CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE SAFE
I didn’t care about the rain on my cheeks or the wind whipping through my hair as I charged through the darkness. I didn’t think about the lightning ignite the sky or hear the thunder clap like drumfire. Houses passed in blurs, the trees streaking green beneath the street lights.
I ignored the crippling need to stop, to bend at the waist and vomit. My exertion ebbed, vibrating like needle-points in my legs as I pushed myself towards the diner, towards my mother. I was running faster than I ever had before, every step pulsing through my ribs, calling old wounds to the surface.
I skidded into the parking lot. My mother’s car was parked in the furthest corner of the lot, nestled where the street lights weren’t shining. It wasn’t exactly the perfect disguise, but she had hidden it, at least. There was no sign of the Falcones but I wasn’t dumb enough to think they weren’t there somewhere, if they weren’t already inside Gracewell’s. If I had learnt anything these past few weeks, it was to expect the unexpected.
And trust no one.
I ran towards the diner, conscious of eyes on my back. I swung open the front door under the awning, groaning at the fact that it wasn’t locked. Locking it behind me, I followed the sound of frantic rustling behind the counter and into the kitchen. My mother was flinging pots and pans out of the cupboards.
‘I told you not to come!’
She snapped her head up. She was wild-eyed, her hands still scrabbling against the wood. ‘Where’s that damn safe?’
What the hell had gotten into her?
‘No,’ I said. ‘No way. We are not taking their money. We need to get out of here.’
‘Sophie, stop, think,’ my mother urged. ‘We’ve been backed into a corner. You said it yourself, you’re bound by blood. We both know what that means. They’ll come after you either way. At least this way we’ll have a fighting chance.’
I glanced around the kitchen. It was eerily quiet, the sounds of our breathing mingling with the dripping of the tap. I could hear my own heartbeat.
‘We can’t, Mom. They’ll kill us. They’ll kill you.’ The idea swarmed behind my eyes and vibrated in my throat. ‘I can’t lose you too.’
‘They won’t catch us.’ She gestured out on to the diner floor. ‘They’re not here, sweetheart. Look around you.’
‘The Falcones—’
‘The Falcones don’t care about the money.’
I faltered. I knew that was true too. They had more money than they knew what to do with. This was about Jack for them.
‘Where is the safe?’ my mother pleaded. She was panting, and the panic between us was rising. ‘I know you’re scared, I know this isn’t the right thing, but it’s the only way we can do this. Jack’s been bleeding us of money for years. We’re only taking what’s owed to us. We’re only taking enough to disappear. You’re my baby. You’re my whole world. I won’t let them take you from me.’
I looked into her watery blue eyes, at that faltering smile, and I caved. We’d never make it far enough away without that money, and we both knew it. We were here now, and the damage was done.
‘We have to be quick.’ I stuck my hand out. ‘Give me the key.’
The cabinets stretched along the back wall, above the prep area, ending just before the back door. You could fit a whole person inside. Millie and I often debated trying it, but most of them were usually locked and Ursula always got angry when we tried to climb on stuff. She almost fired Millie the time she caught us playing ‘The Floor is Lava’ in the kitchen.
I hoisted myself above the stove, balancing on the edges of the countertops as I swung open the furthest cupboard and peeled away the lino wallpaper to find the safe. It was a wide, hulking thing, with a thick brass keyhole.
‘Oh my God.’ My mother was below me. ‘It’s huge.’
‘Can you keep watch, please?’
I turned the key three times and a resounding click echoed through the kitchen.
Of course my father had known about the safe. I was officially unsurprised.
I heaved the door open, and cursed into the echoey din. Inside, a smaller metal safe stared back at me, a thick, circular dial dominating its face. I almost smashed my head against it. ‘You’ve got to be freaking kidding me!’
‘What is it?’ My mother’s voice sounded a long way away.
‘Another safe!’ A fitting ode to Jack’s prevailing paranoia, not to mention his constant status as one giant aggravator in my life. ‘This one has a combination!’ I called out. The stupid key was no good without the combination. I was ten seconds away from grabbing my mother and getting the hell out of there.
I unstuck my head from the cupboard. My mother was hovering between the kitchen and the diner, squinting through the rain-spattered windows into the darkness. If the Falcones were out there, they obviously didn’t see us as a threat. I didn’t know whether to be thankful or mildly offended.
‘Try your birthday,’ she called back.
