Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) by Catherine Doyle (29)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE KEY

I burst through my front door, half expecting my mother to be waiting for me. She was in the sitting room, a mug in one hand, her phone in the other.

‘There you are!’ She sprang to her feet, spilling tea across her shirt. ‘I’ve been calling you. You said you’d only be a couple of hours, Sophie. I was worried.’

Rage rumbled inside me. I took a deep, steadying breath.

‘Am I a Marino?’

The mug smashed at my feet. The pieces nicked at my ankle, drawing blood. I turned from her and marched upstairs.

‘Sweetheart,’ she spluttered, following me. ‘Hang on.’

‘You lied to me,’ I shouted over my shoulder. ‘All my life you’ve been lying to me.’

I crashed into her room and dragged the chair by her vanity table over to the wardrobe.

She stood in the doorway, alarm warping her voice. ‘What are you doing?’

I climbed on to the chair and started flinging my father’s old clothes out of the way, searching through his side of the wardrobe. I was looking for a half-forgotten memory from my childhood. A box I found once when I was trying to find my Santa presents two weeks before Christmas. I had come across a black box, frayed at the edges, that my father had yanked off me. A box he told me never to open.

Well, guess what? I was damn sure going to open it now.

‘Stop.’ My mother was beside me, tugging at my arm. ‘Can we just talk about this?’

I whirled on her, flinging another set of shirts on to the floor. ‘What do you want to talk about? How Dad is one of the missing Marinos? How his real name is Vince? How we’ve been part of the mob this entire time and no one thought it was a good idea to tell me? Is that what you want to talk about?’ I yelled. ‘Because I can’t imagine how you’re going to explain all that to me!’

Her eyes grew big in her pale face. ‘W-what?’

‘I know!’ I told her. ‘I know what I am.’

She stumbled backwards, collapsing in a heap on the bed. I kept rifling through my dad’s closet, shelf by shelf, searching for that box.

‘You were never supposed to find out,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper now. ‘Your father left that life behind a long time ago … He never thought it would catch up with him.’

I fisted a pair of jeans in my hand, turning to her. ‘But it did, didn’t it?’

She couldn’t look at me. ‘Jack didn’t get as far away from that world as your father did. He was drawing suspicion. And then … then Angelo Falcone started looking into them and—’

‘He murdered him.’ I rested my head on the top ledge of the wardrobe as the chair wobbled beneath me. ‘Dad killed him on purpose that night and you knew!’

‘Sophie …’

‘Don’t lie to me! Stop lying to me!’

‘He told me before they took him in,’ she admitted. ‘He said he had to do it, to keep you safe, Sophie. He couldn’t risk it getting out. He wanted you to live a happy life. Not the one he had. He lost his parents to that world.’

‘You knew he murdered him,’ I cried. ‘And you were OK with it!’

‘I’m not OK!’ She scrambled to her feet. I looked down at her tear-streaked face and saw the desperation in her eyes. ‘Why do you think I don’t visit him? Why do you think I don’t answer his letters? Why do you think I can’t stomach looking at him any more, Sophie? It terrifies me. I can’t stop thinking about it. I hate that world. I hate everything it stands for.’

Where was that damn box? I grabbed their wedding album from the top shelf and flung it to the floor. ‘Then why did you marry him?’

‘I didn’t know his past when I married him! He and Jack were taken away by their grandmother. They legally changed their identities. He was a Gracewell when I met him.’

‘OK,’ I said, forcing calmness into my body. ‘When did you find out he was the heir to a bloodthirsty crime family?’

‘After a few years.’

I fought the urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her. ‘Then why the hell did you stay with him?’

‘Because I was pregnant!’

The chair wobbled again. I shot my hand out and grabbed the shelf to steady myself.

‘I was pregnant and I was in love,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to punish him for where he came from. He was making an honest name for himself. He hadn’t seen his family in years. Nobody was ever going to find out. Sophie,’ she added, her voice turning hard, ‘I fell in love with someone who wanted a destiny different to the one he was born with. A man who was kind and funny and loyal and protective. And when the truth came out, I was still in love with him, because my knowledge of who he was didn’t change anything about who he had become. I loved him, Sophie, in spite of his family. Do you find that so hard to believe?’

I faltered, my words catching in my throat. She fell in love with a mafioso.

Was that really so hard to believe?

No. It was easy to understand. Too easy.

I turned back to my search. ‘You were supposed to tell me everything after Donata left yesterday,’ I said. ‘She was sure you would.’

‘I know,’ she conceded.

‘And you didn’t.’

She raked her hands through her hair, greasy tendrils swiping across her forehead. ‘I didn’t know what to do, Sophie. Your father made me swear to him that I’d never reveal it. That I’d hide it with every last breath. But then … Jack got in hot water and he went to … he went to Donata, of all people, and he broke open the secret. And suddenly she had her eyes on you. She knew who you were. She said she was allowing me the courtesy of telling you. I told her I would.’

