Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) (16 page)

Outside, everything was hazy. The air was too thick and humid. Sirens wailed in the distance. I staggered across the street. The pain in my ribs was resurfacing and my whole body was convulsing. I clutched at my sides and pressed on, trying to put as much distance as possible between the club and me.

On the other side of the street, I started trying to make my way back to where Millie had parked at the start of the night, but I was disoriented; I couldn’t remember. How much time had passed since then? An hour? Two? The blood in my hair was streaking down my face and dripping into my eyes, mixing with my tears as I gasped them out. I fished my phone out, doubling over on myself as old pains rushed through my body. The screen was blank – it was either broken or without battery. I shook it and tried again but it didn’t light up.
Crap
.

‘Millie!’ I yelled, blinking through the red, shouting into the sky. ‘Millie!’

I was yanked, crying and screaming, into an alleyway, and
pushed against a wall.

Luca’s eyes pierced the darkness as he brought his face close to mine.

Then his hands were on me, his fingers running up and down my back as I stood shaking before him. It took me a second to realize what he was shouting.

‘Where did they get you? Where are you hurt?’

My teeth were chattering so badly I could barely speak. I looked down at his hands where they were pressed against my body. I was covered in blood. Every part of my dress was soaked. He released me and my legs gave out. I flopped like a doll, half-bent at the waist, panting.

He took my face between his hands, his thumbs smearing the blood and tears together on my cheeks as he lifted my head. ‘Sophie, you need to focus. I need to find the wound.’

I blinked a fresh stream of tears on to my cheeks. ‘I’m OK,’ I said, convulsing. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Come on,’ he urged. He pressed his body against mine, anchoring me upright as he moved his fingers against my neck and back into my hair, searching frantically. ‘Come on,’ he breathed. ‘Help me. I need you to help me.’

‘It’s not my blood,’ I cried, grabbing his hands and crushing them in mine. ‘It’s not my blood!’

Luca faltered as my words crashed into him. Comprehension dawned, slowly lifting the panic from his features. He dropped his hands and stood back. ‘I thought—’

Nic came charging into the alleyway, pulling Millie in tow. He barrelled into Luca, knocking him off kilter. ‘I’ve got her,’ he was saying. ‘Did you find—’ He stopped when he saw me. His eyes swelled and he cursed so loudly it made Millie scream.

Luca grabbed Nic by his collar and pulled him further into the alley. ‘
Calmati! Calmati
!’

Nic was still shouting.

Luca slammed him against the wall. ‘It’s not her blood! It’s not her blood!’

Millie collapsed into me, winding her arms around my neck. ‘Soph, I. Was. So Worried. I. Couldn’t. See. You. Anywhere …’ she trailed off, her words turning to sobs as I imprinted Calvino’s blood on her.

The sirens were getting closer and Nic was pulling me away. I pulled Millie with me. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Now!’

‘My car is back that way!’ She pointed in the direction of the club, the crowds, the sirens, the chaos. Her face fell as she realized the impossibility of it all. ‘
Shit
.’

‘Come on,’ said Nic, tugging us with him.

We followed the Falcone brothers down the alley, both of us hobbling in our heels. The sirens split apart the night air as they got closer and closer. At the end of the lane we staggered into a parking lot.

Luca jumped into his SUV and started the engine. Before I knew what I was doing I was climbing into the back seat, wedging myself beside Millie and dragging blood across their leather seats. We needed to be anywhere but here. Nic got into the front seat and Luca took off.

‘Take the back streets,’ Nic told Luca.

‘I know,’ he ground out. ‘Did you get him?’

‘He was too quick.’

Luca cursed. ‘I told Valentino it was a bad idea.’

‘Better than them coming to us first.’

‘It was the wrong territory.’

A scream from outside jolted me from their conversation. I pressed myself against the window, peering at the parking lot as we pulled away from it. Felice and Dom were dragging someone towards another SUV. A flash of purple hair streaked across my vision. Felice shoved her into his back seat and Dom threw himself in behind her, his hand snaking around her mouth.

We pulled on to a back street and I lost sight of them.

‘What are they doing?’ I asked, pressing myself against the window and leaving bloody handprints on the glass.

No one answered me. Millie was still crying. Nic and Luca were arguing in Italian. Jack was God knows where. We were speeding into the night, far away from the direction of Cedar Hill and the sirens at the club. And in the sudden calmness of the car, one very vital piece of information erupted inside my head.

‘Calvino’s dead!’ The memory descended on me like a black cloud. ‘He fell on top of me. This is his blood!’

My throat started burning. Millie pitched over her knees and vomited.

Luca and Nic had fallen silent in the front. They shared an uneasy glance, and then Nic turned around, leaning across the armrest.

‘Your uncle is dead,’ I said, hearing the horror warp my voice. ‘He’s gone. He’s dead.’

Nic was so calm it threw me.

‘Do you hear me?’ I pressed. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘We know,’ said Nic. Simple, emotionless. But his face was
too placid. He was barely blinking, and I glimpsed a muscle feathering in his jaw. Luca’s knuckles were white against the steering wheel. Millie was still retching.

Why did they have to come? They had ruined everything. Now someone was dead and it was only going to get worse. Everything was such a violent, steaming mess. That stupid crimson card. That stupid boy.

Nic was watching me.

‘You broke your promise,’ I said.

‘And you broke yours.’

There was no accusation in his words, but they still stung. Every second seemed to pull him further away from the boy I had thought he was, and I was starting to wonder if I had tricked myself – if the feeling of needing someone, of
wanting
someone to want me in a world where everyone had turned their back on me, had masked the truth of everything.