I tried my birthday with shaking hands. I tried Jack’s birthday. I tried my father’s birthday. I tried my mother’s birthday. ‘No!’ I thumped my head against the cold metal. ‘No no no!’
Dammit. Panic was raging inside me. My fingers were shaking and there was no moisture left in my throat. It had to be something important. If Jack and my father both had a key, then it had to be something that linked them. Surely. Surely. Like the tattoo I was convinced they both had.
I pulled back and a dim light went off.
The date their parents were murdered.
I racked my memory. The newspaper article had been dated November 14th.
I keyed in 111387. There was a series of loud clicks. ‘Yes,’ I said as triumph flooded me. I pulled the handle and the safe heaved open. I backed up on my haunches as the door swung outwards. ‘Got it,’ I shouted. My voice echoed inside the metal din as I plunged my head into the depths of Jack’s and my father’s secrets.
Inside, the money was arranged in little towers. I guessed there were at least five hundred thousand dollars, but there were so many stacks, it could have been double that, or even triple. More money than I would ever see again. It was like something out of a movie.
‘Holy crap,’ I muttered. My hand hovered over a stack of bills. How much was in just that one? Ten thousand dollars? Twenty thousand? I dropped it on to the countertop. We’d just take one. They’d hardly notice, I said to myself. Besides, we were dead either way. At least this way, we wouldn’t die poor.
OK, maybe two stacks, then. I took out another one, pushing away the feeling of panic.
I brushed the rest of the money out of my way and stuck my head back in, trying to ignore the stale mustiness. Dirty money smelt bad. There were other things in the safe. I lingered, staring wide-eyed as I grappled with bits of paper. There were switchblades. Falcone switchblades with names I didn’t recognize. Ernesto. Alberto. Piero.
What the hell?
I lifted a piece of paper to the light. There was a list of names scrawled in my father’s handwriting. I recognized most of them. Felice, Evelina, Ernesto, Alberto, Piero, Angelo, Paulie, Calvino, Elena, Gianluca, Valentino, Giorgino, Dominico, Nicoli. There were different marks beside some of the names, the darkest one beside Evelina.
Behind the switchblades, at the very back of the safe, was a ring. It was a ruby ring – blood-red and still shining even in the darkness. I plucked it from the shadows of the safe and pulled it into the light so I could read the word engraved inside it, between a swirling E and F.
Sempre
Evelina’s ring.
I swallowed the bile rushing into my mouth and without thinking, I shoved the ring in my pocket. My legs gave out and I stumbled backwards, falling from the chair and whacking my hip bone on the stove. When I picked myself up, I was staring right at my uncle.
He was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the diner. My mother was bundled in a ball at his feet.
‘You’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing,’ he said, calmly.
‘Mom!’ I darted across the room and crouched beside her unconscious form. ‘What the hell did you do to her?’
The rain and wind were so loud I hadn’t heard him come in. If there had been a scuffle, he had ended it quickly, and I had been too busy sticking my head into a safe to notice.
Jack – Antony – looked down on me, his eyes dark and hooded. ‘She was going to scream. I didn’t want her drawing any attention to us.’
‘You knocked her out!’ I glared up at him. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ I pulled her limp body into the kitchen, away from Jack’s muddy boots, and propped her up against the island. ‘Mom?’ I said, nudging her gently. ‘Wake up, Mom.’
‘So, I see you found your father’s key,’ Jack muttered. ‘I suppose you know everything.’
‘Just when I thought I couldn’t be any more disgusted,’ I hissed. ‘I know all about you, Antony.’
‘Good. It’s about time.’ He pushed past me, undaunted by my use of his real name, and unfolded a duffel bag from under the counter. He picked up the stacks of money I had dropped on the counter and held them up. ‘I see you decided to rob me.’
I channelled every drop of venom into my response. ‘I’m a Marino, right? Why not take what’s mine?’
He barked a laugh. ‘A true Marino would have cleaned the entire safe out.’
‘Well, I guess I’m not good at being a depraved criminal.’
‘You’re so dramatic.’ His movements were hurried as he shoved the money into the duffel bag in thick fistfuls.
‘Don’t forget the switchblades,’ I snapped. ‘What charming keepsakes. I’m sure all those Falcones are turning in their unmarked graves.’
‘That’s your father’s business,’ he huffed, climbing up on the counter to reach further inside. ‘The revenge was always more his thing. I just want to make money.’
Oh my God.
‘He’s been involved all along?’ My voice sounded impossibly far away – hollow, quivering. I swallowed the rest of my reaction. Not here. Not now. That brand of betrayal ran too deep. I would deal with it later.
