Inferno

‘You wouldn’t have been able to.’

My voice changed. ‘Why did you take me away from her?’

His voice changed too. Anger, fear, insistence strained his words. ‘Because you were burning alive. You did the thing I told you not to do. You jumped off the cliff.’

‘I was trying to save her!’

‘You were killing yourself!’

The walls were coming down and my mind was exploding with that night. ‘She was calling out to me.’

Luca’s movements changed. They became slower, more deliberate. ‘She wasn’t calling you.’

‘I heard her.’

‘The fire does strange things to your senses.’

‘You’re wrong.’ I kept thinking about those white sneakers.

Luca placed his hands on either side of my legs, his fingers curling in the sheets. ‘Sophie,’ he said softly, ‘your mother lost her life in the explosion. She was too close to the stove when it happened.’

I rose up, away from him. I was disconnecting, the room spinning as memories crashed into me. ‘I could have saved her but you took me away from her!’

He was shaking his head.

The fire burnt inside my mind. My arms were stinging. I could taste singed hair across my lips. Before the fire there was the explosion, before the explosion there was the gas and before the gas there was Jack. Before that … there was everything else. A raging war. I grasped at the thread of understanding. ‘They lured you to them. They knew you’d come to protect your brothers.’

‘Yes.’

How could he remain so calm? Wasn’t he thinking about all the things that I was? Wasn’t he feeling the heat of the memories like flames?

‘You’re supposed to be smarter than that.’

‘I know.’

‘My mother is dead.’ That was the first time I ever said it out loud. It felt like I was flaying myself. The backs of my eyes were stinging.

‘I know,’ he said gently.

‘They wanted to destroy you. They wanted to teach me a lesson. And they killed her to do it. She wasn’t supposed to be there.’ Everything was colliding and I felt the white-hot edge of rage burn inside me. The words sprang from me, strung together in hurried sentences. ‘If you and Nic hadn’t come in they wouldn’t have done it. I told you Donata was coming. I told you she was planning something but you couldn’t walk away – you couldn’t back down! You had to risk everything for some stupid game of honour that means nothing in the end! If you hadn’t been there at the diner, watching, waiting for them, trying to hurt them instead of trying to protect yourselves, then this wouldn’t have happened. If you Falcones hadn’t murdered Sara Marino – if you didn’t insist on killing everything and everyone – then my mom wouldn’t be dead now. You shouldn’t have followed them. You shouldn’t have forced your way into the diner. Why couldn’t you have just left it all alone?’

Luca was getting to his feet.

I stood up, too. ‘You don’t get to leave before you hear this,’ I shouted.

He just stood there, his chest squared towards me. His gaze was unfaltering. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Say whatever you need to say.’

‘Don’t patronize me!’ My face was wet and I realized with surprise that I was crying. Tears were dripping down my neck, soaking into the collar of my T-shirt. ‘Ever since your family came into my life, everything has gone wrong!’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And now I have nothing.’ I was sobbing so hard the words were catching in my throat. I coughed and it turned to wheezing, and I doubled over, spluttering, on to the bed.

Luca moved his hand towards me but I slapped it away. ‘You’ve destroyed my whole life.’

‘That was never our intention, Sophie.’

I backed up, hitting my knees on the bedside table. I dragged my hands across my face, wiping away the moisture. ‘You’ve obliterated me.’

He edged towards me. ‘I know what it’s like, Sophie.’

‘No.’ I prodded his chest. ‘You don’t know. You gamble with people’s lives all the time. You’ve probably taken as many as you’ve grieved. You are used to the possibility of death, you live inside the nearness of it. My mother and I lived in this house, in this peaceful place where we worried about pork chop dinners and making rent and getting the car fixed and making sure the dishwasher didn’t break down again! She didn’t deserve to die the way she did.’

‘I’m not trying to—’

‘You have brothers and cousins and uncles and a mother who loves you!’ I cut in. ‘Even with all the bad things you do, you have a whole family to turn to, and I don’t have anyone.’

‘Sophie—’

‘I thought you’d protect us from them,’ I choked out.

‘We will protect you, Sophie. Come home with me,’ he urged, ‘where he can’t get to you any more.’

‘Don’t you see?’ I said, hearing my voice rise to a manic level. ‘He’s already gotten to me.’ I pushed Luca and he stumbled backwards, clutching at his side. His wound. Pain flared behind his eyes.

‘Just get it out,’ he said, gritting his teeth. ‘Get it all out.’

‘Get it out?’ I said. ‘Get out my “feelings”, is that what you mean? How about this—’ I pushed against him. He faltered, his hands clutched harder around his torso. ‘I.’ I shoved him again and he turned sharply and backed against the wardrobe. ‘Hate.’ I pushed him. ‘You.’