Inferno(108)

I frowned, rubbing the pain beneath my chest. ‘I can’t imagine I’ll ever get used to this,’ I conceded.

He turned to watch me in the darkness. The moonlight fell across his face, alighting the deep cobalt in his eyes. ‘You’d be surprised at what you’re made of.’

‘I don’t think I will be.’

‘I do.’

My throat was starting to feel wobbly. ‘How do I do it?’

Luca got to his knees so that we were leaning towards each other at eye level. He didn’t touch me, but something inside made me feel like maybe he wanted to. I wanted him to. His hands were hovering close to mine. ‘You embrace the pain, Sophie. Don’t fear it. Let it wash over you. Use it as fuel to spur you on.’

‘I don’t want to think about that night.’

‘You have to, sooner or later.’

‘I should have saved her.’

‘You couldn’t have.’

‘I didn’t try hard enough.’

‘Sophie.’ Luca came closer still. I was overwhelmed by his smell, fresh and familiar. My fingers were starting to shake. I could feel the walls starting to buckle, the things I had kept hidden beginning to emerge once more. ‘When I pulled you out of that fire you were nearly dead. Even if you had gotten to her it would have been too late for both of you.’

I gaped at him, and something flashed at the back of my mind. I remembered the feeling of hands on my ankles, my shoulders, my waist, dragging me from her. ‘You pulled me out?’

He fell on to his haunches. ‘Who did you think it was?’

‘Why didn’t you let me get to her?’

‘You wouldn’t have been able to.’

My voice changed. ‘Why did you take me away from her?’

His voice changed too. Anger, fear, insistence strained his words. ‘Because you were burning alive. You did the thing I told you not to do. You jumped off the cliff.’

‘I was trying to save her!’

‘You were killing yourself!’

The walls were coming down and my mind was exploding with that night. ‘She was calling out to me.’

Luca’s movements changed. They became slower, more deliberate. ‘She wasn’t calling you.’

‘I heard her.’

‘The fire does strange things to your senses.’

‘You’re wrong.’ I kept thinking about those white sneakers.

Luca placed his hands on either side of my legs, his fingers curling in the sheets. ‘Sophie,’ he said softly, ‘your mother lost her life in the explosion. She was too close to the stove when it happened.’

I rose up, away from him. I was disconnecting, the room spinning as memories crashed into me. ‘I could have saved her but you took me away from her!’

He was shaking his head.

The fire burnt inside my mind. My arms were stinging. I could taste singed hair across my lips. Before the fire there was the explosion, before the explosion there was the gas and before the gas there was Jack. Before that … there was everything else. A raging war. I grasped at the thread of understanding. ‘They lured you to them. They knew you’d come to protect your brothers.’

‘Yes.’

How could he remain so calm? Wasn’t he thinking about all the things that I was? Wasn’t he feeling the heat of the memories like flames?

‘You’re supposed to be smarter than that.’

‘I know.’

‘My mother is dead.’ That was the first time I ever said it out loud. It felt like I was flaying myself. The backs of my eyes were stinging.

‘I know,’ he said gently.

‘They wanted to destroy you. They wanted to teach me a lesson. And they killed her to do it. She wasn’t supposed to be there.’ Everything was colliding and I felt the white-hot edge of rage burn inside me. The words sprang from me, strung together in hurried sentences. ‘If you and Nic hadn’t come in they wouldn’t have done it. I told you Donata was coming. I told you she was planning something but you couldn’t walk away – you couldn’t back down! You had to risk everything for some stupid game of honour that means nothing in the end! If you hadn’t been there at the diner, watching, waiting for them, trying to hurt them instead of trying to protect yourselves, then this wouldn’t have happened. If you Falcones hadn’t murdered Sara Marino – if you didn’t insist on killing everything and everyone – then my mom wouldn’t be dead now. You shouldn’t have followed them. You shouldn’t have forced your way into the diner. Why couldn’t you have just left it all alone?’

Luca was getting to his feet.

I stood up, too. ‘You don’t get to leave before you hear this,’ I shouted.