Chapter Twenty-Two The Falcone Calling

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO THE FALCONE CALLING

Nic offered me a ride to his house from the park but I decided to walk with Millie instead.

‘Ah, a lovers’ tiff,’ she had assumed on our way home. She wasn’t half wrong, but she wasn’t completely right either. I didn’t tell her the truth about the argument in Rayfield Park for the same reason I didn’t tell her why I was going to Nic’s house after we went our separate ways at Shrewsbury Avenue. I wasn’t ready to organize my thoughts about everything, and until I did that, I wanted to make sure she would be safe. The less she knew, the better.

When I turned into his driveway, Nic was already standing in the doorway. ‘You came.’

I approached him in silence. He stood against the open door so I could sidle past him. I tried not to notice when I brushed against him, but I could see it register on his face.

The front of the house was entirely different from the modern kitchen at the back. Now, I was hovering in the setting of every horror story I’d ever heard, and it was exactly how I’d imagined it.

A crystal chandelier, still covered in cobwebs, hung from the high ceiling. The wooden floors in the large foyer were discoloured and uneven, creaking with each step. Ahead, a grand staircase lined with a thick burgundy carpet turned sharply to the right and up towards the second floor, while panelled wallpaper fell away from the walls in tattered strips. The hallway continued down the left side of the stairs, branching off into a line of closed rooms with narrow doors. The right side was distinguished by huge, newly varnished doors with heavy brass handles.

‘Sophie?’ I turned to find Nic looking at me expectantly. ‘Do you want to follow me through here?’ He led me into a large sitting room, where two dark red leather couches rested around a stately fireplace.

I seated myself on one of the couches, Nic chose the other. I noticed, without an iota of surprise, that there was no TV, just a leather footstool, an old clock on the grand mantelpiece and a built-in bookcase that spanned the entire length of the far wall. It was filled to the brim with Dickens, Defoe, Twain, Swift, and every other great or intimidating novelist I could have imagined. Above the fireplace, an oil painting lorded over the room. It was some kind of avenging angel, rendered in sweeping dark colours and set in a gilded frame. It stretched the entire width of the mantelpiece.

‘That’s one of Valentino’s,’ Nic said, following my gaze.

‘It’s incredible.’

‘It’s kind of dramatic.’

Dramatic. The thought of Nic holding a gun to Robbie Stenson’s head flittered across my memory. ‘Well at least he puts his time to good creative use.’

Nic cleared his throat awkwardly.

‘Well, I’m here,’ I said, keeping my thoughts focused on what I needed to know. ‘Start talking.’

He leant across the corner of his couch, pinning me with his eyes. ‘What I’m about to tell you is not for the faint-hearted,’ he said. ‘Discussing my family like this is not something I do lightly, and I need to know that you won’t use it against me. Against us.’

I hesitated, and he seized my silence.

‘Once it’s been said, I can’t take it back, and I’m risking a lot already.’

I thought about it for a long moment, really considering what he was asking of me, and what he was offering me in return: the unvarnished truth. I didn’t want to betray his trust, but I was afraid to offer my silence if what he told me was too big to handle. But I had to know. He wanted to let me in, he wanted to trust me, and despite everything, I wanted to let him.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

‘It won’t be everything. It can’t be.’

‘I just need enough to understand, Nic.’

He watched me for a moment more, like he was trying to read something in my eyes. Then he leant back and sighed, finally, after all this time, surrendering. ‘Sophie, my family and I are in the business of protection. And what that means is, sometimes we have to hurt people, and sometimes we have to kill people.’

And there it was – out in the open at last. My unspoken fear had come to fruition. Like father, like son: Nic was an Angel-maker too. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand and concentrated on steadying my breathing. I couldn’t speak. I felt sick.

‘Let me explain,’ Nic said. He reached out to me, but I edged away and he dropped his hand. And then he hit me with a fresh bombshell: ‘We only go after people who deserve to die.’

I gaped at him. ‘Is this some sort of sick joke?’ I managed, my mouth still covered by my hand. ‘Because it’s not funny.’

