Inferno(87)

There was only one thing to say.

I had added it up in my head. The tattoo. The Marinos’ interest in Jack, in me. Sara’s dimples. The sense of kinship I felt with her. Donata had yelled for Antony that night at Eden. He was already standing behind her, trying to entice me into their family, their business. He was my only uncle, and I didn’t really know him at all.

Everything I thought I knew was changing.

There was only one way I could ever know for sure. Only one person who would tell me the truth. And she was at home packing up our lives so she wouldn’t have to face it.

‘Millie.’ I heaved a shuddering breath. ‘I think I’m a Marino.’

‘What?’

‘I think my dad’s real name is Vince. I think he and Jack are the missing Marinos.’ I started to hyperventilate, my hands clutching around my throat as I tried to gather myself. ‘Say something,’ I pleaded. I needed it to go away. I needed my life to be normal. I needed to calm down. ‘Say anything.’

‘Wait,’ gasped Mil. ‘Wait, wait, wait, hang on. Wait. Does this mean that you and Nic are somehow … related? Have you been like … incestuously making out this whole time?’

OK. Anything but that. ‘Ew. God. No.’ I reeled backwards, disgust warring against my rising freak-out.

‘OK, sorry, my bad,’ she said, raising her hand in placation. ‘But in my defence, these Mafia family trees are incredibly complicated and I really only concern myself with the hot members.’

‘I’m not related to Donata,’ I said, realizing the small mercy in that at least. ‘She married into the family.’

‘But isn’t she, like, the Marino boss now?’ Millie released a low whistle. ‘Damn, that lady is ambitious.’

‘Mil,’ I groaned as I stuck my head between my knees and shut my eyes. ‘My whole life is literally turning upside down, and I really just need you to talk about something else. Anything else. Please, just distract me. I need you to make it stop.’

‘OK.’ I heard her suck in a breath, and after a moment of consideration, she said, ‘Did you know a baby puffin is called a puffling?’





PART IV

‘A truth spoken before its

time is dangerous.’

Greek proverb





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE KEY



I burst through my front door, half expecting my mother to be waiting for me. She was in the sitting room, a mug in one hand, her phone in the other.

‘There you are!’ She sprang to her feet, spilling tea across her shirt. ‘I’ve been calling you. You said you’d only be a couple of hours, Sophie. I was worried.’

Rage rumbled inside me. I took a deep, steadying breath.

‘Am I a Marino?’

The mug smashed at my feet. The pieces nicked at my ankle, drawing blood. I turned from her and marched upstairs.

‘Sweetheart,’ she spluttered, following me. ‘Hang on.’

‘You lied to me,’ I shouted over my shoulder. ‘All my life you’ve been lying to me.’

I crashed into her room and dragged the chair by her vanity table over to the wardrobe.

She stood in the doorway, alarm warping her voice. ‘What are you doing?’

I climbed on to the chair and started flinging my father’s old clothes out of the way, searching through his side of the wardrobe. I was looking for a half-forgotten memory from my childhood. A box I found once when I was trying to find my Santa presents two weeks before Christmas. I had come across a black box, frayed at the edges, that my father had yanked off me. A box he told me never to open.

Well, guess what? I was damn sure going to open it now.

‘Stop.’ My mother was beside me, tugging at my arm. ‘Can we just talk about this?’

I whirled on her, flinging another set of shirts on to the floor. ‘What do you want to talk about? How Dad is one of the missing Marinos? How his real name is Vince? How we’ve been part of the mob this entire time and no one thought it was a good idea to tell me? Is that what you want to talk about?’ I yelled. ‘Because I can’t imagine how you’re going to explain all that to me!’

Her eyes grew big in her pale face. ‘W-what?’

‘I know!’ I told her. ‘I know what I am.’

She stumbled backwards, collapsing in a heap on the bed. I kept rifling through my dad’s closet, shelf by shelf, searching for that box.

‘You were never supposed to find out,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper now. ‘Your father left that life behind a long time ago … He never thought it would catch up with him.’

I fisted a pair of jeans in my hand, turning to her. ‘But it did, didn’t it?’