Inferno(35)

I had second thoughts about Eden – big ones – but in the end Millie ended up convincing me.

‘Whatever your uncle’s doing, Soph, you could squash it before it’s too late.’

‘Something tells me it’s already too late.’

‘You’ll have to face him one way or another. Isn’t that what Lego-head said?’

‘Her name is Sara.’

‘All right, all right,’ said Millie, waving her hand around. ‘You don’t have to act all kinshippy with her. She was stalking you, don’t forget.’

She googled the nightclub. There were pages of paparazzi scandals involving local celebrities and alleged underworld figures. Donata was featured in almost every article, sometimes by her maiden name, Genovese, and sometimes by Marino. She was a tabloid darling, each piece hinting at an undercurrent of fear. No one dared speak ill of the ‘Genovese Queen’, as one newspaper called her. She was the great and fearsome femme fatale of Chicago.

Her affluence shone through the expensive stoles and designer dresses. Her dark hair was a mane of the world’s finest extensions and her dramatic make-up airbrushed her expertly. But underneath the pomp and glamour she was a skeletal figure with a scrawny neck and severe features. She had that unmistakable Genovese ice – the same chill that Elena Genovese-Falcone had brought with her to my hospital room. The sisters were imprints of one another; each one surrounded by rival Mafia families, waiting to pick off the other. And Donata had a glittering night palace of her own making in which to plot.

Millie pressed the pad of her index finger on the screen, at an interior shot of Eden where everything was draped in white beneath a ceiling of chandeliers. ‘We have to go,’ she resolved. ‘We just have to.’

‘And what if I don’t like what he has to say?’ I countered. I had no doubt I wouldn’t like it.

‘Then we can just leave. And then it’s done, Sophie. You’ll have heard him out.’

I was chewing a pattern into my lip, staring at the screen, my mind playing out all the possible ways this could go. How angry would I be when I saw him? How angry would he be? And Donata. What was her role in all this? If Elena was anything to judge by, I had seen quite enough Genovese ladies for one lifetime.

‘Sophie, look.’ Millie was tapping her fingernail on another picture, this time of a different floor, where everything was bamboo, and fire-lamps blazed around the contours of a pooling dance floor. ‘It’s the most exclusive club in the city. We have to go.’

The logistics of actually getting inside were still hazy. Millie had a pretty good fake ID. I didn’t. If that crimson business card was my ticket into Eden, I was in trouble, because it was in Nic’s pocket.

Stupid Nic.

We barricaded ourselves in Millie’s bedroom and rifled through every single item of clothing in her wardrobe. ‘If we want to get past the bouncers, we have to be sexy but not slutty. It’s a very fine line,’ said Millie, picking up and discarding a floral peplum dress. I examined a cream chiffon blouse. Millie snatched it from me and flung it on to the ground. ‘I said sexy, not politician!’

After almost an hour of indecision, Millie chose a royal-blue strapless dress, a thick silver necklace and hoop earrings. I picked a black body-con dress with spaghetti straps and a lace hem. I borrowed a simple gold necklace and stud earrings, pairing the outfit with Millie’s patent black ankle boots. Millie insisted on doing my hair and make-up. ‘Voila!’ she triumphed, spinning me towards the mirror.

I gaped at my reflection. I had been Barbie-fied. The dress was miniscule, and so tight it clung to every inch of me. My hair brought new meaning to the word ‘volume’ and the hairspray had turned it into a glittering blonde rock. My eyes were rimmed with so much black it was hard to find the blue inside them, and my lips had been lined and glossed until they shone at twice their normal size against my bronzed and blushed face.

‘Well?’ Millie wiggled her high-definition eyebrows at me through the mirror.

‘I look like a hooker.’

She came to stand beside me.

‘You also look like a hooker,’ I told her.

‘A twenty-one-year-old hooker?’ she asked with big, hopeful eyes.

Eden was a sleek three-storey building on the corner of West Grand Avenue. It climbed into the sky in a display of black monochrome and tinted glass. On the corner, two bouncers and a severe-faced woman holding a clipboard were guarding a velvet-roped entranceway. Above them, ‘EDEN’ was imprinted in illuminated red letters that lit up the street below. The spiralling tree emblem from the crimson card stretched across the entire second storey.