He just looked at me – defiantly standing by the craziest thing I had ever heard come out of his mouth.

‘You mean you go after people like Robbie Stenson?’ I pressed after a beat.

He nodded – calmly. Too calmly.

‘Would you have killed him if Luca hadn’t been there to stop you?’

He didn’t miss a beat. ‘Without hesitation.’

I thought about getting up and bolting, slamming the door behind me and running far away. But I didn’t, I couldn’t – not when there was more to know. ‘Can’t you see how crazy that is?’

This time, Nic looked away from me, his expression twisting. ‘He deserves worse than what he got… if Luca hadn’t been there…’

‘You’d probably be in jail,’ I finished dryly.

‘And he’d be six feet under.’

I dropped my hands and ground them into the leather to keep my anger at bay. ‘That’s what the police are for, Nic. Not normal gun-wielding citizens like you and Luca.’

There was a chasm between us. I studied my lap as the bitterness stung my throat. Even though Nic had never owed me anything, I felt betrayed, wounded by the truth of his character, and afraid of the feelings that still lingered for him deep down in spite of it.

I thought about leaving again. As if sensing my unease, he slid on to the couch beside me so that his leg brushed against my bare thigh, and I felt charged by his nearness. He rested his elbows on his knees and turned so that all I could focus on was the passion in his voice and the fire in his eyes. ‘Do you think Robbie Stenson would have never tried to hurt someone again just because his attempt didn’t work on you?’ he asked, his voice subdued. ‘Because I don’t. Someone had to put him in his place before he did what he tried to do to you to someone else. Someone who might not have been as lucky as you were. This is the kind of thing we do, Sophie.’

‘What do you mean, the kind of thing you do?’ I reeled. ‘Are you trying to tell me your family is some sort of self-righteous vigilante force?’

Nic laughed unexpectedly; it was a foreign, misplaced reaction, and I wondered how he could be so light-hearted considering what we were talking about. ‘When we decide to combat a certain problem, we don’t do it within the confines of the law. For us, it’s that simple. There’s an entire underworld of crime that can’t be accessed by the police. Criminals who won’t hesitate to kill anyone who gets in the way of profit – the kind of people who have more judges and lawyers in their pocket than cash. They don’t play by the rules. They’re the kind of things we deal with.’

I fell back against the couch, groaning under the weight of everything I was being asked to understand. ‘But why do you go after people at all ? What does it have to do with you?’

Nic dropped his voice, and quietly, like he was revealing a great and terrible secret, he said, ‘This has everything to do with us, Sophie. It’s in our blood.’

‘The same way managing the diner is in my blood?’ I would have laughed if I wasn’t so full of horror.

‘Sort of.’ Nic smiled. ‘My people are descended from Sicily. From the very beginning every member of my family has been born into the Mafia. Not inducted. Born . For us there is no other choice, no alternate way to live.’

I felt a pang of uneasiness in my stomach. Did that mean he was stuck in this life? Did being a Falcone mean he was destined to kill, the same way being a Gracewell made me bad at math? How was that even possible?

He continued, undaunted by my silence. ‘The Falcone traditions are unique, our membership confined to blood, and our actions informed by honour and solidarity. We are on Earth to make the world a better place. We give everything for the family, and in turn, everything in the pursuit of good.’

‘That’s all very poetic,’ I said after a moment of consideration. ‘But when are you going to explain the killing part?’

‘Now.’ Nic reacted with formidable calmness. He didn’t even blink, he just dropped his hand on top of mine and tangled our fingers together on his knee. I let him do it, and I don’t know why, but I was trying to look at him as a product of his ancestry and his upbringing, and I wasn’t sure whether I could punish him before I understood what that truly meant. I didn’t even know if I was safe or not, being there with him, but I felt comforted by his touch, and despite everything telling me to run, I didn’t.