‘You really thought you could hide it from me?’ I asked her.

‘I had to try,’ she said, her words cracking. ‘I had to try.’

‘What were you afraid of?’ I asked, feeling marginally less angry now. It wasn’t so hard to understand my mother’s position. No wonder she hadn’t been coping well. She was chewing on a secret so big it was destroying her. ‘Telling me wouldn’t have ended the world.’

She shook her head. ‘You can’t bury something if you keep digging it up. We had to keep going, keep living the life we’d made. I was afraid you would go to them. That they would pull you in and you would see a family with money and protection and support, a family you never really had. And then Jack cut us off and the bills started piling up, and when Donata came I thought she would tell you, and you would leave me for betraying you.’

I reached down and clasped her hand. ‘I would never leave you!’

‘I wanted to do the right thing, the best thing …’ She shook her head, her expression filling with sadness. ‘But I couldn’t tell what it was, Sophie.’

‘What do you mean, Jack cut us off?’

‘Jack handles the diner money,’ she said. ‘He’s stopped sending us our share, and you weren’t well enough to go to work. I’ve been too frazzled to finish my own projects … and …’

‘I would have gone back, Mom. You should have told me sooner.’

‘Your health is more important to me.’

I rose on to my tiptoes and returned to my search, feeling a mixture of triumph and fear as my fingers brushed against something hard and dusty at the back of the closet. I pulled the box out, balancing it carefully as I heaved it down. I climbed off the chair and dropped it on the bed.

‘Sweetheart …’ she began, ‘I think we should take this slow …’

I opened the box and dumped its contents on to the bed. ‘We don’t have time for “slow”.’

My father’s past fluttered on to the duvet.

‘God,’ I breathed, as I picked up the yellowed birth certificate from Northwestern Memorial Hospital and read the faded writing.

I brushed my thumb over my father’s birthdate.

My father, Vincenzo Marino Jr.

I swallowed hard.

My eye fell on a newspaper clipping. I picked it up; the article was marked 14th November 1987. I scanned it, trying to detach myself from the gruesomeness, from how close to home it really was.

Beneath the article, there was a grainy photograph of Vincenzo Marino and his wife, Linda Harris. My grandparents. They were dressed formally and smiling at something off camera. She was beautiful. He looked just like my father. In all my life, I had only ever seen one picture of them – a holiday snap from when my father was a child. He said the other pictures were too painful for him to look at. But now they were spread out below me, tens of Polaroids of the Marino boss and his wife, of Jack and my father, smiling and laughing, wearing silly hats and blowing out candles and doing all the normal things that normal happy families do. These were not deadbeat parents, the way I’d always been told.

‘Where were Dad and Jack?’ I asked, sifting through the photographs. ‘The article says they weren’t in the house when they were killed.’

I was all too aware of my mother hovering behind me, her heavy breathing filling up the silence. She was panicking and trying not to show it; I was trying not to scream at her. It was a delicate dance.

‘Linda’s family hid them. They were already in Milwaukee before the murders. Your grandfather suspected there was a hit out on him and he didn’t want to take any chances. Linda wouldn’t leave her husband’s side.’

‘And she died for it.’

‘She did.’

She died for love.

For stupidity.

‘Do you call Dad “Vince” or “Michael”?’

‘He’s only ever been Michael to me.’

I laughed, but there was no amusement in it.

‘Sophie …’

‘Why did Dad come back to Chicago?’ I cut in. ‘Did he have a death wish or something?’

She sighed. ‘I was in college here when we met. I wanted to stay and raise a family, and by the time I found out about his past, he said the danger was over. The Falcones would never find out who he was.’

‘Still, why risk it?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’ She sat down on the bed, disturbing a group of photographs. I picked up the key underneath. It was heavy and brass, with a thick loop at the end, where the metal broke away into connecting swirls. ‘He wanted to be Michael Gracewell. He believed we’d get away with it.’

‘Well, we haven’t,’ I said, bitterness twisting my voice as I twisted the key in my hand. It was fancy, important-looking. It opened the safe in the diner – I’d bet my life on it. Something lurched inside me. What the hell was it doing in my father’s closet?

‘Just because Donata told you doesn’t mean the other families will find out.’

I lifted my gaze. ‘Donata didn’t tell me.’

She screwed her face up. ‘What?’

I stood up, still clutching the key. ‘The Falcones did.’

I don’t know why I revelled in the surprise on my mother’s face in that split second, why it made me feel good to know that there were secrets she didn’t know either. It was petty and small, but that’s how I felt. Stupid. Untethered from my own identity.

She shot to her feet. ‘No.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘But how?’

I crushed the key in my fist and threw the rest of the photos off the bed. Anger surged in me now that I had seen it all, now that I knew for sure. ‘Because I went to them,’ I said, hot tears welling in my eyes. ‘Because I thought they were our only hope! Because I thought we had to be protected from the Marinos! I went to them thinking they would help us, and I left with Felice Falcone screaming “Marino” at me.’ The sobs came thick and fast, choking me.

