Inferno(5)

‘Then perhaps you should have stayed away from my son.’

I could feel my pulse in the tips of my ears. Calm down, Sophie. Calm down. ‘Perhaps he should have stayed away from me.’

‘And Gianluca!’ She threw her hands in the air. ‘Mio figlio! So weak now. Cos’è successo?’ she asked the ceiling. ‘This girl … this girl …’ She shook her head, frowning as her sapphire eyes roved over my face. ‘A beautiful nothing. You have broken them.’

She had careened right through my threshold for rude crap. I had to deal with enough inescapable unpleasantness when I was sleeping; I was not about to let someone berate me when I could do something about it.

‘Broken them?’ I felt anger rise inside me. I let it sweep me up and make me strong. ‘I saved Luca’s life. Any normal mother would be grateful for that. They would thank me, not break into my room in the middle of the night in the hospital where your family put me. Where the hell is your patient etiquette?’

‘Careful,’ she warned.

‘I am careful,’ I said. ‘At least I was … until—’ I stopped. What would be the point of blaming her angelic sons? Her denial was so thick it blinded her. ‘If you can’t see that all I ever tried to do was help your sons, even after all the bad things they did, then that’s your problem. Now get out of my room before I call the nurse!’

Elena Genovese-Falcone exhaled in a hiss. She leant over me, the way Nic sometimes did, but the effect was very different. She brought her face so close I could see the capillaries in her eyes. I flinched away from her, cursing my instincts for making me look weak.

‘I will leave when I have said what I came here to say. Don’t forget, saccente, you lie here in safety because of my son’s command and nothing else. I know exactly who you are – who your father is, what your vermin uncle is, and everything they owe us.’

‘We don’t owe you anything any more.’

‘Those eyes,’ she said, drawing back from me as her voice fell deadly quiet. Mutinous wrinkles appeared above the bridge of her nose. ‘They are soulless.’

‘Please just leave me alone.’

She just stared at me, like I was a puzzle she suddenly had to work out, like there was something written inside my pupils. After a heavy silence, she whispered, as though she was confiding something in me, ‘I know there’s more to you than you would have me believe.’

‘No,’ I said, exasperated, my head shaking from exhaustion and denial. ‘What you see is what you get.’ Unlike – oh, I don’t know – every freaking person in your family.

Her lips twisted. ‘Somehow I doubt that.’

‘What did you come for?’ I demanded. ‘To insult me? To finish what your family started?’

‘I came to tell you to stay away from my sons, or the next time we see each other, I won’t be so careful about where I put my hands.’

‘You wouldn’t hurt me,’ I ventured. Valentino wouldn’t let her. ‘Not after what I did in the warehouse.’

Her laugh died in her throat as quickly as it formed. ‘Girl, I would put a bullet in my sister if I ever came across her unprotected, so what makes you think I wouldn’t do the same to someone I have met only once?’

I had a sudden vivid impression of her choking me. The thought made me swallow more audibly then I meant to.

‘You’re not meant for this world,’ she added, like it was the worst possible insult.

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’

‘We are born, not made. Dynasty and ambition made me who I am today. It brought me the life I wanted, the stature I have been owed since birth. The Genovese women are survivors; we have the blood of Sicily in our veins, entire families who work beneath us. It will never be like that for you. You will never be anything more than a passing distraction for my son.’ She turned from me, and stopped with her hand on the door. She was in darkness. I decided now that I had met her I much preferred her like that – an indiscernible shadow. ‘He would never choose you over his family.’

Seized by a mixture of bravery and anger, I hurled my response at her back. ‘What’s to say I would ever choose him over mine?’

‘Please,’ she said, throwing the word over her shoulder. ‘You have no family left to speak of, and we both know it.’

White-hot rage ripped through me and I imagined leaping from the bed and pulling her hair out by the roots. ‘You don’t know anything about my family or my loyalty,’ I gritted out. ‘So just get out.’