‘No,’ he said, quickly. ‘No way.’ Well, that answered the question of whether he had heard of the Marinos before. ‘Jack would never be so stupid. He would never openly consort with the Marinos.’
‘He is,’ I insisted.
My father shook his head.
I pressed on, determined to push Jack from whatever pedestal my father had placed him on. ‘I don’t know what he’s offering Donata Marino but he’s with them, I swear. He’s not even hiding it.’
‘God,’ my father exhaled. He looked like he was about to pass out. He raked a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. ‘After everything. To do something so dangerous. What is he thinking?’
It didn’t really feel like he was talking to me any more, but since I had the answer, I figured I’d supply it.
‘Protection,’ I said. ‘That much is obvious. The Falcones want Jack dead, so he’s hiding with the one family who will happily go against them.’
My father’s eyelids fluttered at half mast. He looked genuinely ill rather than angry. I slid my hands across the table as close to him as I could without touching. I willed my strength into him. ‘Do the Falcones … do they know where Jack is?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ My brain flashed with scenes from Eden. ‘They’ve known for about a week. There was a … showdown of sorts … It was on the news,’ I tacked on, deciding that telling my father I was actually there would be the world’s stupidest mistake. He’d freak out, even more than he was now. ‘I know Jack was there, though … someone I know saw him.’
He recoiled from the information, his eyes growing wide. ‘He was at the Eden shoot-out?’
‘You heard about it?’
His eyes were darting, panicking, as he processed the information that his only family in the whole world apart from my mother and me was now in the middle of the city’s most dangerous blood war. Jack was courting violence and murder, and my father couldn’t get to him – he couldn’t be the protective big brother he was used to being. Jack was on his own.
‘Of course I heard, Soph. Donata Marino’s teenage daughter was just murdered by the Falcones.’ My father indicated behind him in the general direction of the prison. ‘Franco Marino is serving his sentence here. He howled the walls down. A Falcone was murdered in his cell yesterday morning, but nobody’s talking.’ My father composed himself, his mouth turning hard. ‘Listen to me, Sophie, I need you and your mother to leave Cedar Hill immediately.’ He lurched forwards, his hands thudding on the table. ‘Leave the house, leave the diner and get as far away as you can.’
‘What?’ I hissed. ‘But that’s your place. That’s our place. I can’t just leave it.’
He grabbed my hands and squeezed them. ‘Soph, right now, I need you to leave it behind. And I need you to do it tonight.’
A prison guard shouted at us to separate. I snapped my hands away.
‘When you get home, pack your bags, pack your mom’s bag, get in the car and drive.’
I could have crushed the table beneath me. Here was the father I needed, the man who wanted to keep us safe, and he was stuck behind bars barking orders at me. I was so frustrated, so scared. And I felt utterly alone. I was starting to feel wobbly, like my head wasn’t properly attached to my neck. He had just asked me to do the impossible. We had no money, no destination. All we had in the whole world was our house and the diner. That was it.
‘Mom won’t leave. She’s just getting her life back on track.’
‘She’s not.’ His expression turned grim. ‘She’s not sleeping, she’s not eating properly. Her conversations are erratic. She’s having flashbacks. She’s afraid to leave the house. She’s not holding it together, Soph.’
Every word was like an ice pick in my heart. If he had managed to tell how shaken she was without even seeing her, then maybe she was even worse than I thought. ‘She won’t listen to me,’ I repeated.
‘You’re the only person she’ll listen to. You’re her reason to get up in the morning.’
‘Dad,’ I said, half-hushing him. I watched the veins in his temples bulge. ‘You’re panicking. You just need to calm down.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said, clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘You don’t understand how powerful these families are, how close you are to everything now Jack’s tied up in it all.’
‘I do understand,’ I insisted, my own voice turning hard to match his. ‘Trust me, I get it.’