‘A small player,’ Valentino replied. ‘A test. I’ll let you know the target soon.’ He was so nonchalant it almost tricked me into a feeling of normality. In place of fear, a sense of duty began to rise. This was my task. Of course I would have to do something to prove myself. Of course it would be this. How else would they know I wasn’t a Marino spy? How else could they help me avenge my mother?
‘It’s fine,’ Nic said, the flicker of a smile lifting the hard edge of his cheekbone. ‘It’s not like she’ll have to do it alone, Luca. We’ll help her.’
‘She’ll have to make the killing blow,’ Felice warned. ‘Make sure she pulls the trigger.’
‘Of course,’ said Nic, without missing a beat.
‘Of course,’ I echoed, feeling a million miles away from the girl I had been just a few months ago.
‘It’s settled.’ Valentino’s words floated over his shoulder as he moved away from me. ‘The next Marino casualty will belong to Sophie. And then Sophie will belong to us.’
I had barely reached the hallway when the distant sound of shouting filtered through the house. I jogged towards it, following Gino’s voice as his pitch climbed higher and higher, the sudden wrongness of it echoing around me.
I sprinted past the kitchen, ignoring the laughter of Paulie’s three little girls, skidded into the foyer and wrenched the front door open. Outside, Dom and Gino were already trekking towards the end of the driveway.
In the distance, flames were billowing above the entrance to Evelina. My heart leapt into my throat as an onslaught of dread careened over me. It prickled in my fingers, slithered up my arms, flashed warmth beneath my cheeks. Memories crowded against my mind, trying to push their way in.
No.
I tracked after the boys, my gaze on the back of their heads as they crested the hill halfway down the driveway and approached the flames. Every step pushed me further into my nightmares – into the searing heat of the diner, those final moments with my mother.
Don’t.
That voice in my head, pulling me back to reality. To the mysterious burning heap at the end of the driveway. How mesmerized I was by the flickering amber streaks, how trapped I felt by all my memories inside it.
The heat of the fire, both real and imagined, was beating against my cheeks. I was close enough to see what was burning, all the shiny bits of metal inside it – a painful, familiar blue – and I knew, several seconds too late, that we were making a huge mistake.
Right in front of the big black gates and blocking the entranceway to Felice’s driveway was a battered blue Ford. A Ford that had driven me into the city countless times, that had dropped me off at Millie’s house, that had sat in my driveway as I tried to work the stick shift and cursed every time it stalled.
My mother’s car was at Evelina.
My mother’s car was burning at Evelina.
‘Dom!’ I screamed, but he was already circling the fire, trying to investigate it. ‘Come back!’
Gino was even further from me. ‘Gino! Get away from it!’
My voice railed against the sudden heat, the blinding crackling in my eardrums. Gino heard me, just enough to turn his head and stare, bewildered, at my sudden flare of panic.
I took another step, raised my voice. ‘Get away from it!’ I flung my hands out to the sides, arcing them as I shouted. ‘Move backwards!’
‘Sophie!’ Luca’s voice thundered down the driveway behind me. ‘Get back!’
I was still screaming at Gino and Dom when Nic caught up with me, his boots skidding on the gravel as he grabbed me by the waist and swung me around. I barely had time to react before the car exploded and we all went flying backwards under a sky of raining metal and dead rats.
The noise thundered all around me as a fireball shot into the air. Heat, white-hot and searing, rolled over me as I scrabbled towards Nic, my fingers clutching the grass. The entire sky turned to smoke and ash, and jagged bits of fur and blood splattered us as we crawled towards each other.
Dom and Gino had gone flying to either side of the driveway, smashing into the blood-streaked gardens, the momentum rolling them over and over into flowerbeds along the periphery. They shouted each other’s names as they dragged themselves away from the hungry flames, clawing their way back up to us.
I pulled myself to my feet, barely standing on shaking legs. When I lifted my head, the driveway right in front of the house was full of Falcones, each one consumed by their own unique brand of horror.
Luca jogged over to me, his arms streaked with blood and fur. He was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. The reality of what had just happened was sinking in. The ground around us was littered with dead rats, and my body was streaked with their blood. One had landed a yard from my shoe. I stepped over it, moving towards the explosion site.
Yet again, the proof of Marino cruelty was shimmering in front of me. I was watching my mother’s blue Ford now burnt black and heaving beneath dying flames. I was fighting the urge to rip their poisoned, savage blood right out of my skin.
Felice and Paulie darted past me, their arms filled with buckets of water. Elena was outside too, trying to keep the children away from the flames. I could hear her screeching at Sal and Aldo behind me. One of Paulie’s girls, Greta, was wailing uncontrollably.
I drifted towards the car. At the very end of the driveway, plumes of smoke curled into the sky, turning the air to an unnatural, rancid smog.
A gift of smoke and ash. A hundred bloodied rats. A warning, not a shot. And somehow, that made it all the worse.
I stared as the flames made my eyes water, as the dead rats painted blood at my feet. I stared as Nic and CJ tied rags around their mouths and batted at the dying fire with blankets. I stared as Felice doused four buckets of water over the car, as Paulie inspected the damage. I stared as Elena came charging towards her sons, the younger children now barricaded inside the house.
Gino and Dom were covered in blood, too. It had soaked into their jeans, and criss-crossed their T-shirts, ending in smudges around their necks. Gino had a big crimson splodge on his cheek.
The smell was so achingly familiar. Dom’s forehead was mussed with grey, his hair burnt at the tips. Gino’s ponytail was like straw, strands broken off at the ends. He looked like he was about to vomit on himself. Dom raised his head to his mother. ‘They stuffed the car with dead rats before they detonated it. It nearly blew us into the next life.’
Elena walloped him on the side of his head. ‘Non parlare così!’
‘Mamma!’ he yelped.