Inferno(39)

I stepped back, but he stepped with me. His cheeks had flushed a rosy hue. ‘Sophie,’ he said, surprisingly gentle, yet intimidating. He was teetering on the edge of something, his eyes flicking from side to side, to Donata, to his cronies. ‘There is no way out now.’

I lifted my chin, steel staring into steel. ‘There is for me, Jack. You might have forged your allegiance,’ I gestured pointedly to Donata, then swirled my hand around, encompassing the club, its hedonism and all the wrongness, ‘but I stand with my mother, and only her.’

A veil of anger snapped Jack’s features back into place. ‘Only her?’ he asked, his eyes slitting. ‘And what about the Falcones?’ He spat the word.

There was an Italian curse from somewhere over his shoulder. Donata.

‘I have nothing to do with the Falcones,’ I insisted.

Jack arched an eyebrow. ‘I was in that warehouse, Sophie. You’re the key to their undoing; you’re the answer to my freedom. And with the Marinos, we’ll be able to do it.’ His voice climbed in pitch and his eyes were manic, darting. ‘We’ll finally be able to rid Chicago of this festering wound of self-righteous fools. Mark them for every mark they put on you. We’ll hang Valentino in his chair. We’ll drown Felice in his own honey. We’ll take Luca Falcone’s head from his body.’

My stomach seized up and I clasped my hand over my mouth. So he wanted the war. He was orchestrating it.

I swirled around, scanning the numbers – the sheer amount of Marino family milling around us. They mightn’t have been ready before, when the truce had come down, but they were ready now. Were the missing Marino twins here, too? Baying for revenge, all of them united in hatred?

Donata was laughing – it was a high-pitched screech of pleasure. I hated her. I hated her. I hated her. And I felt sick, so sick I couldn’t stand another minute in their presence.

‘I’m leaving.’ I turned. ‘This was a mistake.’

I pushed by the bouncer and marched on to the main floor. But I was stopped again, this time by Sara. I almost crashed into her. She raised her hands. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘I thought he cared about me, but he doesn’t. I’m just a pawn.’ I stifled the urge to cry, swallowing hard against the rising lump in my throat. ‘I want to go home, Sara.’

‘I know,’ she said, tugging me to the side so all those hovering behind us couldn’t overhear our conversation. Even Razor Grin was out of earshot, and he wasn’t happy about it. ‘But this isn’t the way to make it happen. She won’t let you leave if she thinks you won’t even contemplate helping her.’

I glanced over my shoulder. Donata was poised on the edge of her dance floor, watching us. ‘What would you have me do, then?’

Sara’s sigh hung in the air. ‘Just agree to whatever she wants.’

‘Are you crazy?’

She edged closer so even her fuchsia lips couldn’t be read when she spoke. ‘I’m not telling you to tell the truth, just say you’ll think about it or whatever. My mother doesn’t like the word “no”. You’re not going to walk out of here smiling if you don’t at least pretend to give her the respect she thinks she deserves.’

‘Why are you helping me?’

She dropped her gaze and when she spoke again she was just a little girl in a thrumming, glitzy club where she didn’t belong. And it hit me so clearly in that moment that I felt an intrusive and weird urge to hug her. ‘Because I was you, Sophie,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder. ‘I wanted to study music, to see the world, to hang out with my friends, to do good things and be a good person. I still am you in a lot of ways, so I get it. There’s this blood in us – people who think they can speak for us.’ She started tearing her fingernails along her arms like she could scratch it all out of her if she tried hard enough. I grabbed her hands and pushed them away from her arms, to make her stop. They fell limp at her sides. ‘You’re lucky. There’s another life for you. You’ve just got to be smart enough to hold on to it, to get back to it. And that means maybe you need to play the game—’

I was wrenched away from the girl with the kind heart and the big dreams. Five spindly fingers clasped around my wrist, long red nails digging into my skin like talons. I was twirled around until Donata’s face was inches from my own and Sara’s was lost somewhere in the crowd behind me. Donata’s lips had twitched into what I supposed was her attempt at a smile. ‘You and I aren’t done.’