Chapter Twenty The Click

CHAPTER TWENTY THE CLICK

By Sunday morning, Libero Marino’s ‘gangland’ murder was all over the newspapers. His brother, Marco, had released a chilling statement on behalf of the family. They were coming out for their revenge, and they wanted the world to know it. They wanted us to know it. Millie rang to tell me it was trending on Twitter. I feigned surprise and withheld the truth until she hung up.

The news was out there but Evelina remained, happily, police-free. I knew we had covered our tracks, but I still couldn’t figure out how the boys were escaping interrogations. Everyone knew the bloody history between the Falcones and the Marinos. At first, I thought that perhaps the police were just monumentally bad at their jobs, but it became clear that when two Mafia clans are at war, it makes more sense to turn a blind eye and let the criminals take care of each other. That was what Paulie told me. As long as innocents weren’t being killed, we were doing the city’s job for them.

I had been staring at Libero’s face in my mind all night, and I decided that eating some cereal at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning would be preferable to trying to ignore the mental chant of Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Failure! Failure! Failure!

And that god-awful question that pulsed uneasily in my mind: How are you going to shoot Jack? How are you going to avenge your mother?

I told myself it was different. I didn’t know Libero. He had never wronged me directly. His only crime was looking like Sara, and his face reminded me of how I had failed her. I couldn’t shoot him because it would be another betrayal. I owed Sara – I convinced myself that that was why I hesitated.

On the other, bloodier hand, I definitely wanted to shoot Jack. I had slashed a blade across his eye without the slightest hint of freezing, so when he did resurface, it wasn’t going to be a problem. I told myself that over and over again, hoping that if I said it enough times then it would become true.

I finished two bowls of Lucky Charms and washed up, enjoying the morning silence. I was even considering reading a book in the library to take my mind off everything. I wanted to lie low – at least from Valentino – while the lie worked itself into my bones, and I started to believe that I deserved to be here. I made my way down the hallway, appreciating the quiet while it lasted. In about two hours, Dom and Gino would be making enough racket for a small concert hall and Nic would probably come search me out for more target practice.

I padded down the hallway, following the faint sound of voices wafting through the house. I paused with my hand on the door to the sitting room, already ajar, and pushed just a little. It yielded easily, and I peered around it.

Felice was bent over himself, his words muffled by his fingers.

Paulie was beside him, perched on the armrest of the couch, one hand clapped on his brother’s back. ‘… time and time again. You have to let him lead the way he sees fit.’

Felice rolled his head around, venom oozing from his voice. ‘He is a child, Paulie. He will derail this family.’

Paulie sighed. ‘Killing Libero was the right choice strategically. And to have a Marino do it… well.’

‘Nonsense,’ Felice spat. ‘The whole thing is off. He has his soldati wrapped up in cotton wool – all of us barricaded in the same place.’

‘I think,’ said Paulie, edging lower, on his hunkers now, so he could look at Felice straight on, ‘perhaps you are indulging a little too hard right now.’

‘ Stai zitto ,’ Felice hissed like a rattlesnake. ‘You know why I’m drinking.’ He dropped his head back and closed his eyes at the ceiling. ‘I. Hate. This. Time. Of. Year.’

‘I know it’s hard for you, but self-medicating is not helping,’ Paulie said. ‘You’re not angry with Valentino.’

Felice waved Paulie’s words away, almost swatting his brother on the cheek.

‘You’re mad because she left you,’ Paulie added, his voice turning soft.

‘Say it,’ said Felice, looking at the mantelpiece, at a photo of him and Evelina laughing and toasting each other with champagne on their wedding day. I edged backwards, pressing myself against the wall so I was hidden behind the door. ‘Say the rest.’

‘Brother…’

‘She’s not coming back.’ He cursed. ‘She’s never coming back.’

‘It’s been a long time.’

How long ago had she been taken from him? How long did a broken heart last? I thought of my own grief, the constant ebb of it at the edges of my awareness. It hadn’t lessened; I had just accommodated it. It was part of me now – this blur of sadness. Maybe in five years’ time, I would be like Felice. Still angry, still questioning… still baying for revenge. His mask was almost perfect. Maybe mine would be too.

‘I want to see my child,’ Felice said.

‘Look forward.’

‘I built her a palace,’ said Felice. His voice was vibrating with emotion – it was strange to see him so vulnerable, to see beneath that carefully polished veneer of his. ‘I gave her the world and she walked away from it without so much as a goodbye .’

‘Look to the future.’ Paulie gripped his brother’s arm, but Felice wasn’t even looking at him now, he was looking at his expensive shoes.

‘It was Angelo’s fault,’ he said quietly.

I caught my gasp on the palm of my hand. Did he know Evelina was dead? Did he really think his own brother killed her? If only he knew the truth. If he knew about my dad, or the safe, or the ring…

I told myself to leave, to get the hell out of that room before he caught me spying, but I had never seen Felice so… vulnerable, and I was compelled by it.

‘I know he helped her to leave. I know he convinced her.’

‘No.’ Paulie was shaking his head. ‘He would never do that to you.’

‘We’ll never know,’ said Felice bitterly. ‘We’ll never know what he did with her.’

‘You are talking nonsense.’

