‘I’d usually request a lullaby, but I heard you singing in the kitchen the other day and I saw the milk curdling.’

I slammed my pillow into his face. ‘You rude man-pig. How dare you.’

His hands shot up in surrender. I rearranged the pillow behind me and lay back against it. ‘What’s really up?’

Nic grinned at me. ‘Well, my excitement levels for one.’ At my confused expression, he gestured to the nightstand, where Libero Marino’s face was staring at the ceiling. ‘Valentino just gave me the good news. You got your target. Finally!’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ I tried to smile but my cheeks were twitching. ‘I did.’

‘Libero Marino.’ Nic laughed his name. ‘He was a real piece of shit when we were younger but he’s a joke now. He’s always high on something. You could pick him off with your little finger.’

I swallowed hard, tried to ignore the ten thousand butterflies taking flight in my stomach. ‘Great.’

Nic edged towards me, crumpling the duvet into little peaks and valleys between us. Concern swept across his face. ‘You OK, Soph?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I said, in the least convincing attempt at a lie ever.

‘I thought this was what you wanted?’

I looked at my hands, knotted my fingers together. ‘I do. I’m just getting used to it. I didn’t think—I didn’t expect it to be Sara’s brother, that’s all.’

‘Oh,’ he said softly. ‘You thought it would be someone you didn’t know.’

I nodded at the bedspread. ‘Yeah. I guess I did. It just feels a bit more personal than I was expecting …’

‘The Marinos are your family,’ Nic said.

‘Well, when you put it like that, I sound pretty dumb right now.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he added. ‘Really, I do. It’s natural to have doubts, Soph.’

I stared at all that honeyed warmth swimming in his dark eyes, and felt the knot in my chest loosen. He was silent for a minute. I soaked it up, waited for my breathing to return to normal. He moved his hands a little closer. Instinctively, I pulled away, not wanting to fan the embers of desire still inside me, not wanting to complicate an already complicated situation. ‘Nic …’

‘I heard about your mother’s ceremony yesterday,’ he cut in. Maybe I had imagined his nearness, the way his body seemed to be inching closer. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I would have gone if I had known.’

I studied his face for clues of what Luca might have told him. Did he know about my father? His placid expression suggested otherwise. Another secret Luca had kept, then … another reason to feel grateful to him and guilty all at the same time.

‘How was it?’ Nic asked, his fingers still close to mine, a line of fresh bruises colouring the knuckles on his right hand. City work.

‘It was depressing,’ I told him.

He nodded knowingly, and just like that, my mood migrated from resigned to angry, my thoughts turning to everything Donata had taken from me. She had reduced my mother to a vase of ashes, a trail of memories that most people would soon forget. That was the truth of it. The cold, harsh truth.

I balled my hands into fists, released the fire inside me. ‘I want to hurt her so badly. I can’t even put it into words, Nic. I want her to suffer the way she’s made me suffer.’

‘Good,’ he murmured, sitting up and squaring his body up to mine. ‘That’s the spirit, Sophie.’ He put his hands on my shoulders, dug them in until they started to sting. I ignored it, using the pain as fuel as he poured his strength into me. ‘You need to get fired up about this, Sophie. You need to feel determined and angry, and, most of all, you should feel excited. This is your time to fight back. Don’t you want to fight back?’ That smile again, full and white and dazzling. ‘Don’t you want to take from her what she took from you?’

‘Yes. Of course I do.’ I nodded, siphoning off some of that unbridled optimism, keeping it for myself. ‘I want her to pay, Nic. I’m going to make her pay.’

‘And I’m going to help you.’ He was nodding along with me, his fingers digging harder into my shoulders, but I didn’t care. We were in this together. I didn’t have to do it alone. ‘I’ll stand by your side until there’s no one left. Until Donata begs for mercy at your feet. I’ll be there right until the end.’

A well of gratitude sprung up inside me. This was what I needed: strength, belief, support.

‘Thank you,’ I told him in earnest. ‘Thank you for helping me. I really needed this.’

‘You really want to thank me?’ He cocked his head, a slow smile curling on his lips. For a second I thought he was going to lean in and kiss me, but instead, he dropped his hands, made the shape of a gun with his fingers and pressed it against my forehead. ‘Thank me by putting a bullet in Libero Marino’s head this weekend.’ He winked at me. ‘Thank me in Marino blood.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

MY SOUL

When I got home from school the following afternoon and made my way to the library, there was a piece of paper with my name on it waiting for me on the coffee table. It was sitting on top of a book of poems I hadn’t seen before. I recognized the handwriting on the note as Luca’s.

So Nic really had told him about my assignment, and Luca had decided to help me. I tried not to wonder why, tried not to imagine him poring over this poetry book, thinking about me. It would only drive me insane.