CHAPTER TWO
THE MAFIA QUEEN
At first my mother refused to leave my side. She just watched me, statue-like in her chair, blood-red eyes drooping with tiredness as she clutched my hand in hers and told me it would get better. Her voice shook as she said it, and I wondered at her reluctance to be apart from me – was she afraid of leaving me by myself, or was she terrified of being alone?
When she could barely open her eyes from exhaustion or speak without yawning the ends of her sentences, she agreed to go home and sleep. It was almost over. The next day I was getting out. After that I would never have to set foot in a hospital room again.
The sound of her retreating footfall was replaced by Nic’s surer steps. He was returning from his brother’s bedside, where he spent the other half of his time, his guilt splitting him in two.
‘Hey,’ he whispered. He leant over me, subtly assessing the bruises, like he always did. Maybe he didn’t want me to feel self-conscious about it, or maybe he didn’t want to remind me where they had come from.
‘Hi.’ I was lying down, feeling the weight of my tiredness on my lids. He looked as exhausted as I felt. ‘I’m trying not to fall asleep.’
‘Sleep if you need to, Soph. I’ll be here.’ I didn’t notice him move, but I felt the soft pressure of his fingers as he brushed my hair from my face.
I didn’t want to sleep – sleeping meant dreaming and dreaming meant nightmares, and then before I knew it, I’d be awake and screaming all over again. I shook my head, but I could feel the threads in my brain going slack. ‘You should go,’ I told him, my tongue thick in my mouth. ‘Visiting hours are over.’
I caught the quirk of his lips as he pressed them against my hand, smiling. He had zero respect for visiting hours. Among other things. ‘I’ll wait until you fall asleep.’
I let my eyes close as the feeling of safety surrounded me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘Forgive me, Sophie.’
I wanted to. It was easy in times like this, when I was too tired to think, too distracted to remember. It was easy to listen to him whispering to me, his fingers stroking mine. If I thought too much about those hands – what they could do, what they had already done – then I wouldn’t have been able to hold them, to let them trail softly along the bruises on my face.
If ‘sorry’ could have made it all better, I would have walked right out of the hospital and never looked back. But deep down I knew the boy who watched over me with quiet attentiveness was the same boy who had put a bullet in my uncle in the warehouse. And yet when Nic looked at me with those gold-flecked eyes, it was hard to ignore the flutter in my stomach, the weakness in my arms when I tried to push him away.
The line between right and wrong was a dark, blurry gap, and I had fallen down inside it.
When I woke up screaming, there was something hovering in the blackness – a strange winged shape upon the walls. I tried to blink it away, but the form grew crisper, taller. Real. I strangled my screams and sat bolt upright, crushing myself against the pillow. ‘Who the hell are you?’
Either this was the creepiest nurse in history, or I was about to get murdered. She edged closer to me until the half-light from underneath the door flickered along her frame. I had only seen Elena Genovese-Falcone twice before – once in Valentino’s portrait of her, and once in a newspaper article about the funeral of Don Angelo Falcone, Nic’s father. She had been in Europe when Nic and his brothers had first moved to Cedar Hill.
In person, she was statuesque. Her frame was narrow and crisp around the edges – a consequence of tight-fitting, tailored clothes. The tip of her nose swooped upwards into a point and her dark hair was wound into a bun. She was gripping the bars at the end of my bed. If we were in a superhero movie, she might have ripped them right off, the way she was tensing her fists around them.
‘So,’ she said. ‘You are the Gracewell girl.’
Her voice was plummy, and edged with a faint Italian accent. It wasn’t a question, more of an accusation, and I had the sudden sense of being caught in a trap. Which was stupid, considering that was my name and she hadn’t exactly jumped any hurdles to figure it out.
‘Yes,’ I said, a tremor tripping through my voice as I reached for the bedside light and flicked it on. ‘That’s me.’
The room lit up and I felt marginally more confident. I could probably duck and roll if I needed to, but as far as I could see she wasn’t brandishing a weapon. Unless you counted the patronizing smirk. The light had enveloped her harshly, illuminating a made-up face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her hooded eyes were a familiar searing blue.
I smoothed the greasy wisps of hair away from my face. Let her take a good look at what her family did to me. Let her see the yellowing bruises, my swollen cheeks. I would stand my ground – I would show her I wasn’t afraid. Even if I was totally and completely terrified. ‘May I ask what you’re doing in my room at this hour, Mrs Falcone?’
If she was surprised by my knowledge of who she was, she didn’t let it show. I guess any halfwit could nail a game of ‘Spot the Falcone’. Just look for the shampoo-commercial hair or those I-might-murder-you eyes.
Her lips reset into a thin line. ‘You and I have a problem.’
‘And what problem would that be?’
She straightened, folding her arms across her chest. Well. She was tall. ‘You have done something to my sons.’
Sheesh. Talk about being selective with information. ‘If you’re referring to Luca, then yes, I did do something. I saved his life.’
‘Something else,’ she clarified with cool indignation. ‘Don’t try and be smart with me.’
I guess saving her son was not going to earn me any brownie points. ‘I have returned to a disastro. Nicoli is pre-occupied. Distracted. You have gotten inside his head, like a worm.’
