Chapter Twenty-Eight The Escape

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT THE ESCAPE

Luca and I stared at each other for a long, agonizing moment.

I watched his expression darken. I tried to speak again, but I couldn’t. I knew I was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness; flashes of pain were pulsing through my ribcage, and every breath was more difficult than the one before. But I knew, too, if I let myself fall into the darkness that was licking at my mind, then I might never wake up again – because Luca was Valentino’s underboss, and he had orders to extract a blood debt from me.

I unballed my fist and pushed onwards, holding the knife as far from my body as I could and using my shoulder as an anchor to keep me upright.

‘Get out of my way.’ Brandishing the switchblade, I tried to shove against his chest with my other shoulder.

Luca curled his hand around my back and yanked the knife easily from my grip with the other. He flicked it closed and threw it on to the couch, far from my reach. ‘You can’t go through me.’

I looked up at him, glaring. I had seen enough of those piercing eyes to last me a century. ‘Let go of me.’

He didn’t. He moved his gaze across the room and let it rest on Calvino’s flat-out form. ‘You do that to him?’ he asked evenly.

I nodded.

He studied me, first the dried blood on my chin, and then where I was trying to clutch at my ribs. ‘ Cazzo, ’ he muttered, shaking his head.

My legs buckled, but he caught me. He lowered me to the floor so that I was sitting. I wanted to tell him to get his hands off me, but I didn’t because, for a nanosecond, I felt a respite from pain. It was almost manageable in this position, but I knew I couldn’t remain in it. I had to escape.

Without taking his eyes off me, Luca pulled out his phone, punched in a number and lifted it to his ear. ‘She’s still here.’ A short silence, and then, ‘An hour.’ He clicked off and returned the phone to his pocket.

‘What’s in an hour?’ My voice was breathless with pain.

Luca didn’t respond, and I winced as another ache spread along my chest. He got to his feet and crossed over to where Calvino was beginning to stir on the floor.

‘ Svegliati, ’ he said, nudging his shoulder with his shoe. Calvino groaned, but he didn’t open his eyes. ‘I’m taking her to the warehouse,’ Luca continued, as though talking to a semi-conscious, moaning man was entirely normal. ‘I’ll try not to let everyone know a seventeen-year-old, tied-up girl with no formal training managed to knock you out. In the meantime, you might want to sleep this off.’

Calvino’s leg twitched as Luca walked away from him. ‘ Pezzo di merda, ’ he muttered, before returning his attention to me.

‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ I said.

‘It’s not up to you.’

‘Nic will never forgive you.’ My voice cracked and I cursed the weakness it betrayed, but Luca didn’t seem to notice. Or care. He flicked his gaze to Calvino again. ‘Nic is not my concern right now.’

He peered around the open door, into the next room. When he turned back I was already on my feet again, swaying. I stumbled forwards.

Luca cocked his head. ‘You’re coming with me, Sophie.’

‘No,’ I heaved, pushing forwards until we were standing together at the threshold once more. ‘I told you I don’t respect your authority.’ I staggered on and nearly tripped.

Luca caught me again. I tried to hit his shoulder, but I faltered and he grabbed me by the waist, anchoring me to him so that I was half floating and half standing. ‘That doesn’t change anything.’

I tried to wriggle free, but he wouldn’t let go of me. ‘I hate you,’ I heaved.

‘Then this probably won’t help,’ he replied. Before I could respond, he swung my legs upwards and caught them beneath one arm, pulling my body into his with the other. I kicked out as hard as I could, but he only held me tighter, crushing me against his chest.

He carried me through a second, larger room. It was a dimly lit sitting area strewn with empty pizza boxes and cans of Coke. There was a muted poker tournament playing on a huge flat-screen TV, which was surrounded by wide leather armchairs.

I continued to struggle as agony coursed through my body, pushing through my vocal cords in banshee moans.

‘Shut up,’ he cautioned as he opened another door and we plunged into the darkness along the second-storey landing. I didn’t shut up. I screamed until my voice cracked and my throat stung.

We reached the top of a winding staircase that parted into two identical paths. Luca descended quickly, his footfalls tapping against the marble until we were at the very bottom, standing in a large circular foyer with a white stone floor. In the centre, a glass chandelier illuminated a mosaic of the Falcone family crest carved into the stone at our feet. My kicks were getting weaker and weaker.

‘Please,’ I said, looking up at him. My head lolled against his shoulder as exhaustion crashed over me. ‘Please don’t do this.’

Luca’s mouth was a hard line, stretching the faint scar above his lip. He didn’t look at me.

We reached the front door and stepped out into the night. Luca hurried into a jog. The house rose into the sky behind us; it was a gargantuan three-storey mansion made of white stone. In the middle, the roof rounded and protruded from the rest of the house, supported by a semi-circular row of columns.

The driveway was torturously long and dark. When we finally stopped, Luca hitched me away from his body and opened the door of his SUV, propping me into the passenger seat and shutting me in before I could try and tumble out. He jumped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. It roared to life beneath us. The clock on the dashboard read 10.04.

‘Where are we going?’ I already knew. I just wanted him to speak to me, to acknowledge what he was doing. Even yelling was better than the stony silence that stretched out between us. The quiet meant he was too focused on what he had to do, and that my pleas weren’t causing him to waver.

We drove in silence for a long time, speeding along deserted roads I didn’t recognize, until finally, strands of civilization edged back into view. I tried to stay alert, but I could feel myself slipping in and out of consciousness as the pain ebbed and flowed through my body.

I tried everything to get through to Luca: I cried, I pleaded, I yelled, but he never replied. He never even looked at me. He just stared, face forwards, at the road, grinding his jaw and gripping the steering wheel so hard his fingers turned white.

And then when the clock read 10.57, almost an hour after leaving Lake Forest, we stopped. Luca turned off the highway and pulled around the back of a small service station. He parked the car, and for the first time since we had started driving, he turned to me. I stared back into his fathomless blue eyes, and waited as he shifted in his seat. He pulled something out of his back pocket, and my stomach curled with terror as he leant towards me. He dropped it into my lap and for a moment I felt no pain, just surprise. It was a fifty-dollar bill.

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 wrist. 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

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.