Chapter Thirty The Choice

CHAPTER THIRTY THE CHOICE

Her hair was falling in messy strands across her ashen face, and she’d pulled her old cardigan over her pyjamas. She was still wearing her slippers.

Suddenly it felt like all my nightmares were colliding with each other and exploding into one dreadful spectacle. And this? This was my rock bottom.

If I thought I’d known anger before, this was something else entirely. Heat surged through me, and I could barely keep from screaming. What was Jack thinking ? How could he do this to my own mother ? To his brother’s wife ? I felt sick, and suddenly I didn’t know which side I was on any more. Luca was right; I should have gone home. I should have left Cedar Hill with my mother. I should have kept her safe. She was the only person in my family I could rely on, and I had been a fool to think anything different.

When she saw the guns that were pointed at her, my mother let out a strangled gasp. Her hands flew to her mouth and she stumbled backwards.

The Falcones hesitated, glancing at one another, but they didn’t lower their guns. I couldn’t understand why they would see anything remotely threatening about her. She was five feet tall, a hundred pounds, and shaking like a leaf.

I bit the back of my hand and tried to centre myself, but I was screaming on the inside. I crept closer – as close as I could get to her before I couldn’t hide behind the dwindling crates any more. It still wasn’t close enough. I desperately wanted to spring from the shadows and pull her out of there, but I knew I’d probably be shot before I got to her.

My mother shuffled forwards again, cradling herself. ‘I’m here for my daughter.’ The fear made her voice unrecognizable. ‘I’m here for Sophie.’

Luca lowered his gun. ‘What the hell does Gracewell think he’s doing?’

The others didn’t move.

‘Keep your defences up,’ cautioned Felice. ‘This is clearly a trap.’

‘It’s her mother,’ said Nic, turning to spit on the ground. ‘He’s using her goddamn mother.’

‘There are more of them outside,’ said Felice. He narrowed his eyes and started scanning my mother as if making sure she wasn’t an illusion. ‘I don’t know what this is, but if Jack Gracewell thinks we won’t shoot you, then he’s sorely mistaken.’

‘W-where is my daughter?’ My mother wasn’t focusing. Her attention had fallen away from the guns and she was whipping her head around, searching the warehouse frantically. For me. ‘Where is she?’ she asked, dread drowning out the fear in her breathless voice. ‘He said she was here. What have you done with her?’

‘Where is Jack Gracewell at this moment?’ Felice started towards her, levelling his gun at her forehead. ‘Tell me what he’s planning or I’ll kill you right now.’

‘Stop!’ shouted Nic. He flung his arm out across his uncle’s chest and Felice skidded to an unexpected halt.

‘Nicolò,’ he hissed. ‘You need to learn to pick your battles.’

‘She’s not part of this,’ he snapped.

‘Of course she’s part of this, she’s standing right here!’

‘We said no more innocents. You’re as bad as Valentino!’

‘Nonsense,’ said Felice indignantly. ‘Of course we should kill her.’

Luca stepped between Nic and Felice. ‘Do you really wish to derail this family further, Felice?’ he asked, his voice carefully controlled. ‘This is not what my father would have wanted, and we all know it.’

‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t have shunned his last request. You would certainly be in a better position to complain now.’

Luca’s expression grew faintly hostile, but his voice remained unchanged. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, Felice, that regardless of my decision, I still outrank you.’

Felice grimaced and lowered his gun slowly. The feeling returned to my jelly legs.

‘S-Sophie?’ My mother inched forwards, craning her neck to see behind the crates ahead of her. But she wouldn’t find me there, and the more she tried, the harder it was to watch her fail. Silent tears were streaming down her cheeks, catching in the half-light. ‘Sophie?’

‘Where is Jack Gracewell?’ Felice repeated. He was so caught up in studying her that he didn’t hear the dim thud coming from the back of the warehouse. None of them did.