I slow-blinked at her. ‘Did you … did you just call me a worm?’
‘That’s what you are. An American worm.’
‘I am not a worm.’ That was a particular combination of words I never thought I’d have to say. Was this how mobsters insulted each other? If I was braver, I might have called her a dung beetle and stuck my tongue out. ‘I’m a girl,’ I added for further clarification, feeling a little bit like an indignant two-year-old.
‘A stupid girl,’ she hissed. She was way too close now. I could see the shine on her Botoxed forehead. ‘You should have minded your own business.’
‘Don’t you know what happened?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you have any idea?’
She stared through me, nonplussed. My voice grew a little stronger and I pressed on, trying to make her see sense. ‘Do you think I enjoy being in this hospital bed? Do you think I like my face being this shade of yellow and purple? I was dragged into your family’s twisted games. I never wanted to be a part of any of this.’
‘Then perhaps you should have stayed away from my son.’
I could feel my pulse in the tips of my ears. Calm down, Sophie. Calm down. ‘Perhaps he should have stayed away from me.’
‘And Gianluca!’ She threw her hands in the air. ‘Mio figlio! So weak now. Cos’è successo?’ she asked the ceiling. ‘This girl … this girl …’ She shook her head, frowning as her sapphire eyes roved over my face. ‘A beautiful nothing. You have broken them.’
She had careened right through my threshold for rude crap. I had to deal with enough inescapable unpleasantness when I was sleeping; I was not about to let someone berate me when I could do something about it.
‘Broken them?’ I felt anger rise inside me. I let it sweep me up and make me strong. ‘I saved Luca’s life. Any normal mother would be grateful for that. They would thank me, not break into my room in the middle of the night in the hospital where your family put me. Where the hell is your patient etiquette?’
‘Careful,’ she warned.
‘I am careful,’ I said. ‘At least I was … until—’ I stopped. What would be the point of blaming her angelic sons? Her denial was so thick it blinded her. ‘If you can’t see that all I ever tried to do was help your sons, even after all the bad things they did, then that’s your problem. Now get out of my room before I call the nurse!’
Elena Genovese-Falcone exhaled in a hiss. She leant over me, the way Nic sometimes did, but the effect was very different. She brought her face so close I could see the capillaries in her eyes. I flinched away from her, cursing my instincts for making me look weak.
‘I will leave when I have said what I came here to say. Don’t forget, saccente, you lie here in safety because of my son’s command and nothing else. I know exactly who you are – who your father is, what your vermin uncle is, and everything they owe us.’
‘We don’t owe you anything any more.’
‘Those eyes,’ she said, drawing back from me as her voice fell deadly quiet. Mutinous wrinkles appeared above the bridge of her nose. ‘They are soulless.’
‘Please just leave me alone.’
She just stared at me, like I was a puzzle she suddenly had to work out, like there was something written inside my pupils. After a heavy silence, she whispered, as though she was confiding something in me, ‘I know there’s more to you than you would have me believe.’
‘No,’ I said, exasperated, my head shaking from exhaustion and denial. ‘What you see is what you get.’ Unlike – oh, I don’t know – every freaking person in your family.
Her lips twisted. ‘Somehow I doubt that.’
‘What did you come for?’ I demanded. ‘To insult me? To finish what your family started?’
‘I came to tell you to stay away from my sons, or the next time we see each other, I won’t be so careful about where I put my hands.’
‘You wouldn’t hurt me,’ I ventured. Valentino wouldn’t let her. ‘Not after what I did in the warehouse.’
Her laugh died in her throat as quickly as it formed. ‘Girl, I would put a bullet in my sister if I ever came across her unprotected, so what makes you think I wouldn’t do the same to someone I have met only once?’
I had a sudden vivid impression of her choking me. The thought made me swallow more audibly then I meant to.
‘You’re not meant for this world,’ she added, like it was the worst possible insult.
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘We are born, not made. Dynasty and ambition made me who I am today. It brought me the life I wanted, the stature I have been owed since birth. The Genovese women are survivors; we have the blood of Sicily in our veins, entire families who work beneath us. It will never be like that for you. You will never be anything more than a passing distraction for my son.’ She turned from me, and stopped with her hand on the door. She was in darkness. I decided now that I had met her I much preferred her like that – an indiscernible shadow. ‘He would never choose you over his family.’
Seized by a mixture of bravery and anger, I hurled my response at her back. ‘What’s to say I would ever choose him over mine?’
‘Please,’ she said, throwing the word over her shoulder. ‘You have no family left to speak of, and we both know it.’
White-hot rage ripped through me and I imagined leaping from the bed and pulling her hair out by the roots. ‘You don’t know anything about my family or my loyalty,’ I gritted out. ‘So just get out.’
She left a tinkle of laughter behind her and I fell back against my pillow, panting. I was flooded with adrenalin; terrified and angry and confused and wishing I had been braver, wishing I could stand my ground in front of the Falcones without feeling the creeping arrival of my impending doom. Damn them. Damn her. In a different world we might have gotten along. But in the stark light of day, between two families who would hate each other for ever, I was nothing more than a troublesome, interfering Americano – and she was the Mafia queen from hell.