‘In Sicily, the Mafia came about from the need to protect the local townspeople. It wasn’t anything like it is now, different families governed by ruthless behavioural codes and illegal moneymaking schemes. The true and real Mafia, La Cosa Nostra , was different.’ His voice twisted, turning wistful, like he was remembering something he had once been part of. Maybe that’s how he felt. ‘After Italy annexed Sicily in the nineteenth century, the lands were taken from the Church and State, and given to private citizens.

‘Trading grew and so did commercialism, and out of commercialism came the ugly side of profit: greed, crime, murder. There was no real police force. The townspeople didn’t have anyone to protect their homes, their businesses, even their families, so they looked elsewhere. My grandfather used to say it was a simple case of supply and demand. First, small groups of men started to spring up across Sicily; in return for money, they ensured safety by killing those who threatened to destroy it. Word spread, and after a while these groups were hired by wealthier families to settle personal vendettas or offer additional protection.’

‘So these groups – these early members of the Mafia – were just a law unto themselves?’ I asked. Sounds familiar .

‘And that was the problem,’ Nic replied. ‘With no law, apart from their own, temptation got the better of many of them; some organizations turned against the people they protected, falling into violence for violence’s sake, extortion, money laundering and racketeering – all the things that make the Mafia as infamous as it is today.

‘After that, many of them, who had become formidable families in their own right, emigrated to America. My grandfather’s family were among the first immigrants in the early twentieth century.’ Nic paused for a moment before continuing with quiet surety. ‘But the Falcones never chose the corrupt path of those around them, not in Sicily and not here. We have always tried to protect those who can’t protect themselves, to stay on the right side of right and wrong. And sometimes, the right thing is to kill the wrong kind of man.’

Suddenly he seemed so much older. A part of me wanted to cry for him and for the innocence he never really had, but another part wanted to shake him and scream at him for being so idiotic, for not seeing his life’s calling as I did – as an insane death wish.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘That you could die at seventeen because you’re chasing down vendettas that have nothing to do with you, and I still don’t really understand why.’

‘It’s my job,’ he said simply. And then came four horrifying words: ‘I’m a career assassin.’

I lost the ability to blink. Suddenly there wasn’t enough space in my lungs to fill them with the air I needed to breathe. If I had remembered any curse words in that moment, I would have used them all at once. Nic just waited, politely, while I connected the word ‘assassin’ with a seventeen-year-old boy who had big, beautiful brown eyes and an easy smile.

‘How many?’ I stammered, as numbers ran through my mind – five people? Ten? Fifty?

He slow-blinked at me, but I knew he understood. I spelt it out for him. ‘How many people have you killed? ’

‘I don’t know.’ Lie .

‘Ballpark,’ I demanded, but my voice wavered. Did I really want to know? Would it be worse than my guesses?

‘Not that many.’ His eyes grew, and I caught myself noticing the flecks of gold inside them.

I re-focused. I was not about to let him smoulder his way out of this. ‘Anything over zero is “many”.’

Nic had the good sense to look away from me, even if he was feigning the shame he should have been feeling.

‘So how many?’ I asked again.

‘I can’t discuss it, Sophie. I’d get in trouble,’ he said, almost pleadingly. ‘Just know they were bad people. People a lot worse than Stenson. And it’s my job.’

‘ How could that be your job?’ I finally managed, though it came out with an eye-watering shrillness.

‘It couldn’t be anything else,’ he replied simply.

‘It could be lots of things, Nic!’ I was screeching without meaning to. ‘You could be a teacher, a doctor, a barista, a fishmonger, an accountant, a—’

‘Sophie,’ Nic interrupted softly. ‘Just calm down…’

I clamped my mouth shut until the hysteria subsided, and when I had finally calmed my breathing down, I conceded, ‘I’m scared.’

‘I told you I would never hurt you,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s just a job.’

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘How could it be?’

‘The Falcones have earned our position as one of the most honourable and respected lineages in the American Mafia. The other families always come to us, for one reason or another, and we always respond. That has been our calling within the underworld. And it is how we operate within omertà .’ The last word rolled off his tongue.

