Inferno

‘Shouldn’t you be off drugging and kidnapping someone, Dom? I know how you like to do that.’ I imagined throttling him and the thought made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

He bared his teeth at me. ‘Careful now, Gracewell.’

My cheeks started to burn. A hand brushed my shoulder and I turned to find Millie beside me. ‘They’ve been here all week,’ she said. ‘I was waiting for the right time to tell you.’

That got Dom’s attention. He flicked his gaze up. ‘Millie,’ he offered, with a curt nod. Gino was still tapping on the dashboard, his chin jutting in and out with the rhythm.

‘Dom,’ she hissed. ‘You’re looking greasy as ever.’

‘Still juvenile, I see,’ he returned. He glanced at his phone again, drawing his finger across the screen and flicking at something in the game he was playing.

‘Shut up, Dom,’ I said, jumping to Millie’s defence.

‘So snappy now she knows we can’t touch her,’ he muttered to Gino.

‘Let’s just go. Let them have their secrets.’ Millie tugged me away. I went willingly. Dom’s aftershave was overpowering and his attitude was making me want to punch him. ‘Oh, and, boys?’ Millie shouted over her shoulder. The window was already buzzing up, but they definitely heard her when she shouted, ‘Vaffanculo!’

‘You’ve been brushing up on your Italian, Mil?’

‘I got an app,’ she said, opening her car door and smiling as she slid in. ‘I knew it would come in handy.’

We pulled out of the lot and I watched the SUV sit motionless as it hovered across from the diner, waiting for something. So they had one car at the diner and one car trailing me. And one boy popping up in my back garden. What the hell are they up to? What secrets do they think I have?

‘So are you ready for the next phase?’ Millie asked. ‘Do you have the switchblade with you?’

‘Yes …’ Hesitantly at first, I pulled it out of my pocket.

‘So I was reading up about this, and we have to get rid of it, but in, like, a symbolic way. The switchblade is really the last thing you have that connects you to the Falcones, right? So when you leave that behind you, you’ll be emotionally distancing yourself from all the pain they caused you. Are you with me?’

‘Uh-huh …’

‘So traditionally you’re supposed to burn these things, like, in a ritual or something, but I googled it and you can’t really burn a knife.’

‘Did you really have to google that?’

‘What you can do,’ she said, ignoring me, ‘is throw it in a lake where it’ll never be found again. And then it will be gone and hopefully some of the memories and stuff will go with it. I know it’s a long shot but it can work for some people, and since you can’t really risk going to therapy or whatever, I think it’s worth a try.’

I stared at the switchblade, at its grooves and flourishes that had become so familiar to me. At the name that I read at least ten times every day. ‘I don’t want to throw it in a lake, Mil.’

Millie slammed on the brakes and the car came skidding to a stop. ‘Are you serious? Come on, Soph. You know it’s got to go. You cut yourself with it. You’re too dependent on it.’

‘It’s not that,’ I told her. ‘I just think I should return it to him. It has value. It’s a sentimental thing.’

‘Pfff, and you think Luca Falcone is sentimental?’

I held it up to the sunlight and watched it reflect in a hundred different directions. ‘I do, actually.’

‘Fine,’ she said, pulling the most illegal U-turn she possibly could. ‘Let’s go and give it to his idiot brothers, then.’

‘No! Are you crazy? Then they’ll know he set me free!’

‘Oh yeah.’ She started manoeuvring the car back around again, taking advantage of the quiet street to pull another tragic turn. ‘Well, then?’

‘The mausoleum,’ I said. ‘Mrs Bailey mentioned going to church earlier and it got me thinking about the Falcones and their beliefs. Their father is buried in Graceland Cemetery. If I leave it there, then one of them will find it eventually.’

‘Ah,’ said Millie, a smile brightening her features. ‘Leave it in the grave. I like it.’

‘You do?’ Relief flooded me. Sometimes it was difficult to tell whether my thoughts were rational or completely insane.

‘And,’ she added, ‘by traipsing through a graveyard, we can get a nice little gander at where you’ll end up if you don’t cut Nic and his family out of your life!’

‘Mil, can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’ She turned out of Cedar Hill and we started heading towards the open road.

‘And please be honest.’

‘I am a pillar of integrity.’

‘Are you or are you not reading a Dr Phil book right now?’

‘That man is a saint, Sophie Gracewell. A damn saint.’

A laugh bubbled out of me. ‘The things you do for me.’

‘Tell me about it,’ she sighed. She revved the engine and the car sped up, setting a steady course for the cemetery.

CHAPTER NINE

THE CEMETERY

Graceland Cemetery was enormous; almost one hundred and twenty acres of constructed landscape that had been growing since 1860. Now it was a Who’s Who of Chicago’s most important figures. We got the Falcone mausoleum’s location from the main office and chose the most direct route to the lake at the north end of the cemetery. It was bordered by clumps of shrubs and weeping trees. Along the edges, the water was dotted with elaborate stone mausoleums with plaques etched in bronze above them. Some of the names were familiar to me; that’s how I knew we were getting close. We stalled in criminal territory – between the Marinos and the Genoveses – and I pulled out the map again.