Vendetta

Then he spoke quickly and quietly: “I took you from Felice’s house against your will. When we made it into town, I stopped at a red light and you escaped. You ran into a service station. I couldn’t come after you because there were too many people inside. I couldn’t risk getting caught. You called a cab to pick you up. You went home to your mother and you both fled Cedar Hill immediately.”

I started to shake, first my hands and then the rest of me. He was setting me free. He wasn’t going to kill me. “What about my uncle …” I said as tears pricked the back of my eyes.

Luca’s expression was unyielding, his voice dark. “You will not return home until after your uncle’s funeral. Valentino won’t keep us in Cedar Hill just for you. He won’t like it that you escaped, but he will be able to move past it once Jack Gracewell’s debt is settled.”

“But if — ”

“Sophie,” Luca cut me off. “You will never see your uncle again.”

“Please,” I whispered. “Please, you have to help him.”

“There are certain mistakes I can afford to make,” he replied evenly. “And certain mistakes I can’t.”

“Do you mean they’d kill you if you tried to help him? But they’re your family.”

“I mean I wouldn’t try,” he said plainly.

I swallowed my words. Not only could Luca not help Jack, I knew he wouldn’t. In his heart, he believed he should die, and there was nothing I could do to change that. How could a boy who was raised to believe that bad people are wholly bad possibly understand the idea that within bad there can be good and, more important, the potential for good? Luca and his family were looking at the world in black-and-white.

With a quick glance over my shoulder, Luca pulled his switchblade out of his pocket and cut the ties around my wrists. I watched as they fell apart limply. He pressed the handle of the blade into my hand and closed my fingers around it. “You stole my knife and took it with you in case you needed protection.”

I looked down at the inscription: Gianluca, March 20th 1995. He was really giving me his blade, his personalized blade. And what’s more, he was trusting that I wouldn’t use it against him. It felt cold and unnatural in my hands, but I kept it, stuffing it in a pocket of my shorts alongside the fifty dollars.

“Thank you,” I said, because I couldn’t manage anything else. I didn’t know whether to be grateful or horrified. I was exhausted, I was numb, and I was shaking. But he was setting me free, and whatever else was happening around us, that meant something. He was going against his family. He was giving me my life back.

“You’ll never see us again, Sophie.” There was a devastating finality in his words, but there was still nothing in his expression. It was, as ever, carefully controlled.

Before I could respond, the handle of the passenger door clicked and I turned to find Nic standing there, in the small parking lot at the back of the service station, holding it open for me. I stepped out of the car. We looked at each other, and I could see every shred of heartache bound up in his dark eyes.

He studied me — the bruising on my face and the lopsided way I was holding myself, my hands clutched beneath my ribs. He shut his eyes, there was a sharp intake of breath, and I swore both our hearts cracked just a little in that moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said, opening his eyes again.

I couldn’t tell him it was OK. It was a million miles away from being OK. But I offered him something small: a soft, watery smile for the boy who had kissed me like I had never been kissed before. He had goodness in him, even if it was buried far beneath the codes he lived his life by.

I stood back from Nic and he brushed by me, taking his place beside Luca in the car. He reached out for my hand and I gave it to him. He held it carefully, like it was made of porcelain, and traced the red marks on my wrist with his thumb. Then he lifted it to his lips and kissed it. “Riguardati,” he murmured against my skin.

And then the Falcone brothers were gone from me, and I was doubled over on the ground, crying so hard I could barely breathe.

The more I cried, the more I thought about everything that had happened, and slowly, my resolve grew steadier than all the pain swimming inside me. If all the Falcones did was put people in the ground, then how could they know the benefits of second chances and what they can do for someone? How much good were they doing by ripping the potential out of a man before he could find the good in himself?

Luca and Nic might not have had a choice about killing Jack, but I did. I didn’t know his number to call him — never mind that my phone was presently in the possession of thug-in-training C.J. — but I knew where they were going, I had a weapon, and I had money to get there. If I abandoned my uncle now, I would never forgive myself, and I would never think of Nic with anything other than contempt. I had made a promise to my father to look after Jack, and if his brother died like this I knew he would never recover. He was barely hanging on already.

But there was still time, I could still do something. I could stand between Nic and my uncle, I could stop him from killing him. I might not have been able to convince Luca, but I knew Nic would listen to me. He wouldn’t devastate my family so completely, not after everything we had shared with each other.

I picked myself up and did my best to clean my face, wiping the blood from my chin and pulling my hair around my eyes to hide the bruising. I forced my body to straighten, walked into the service station, and broke the fifty-dollar bill so that I’d have one measly quarter to call a cab. I waited in the service station bathroom until it arrived, studying my reflection. I pulled my matted hair back from my face and stifled a horrified gasp. Deep bruises pooled out from under my swollen eyes. The bridge of my nose was crooked, and my cheeks and chin were red-raw from where I had scrubbed the blood away. I gripped the sides of the sink as the pain in my ribs surged. A few weeks ago, my biggest problem was the stifling July humidity. How had it come to this?