‘What’s omertà ?’ My tongue stumbled over the word.

Nic smiled at my botched attempt. ‘It’s a code of silence. Our people don’t speak to the law, but we speak to each other, and that’s how we get things done. How we solve certain… problems.’

‘You mean people,’ I pointed out.

‘People,’ he confirmed.

‘So your family is like a special branch of the Mafia?’ I ventured.

He considered it for a moment before conceding with a soft smile. ‘I suppose it has become that way. We are the part that takes care of the people who shouldn’t be dealing on the streets, or trafficking, or killing innocent bystanders…’ His voice grew hard. ‘We take care of the scum.’

He studied me intently as I started knitting the pieces together in my head so I could see the picture he was creating. His family hurt and killed people whose aim in life was to hurt and kill innocents. That was his job, but it was more than that, too: it was his legacy. But how could he justify it to himself, and how could I justify his understanding of it? The idea that I was sitting beside an assassin made me dizzy, and yet when I looked at Nic, I didn’t feel afraid, I felt… confusion. ‘And you get paid to do this?’

‘Yes, we do.’

‘By other families in the Mafia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Handsomely, I’m guessing.’

‘That’s not important.’ He was right, the answer wasn’t important. The mansion spoke for itself.

‘Wait.’ There was something not quite right about his explanation. ‘Don’t members of the Mafia break the law too? I know they’re not exactly law-abiding. I’ve heard about horse heads and secret murders and money laundering and brutal family feuds…’ I trailed off, hoping Nic wouldn’t notice I had just listed a bunch of things I had seen in movies. After all, those stories must have come from somewhere.

He inhaled through clenched teeth. ‘Yes, the families are not exactly angelic .’

‘Well, how do you have their protection if you have to go after at least some of them too?’

Nic regarded me like I had suddenly sprouted horns. ‘Sophie,’ he said, his tone affronted. ‘We never go after members of our own culture, whatever they have done.’

All of a sudden I was back on my own planet, watching him from afar and resisting the urge to shake him until all the stupidity fell out. ‘Is that a joke?’

‘No.’

I pulled my legs underneath me and fell back on my haunches so that I was hovering over him on the couch. ‘So you just go after the ordinary, run-of-the-mill criminals? Not the ones on your side?’

‘We can’t,’ he said, looking up at me through thick, dark lashes.

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’d all have died out by now.’ He said it so matter-of-factly it surprised me less than it should have.

‘But don’t mob families fight with one another all the time?’ Another movie-based assertion, but I had a feeling I was right about that.

‘Yes, but not with us. We are untouchable.’

‘Because most of the time you’re doing their bidding, right? You provide them with a service and in return they keep you living in the lap of luxury,’ I shot back. ‘That is so messed up.’

Nic shifted so that he was sitting up straighter, putting us at the same height again. ‘We are eliminating the worst kinds of people in society. Can’t you see that?’

I shook my head. How could he be so na?ve? ‘You only kill their competition, Nic. The Mafia can still do whatever they want.’

‘It’s still a service to society.’

‘It’s a selective one.’

‘Better than none at all.’

‘Doesn’t it bother you? Don’t you think about the hypocrisy of it all? Murderers paying you to murder other murderers?’ My mind was starting to spin again.

‘I try not to think about it.’

‘You should.’

‘What?’ he asked, his voice wounded. ‘Consider that my whole family are going to hell for trying to make Chicago a better place for people like you to live in? Consider that, no matter how much freedom and protection we have, our hands are still tied by others in our culture?’

‘Yes!’ I urged. ‘Think about that!’

‘Sophie, there’s nothing I can do about it!’ His voice escalated with anger. ‘This is my life. It’s everything I’ve ever known. It’s what I know is right. It’s all I know.’

I settled my hands in my lap and fell back from him, recognizing the losing battle I was fighting. ‘It shouldn’t be all or nothing.’

‘I know,’ he conceded, exasperated. ‘But what can I do?’

‘You could walk away.’

