Chapter Twenty-Three The Underboss

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE UNDERBOSS

Luca stalked into the room.

‘Nic, have you heard from Val—What the hell is she doing here?’ The beginning of his sentence differed drastically from its end, which rose substantially in pitch.

Nic raised his hands in the air like he was surrendering to a police officer, positioning his body protectively in front of me as though Luca might lunge and tear my throat out.

He came to tower over us. Fury and shock mingled in his eyes, but there was something else there too, something I couldn’t place. ‘Nic, I am going to rip your heart out and make you eat it, you stupid…’ His sentence descended into the worst combination of expletives I had ever heard in one single breath.

Nic jumped to his feet and squared up to his brother. ‘I had to explain what she saw.’

Luca’s icy blue eyes flashed with fury. ‘So you brought her here ?’

Nic balled his fists. ‘Don’t start.’

Feeling dangerously close to losing it, I sprang to my feet and pushed past Luca. I couldn’t handle being on the edge of a conversation that would undoubtedly slide right over my head, but still be close enough to drive me insane with questions. I shouldn’t have been there with them anyway, and now that my clarity was back, I was going to use it. ‘I’m going to get out of here.’

Nic reached for me, but Luca slapped his hand away. ‘Let her go,’ he warned. ‘Unless you want this whole thing to get worse.’

Nic didn’t protest, and I wondered why. I stepped away from him, sliding across Luca’s stiffened frame without another look at either of them and banging the front door behind me in my own display of hostility.

As I crunched through the gravel of the driveway, my mind erupted with questions about how I had gotten back into the same situation all over again. I had just begun to move on and now I was back at square one, feeling confused and jilted by a mafioso who was as good for me as a syringe full of poison.

I started to run, skidding over the gravel, but I didn’t get far before something wrapped itself around my arm and I was twirled unceremoniously into the unyielding frame of the last person I wanted to see.

I removed myself from where I had landed against Luca’s chest. He gripped my shoulders and pushed against me until I was backing up against the stone wall at the end of the driveway, pinned between his hands just like before. His face adopted the angry, feral appearance I was already so familiar with. ‘I thought I told you I don’t ever want to see you in my house again.’ He was so close I could see a small white scar above the right side of his lip. It occurred to me, pretty inappropriately, that I was probably one of very few people alive who knew it was there.

I blew a stray strand of hair from my eyes. Now armed with the knowledge that he wouldn’t hurt an innocent girl, I felt fractionally more confident about how I could speak to him. ‘Nic invited me.’

‘I don’t care if the Pope invited you. You’re not welcome here.’

‘Well, take it up with your brother. I don’t respect your authority.’

My reply provoked his temper, which was etched above his eyebrows in deep dents. ‘You know you shouldn’t be with him.’

‘I can handle it.’

‘You can’t.’

‘I know you won’t hurt me.’

Luca’s eyes flashed in warning, but when he spoke again it was quiet – gentle, almost. ‘That doesn’t mean you won’t get hurt.’ He scrunched his eyes in frustration, and when he opened them again they were blazing. ‘Just tell me what I need to do to get rid of you, since rehashing your father’s crime didn’t help!’

I pushed my face forwards and clenched my jaw. ‘Tell me what you’re doing in Cedar Hill.’

Luca regarded me warily, hesitating, then – ‘No.’

‘Then I guess I’ll just stick around here.’

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ he threatened.

‘What are you going to do, Luca?’ I clenched my fists at my sides. ‘Pull a gun on me?’

‘If that’s what it takes.’

‘How brave!’ I exploded. We were so close to one another now. ‘You can’t use your words, but you’re more than happy to use your gun.’

‘I’m not going to be responsible for ruining your innocence!’

I tilted my face towards him to show I wasn’t afraid, or as innocent as he clearly thought. ‘Go ahead,’ I whispered. ‘Shatter it.’ We were nose to nose. ‘It almost worked last time, when you told me about my dad.’

‘I don’t care,’ he replied resolutely. ‘I’m not punching Bambi in the face.’

I raised my voice again. ‘Tell me what you’re doing in Cedar Hill!’

Luca moved his unblinking stare from my eyes to my lips and then shook whatever thought was forming out of his head. ‘No,’ he said calmly.

