‘Do you want some in return?’ I offered. ‘Next time you’re going to eavesdrop on my conversations … don’t.’
‘What about when I see my brother wrapping you around his little finger? Should I let him finish manipulating you, or should I intervene?’
‘Don’t, Luca.’ I let my voice lag, the weariness seeping through. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘He doesn’t have the cure for what you’re feeling right now. No one does.’
‘That’s a message for me.’ I gestured at the window. Somewhere beyond it, the skeleton of my mother’s car was heaving in the driveway. ‘And I want to kill Donata for it.’
He shook his head, a frown rippling across his forehead. ‘This is exactly the response they want. They want to draw you out, towards them.’
‘When do I get to kill my Marino?’ I asked.
Luca gaped at me. I studied his chest, his uneven breaths pushing it upwards. The silence grew. I decided to slice into it. ‘I’m not really up to date on proper assassin etiquette yet, but judging by this dramatic reaction of yours, I’m getting the sense I’ve just committed some kind of faux pas?’
He dragged a hand across his cheek. ‘Look, I get that you’re angry right now. I get—’
‘When?’ I interrupted him. ‘Valentino said I’d get my target soon, so how soon is soon, Luca? When?’
The act of having to kill a Marino just to test my loyalty had dropped into my stomach like a block of lead, but with the heat of those flames still burning inside me, I realized I wanted to hit back at Donata. I wanted to show her I wasn’t afraid, that she would pay for all that she took from me, that this was only the beginning. I wanted the target. I wanted my target. I wanted somewhere to direct all the rage festering inside me.
Luca shot to his feet, and shut the door to the library, sealing us inside. He came towards me, his voice so low I could barely hear it. ‘Sophie … you don’t seriously think I expect you to kill someone, do you?’
I kept my voice at level pitch. ‘That’s what Valentino said at the initiation. We all agreed, remember?’
‘I didn’t agree,’ he said, pointedly.
‘Well, he outranks you.’
‘I don’t care,’ he said, unruffled. ‘There’s no way in this life or any other that you are holding a gun to anyone’s head and pulling the trigger.’
How cavalierly he seemed to control my life, how strange he seemed to find it that I would expect to be treated just like the rest of them. ‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘Well, what do you expect to happen when my uncle and Donata finally crawl back into the world? Do you really think I’m going to stand by and do nothing?’
Luca raked his hands through his hair, pulling the unruly black strands away from his face so he could ensnare me with that hypnotizing azure gaze. It felt almost deliberate, like he knew how paralysing it was. ‘Sophie, I think there has been some confusion between us on this matter.’
I tried to keep my voice level. ‘And that would be?’
‘I didn’t let you stay here because you promised to kill your uncle, I let you stay because you had nowhere else to go and I was worried about you.’
‘But even Nic said he would help me. He promised we would—’
‘I’m not Nicoli,’ he cut in.
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But he—’
‘The decision wasn’t his. It was mine.’
‘And Valentino’s.’
‘Mine,’ he said simply, without elaborating.
All this time I had thought I’d bargained my way in that day I showed up on their doorstep, but here Luca was, telling me the reason I was sitting before him now was out of pity. It twisted inside me – this feeling of uselessness, of weakness, of the idea that my grief had not made me strong or capable, but pitiable.
‘You expect me to sit tight while they send things to this house that directly threaten me, while they call me out like they did today? What if I want to harm them? What if I want to actually contribute to this family?’
‘I said no.’
‘Then why have a damn initiation at all?’ I snapped. ‘Why waste my time?’
‘To keep you safe,’ he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I gaped at him, flinging my arm out in the direction of the driveway. ‘Do you feel safe right now? Does anyone?’
A shadow flitted behind his eyes, so quick I might not have noticed if I wasn’t searching them so intently. ‘Not just from the Marinos,’ he said, after a beat.
‘From the rest of you, you mean.’
He didn’t say anything, but we were both thinking it. From Felice.
‘Luca, I want to prove myse—’
‘I said no,’ he cut in.
‘Don’t pull rank on me,’ I fumed.
He took a step towards me, enough that I had to tilt my chin to look up at him. I watched the hardened edge of muscle in his arms, the thick heel of his boots as he ground them into the floorboards. ‘Of course I’ll pull rank on you. I’m the underboss of this family.’
‘I don’t care what your role is. I’m not going to bow to you, so you shouldn’t expect it.’
‘Dio mi aiuti.’ He shut his eyes tight. ‘You, Sophie Marino, are single-handedly aging me before my time.’
Had I really been psyching myself up for nothing? For how much longer was I expected to be a spectator in my own life? How much longer would I feel the squirming, guilt-ridden uselessness of my role in my mother’s death? ‘It’s not up to you. It’s up to Valentino. I’m going to prove myself to this family, and then I’m going to avenge my mother.’ I got to my feet, cutting the height difference in half, determined to make him understand. ‘This is my cause too. This is my vendetta.’
Luca spluttered a laugh – it was hard and sharp. ‘Your vendetta,’ he repeated. ‘Do you know what it feels like to kill another human being? Just because we don’t talk about it doesn’t mean we don’t feel the guilt. Just because the people who die are not good people, does not make it any easier. You don’t get used to it. Sophie, the guilt is relentless. It drowns you. It becomes you. It’s all you are in the end – a collection of taken lives and the mask you wear to pretend you’re OK with it.’
I thought of Jack, of Donata as she flicked the lighter into the diner kitchen and sent my mother to the afterlife. The white-hot edge of rage still burnt inside me. I was already in the darkness, and I couldn’t conceive of a feeling worse than the one Jack had bestowed upon me, worse than the sick, creeping feeling of grief that woke me up every morning and rocked me to sleep at night, worse than seeing that car explode in front of me, of letting it throw me backwards, cover me in blood and ash. ‘I could handle doing to Donata what she did to me.’
Luca shook his head. ‘Every life has value, Sophie. They all leave a stain.’
I was so close to him now – when did that happen? His aftershave hung in the space between us. ‘So, when you let me come here, it wasn’t to prepare me to face them but to lock me away from them?’
He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.