I felt myself jump and the pain in my ribcage soared, as if an invisible hand had decided to braid my insides. I fell back on to my haunches and followed the noise. Four figures were sneaking through the hidden back door. They started navigating their way through the crates, crouching low to the ground. A shock of crimson hair alerted me to Eric Cain’s position. Of course Jack’s best friend was involved in this, just like everybody else seemed to be. Beside him, I recognized the gait of my uncle as he pulled himself across the ground, stalking towards the Falcones.

I started to panic, caught between shouting out to draw attention to Jack so that Nic and Luca could be forewarned and keeping quiet so Jack could save my mother from Felice’s increasingly steady aim. Maybe he did deserve this, but she didn’t. I patted my hand against Luca’s knife in my pocket and the angriest part of me imagined using it on Jack. What good was showing up to rescue me if he was prepared to use my own mother, knowing she could get hurt too?

‘Enough of this!’ It was Gino; Gino the Unstable. He lunged forwards, barrelling past Felice and Nic, his gun held high.

My mother yelped, stumbling backwards, and almost tripping over herself.

‘Gino!’ Nic’s scream drowned out my own, and no one seemed to notice the threads of our voices intertwining. Luca lunged at the same time and in a heartbeat he was standing in front of my mother, his palms raised towards his brother.

‘Gino, no,’ he echoed, but calmer.

‘She’s a distraction,’ Gino cried, madly waving his gun in the air. ‘And she’s Michael Gracewell’s wife! At least this way we can get the blood debt that you and Calvino screwed up.’

‘Watch what you say, Gino,’ Luca said without budging.

The shadows at the back were lurking ever closer. I caught a glint of Jack’s buzz cut several crates across from me. I decided to go for him. If he knew I was OK, maybe he could sneak away, and then Luca could convince them to let my mother go too.

I dragged myself across the cement, glancing over my shoulder as I crept as quickly as possible. My mother had buried her face in her hands and her sobs were echoing around the warehouse. I watched Luca turn and whisper something to her. She straightened up and began to wipe her face with shaking hands. She said something in return. He nodded and she released a watery smile, her face twitching with relief. She knew I was alive.

When I turned back, my uncle was no longer in my sights, and the lurking shadows were no longer shadows. They were men. And they were standing up, arms outstretched and guns in hand. I screamed at the top of my lungs, but it was too late.

In the movies it’s always so dramatic when someone gets shot. Time slows, the music ebbs and flows around the moment. When the bullet hits, the body buckles – each limb reacting in perfect unison – as it sails backwards through the air, and even though it’s supposed to be horrifying, there’s always something quietly artistic about it too.

It wasn’t like that with Luca. He just crumpled. One minute he was on his feet, standing in front of my mother, and the next he was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood.

The pop was still echoing in my eardrums when she started screaming, and then the shouting followed, and all hell broke loose.

Eric Cain, the man who had shot Luca, dropped to the ground and rolled behind a line of broken crates. Dom started shooting at him, putting holes in the crates as he sprang up and leapt between them like a gazelle, weaving towards the back of the warehouse. Another man – who was little more than a curtain of white-blond hair – was trying to dart in wide circles around Gino, while Felice cornered the fourth, all of them firing at one another between crates.

Nic went straight for Jack, his gun readied, but Jack shot first. The bullet lodged in the crate beside Nic’s head. He shot back, but Jack dodged it, leaping behind a tower of crates and disappearing from my view. And then I couldn’t see them any more, but their shouts rose up with the others’.

I slithered across the cold cement, following Luca’s blood like it was a trail and ignoring the pulsing pain in my ribcage. My mother was already crouched down, trying to drag him away from the chaos with one hand and protecting her head from stray bullets with the other. Someone screamed my name, and I braced myself for the impact of a bullet that never came.

Behind us, a door slammed and most of the shouting moved outside. I reached Luca and threw my hands on to his waist to stop the bleeding that was coming thick and fast from an entry wound in his side. It bubbled angrily beneath my hands as blood oozed over my fingers, coating them in sticky warmth.

‘Sophie!’ my mother cried, grabbing on to my shoulders. ‘Sophie, you have to leave!’

