you shoot to kill. I will take the gun from you and tell you you’re a thousand times better without it. I will always take the gun from you, Sophie. I will always tell you that you don’t need it. I will always support you, but I will never support that.Never.’ He scrubbed his hands across his forehead, dragging his hair away from his face. ‘You always manage to work me up,’ he said ruefully.
All this time, I thought he put himself on a pedestal, but it was me he had raised up. He thought I was better than him – than his life, than his family – but I wasn’t.
‘We’re the same,’ I said. ‘We come from the same kind of blood. How could you say all these things to me, and not say them to yourself? How do you expect me to take any of it to heart, when it’s said with such hypocrisy? If you really believed your family was truly bad then you’d walk away from it. I know you’re strong enough.’
Luca shook his head. ‘It’s not the same.’
‘Why not?’
