Jack put his arm around me, encasing me in a cocktail of alcohol and sweat. ‘Thank you for coming.’ He was so sincere, so serious … so like himself, the kind uncle I remembered from my childhood. And yet when I looked at his surroundings, everything blurred again. The two sides of him did not add up, and the version that had walked into that warehouse was the one I had come here to confront.
‘I almost didn’t,’ I said, ducking out of his grasp. ‘And this isn’t meant to be some happy reunion.’
Jack had the audacity to laugh. ‘Aren’t you at least glad I’m alive?’
‘I never wanted you to die. I don’t think like that.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you would have blown my cover in the warehouse. But you led that Falcone prick away from me and I owe you my life for that. You’re loyal, Sophie, and I’m sorry about the danger I put you in. If I’d have known what would happen I would have sent you somewhere safe. Trust me, I won’t be making that mistake ever again.’
I pressed my lips together, waiting.
‘We have a lot to talk about,’ he continued. ‘I hope once you understand my position, you won’t hate me.’
He made it sound so simple, like the lives of scores of people weren’t balancing on pinheads around us. Like he wasn’t being sheltered by one of the most ruthless families in Chicago. I didn’t even know what to ask first. There was so much to say, and yet now that I was here, sitting beside him, staring at him, I felt tongue-tied. ‘Jack,’ I said, expelling a pent-up sigh. ‘How did it come to this?’
I looked at him imploringly, like a child asking if Santa Claus was real but not really wanting to hear the truth.
‘I wanted a better life.’ His answer was deceptively simple, and not at all what I was expecting. ‘I wanted to rise above my station.’
‘This, Jack,’ I said, endeavouring to be more specific since his answer was so painfully vague. It shouldn’t be this simple – the things he’d done, the drug trafficking, the killing. ‘How did you come to be here?’
‘I’m safe here, Sophie—’
‘Do you know this will probably start a war? Is that what you want to happen?’
Jack hesitated, and for the first time he seemed unsure. But I got the sense it wasn’t because of my question, but because of my knowledge of the truce, which I had betrayed by asking it. I hadn’t been thinking of hiding anything from him; I was too hell-bent on getting him to stop hiding stuff from me.
He glanced sidelong at Donata. Something passed between them, a flicker of amusement, a quiet understanding. Her smile was spidery. ‘Your niece knows more than I expected.’
I scrunched my hands in my lap as my cheeks flushed with heat. ‘Isn’t it common knowledge?’
Donata was still looking at Jack. She nodded, just once, her eyes slitting as she said, ‘Fidelitate Coniuncti.’
‘Not yet,’ he said, looking around him now.
There was definitely something between them, and it dawned on me with quiet revulsion what it was. I got up, suddenly feeling hot and sticky.
Jack sprang to his feet. ‘Let me explain what happened, Soph.’
I turned on him, trying to ignore the icy wave of Donata’s attention. ‘How can you explain it?’ My sudden shrillness roused some of the others from their conversations. ‘You’re messing around with drugs and the Mafia, and you’re cosying up to her to save your own ass even though you know how dangerous it is, how many people could die if the truce is broken. What could you possibly say that would make any of this OK?’
Jack’s sigh deflated his chest and made him seem smaller. ‘It all comes down to money, Sophie. When I was a young man I had to ask myself, how can I use my talents to make sure I don’t end up on the bottom rung of society, trying to climb out of poverty my whole life? Your father and I never got the chance to make a go of our lives in the right way. All either of us ever had was our own smarts and the ambition to do—’
I bristled. ‘Do not involve my father in this. He has nothing to do with your depraved drug trade!’
Jack clenched a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. ‘Calm down. You’re making a scene.’
‘This whole thing is already a scene!’ I hissed, pointing openly at the cocaine two feet away from us, at Eric’s chomping jaw and guffawing laugh, at the girls pouring champagne on each other and shrieking in the corner. ‘You shouldn’t be here! You should be far away.’
Jack set his jaw. ‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘I insist that you leave me.’ I edged closer, cutting Donata out of the conversation, and dropped my voice. ‘And you should leave these people too, before it’s too late.’
Jack shook his head, his expression suddenly drained of joviality. ‘Sophie, we’re in this together.’
‘My family is not in this with you, Jack,’ I gritted out. ‘When are you going to get that through your head?’