‘No,’ my mother half-shrieked. ‘They can’t know.’

‘Everybody knows!’ I yelled. ‘Everybody knows and we’re stuck here like rats, waiting to be killed or used in this stupid blood war! You should have told me!’

‘I wanted to protect you!’ She was shouting too. Panic had seized us both. We saw our fate mirrored back at us – hopeless, inevitable. We had burnt all our bridges. The secrets had cut us down. ‘I’ve been tearing my hair out thinking about it. How could I risk telling you? After the warehouse … after how close they got to us, and you were so brave and so good. The Falcones weren’t looking at you any more – they owed you. I thought we could walk away. I thought our secret was still safe. How could I tell my baby girl the family she comes from is sick and twisted, after everything we’ve come through? How could I break your heart like that?’ She was crying harder than me.

‘I never had a choice,’ I said, a violent sob rattling my shoulders. ‘All this time I was living a lie. I never had a way out, and you all knew it!’

‘We wanted to give you a way out,’ she insisted. ‘I wanted to more than anything, sweetheart.’

Something shifted inside me as Nic’s forgotten words rose to the surface, wrapping around me. The world got very dark all of a sudden. ‘I’m bound by blood, Mom.’ My voice fell deathly quiet. ‘There is no way out.’

‘Oh, Sophie.’ She dragged her hands across her face. ‘Do you know that you’re the most important thing to me in the whole world? I love you.’

‘I know,’ I said, defeated. ‘I know that. I love you too.’

I sank to the floor and she sank with me. The key fell to the carpet between us. ‘I was trying to protect you,’ she said, clasping my hands in hers.

‘And I was trying to protect you,’ I told her. ‘And now we’re screwed.’

She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands. ‘No.’ She got up and pulled me with her. ‘We’re going. We have to go. We have to go tonight.’

‘They’ll find us, Mom. There’s no way out of this life. Don’t you get it? Jack’s got all that money in the diner. He’s got all the resources in the world.’ I picked up the key and brandished it between us. ‘He’s got his damn safe in our diner. Donata’s watching us. I don’t know what the Falcones are going to do any more than you do, but I know we don’t have enough to get away from them. We won’t be able to hide. I was supposed to choose, and I chose wrong.’

Nic’s words rang in my head. She’s a fucking Marino.

The look on Luca’s face.

My mother took the key from my hand. ‘Well, then, let’s get the resources,’ she said, her voice spiking. ‘If they’re going to treat us like Marinos then let’s act like them.’

I eyed the key. ‘No way.’

‘Yes way,’ she said. ‘It’s the only way.’

‘We can’t take their money!’ I hissed. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘Yes! I’m crazy with worry and this is the only way out. Let’s take it and get the head start we need.’

I shook my head. ‘Dad would never—’

‘Your father isn’t here!’

We huddled around that key, scrolling through all the ways tonight could blow up in our faces. The underworld was moving around us. We had to go. Eat or be eaten.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ I whispered. ‘The Falcones are watching the diner. They’ll kill us.’

‘No, they won’t. They won’t suspect us. They’re looking for Jack, remember?’

‘You didn’t see them.’ I thought of the horror in Nic’s eyes. The moment he had looked at me like I had betrayed him. ‘You don’t know what they’re capable of.’

She stuffed it in her pocket. ‘I know the stakes, Sophie. We’ve got a little time. Donata thinks you’re on side, remember? She said she’d come here first to brief you. And she hasn’t yet. “Soon” is not tonight.’

‘I’ll go, then. You keep watch and I’ll go in.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re not a thief, Sophie.’

‘Neither are you!’

‘This is my job. I’m supposed to protect you. I’m supposed to keep you safe.’

I had a sudden flash of Sara Marino trying to claw the blood out of her arms at Eden.

There’s this blood in us.

‘No. I’m the Marino, remember?’

She shut her eyes tight. ‘You’re not going in there, Sophie.’

‘Fine,’ I huffed. ‘Then neither are you.’

‘Sweetheart …’

‘It’s way too dangerous. Let’s just get in the car and go. Leave the money where it is. We’ll find another way.’

There was a heavy silence. She chewed her lip, thinking. And then, at last, her shoulders dipped and she said, ‘Pack a bag. We’ll discuss it when we’re in the car.’

I left the pieces of my father’s past, the broken secret he had kept from me, and went into my bedroom and threw my whole life into a suitcase.

I was fishing a pair of shorts out from underneath my bed when the front door slammed. My heart slammed too.

My mother had reversed out of the driveway by the time I got downstairs. She sped away from me, leaving me screaming at the back of her car as the first drops of rain began to fall, heralding the storm.

She was going to rob the safe.

They were going to kill her.