CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE BLACK HAND
I spent the rest of the afternoon at Millie’s, purposely not talking about what had happened in the cemetery. The switchblade was gone and I was trying to ignore the emptiness it had left behind. We made cookies and watched Harry Potter movies back to back until guilt at leaving my mother in the general gloominess of our house began to eat away at me. Real life was waiting at home – the shadows on the wall, the screams in the night, the gaping hole where my father should be. I left as evening was falling, dragging myself out of Millie’s distraction bubble. I was experiencing a sudden urge to stretch my legs and work off at least some of the sugar I had packed into my body, so I could at least try and sleep tonight.
The sun was beginning to dip, tingeing the sky with streaks of pink and orange. It wasn’t until I was passing the diner that I became aware of the black Mercedes trailing behind me. The traffic on Main Street had declined and now cars passed by in dregs.
I turned into the lot and stopped walking. The Mercedes parked several spaces away. The engine shut off and the girl with purple hair emerged. She flicked her hair from her face but the bangs held steady, drooping over her eyes. There was a forced casualness about her stance – her arms hung limply by her sides, but her hands were clenched in fists.
She rounded the car and came towards me. I squared my shoulders to appear bigger than I was. We were almost the same height and she was slight, too. She stopped too close to me and I stepped backwards, away from her citrus perfume. It took a moment to find her eyes underneath the bangs and the black kohl powder she had over-rimmed them with.
‘Sophie Gracewell,’ she said, appraising me with unashamed forwardness. Her voice was a lot softer than I expected it to be. It struck me again how young she was – she couldn’t be much older than me. She twirled her hands in front of her as though she was pointing me out to an invisible audience. ‘God, I feel like I’ve been trying to get you on your own for, like, my whole life.’ She smiled broadly, revealing two dimples so pronounced that it suddenly seemed impossible to be intimidated by her. Which was irritatingly misleading.
‘That’s funny,’ I said, not laughing. ‘I feel like I’ve been avoiding you for about that long, too.’
She nodded, her smile faltering as she heaved a sigh. ‘I’ve been freaking you out, I know. I’m sorry.’
Her contrition disarmed me, and, softer than I intended to, I said, ‘There’s a right way and a wrong way to approach someone, you know.’
She started chewing on the corner of her lip, smearing her fuchsia lipstick across her teeth. She was wringing her hands and I realized she was as jittery as I was.
‘I take it you’re a Marino,’ I said.
Her eyes went wide. ‘So you’ve heard of us?’
‘Somewhat.’
‘All good, I’m sure.’ She offered me a bashful smile, all doe-eyed, with those dimples again. There was a small gap between her two front teeth.
‘So my uncle sent you?’
I crunched my palms into fists, feeling the sweat on my fingertips.
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t think you’d have figured it out.’
Poof! There goes the truce.
Thank God I hadn’t mentioned anything about this to Luca.
The girl’s grin betrayed a sense of lightness that was buried beneath the dramatic make-up and severe hair. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I guessed,’ I lied.
She broke off into a chesty laugh. ‘He said you were clever, but I think you had me figured out at the movie theatre. I’m sorry if I scared you. I was trying to get a minute to talk to you by yourself. No one else is supposed to know.’
It was hard to dislike her – as far as Mafia types went, she was surprisingly normal. I might have let my guard drop if I hadn’t known her surname. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked her. ‘Can I know that, at least?’ Anything to distract from the pulsing Marino in my head.
‘Sara.’ She feigned a curtsy and I found myself laughing before clamping my mouth shut. God, she was weird, too. What the hell was she doing running errands for my uncle? She should be out being a teenager.
‘Sorry,’ she said, seeing the bewildered curiosity on my face. ‘I’m kind of new at this messenger thing.’ Her expression turned sheepish. ‘I’m supposed to just give you something,’ she continued. ‘I’m not really even supposed to talk to you.’
‘Why?’ My pulse kicked into high gear.
‘Oh I don’t know.’ She smiled. ‘In case I tip over and all the family’s secrets come out.’
‘Right,’ I said, understanding perfectly.
‘Anyways, your uncle wants to see you.’
‘Not to be rude,’ I said, ‘but he could have called me and saved you all this running around …’ And creepy-ass stalking.