Jack stopped his rustling to glance over his shoulder. He shrugged heavily, and something peculiar flashed in his eyes. ‘They took everything from us, Sophie. I thought you’d be able to understand that.’
I kept my voice as steady as I could. ‘I understand that you’re going to get killed pretty soon, and you know what? I think you deserve it.’
I patted my mother’s cheek. A welt was rising on the top of her head; Jack had hit her hard. I couldn’t drag her out, could I? Maybe I should just whack my head on something too and go with her, into dreamland, where I had a name and a family that still made sense.
I was trying really hard not to think about the ring in my pocket. Trying not to think about my father with his greying hair and melancholy eyes, rotting in prison. Where he deserved to be, as it turns out. And I was really trying hard not to cry in front of my uncle.
He heaved another tower of money into the duffel bag and swept his hand inside the safe, checking that everything was out. ‘And what about your dad?’
‘Leave him out of this.’ I didn’t have anywhere near enough energy to open that box of broken promises. I wanted to twist my hands in his collar and scream at him. But I could never get to him. He was behind bars. Safe.
Another wheezing laugh escaped Jack. He slammed the heavy brass door shut and locked it. ‘Newsflash, Persephone, we’re all fucked up in this together. Your father and I are blood-red with guilt. You can’t pick and choose which one of us to hate.’
My mother still wasn’t stirring, and I was starting to grow desperate. Slits of white pushed against her drooping eyelids. I brushed her hair back and felt for the pulse in her neck. It was weak but steady. ‘I need you to wake up,’ I whispered as tears pooled in the backs of my eyes. ‘I really need you to wake up now.’
Jack covered the safe behind the lino and shut the cabinet. When I looked up, he was right above me. The duffel bag was slung on his shoulder and his eyes were flashing with some new crazy purpose.
‘Just go,’ I said, pushing it out with all the strength I had in me. I was not going to think about the switchblades. I was not going to think about what that list meant. Or where the ruby came from. I was not going to think about how many lies my father had told me.
Jack had the audacity to laugh. ‘We both know I’m not leaving here without you, Soph.’
‘I can’t help you kill the Falcones. Donata won’t—’
Jack barked an incredulous laugh. ‘You don’t really believe Donata expected you to kill anyone, do you?’
I blanched. ‘She said she wanted me to help her.’
‘You don’t even know how to use a gun, let alone kill a man. For Christ’s sake, you’re seventeen years old.’
‘But then how was I supposed to—’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jack interrupted, amusement still colouring his tone. ‘You’ve already done it, Soph. You’ve already helped her.’
‘I—’ The words fell away from me. ‘She knew I’d go to them,’ I realized. ‘She wanted me to go to them.’
She played me.
But why? I didn’t get it – I couldn’t grasp the scope of her plan. I was too close to it, and it didn’t make sense. But I knew I had slipped up.
‘Donata is a very intelligent woman,’ Jack said admiringly. ‘You shouldn’t underestimate her.’
My mother was groaning, and I was beginning to realize that the two of us getting out of here together and without Jack was going to be impossible.
As if reading my thoughts, he said, ‘You can’t run, so don’t try.’
‘Why?’ I asked, hearing the childishness in my own voice. ‘Why do I matter so much?’
‘Because you’re family,’ said Jack. ‘And family stick together.’
‘We don’t want to stick with you, Antony, we’re fine by ourselves.’
‘Well,’ he said, still ignoring my use of his real name, and looking past me out the window into the storm-swept parking lot. ‘Donata’s collecting Marinos. She wants you in the fold where she can keep an eye on you. So you know what that means?’
‘What?’
‘It means tough shit.’
We glared at each other as my mother twitched beside me – Don Vincenzo Marino’s eyes mirrored back at each other, shooting mistrust.
The rain thudded relentlessly against the roof. Thunder groaned, rumbling ever closer as the windows rattled in their frames. I could feel my heartbeat in my fingertips. Dread was uncoiling in the pit of my stomach as a new comprehension dawned on me: there was no one left to help us. I had to call the police. I had to take my chances.
‘You should have told me,’ I said. ‘I deserved to know.’
‘I vowed I would tell you if one of us ever came out of hiding.’
‘You are out of hiding.’ Subtly I slid my phone out of my pocket.
‘I tried to tell you at Eden but you wouldn’t listen,’ he said irritably. ‘What does it matter, anyway? You know now. We’ve been running for too long. It’s time to stand up and fight.’