‘Did you mean it – at least when you said it?’ I asked, my voice deceptively steady for all the commotion that was raging inside me.
Show me who you are
.

It was hard to find the warmth in his dark eyes now. They were hardened, absent of their golden flecks. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I never meant it.’

Honesty at last. Even if it stung. Well, we could give each other that, at least.

‘I didn’t mean it either,’ I said. I didn’t want him to think he had gotten one up on me, even now, in the midst of all the bloodshed and horror. My pride was important to me, and his betrayal was irritating.

‘I thought you did,’ he admitted with a frown. ‘But when I told Luca he was sure you’d lied.’

I glared at the back of Luca’s head. So mistrustful. So accurate. Tears were streaming down my face. My vision was red around the edges. In my mind the image of Calvino careening backwards played over and over. I tried to blink it away, but it slithered back in every time my attention lapsed. Here was a new nightmare, waiting to play over the top of the warehouse one. Great. At least my mother wouldn’t have to suffer this one along with me. The world is full of small mercies – I chose to recognize that one.

To Nic, I said, ‘You would have come either way, though.’ It was a statement, not a question. I knew he would do anything to get to Jack. To have the first move on the Marinos was obviously a no-brainer. Anything I did or didn’t do was peripheral to that.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We would have.’

I looked away from him, out the window, every molecule in my body still trained on those brothers, wondering what was next for them – for all of us. But I didn’t want to talk about Nic’s betrayal any more. We were both just a couple of liars with blood on our hands and agendas more important than our trust in one another.

It is what it is
.

We were leaving the city, heading west and watching the city lights fade behind us. Millie was cowering against me in the back seat. ‘Soph, I’m so scared. I really don’t want to die tonight.’

‘You’re not going to die, Millie.’ Luca spoke matter-of-factly from the front seat. His panic in the alleyway was a million miles away from his carefully controlled demeanour now. ‘I think we all need to calm down.’

‘I am calm,’ said Nic. It was scary how emotionless they could act, how pragmatic they seemed to be at a time when it felt like the world was tipping over. For all I knew they could have murdered someone in Eden, and still I didn’t have the guts to ask them.

‘I’m not talking about you,’ Luca returned. ‘We can’t send them back to Cedar Hill like this. They’re in shock.
Qualcuno chiamerà la polizia
.’

I looked at myself and then at Millie. Our dresses were destroyed, our limbs were bloodied. ‘We’re a mess. Our parents are going to freak out.’

Luca nodded. Calm. Focused. ‘We need to get you both cleaned up.’

Nic turned to his brother. ‘It will take a lot.
Guardali
.’

Luca’s grip on the wheel tightened, threads of red lining his white-knuckled hands. He kept his eyes trained on the road. ‘I can’t,’ he said quietly. ‘It makes me sick.’

‘I didn’t think she’d come,’ Nic said.

They switched to Italian as the argument escalated.

‘It’s too late now,’ said Nic, flipping the conversation back to English, either too weary or too distracted to stay angry. ‘We have to deal with the evidence. Sophie is covered in it.’ He threw me what I assumed was an apologetic glance, but it only made me more concerned about the ‘evidence’, and whether
I
constituted part of that as well.

Millie’s hands were clutching mine so hard my fingers were turning purple. I didn’t want her to let go. I wished I hadn’t counted those stab wounds. They were printed in the backs of my eyelids: those pooling smudges.

Nic’s phone rang. He turned away and his voice changed,
turning low and hurried, as he flipped into long strings of Italian. When he hung up, he released a heavy sigh. It was the closest thing I had seen to grief up until then.

‘Valentino?’ Luca asked Nic.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you tell him?’

Nic nodded. ‘The boss is angry.’

‘
Ci sarà del sangue
,’ said Luca, shaking his head. Whatever that meant, it didn’t sound good.

Millie pinched me. ‘What’s going on?’

Nic turned around again. ‘Valentino knows you’re here.’

‘Is he angry about what happened?’ I asked.

Nic looked away from me, out the window towards the passing trees. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s angry.’

I got the sense that was a colossal understatement.

‘Where are we going?’ Millie asked tremulously.

Nic fell back against his seat with sudden, violent exhaustion. ‘We’re going to
Evelina
.’

Millie turned to me, her eyes wide and pooling. ‘What’s
Evelina
?’

Evelina was the name of Felice’s runaway wife. And if
Evelina
was also a place, that meant it was his house. I thought about sugar-coating my response, but there was no point. We were sitting in a pool of Calvino Falcone’s blood and speeding into the darkness with two assassins to the place where the Falcones had tortured me and held me against my will.

When I said the words they were strangely disconnected, as though my threshold for horror had caved in and there was nothing but blithe impassivity left. I had stopped
shaking. I was numb. ‘We’re going to Felice’s house.’

Millie dug her nails into my hands. ‘No, please. Make them turn around. I just want to go home.’

There was only one thing more horrifying than the thought of being inside Felice’s house again, and that was the thought of seeing my mother react to my appearance. She would keel over. She certainly would never sleep again, and I couldn’t watch her waste away from anxiety any more. And besides, it wasn’t like they were going to let two girls steeped in Marino/Falcone evidence walk unaided back into Cedar Hill, so why pretend we even had a choice?

‘It’s going to be fine,’ I lied, patting Millie’s arm.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘We’re going to hell.’

In that moment, with her pallor drained by fear and our trembling hands entwined beneath blood that wasn’t ours, it really felt like we were.

PART III

‘This is the law: blood spilt
upon the ground cries out
for more.’

Aeschylus,
The Libation Bearers

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EVELINA