Sara rolled her eyes so intensely her irises practically disappeared. ‘That’s what I said. The last thing I wanted to do was freak you out, but your uncle wanted to be extra careful now that he’s got, like, a thousand hits on him. He was hellbent on making sure you weren’t running around with …’ – she faltered and something dark flittered across her face – ‘… with people you shouldn’t be,’ she finished. ‘It’s important that the information reaches you and only you. It can’t leak. At least not yet. I guess this was the only way to ensure that.’
‘I see.’ It all seemed so intense, so clandestine … so dangerous. They didn’t want to shatter the truce yet. They obviously didn’t realize it was already hanging by a thread. I swallowed hard. I felt like I had my finger in the dam, holding on to a secret that was swelling and swelling. ‘So where is he?’
‘I should go now.’ Sara fished a business card out of her pocket and held it in front of me. ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘Before they fire me!’ She pulled an elaborate mock frown; it dragged at her cheeks, revealing razor-sharp cheekbones. Her eyebrows sank low over her eyes and I was struck then by how familiar she seemed. That expression – I had seen it before.
I gaped at her, forgetting the card hovering between us.
‘What’s the matter?’ She smiled, revealing sharpened canines that spread into a generous display of white teeth.
‘You look …’ I shook my head. ‘You reminded me of someone, is all.’
All the good cheer she had been exuding evaporated in that moment. Her expression soured and she stepped away from me, still holding the card.
‘You insult me,’ she said, dropping her hand.
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘The comparison was implied,’ she said. ‘I know exactly who you mean.’
I raised my palms in innocence. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you.’
She held up the card again and this time I snatched it from her.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t speak of a Marino and a Falcone in the same sentence. If you learn nothing else, learn that before you walk into Donata’s club. And whatever you do, don’t mention her sister.’
‘A club?’ I caressed the glossy card with my fingers, considering the ridiculousness of me parading through some Mafia club in the city amidst a whole other mob family. As if one wasn’t enough. ‘What’s to say I’ll even go?’ I shook my head. ‘I’m not sure I ever want to see my uncle again. He betrayed my mom and me. He doesn’t deserve it,’ I said, surprised at my willingness to confide in someone who had been unashamedly stalking me up until now.
Sara raised her hand to touch my shoulder but then stopped herself in mid-air, thinking better of it. ‘I understand, you know. It’s difficult being pulled in directions you don’t want to go in. And even more so when it’s your family holding the strings. But it will become clear to you, if you let it.’
Um, what? Part of me was curious. I couldn’t help it. It was like this festering, buzzing thing in the pit of my stomach. ‘I shouldn’t go,’ I said. ‘It’s not my world.’
She dropped her voice, even though no one but me could hear her. ‘You will have to see him, Sophie. Better that you go on your own terms.’
A caution – a whisper of something else. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She loosed a weary sigh. ‘It means important things are happening and he will need to see you, one way or another, and soon. You should go to him or he’ll come for you, and this place is not safe for anyone right now. Not even me.’
‘You make it sound like I don’t have a choice,’ I said, feeling the chill in her words as they settled around me.
She offered me a half smile. ‘You have the illusion of one, at least. That’s more than I ever had.’ Another failed smile, and then, ‘Please don’t make me do something I don’t want to do …’
Before I could respond she was marching back towards her car. I stood, speechless, as she sped out of the lot, leaving me wondering about the quiet threat in her final words.
I studied the card in my hands – it was crimson. In the middle a tree with swirling branches was printed in black ink. Underneath, the word EDEN was written in calligraphy. I flipped it over. There was an address, along with the phrase ‘Lose Yourself’. Scrawled along the top, in my uncle’s handwriting, were three simple words: ‘Sophie. Tuesday 11 p.m.’.
I shouldn’t go. Jack had already gotten me in enough trouble. But if I didn’t go to him, he would come to me. He would come for me, whatever that meant. And the further I could keep him from Cedar Hill, and my mother, the better.
Something was going on, and if I had to see him I was damn sure going to try and find out what it was. I was sick of being kept in the dark – so close to the things swirling around me, and still out of reach. Enough was enough. For my father’s sake and my own, there were questions that needed to be answered, and I needed to know what my uncle planned to do next – to Nic, to Luca, to all of them, now that he was being sheltered by the Marinos, now that the truce was crumbling around them. I would accept the illusion of my free will and try, at least, to use it to my advantage in some way. Jack had shown up to protect my life once, maybe he would listen to me about the truce. If he walked away now, before any bloodshed – if he left town – he could prevent a war. And surely no one, not even my crazy, morally unhinged uncle, wanted a war.