Inferno(85)

Thirty heads rolled back towards me. There was a general sense of wonderment – dark Italian eyes widening in surprise, mouths going slack. A flurry of whispers scuttled along the table. They were falling for it. They would vote against me.

‘You’re lying!’ I shouted. ‘Stop it!’

Luca shot to his feet so he could stand between Felice and me. ‘Drop this now, Felice,’ he warned. ‘It’s not right what you’re doing.’

‘Luca.’ Valentino’s quiet interruption killed the commotion. It was remarkable; whenever he spoke, the whole room dangled on his word. Luca backed away from Felice and stood, instead, by his twin’s shoulders.

To Felice, Valentino said, ‘Show them the photo.’

Felice didn’t take his eyes off me. ‘With pleasure.’

He pulled a page from the envelope he was holding, and slid it across the table. I stepped forward tentatively, staring over Gino’s head to look at it. We were all craning to look at it.

‘Stateville biometrics,’ narrated Felice for those who couldn’t see. ‘They make a record of their prisoners’ identifying markers when they’re brought in. Valentino pulled some strings. He received this email thirty minutes ago.’

Felice’s words droned in the background of my attention. I was too busy staring at a photo of my father. It was like his mugshot but in this one, his shirt was off, and there were three images, one of him side-on, the shamrock on his arm small and blurry. He’d told me he had gotten it with a friend on his eighteenth birthday – a cautionary drunk tale. His back was bare, and in the photo of his front, right over where his heart was, was a crest with a black handprint inside it. Beneath it were the words Fidelitate Coniuncti.

Donata’s final words to me.

‘Loyalty binds us,’ translated Valentino. He wasn’t anywhere near the photo, but I’m sure he had already stared at it long and hard. ‘The Marino family motto.’

‘That,’ Felice’s index finger stabbed the tattoo on the page, ‘is the Marino crest. Every Marino since the dawn of Cosa Nostra has had this crest engraved on their person. Many of us in this room have seen them first-hand on their corpses.’ He sucked in a gulping, excited breath. ‘He’s covered it since, smart boy. But these he can’t get rid of.’ He moved his finger and pressed it over my father’s grainy, lifeless eyes. ‘These are Don Vincenzo Marino’s eyes.’ He lifted his head and moved his finger until it was an inch from my face. ‘And so are those.’





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE LIFE



I pulled back from the table. I was finding it difficult to stay calm, more difficult than it was to believe what Felice was saying. I had seen that crest a ton of times, on hot days when my father worked in the garden, when he got out of the shower in the morning. He had told me he and Jack had gotten the same one as teenagers – as a way to always remember each other no matter where they ended up in the world. So they would never forget where they came from.

So they would never forget where they came from.

The room was deadly silent. I stumbled backwards, pressing myself against the wall and feeling its coolness through my tank top. I was going to pass out. I was going to get killed.

Felice seized the stunned silence. ‘If you examine the records, collated with Angelo’s research, you will see that the prison-recorded birthdate of Michael Gracewell matches exactly that of our own dear Vince Marino Jr, the boy who disappeared on me all those years ago. The missing Marinos might not legally exist any more, but they are still living right under our noses. And I’d bet my own blood and bones that their nearness to this family is no coincidence. I put a bullet in their parents, so little Vince Marino put a bullet in Angelo, and Antony put five stab wounds in Calvino in Eden. All this time, we wondered what Gracewell was offering Donata. It was simply his true identity. A Marino always sticks by their own.’

At that, the seated Falcones broke into a rush of frantic murmurings. The tide was turning. Felice was winning. Chaos was rising. I was going to drown in it. ‘No,’ I insisted, shaking my head violently. ‘No, it’s not true. It can’t be true.’

‘Liar!’ Elena sprang to her feet. ‘We’ve caught you out. Admit it! Admit your father is Vince Marino. Admit your uncle is Antony Marino.’ She jabbed her finger at me. ‘Admit that you, Sophie Marino, are a rotten liar.’

‘I’m not a liar!’ I shouted. ‘I don’t know anything about this!’

Dark gazes pressed against me. They were waiting for me to say something, to justify the insanity of walking into their house and expecting to live.