‘Did Mom fill you in on everything?’
‘As much as she could,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want to talk about that, I want to talk about my girls.’
‘Well, I want to talk about the drugs and the Golden Triangle Gang and everything else that’s put us in hot water. I want to talk about everything you missed.’ So I did talk about it. I told my father everything that had happened up until the warehouse shoot-out – I told him about Jack’s shadiness, about the drugs and the gang he had been a part of, how he walked my mother into the warehouse, how he stood over me and tried to kill the Falcone underboss. I talked until my voice nearly ran out. I talked until I was sure I had toppled Jack over in my father’s mind, until I was sure he saw the cold, hard truth about his little brother.
Then I let up, breathing long and deep, as a small weight shifted inside me and I felt less bound up than before.
My father, who had been listening intently, unblinking as he watched me, straightened in his seat. ‘Soph, I promise I’ll make him pay for endangering you and your mom,’ he said. ‘I’m so disappointed in him – in his choices, in the path he’s chosen. I should have cut him off long ago.’ Compared to all the words I had just hurled at the space between us, his answer felt like nothing, but I could see how his face had changed, how everything in his brain was slotting into different places. He was completely wrung out. He scrubbed his hands against his forehead. ‘But I can’t get to him. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing.’
That was the moment. Indecision flickered inside me. To tell or not to tell. To stir or not to stir. But I needed guidance. A plan for when Jack came back – I needed my father to intervene so I wouldn’t have to. So I decided to give him this chance to step up and protect us, the way he’d said he would. ‘I know where he is,’ I said, without batting an eyelid. I sat back in my chair, instinctively pulling myself away from him in case the force of his reaction was too great. ‘Jack’s with the Marino crime family.’
‘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.