‘I know what I know,’ said Felice. ‘Angelo was a snake.’

Something cold rippled up the back of my neck. Felice wasn’t talking about Angelo as a brother… but as an enemy. I was starting to wonder just how deep his resentment ran, and whether he had felt like this the night he watched him get shot. Was that why he hadn’t intervened?

‘He was your brother. He was loyal to you.’

‘If he was loyal then I would have been his underboss, not his useless—’ Felice stopped himself, swallowing the slur. ‘Angelo destroyed this family’s prospects long before he got himself killed.’

‘Careful,’ Paulie warned. ‘Clean yourself up. Try and sleep. Don’t let the others hear you speak like this.’

‘Why?’ Felice looked like he was about to pass out. ‘Because his little bastards run this family? They take in strays and undermine our safety, and I should worry about voicing the obvious opinion of—’

‘Enough!’ snapped Paulie, losing the last dregs of his composure. He gripped his brother by the shoulders and shook him. I couldn’t imagine ever doing that to Felice; I’d get my head sawn off. ‘ Get a grip .’

Felice shrugged his brother off. His suit was crumpled, his slacks turned up at the bottom.

Paulie crossed the room, pausing in the doorway that led directly into the study. ‘I’m going to take a nap, and then I have the girls for the afternoon. Pull yourself together before the others wake up. I can’t keep babysitting you like this.’ He disappeared, shutting the door behind him with a quiet thud.

Felice raised his head so suddenly I didn’t have time to jump backwards. We locked eyes, and he shot to his feet so fast he became one big streak of silver hair and spidery limbs uncramping themselves. I stumbled backwards out into the hallway, heading for the first room I could find.

I was halfway into the library when I was yanked backwards, my feet dragging against the floor as I struggled upright. Felice spun me around and shoved me into the alcove in the hallway, his left hand crushing my windpipe.

I grappled at his fingers. ‘Get off me!’

‘Eavesdropping were we, Marino?’ He tightened his grip and pushed me further into the alcove, until the shadows fell across us both.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ I choked out. ‘I’m just trying to do my homework!’

There was a strong whiff of whisky on his breath. He peeled his lips back, his teeth glistening at me like fangs. ‘I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you, Persephone.’

I blinked dumbly at him, trying to convey innocence.

‘You walk around here like you belong, like these floors are yours to traverse, but they don’t belong to you, nor does this family. You will always be an outsider to us.’

If I wasn’t concentrating so hard on dragging tiny morsels of air into my bruising trachea I might have said something about his own botched loyalty, but I couldn’t force the words out.

‘I don’t know what went on in Valentino’s office on Friday night, but if you think I believe the diatribe Luca spun about Libero Marino, then you’re sorely mistaken.’ He relaxed his hold an inch, and I gulped down a breath of fresh air. I thought he was going to relinquish me, but instead he whipped his gun out of his jacket, cocked it, and pressed the barrel into the underside of my jaw. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

‘As far as I’m concerned, Persephone Marino, you are still an active threat to me.’ The gun was cutting off my oxygen supply. Felice’s eyes were wild, his lips quivering violently. Even his hands were shaking. ‘If you even consider breathing a word about anything you think you just heard to anyone , you will be facing your death at my hands. Mark my words, I will show you the depth of my wrath if you so much as tiptoe out of line.’

I had frozen in place, my pulse vibrating against the cold metal, trying not to move a muscle. Any wrong move, wrong word, could set him off. The truth was, he was crazy – drugged up and strung out. If he wanted to, he would kill me right there and then, and I would only get half a strangled scream out before he did.

‘I’m never going to stop watching you, Persephone.’ Spittle foamed at the sides of his mouth, the words coming in heaving gasps. ‘If you presume to undermine me in any way, or do anything that places this family at risk, I will put a bullet in your head.’ He dug the barrel of the gun in further, and I gagged, trying to suck in air. I was about to pass out.

‘Just. Like. This,’ Felice whispered.

The click was as loud as a bomb. It echoed inside the alcove, and grew louder and louder inside my head.

Nothing happened. There were no bullets in his gun. A warning.

He bared all his teeth at me – that shark grin, full of malevolent amusement – and as unsightly as it was, I almost fainted in relief.

Then another sound echoed around us. Felice froze, the empty gun still pressed against my neck as the sound of a hammer being pulled back filled the small space. A black gun appeared beside Felice’s head, the pressure of the barrel puckering the skin around his temple.

His face drained to a ghostly white.

Luca stepped into the alcove and brought his lips right up to his uncle’s ear. ‘That gun might be empty, scarafaggio , but this one is loaded,’ he growled. ‘If you ever threaten her again, I’ll blow your brains out.’

The shark grin died, and real, chilling fear consumed Felice’s face. His eyes grew lidless and wide. Luca kept the gun pressed against his uncle’s head, and slowly, Felice lowered his own from my neck. My jaw clicked back into place and cool air rushed down my throat. I gulped it down. Without turning around, Felice addressed Luca, his grey eyes still trained on me.

‘So,’ he said, his lip curling. ‘There are some things you deem worthy enough to kill for, Gianluca.’

Luca’s reply came in one steady breath. ‘Only one.’