‘The only way to leave this way of life is in a coffin,’ he said with chilling finality.

Silence descended. Part of me understood. I wanted to cry for him and the future he was bound up in, but I didn’t. I was too numb, too afraid to consider the possibility that maybe Nic didn’t want to walk away from his way of life, that he enjoyed the feeling of punishing people, of watching them quiver and beg before him. I studied my cuticles while he studied me.

‘It’s suicide,’ I muttered.

Nic sat back and smiled, and for a second he looked like the teenager he was supposed to be. Happy and carefree, not dark and hardened. ‘My brothers and I, we have been training for this life since we could walk,’ he said. ‘We can read situations unlike anyone else. We can break a man’s neck ten different ways. We have the knowledge to infiltrate gangs and the skill to shoot their leader from one hundred feet away.’ He spoke like he was listing a set of everyday skills on his résumé, and not reeling off his special mob-related activities.

‘Do you have to answer to the boss of your family?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ Nic said slowly, as though he was starting to realize something. ‘We follow his instructions.’

‘Who is he?’

He shook his head like he was coming out of a daze. ‘Sophie,’ he said hesitantly, ‘I’ve already said far too much. I got carried away… I always seem to with you…’ He trailed off. ‘You could ruin me now.’

‘I won’t,’ I said automatically. I hadn’t even thought about it, but my heart already had an answer. Despite everything, I didn’t want to ruin him. He was already being ruined by the people around him. By his own family. If only he could see that, maybe I could get through to him.

‘I can’t say anything else,’ he said.

It didn’t matter; I already knew who the boss was.

How could their father have OK’d this when he was alive? My father saw me pretending to smoke a candy cigarette once and nearly grounded me over it. But Nic’s father probably bought him his first gun, taught him how to load it, how to aim it, how to kill with it. And now Felice? Surely he had a responsibility to look out for these boys, not use them to kill people.

I fell back against the couch, suddenly feeling exhausted. ‘You don’t have to say anything else,’ I said softly.

Nic sank down so that our eyes were level when he looked at me. ‘Are you frightened, Sophie?’

I did my best to ignore how close he was. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t run away.’

‘Not yet.’

His smile was a soft tug at the lips.

I was beginning to feel intoxicated again; dizzy with desire. ‘You do bad things,’ I reminded myself aloud, making the mistake of looking into his eyes. How many people had spent their last seconds on Earth looking into those eyes?

‘Only sometimes,’ he said quietly.

‘Do you have to be so casual about it?’

‘I don’t feel bad about what I do.’ He brushed his finger along my neck, and my spine started to tingle. How many necks had he broken with those fingers? ‘But I feel bad that you dislike this part of me, and this part is almost all of me, Sophie.’

‘But there’s so much kindness in you, Nic,’ I whispered.

‘Kindness for the right people.’ He watched my lips as he trailed his finger beneath them. ‘For people like you.’

I felt a familiar rush in the air. Don’t get distracted . What were all those things I’d wanted to say? Suddenly I couldn’t remember a single one. ‘You shouldn’t break the law.’

He pulled my chin towards him and brushed his nose against mine. ‘I know,’ he hummed against my lips. His breath was as unsteady as mine. ‘ Bella mia ,’ he moaned softly into my mouth, and that was all it took to make my resolve implode.

This time, our kiss was deeper than before. Nic tangled his hands in my hair, pulling me into his body and moulding my shape to his. He dragged his mouth along my skin, intoxicating me with his kisses. ‘Staying away from you is too hard,’ he groaned into my neck. ‘I don’t want to be good any more.’

‘Then don’t be,’ I said, clutching him tighter and feeling the muscles in his back flex against my fingers. Gently he dipped my head back and found my mouth again, parting my lips with his tongue as he pushed me down across the couch, holding me beneath him.

When the sound of the front door slamming against its hinges made the couch jump under us, we were shocked back into reality. I pulled myself up just in time to see the look of unbridled horror on Nic’s face. He shot up, his cheeks flushed with pink, his eyes darting.