‘I don’t want to fight.’ I unlocked my phone.
Jack’s attention flicked between the parking lot and where I was crouched beside my mother. His eyes narrowed at something outside.
I started to dial, the phone hidden by my side, but Jack whipped around and snatched it from me. He brought his hand down hard across my face. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he spat. ‘Calling the police – are you crazy? Do you want to get killed, is that it?’
I lunged at him, but he caught my fists as I slammed them against him. ‘Just go!’ I yelled. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Calm down!’ he snapped. I thrashed against him but he held firm, dragging me towards the server line behind the till. He pulled his phone from his pocket. Whoever he was calling answered on the first ring. He spoke low and quickly, his eyes darting around the diner, ignoring my mother as she started groaning. ‘They’re on the move,’ he said. ‘Three.’ Another pause, and then, ‘Watch the front, but I’m guessing they’ll come around the back.’
I glanced over my shoulder. Through the window, in the distance, a flash of lightning illuminated three dark shapes at the very far end of the parking lot. The Falcones were coming. We were caged in.
Jack pulled me back into the kitchen. A strange part of me was glad my mother was out cold for this. If our doom was rising to meet us, at least she wouldn’t have to suffer the terror of it. At least she hadn’t seen those switchblades, the ring, the truth. At least she didn’t realize how depraved her husband really was – how we had both been conned. At least her heart was still whole.
Across the kitchen, the back door was shut and locked. It was heavy and metal – and impenetrable.
‘What are you going to do now?’ I asked, trying and failing to pull him back to the serving section of the diner – to the diner phone.
‘We’re going to kill them,’ he said. ‘And finally teach you the meaning of loyalty.’
His eyes were fathomless pools, polluted with his scheme. I tried to twist out of his grasp but he clamped down harder. He stalked to the other side of the kitchen, through to the serving area, so he could glance through the windows again. Sheets of rain crashed against the windows, but outside all was still.
Or so it appeared.
I had to get out. If I could get out, I could flag someone down. I could get us out of there. I struggled against him.
‘You can go,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to take your chances with the assassins outside.’
There was a deafening crash from the kitchen – something was colliding against the metal door. Jack had been right – the Falcones had come around the back, where their attempts to get at him would be hidden in the darkness of the alleyway.
I seized this distraction and bolted into the serving area. The furious thudding of Jack’s pursuit jolted me faster. I sprinted across the floor, pulling tables behind me as I went, hoping to slow him down. He bounded over them with wild abandon.
I reached the front door and managed to free the lock with fumbling hands. Jack grabbed my T-shirt. We tussled and he yanked me backwards, clenching my shoulders. ‘They’ll kill you!’
I stomped on his foot. ‘Let go!’
Two loud cracks rang in the air outside. Closer than thunder, more frightening than lightning. I stumbled backwards, hitting my head against Jack’s chest. He gripped my arm again and pulled me with him, knocking over a table.
Another crash rang out back in the kitchen, the door clanging against their attempts to demolish it.
They were everywhere.
The front door swung open in front of us and Donata Marino swept into the diner, bringing a flurry of wind and rain with her.
‘There you are,’ she said, holding her gun high. ‘By happy coincidence you are already exactly where I want you to be.’
‘You lied to me!’ I spat. ‘You used me!’
‘Like a carrier pigeon.’ She took a step closer, blocking my way. I could see the beads of rain sliding down her face. ‘As if I would ever expect you to betray the boy that gives you flowers and looks at you like you’re worth something.’
I gaped at her.
‘I have eyes everywhere, Sophie.’ She shook her head. ‘And I am no fool.’
‘Why? Why send me there?’
‘Don’t you understand power structures, silly girl?’ She lowered her gun and tucked it in her pocket. Her smile was a patronizing slash of red lips. ‘Our strike tonight is only as good as the highest-ranking member we kill.’ Her smile grew as she saw comprehension move across my features.
She knew she could never get to Valentino. But Valentino was one half of a whole.
So …
‘Luca is the target,’ I whispered.
She nodded. ‘I wanted the underboss to know we were coming so he would come out of that mansion and stand with his brothers, where I can get at him.’
As she shut the door behind her, I caught a glimpse of Gino Falcone slumped against the doorframe, his gun held limply in his hand as rivers of crimson pooled across his T-shirt.
I knew in that split second that I had made the gravest mistake of all, and that tonight we would all pay for it.