‘No.’ I pressed down harder, feeling my own ribs shriek in protest. Luca’s eyelids were fluttering and his complexion was drained. It was strange to see him so pale. ‘Call an ambulance.’

My mother released me and started patting her sweater frantically. ‘I don’t have a phone. I didn’t think,’ she dithered. ‘Everything happened so fast, and Jack said we had to leave urgently if we were to have any chance of… oh, and I was so worried I could barely think…’ She trailed off into senseless mutterings. We were close to the front of the warehouse now. She started pulling nearby crates around us – building a makeshift barrier.

There was no sign of Nic or Jack. Before, I could hear them barking at each other, but now there was nothing. Inside, the rest of the shooting had ceased. Someone had had the sense to lure the chaos away from us, and I couldn’t be sure which side had thought to do it, and whether it was for my benefit or for Luca’s, but in that moment I was profoundly grateful.

Outside, three more shots rang out and an engine roared to life. Someone was leaving in a car at the front of the warehouse, and I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.

‘We have to get help.’ I started to drag Luca towards the entrance with my free hand. He gurgled and a stream of blood bubbled from his discoloured lips, staining his chalk-white skin.

‘It’s too dangerous, Sophie,’ my mother whispered. ‘We don’t know what’s going on out there.’

The sound of another engine startled me. It was further away, coming from the back of the warehouse. Tyres squealed, and I knew it meant at least one Falcone was taking off.

‘Those bastards,’ I spat. ‘They’re leaving him here to die.’

‘They probably think he’s already dead.’ The way my mother said it betrayed her own grim expectations. ‘He very nearly is.’

The tears stung my eyes, but I blinked quickly so they would fall away from them and clear my vision. ‘If you hold the wound, I could try to find—’

The front entrance was kicked in. Jack stomped into the warehouse, his shirt pooling with sweat and his face blotchy and red. He had his gun raised in front of him, his eyes darting around the warehouse for possible threats.

‘You’re safe,’ he said without looking at my mother and me. He was still scanning the warehouse. ‘We have to go.’

‘Where are the others?’ I asked.

‘Carter’s dead. They got him twice in the head. Grant’s still out there with one of them. Cain’s been shot in the arm, but he rallied and—’

‘The Falcones,’ I interrupted. ‘Where are the Falcones?’

Jack didn’t register the urgency in my question; he probably thought it was fear. ‘Cain’s leading them on a wild goose chase across the city; those dumb goombahs think they’re chasing me. They thought it would be so easy, but once again they’ve underestimated me. They have no idea what they’ve started. I’m going to pick those little shits off one by one. No one lays a hand on my niece and gets away with it.’ The pride in his voice was horrifyingly misplaced; I guessed it often was in this strange underworld, where morals were warped beyond reason. ‘We’ve got to get you two to safety before that other Falcone comes back in here. I’ve called Hamish and he’s on his way; we’re meeting him at the edge of the lot. We’ll just have to write Grant off as an expense. He was new any—’

Jack stopped mid-rant. For the first time, his attention focused on our little heap behind the crates. He zeroed in on Luca, his eyes growing. ‘Shit,’ he said, grimacing. ‘Move aside.’

He pointed his gun at Luca’s head.

‘Stop!’ I screeched, shifting so I was in his firing line instead.

He came closer, stomping through Luca’s blood like it was a puddle of water. He softened his voice in an effort to comfort me. ‘You don’t have to look.’

‘Jack!’ my mother cried hysterically. ‘Don’t shoot the boy!’

Jack didn’t understand. Luca was just another fallen chess piece, and he was distracting me from our getaway. ‘Celine, if she doesn’t come now, we won’t get her to safety.’

Luca was unconscious, but I could still hear laboured wheezes seeping from his chest. I pulled my body over his, bringing our foreheads together so that my hair fell around his head, shielding him. I stretched my free hand across his body, covering his heart, while keeping the other one tight against his wound. ‘No.’

