‘This will be your task. When we come back for you, you’re coming with us. You’ll help lure them into our trap.’
‘I don’t want a task,’ I said firmly. Everything inside me told me to run, to hide. Everything was darkness and Donata, rage and ice, expectations and consequences. I could feel the walls closing in, my mother’s muted panic pressing against me.
‘If you do as I tell you when the time comes, you stake your allegiance with us and we’ll take care of you.’ Her eyes flicked to my mother. ‘You’ll be safe. Provided for.’
My mother hung her head. So she was shaming her. She knew about our money troubles, about my absent father, and she was using it as a weapon against us.
‘If you don’t kill them, they’ll kill you.’ She was still looking at my mother. ‘It’s only a matter of time now Jack is in the fold.’
‘What’s he offering you?’ I pressed. ‘Are you really so easily bought?’
The ghost of something sinister passed over Donata’s face. ‘If you fail to do what I’m telling you, then your allegiance is with them.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘And we will kill you.’
The flowers pulsed in my peripheral vision. I could never hurt the Falcones. Not in a thousand nightmares. ‘Can’t you just leave me out of this?’
Donata looked at my mother. ‘It is my experience that in matters of life and death, everyone should know what’s at stake.’
My mother raised her head. Her eyes were rimmed with red. She looked at Donata, shook her head, and sighed.
I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t lie to her and agree to her demands, and yet I was afraid of refusing her. I needed her to leave so I could gather myself. So I could snap my mother out of whatever day-coma she was in. So I could find a way to warn Luca. I remembered Sara’s advice to me in Eden – I had to pretend. I had to pretend so Donata would slacken her grip just enough so I could breathe. So I could think.
Donata shifted and a gun appeared in her hand. Before I could move, she was pressing it into my mother’s jugular, lifting her to her tiptoes as she bent her backwards across the sink. I froze, a half-scream jolting from me.
My mother choked out a whimper.
Donata cocked the trigger, her eyes boring into mine as I stood stock-still across from her. ‘How high do I need to make the stakes, Sophie?’
‘Don’t,’ I pleaded. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll do what you want.’
Donata pushed the gun harder and my mother choked again. Her eyes were bulging, the capillaries angry and red. Donata leant over her, and when they were nose-to-nose, she said, as calm as if they were old friends, ‘Remember your promise, Celine.’
‘I’ll help you,’ I said. ‘I’ll do what you ask. Just don’t hurt her.’
Donata pulled back, slipped her gun into the pocket of her dress and smoothed the stray black tendrils around her forehead. My mother fell forwards, her hands circling her throat as she gasped for air. ‘You are a cruel woman,’ she heaved.
Donata straightened the sleeves of her dress. ‘I have to be.’
‘Leave my house,’ my mother said. ‘You’ve made your point.’
I followed Donata into the hallway, making sure she really was leaving. Her heels click-clacked with purpose, the sound pulling me back to the memory of her sister, Elena, as she thundered down the Falcone corridor at Evelina. What a twisted destiny the two of them had secured for themselves.
Donata turned on the threshold, her back towards the heaving sky and the heat pummelling against us from the driveway. We stared at each other. ‘We’ll be back for you.’
My stomach lurched, but I regarded her calmly. ‘When?’
‘Soon.’
‘I’ll be ready,’ I lied. My mind was whirring with all the ways I could beat her. I wouldn’t let her win. I wouldn’t be her pawn.
Her voice turned weary, the pitch dropping as her shoulders dipped. She exhaled a sigh and her mask shifted, just a little. ‘We’re not the enemies, Sophie.’
The air was too warm; I could barely feel it as I sucked it in and forced another lie. ‘I know.’