My mother choked out a whimper.

Donata cocked the trigger, her eyes boring into mine as I stood stock-still across from her. ‘How high do I need to make the stakes, Sophie?’

‘Don’t,’ I pleaded. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll do what you want.’

Donata pushed the gun harder and my mother choked again. Her eyes were bulging, the capillaries angry and red. Donata leant over her, and when they were nose-to-nose, she said, as calm as if they were old friends, ‘Remember your promise, Celine.’

‘I’ll help you,’ I said. ‘I’ll do what you ask. Just don’t hurt her.’

Donata pulled back, slipped her gun into the pocket of her dress and smoothed the stray black tendrils around her forehead. My mother fell forwards, her hands circling her throat as she gasped for air. ‘You are a cruel woman,’ she heaved.

Donata straightened the sleeves of her dress. ‘I have to be.’

‘Leave my house,’ my mother said. ‘You’ve made your point.’

I followed Donata into the hallway, making sure she really was leaving. Her heels click-clacked with purpose, the sound pulling me back to the memory of her sister, Elena, as she thundered down the Falcone corridor at Evelina. What a twisted destiny the two of them had secured for themselves.

Donata turned on the threshold, her back towards the heaving sky and the heat pummelling against us from the driveway. We stared at each other. ‘We’ll be back for you.’

My stomach lurched, but I regarded her calmly. ‘When?’

‘Soon.’

‘I’ll be ready,’ I lied. My mind was whirring with all the ways I could beat her. I wouldn’t let her win. I wouldn’t be her pawn.

Her voice turned weary, the pitch dropping as her shoulders dipped. She exhaled a sigh and her mask shifted, just a little. ‘We’re not the enemies, Sophie.’

The air was too warm; I could barely feel it as I sucked it in and forced another lie. ‘I know.’

She lowered her voice then, and her words fell into something else – a plea. ‘Girl, you might think you love one of them, but that is the Falcone game. Don’t make the mistake my sister made. Angelo Falcone might have once been a shining star but he was violent and cruel. Do you know what he gifted to my sister on the night of their wedding? My father’s death. Elena and my father never saw eye to eye, and her elopement with Angelo Falcone didn’t help things, but to kill a girl’s father simply to remove a nuisance from her life? That’s no gift. Yet she was so wrapped up in his glittering eyes and his wealth, she fell more in love with him for it. You can curl your lip because your uncle and I deal in the business of drugs, but the game of murder for murder’s sake is a twisted one. The path is dark and there is no going back.

‘The next time you think about those boys, ask yourself how many fathers, mothers, sons and daughters they have killed. Ask yourself who dumped my daughter’s body into that lake? Who carved “La nostra vendetta” across her heart?’ Her voice cracked and she stopped abruptly, covering her mouth with her hand and pressing her lids tight shut. ‘Mia bella bimba.’

‘I don’t—’

‘You will help us destroy them,’ she interrupted, ‘and I will forgive you for the mystery of how Valentino Falcone knew where to send his soldati the night my daughter was taken from me.’ She caught me by the wrist, pulling me into her until her perfume rolled over me.

‘Yes,’ I said, breathlessly. ‘I promise.’

‘For Sara.’ For a passing second, she wore her grief plainly on her face – it aged her, made her human, and I felt something squirm inside me at the sight. She was being ravaged by her loss, and it was driving her to bloodshed and madness.

My throat was starting to quiver, making the words thick and heavy as I forced them out. ‘For Sara,’ I said.

‘You must see sense.’ She placed her other hand on my shoulder and squeezed it, as though to strengthen me, but all I felt was frightened and full of guilt. ‘Fidelitate Coniuncti.’

She turned from me and charged into the heavy evening, taking her place in her blacked-out convoy. It had appeared from nowhere but I knew it had been there, somewhere close by, all along. The Marinos wouldn’t send their queen anywhere unaided. I wondered if Jack was with her now, sucking up to her like a lapdog.

A hand brushed across my back as my mother came to my side.

I watched as Donata drove away from us, my heart hammering violently in my chest. ‘What’s “Fidelitate Coniuncti”?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’

A familiar surge of regret flooded through me. I should never have gone to Eden. I would go to my grave regretting that decision. Maybe Jack would have come to me in the end, but it would have been on my terms. It would have been on my turf. But now the choice was gone.

‘What did you promise her?’ I asked.

‘Something I have no intention of delivering.’

I turned to her.

‘I told her I would get you to cooperate,’ my mother continued. ‘She said she would hurt you if you didn’t. I would have promised her the moon if it got her out of my house.’

‘I’m not going to help her. I don’t care what she wants. I’m not hurting anyone.’

She looked alarmed. ‘Of course you’re not.’ She pulled me back into the darkness of the house. ‘You’re not getting involved in any of this. It’s not our world.’