‘He has to go, Sophie. He’s the underboss.’ The gentleness in my uncle’s voice was turning to frustration, his patience to urgency. ‘Don’t make me pry you off him.’

‘Jack,’ my mother tried again. ‘We need to help him.’

I could hear his knees crack as he hunkered down beside me. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Celine.’

I held on tighter.

‘Come on, Soph.’ He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me away from Luca’s body in one stiff yank. ‘Turn away.’

I clawed forwards, but he pushed me back, sliding me across the ground until my bare legs were stained with Luca’s blood and I was too far away to stop him. I screamed as he cocked the gun at his head.

There was an almighty pop. It was louder this time, and it seemed to change the particles in the air around me, pushing them against each other in small vibrations. My mother and I screamed, but Luca, who was barely Luca now, remained intact.

Instead, the gun flew out of Jack’s hand, and skidded along the floor past me.

‘Son of a bitch!’ he cursed. His head was lolling, his expression dazed. The bullet had gone right through his hand, and now the tear was pumping blood down his arm. Jack shrunk to the floor, gasping and clutching his crimson fingers. I kicked his gun away. It slid to a stop between two bullet-riddled crates, far from his reach.

At the back of the warehouse, Nic was sprinting towards us, his face spattered with dirt, his clothes soaked with what must have been someone else’s blood. The gun was still in his hand, half raised at my uncle, like he was planning to shoot at him again. I guess he wasn’t kidding about that perfect aim.

‘Both your friends are dead!’ he shouted.

Jack started scrabbling backwards towards the entrance, pulling himself across the floor with his uninjured hand. ‘Sophie!’ he shouted, but he wasn’t focusing; he couldn’t see me. But I could see him; his pale face was awash with terror and his blood was mixing with Luca’s as he dragged himself through it.

Nic stopped running and raised his gun again. ‘Stop!’ he commanded.

‘Nic, don’t!’ I yelled. ‘He’s not armed. Just let him go!’

Nic’s head twitched like there was something buzzing around it. He hesitated. Jack was at the door now; he stuck his good hand through and tried to pull himself up. He was almost there.

And then Nic shot him.

My mother and I screamed. Jack slumped against the doorway, and a blood-red star started to swell across the left side of his shirt.

Nic skidded to a stop beside Luca. He didn’t even look at Jack. He stowed his gun and crouched down beside his brother, checking the pulse in his neck. ‘We need to get him to the hospital,’ he said to my mother. She was visibly shaking, but she was still plugging the wound.

I was too numb to move. I was still staring at my uncle and the new, terrified expression in his eyes. He was still alive, and he was looking at me, his body slumped half in and half out of the warehouse. I scanned the entry wound – it was just below his left shoulder. Not quite his heart, although it could easily have been. By all appearances, from where my mother and Nic were huddled, my uncle seemed very much dead, but I could see the alertness in his expression, and the fear in his eyes. Had Nic shot to kill or to wound Jack? And if he knew what I knew then – that the bullet had missed my uncle’s heart, then would he finish the job?

‘Sophie,’ my mother said, her voice heaving. She and Nic had started to hoist Luca between them. ‘Can you help us? We need you to plug the wound while we move him.’

Did Jack deserve my forgiveness? No. Did he deserve to die? That wasn’t my decision to make; it wasn’t anyone’s. I didn’t have any time to think. I stood up without saying anything, sticking my hand out to help, and blocking their view of my uncle’s body as I came towards them. Then we moved quickly, all three of us in tandem, towards the back of the warehouse, away from all the blood. I didn’t turn around to see if Jack was still there.

My mother and Nic carried Luca into the remaining SUV, while I stumbled along beside them, clutching my ribs with one hand and plugging his wound with the other. And then we took off, Luca and I lying side by side in the back seat, my hand pressed tight against his torso as our laboured breathing mingled in the air between us.

As Nic sped through the darkness, lost in hurried conversation with my mother, I drifted away from the pain inside me, and into the darkness that had been creeping up on me all evening.