I prodded him in the chest, pushing him away. ‘I know you’re in the Mafia. If you think I can’t handle that, then you’re wrong.’

He shook his head again, in disbelief, his voice pulsing with a level of anger that far eclipsed my own. ‘Of course he told you. That idiot. And you’re still here, which doesn’t make you any smarter than him.’

I glowered at him. ‘I know you don’t hurt innocent people. You’re all about “honour” and “morals”… skewed as they are,’ I added venomously.

He pulled back, his expression suddenly unreadable. There was a beat of silence and then, in a cold, calculated voice, he said, ‘And revenge.’

‘What?’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘You forgot about revenge.’

‘What about revenge?’ I faltered, thinking about my father. His father. Our history.

Luca’s sudden smile sharpened his cheekbones. ‘Oh, Nicolò left that part out? Figures he’d be selective.’

I started to chew on my lip, searching internally for the bravery I had just summoned, but I had spent it all screaming in his face. ‘He said you’re different from the other families.’

‘Yes.’ Luca remained perfectly still, watching me like a hawk circling its prey. ‘Except when it comes to revenge. Like the other families, the Falcones always exact revenge, regardless of whether it’s morally sanctioned.’

‘No,’ I said, jutting out my chin and shaking my head.

‘No?’ Luca laughed freely; I gathered it was his real laugh, and it was a strange, silvery sound. ‘Gracewell, you really are something else. What did you think?’ he asked bemusedly. ‘That we’re gun-toting, knife-wielding avenging angels without fault or sin? You saw Nic put that gun in Robbie Stenson’s mouth. You heard him cock the trigger. Do you really believe that the idea of revenge is above a dynasty of temperamental, hot-blooded, territorial assassins who have appointed themselves the underworld distributors of a kind of karma that shouldn’t be policed by anyone else on this earth? Do you think that everything we do is the right thing?’

He shook his head disbelievingly, and I cursed my na?vety. I had been stupid to get swept up in romantic notions of Nic as some sort of vigilante; he was a killer, plain and simple, prone to the same tempers and temptations as the rest of us.

I slid along the wall so I was out from under Luca. He let me, and I felt a pinch of relief. ‘You’re not going to hurt me…’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m not.’

‘Then why are you being so dramatic about it?’

Luca’s voice grew dangerously quiet. ‘Listen very carefully to what I’m about to say.’ I had to watch his lips as he spoke because the shards of turquoise in his eyes were suddenly too intense. ‘I am the underboss of the entire Falcone dynasty, and if I’m telling you to keep your head down and stop coming around here, then you’d better believe I have a damn good reason. You need to get away from this house and as far away from Cedar Hill as you can. Nic might have deluded himself into thinking he can shield you from what’s going to happen, but he can’t. My father was a made man, and that means your family owes us a blood debt, Sophie.’

A blood debt . The air left my lungs in a swift gasp. Luca’s expression faltered, but he twisted away from me before I could catch the real emotion behind it. When he reached the door again, he turned around. I was rooted to the same spot, like he knew I would be.

‘Do you know what that jar of honey meant?’ he asked.

My stomach twisted at his tone, at his knowledge of the honey. Although I think I had always known, deep down, that there was a connection, it suddenly felt more sinister now than I ever could have imagined.

I shook my head.

‘It wasn’t a gift.’

‘I didn’t think it was,’ I lied.

There was nothing in Luca’s voice or on his face now; it was completely void of emotion. He looked past me into the night sky. ‘There’s a reason people in the underworld call my uncle Felice “The Sting”, you know.’

I didn’t respond. I just stood there, trying to get my legs to work, as memories of his uncle’s bee-stung face crept across my mind.

‘When Felice Falcone gives someone a sample of his black-ribboned honey, it means he’s going to come back for the jar.’

I tried to swallow the tightness in my throat, but it was unyielding.

‘And when he does, he brings his gun. That jar of honey is the Falcone Gift of Death.’ Luca shifted his gaze again, pinning me beneath his stare. ‘Let that be your final warning. Get out of here while you can.’

I blanched, my mind whirling frantically. I had all the pieces, I just had to make them fit. ‘But what are—?’

‘Talk to your uncle, Gracewell,’ Luca cut in. ‘Or should I say, Persephone ?’

Before I could respond, he was slamming the door in one deafening bang, leaving me shaking from head to toe.