Inferno(67)

The violets were electric blue, and I held them tightly. I was still holding them like a perverse life raft for my sanity when I shut the front door of my house and found myself face-to-face with Donata Marino. She was perched, like a Gucci-fied vulture, on the threshold of our kitchen.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ALLEGIANCE



In the giant game of human ping-pong that was fast becoming my life, Elena Falcone held one bat, Donata Marino held the other, and I was a small, white ball, whirring back and forth.

And I was so over all this.

My mother was hovering behind Donata, her hands curling around the kitchen sink edge as she leant against it. Donata was rigid, squared shoulders cutting her neck in half, hands fisted at her sides as she stood between us. She wore all black for her daughter. Sara Marino had been dead less than a week.

My body deflated in a mixture of shock and fear. The flowers went limp at my side, their blue heads drooping towards the floor. I forced myself to look at Donata as memories of her bony grip at Eden brought a phantom sting to my wrists. She moved aside, granting me entrance to the kitchen.

‘Well, here you are, Ms Gracewell.’ She lingered over my name as though it burnt her mouth. Her darkened lids fell heavy over bloodshot eyes.

‘Sweetheart.’ My mother said the word on an inhale. Her brow was creased, the sun-tanned skin rippling. She looked like she was trying to figure out a riddle.

I put the flowers on the countertop beside me, tossing them with forced casualness, the irrational part of me worrying that Donata might sense where they had come from, who they had come from. In that moment, those flowers felt as incriminating as a giant neon sign on my forehead flashing FALCONE SYMPATHIZER.

The atmosphere was strange – loaded, like the entire room was tilted on a knifepoint, waiting for the plunge into something darker.

‘Mom?’ My fingers clutched my phone inside my pocket. I was already unlocking it. ‘What’s going on? Did she hurt you?’

She shook her head. The circles under her eyes were moistened. ‘No, sweetheart … she was just telling me about …’

‘About my daughter,’ said Donata, peering at me through black-rimmed eyes. ‘I was telling your mother about what the Falcones did to my nineteen-year-old girl.’

‘Dreadful,’ whispered my mother. ‘Those boys … it’s just dreadful.’

‘I was telling your mother how it might have happened to you …’ Donata paused, calculated, waiting … and then, ‘how it still might.’

‘Oh, Sophie,’ my mother said, falling head over heels into Donata’s manipulation. She pressed a hand to her chest. ‘I’d lose my heart.’

‘You’re not going to lose anything,’ I told her calmly. ‘I’m sorry about your daughter,’ I added, speaking to Donata and being careful to keep my features in check. I didn’t want her to know I had seen Sara after Eden that night – how close I had been to saving her. How dreadfully I had failed. ‘But I can take care of myself.’

Donata waved my words away, a manicured hand flying between us. My mother shrank further into herself. ‘Let me cut to the chase. I’m here to tell you what the Marinos expect from you, Sophie.’

‘The safe in the diner,’ I answered, without even blinking.

‘The money is no longer your concern,’ she replied, unfazed by my knowledge of the safe. ‘Your uncle thought you might remove it for us – but I think trusting you with that task given your current attitude is not such a good idea.’

So it was money. It must have been a whole lot, considering how hell-bent they were on getting back in there.

‘We intend to retrieve the contents of the safe ourselves.’ Her lips peeled away, revealing a line of yellowed teeth – a wolf waiting to pounce. ‘It will be more … opportune this way.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means we will no longer back down from Falcone threats. We are going to hang them with their own noose.’

The explanation might have been vague but the image was horrifyingly vivid. I tried to blink it away, to school my features so she wouldn’t know how hard my heart was thumping, how it felt like it was climbing into my throat. I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t show it.

Her smile was tight, pinching the hollows in her cheeks. ‘Their soldati are watching the diner. We know exactly how and where to get to them. When we take the safe, we’ll take the heads of the Falcones who stand guard over it, too.’ She inhaled sharply, her face reflecting some imagined glory. ‘We are ready for them.’