‘Excuse you?’ Millie scooted forward, her head jutting between the front seats. ‘Luca Falcone, you can shove that vow right up your—’
‘Millie!’ I interrupted, yanking her back. ‘It’s all right. I’ll tell you.’
Millie folded her arms, her narrowed gaze on the back of Luca’s head. ‘You come to my dance and endanger my best friend by going off shooting your gun at random people and then you expect me to wave you off without so much as a single question as to what the hell went on. Meanwhile, my best friend is suffering from a gunshot wound – and let me tell you something, pretty boy, if I find out it was you who shot her, I will yank every perfect hair out of your head one by one and then slam my fist into your face. I swear to God, you’d better hope the explanation for this shitstorm is watertight, because it will be your funeral if—’
‘I didn’t shoot her,’ Luca cut in. ‘Don’t insult me.’
‘Do you want a medal?’ she retorted. ‘Because the way I see it, you were the last person with her, and now she’s all shot up.’
‘I told you to stay put.’
‘I’m in charge of my own actions,’ I interjected. ‘So how about you stop blaming each other?’
‘OK,’ said Luca. ‘Shall I blame you, then?’
‘For not staying behind while you went charging to your death?’ I supplied.
‘Stop hate-flirting, you two,’ Millie interrupted. ‘Who was it? Who the hell shot her? Was it Donata? Was it Jack? Who do I have to maim now?’
I almost laughed. No fight skills or guns or training, and Millie was perpetually undaunted in the midst of all these assassins.
‘Zola Marino,’ Luca replied. ‘Donata’s daughter. I shouldn’t have gone after her. She’s a loose cannon. I was afraid of what she’d do to get your attention, Sophie, to pull you away from the crowds. I was afraid who else she might hurt in her attempt to flush you out. I was trying to neutralize her.’ He stopped to bite off a curse. ‘I should have looked for Donata first. For your uncle. I made the wrong call.’
‘Wait, you went after Sara’s sister?’ Millie asked. ‘What the hell was she doing at our dance? Does she go to Cedar Hill High?’ She paused, then sucked in a gasp. ‘Wait, is she dead now? Did you kill her?’
Luca and I exchanged a look in the mirror. God. Where to begin? Millie didn’t even know about our involvement with Libero. She didn’t know about the blood war. She didn’t know about what I was planning. She didn’t know about anything.
Luca was having the same thought. He scrubbed his hand across his forehead, a heavy sigh filling up the lingering silence.
Millie sat back, her face turned towards the roof of the car. ‘OK,’ she said calmly. ‘The way I see it, you both have two choices. You can sit here covered in your lies and your silence and keep exchanging furtive glances right in front of me and thinking that I don’t notice, or one of you can open your mouth and start talking.’
‘I’m inclined to go for number one,’ Luca said.
Millie blew a laugh at him. ‘That was a fake option, Luca. If I have to track down every Marino in Chicago to find out what the hell went down tonight, then I will. You think Sophie is stubborn? Well, let me introduce you to Sophie 2.0.’
A laugh trickled out of me. ‘It’s a very long story, Mil.’
‘Well, then,’ she said confidently, ‘lucky for you we have a long drive.’
PART III
‘Whatever is done for love always
occurs beyond good and evil.’
Friedrich Nietzsche
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
GENOVESE
Back at Evelina, it wasn’t Vita who tended to me, but Elena. She breezed into my bedroom dressed in a floor-length dressing gown, her dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She looked younger without her usual make-up.
‘You’re back,’ she said, way more casually than I was expecting. She had a small case with her; she laid it on the bed between us and gestured at Luca’s suit jacket, indicating with a flick of the wrist that I should take it off. ‘Can I see the wound, please?’ There was a note of tenderness in her voice, in place of her usual mistrust.
I shrugged the jacket off, watching as her eyes went wide. She sucked in a gasp. ‘It’s a little worse than I was expecting.’ She took my hand in hers, pulled gently, so she could get a better look at my shoulder. There were pools of dried blood around the wound, the skin gaping open where the bullet had grazed the skin. I had to look away before I got sick.
‘OK,’ she said, calmly, opening the case. ‘I’m going to have to stitch it closed.’
‘What?’ I gaped at her. ‘Shouldn’t we get a doctor or something to do that?’
I don’t know why I was expecting her to pull out some run-of-the-mill fabric thread and a rusty old needle, but I was. She removed surgical thread and a sterilized needle instead, a frown pursing her lips as she looked at me. ‘I am a mother of five active assassins, the wife of one deceased Mafia boss and the daughter of another. I am also a trained nurse. You don’t have to look so horrified, Sophie.’
Sophie. My name. The preferred version too. Something fluttered inside me. It felt a little bit like relief.
I closed my jaw back up. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I just thought—’
‘That I was going to hurt you?’ she said. ‘Of course not.’ She applied some ointment to the area around the wound. I tried not to flinch, and failed. ‘I don’t usually numb first, but since this is your first gunshot wound …’
‘Jesus,’ I muttered.
Elena surprised me by laughing. ‘The first prick will be the hardest, and then it will be quick. I promise.’ She tapped a finger against my skin to see if the numbing cream had set in yet. ‘Feel that?’
I nodded, and she pulled back, waiting.
‘I didn’t know you used to be a nurse,’ I said.
‘Yes. I trained a long time ago – before I had all these boys running around after me, dragging at my skirts, demanding five meals a day. Once they came along, I found being a mother to them was a full-time job.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I enjoy it, you know,’ she said, flicking a glance at me, waiting for a reaction. ‘Tending to people. That might surprise you.’
Maybe it would have once, but not any more. Not after I’d seen her around her sons, the love she showed them, even when she was snapping at Dom about leaving dirty plates in the sink or giving out to Gino about his messy hair. You could feel it.