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

I kept my expression steady.
I saw nothing. I know nothing. They will discover nothing
. As it turns out, I needn’t have worried about how they were planning to persuade me because they were interrupted, ceremoniously, before they could try.

The door to my hospital room was flung open and a figure breezed in with such misplaced casualness it felt almost like we were expecting him. His attire was impeccable as usual: a bright grey suit that shimmered underneath the fluorescent lights, and patent shoes that click-clacked as he walked. He had slicked his silver hair behind his ears. I almost gagged as the smell of honey wafted into the room, clinging to my skin, my hair, my brain.

I hadn’t seen him since the warehouse, and I had been hoping I would never have to see him again. But unfortunately for me and my pulse, we were bound up in this investigation together, and as the Falcone
consigliere
, Felice was not about to let it go on unsupervised by him any longer.

‘
Buongiorno
, detectives,’ he offered, sweeping around them in an arc and coming to stand mid-way down my bed. The air was thick with that dreadful cloying sweetness, and I wondered if I would ever again smell honey without experiencing the accompanying sense of certain death.

Felice laid a hand on the side of my bed, his fingers curling around the bordering bars. I felt myself stiffen at his closeness. It brought back unwelcome memories of being tied up in his huge bee-infested mansion right before Calvino, his brother, beat the crap out of me. I shifted away from him. On the other side of my bed my mother squeezed my shoulder.

‘It’s OK, sweetheart,’ she whispered, but there wasn’t an ounce of conviction in her voice. The last time she had seen Felice Falcone, he was pointing a gun at her head. If she thought I couldn’t feel her hand shaking on my shoulder, she was wrong.

‘Mr Falcone,’ croaked Detective Comisky, his cheeks rouging. ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave. We’re conducting a private interview with Miss Gracewell.’

‘Whatever for, Detective Comisky?’ Felice’s smile, while fake, was a lot more practised than that of his adversaries.

‘Well, we—’ Detective Comisky faltered. He shut his notebook and shoved it back into his shirt pocket, but kept the pencil clamped in his hand. ‘I don’t recall telling you my name, Mr Falcone.’

Felice raised his almost invisible brows. ‘But you know
my
name, detective. Is it that strange that I should know yours?’

Detective Comisky blanched. Felice seized his surprise, stepping closer to him. ‘Walter Comisky,’ he mused. ‘342 Sycamore Drive, I believe. Beautiful residential neighbourhood. Those quaint brick houses, and then there’s that fabulous park on the end of your street. I expect your girls adore it.’

Detective Comisky rolled his shoulders back and made himself stand a little straighter. He was a half-head shorter than Felice but he jutted his chin to account for the difference. ‘They do, Mr Falcone. Now if you could just—’

‘And your wife must
love
that backyard. So much open space for her gardening. All those beautiful hydrangeas, and I’ve always adored long-stemmed daisies. It’s Alma, isn’t it?’ He flashed another thirty-two-tooth grin.

‘No,’ said Detective Comisky, with obvious relief. He hiked his belt up, returning a small, not-so-practised smile that flickered underneath his moustache. ‘It’s not.’

Behind him, Detective Medina’s expression had crumpled.

‘No, no, no.’ Felice rubbed his temples as though his mind had betrayed him. ‘That’s not your wife, Walter, that’s Detective
Medina’s
wife … isn’t it, Doug?’ He peered around Comisky, making a show of his sudden interest in Detective Medina.

It took several long seconds before Detective Medina responded. ‘I don’t see why that m-m-matters in a p-p-professional investigation, Mr Falcone.’

My mother squeezed my shoulder a little harder, and beneath the sheets I squeezed my leg to stop it from shaking. Felice was a master of intimidation and it was hard not to feel
the horror in the detectives’ faces as they realized exactly what was going on. Here was a cat sharpening its claws in front of two quivering mice.

‘It matters,’ clarified Felice, without taking his eyes off his prey, ‘because maybe I have a gift for her. Both of your wives, in fact. Alma and …’ He made a show of tapping his chin thoughtfully, but there wasn’t a person in that room who didn’t believe he already knew the name of Detective Comisky’s wife. ‘Rose!’ he whooped, feigning excitement in his fake
Aha!
moment. ‘How could I forget? Rose. Beautiful, like a flower. Beautiful like her garden. They fit together seamlessly.’

Detective Medina raised his hand to his chest, rubbing at it with casual slowness, but there was a real possibility he was having a heart attack. I pictured Felice stepping over his body, being careful not to scuff his shoes.
Ugh
.

When Felice spoke again his voice was low. ‘Perhaps your wives might like a jar of my home-made honey? I could have it delivered to them, it wouldn’t be a problem …’ He trailed off, letting the sentence, and everything that went unsaid in it, hang in the air.

The pencil snapped inside Detective Comisky’s fist.

Felice smirked.

I sank deeper into my sheets. I remembered the jar of honey Felice had sent to Jack, and exactly where it had led us all. By the looks on the detectives’ faces it was clear they knew exactly what that black-ribboned jar meant. In the underworld, he was ‘The Sting’, and his honey brought death.

‘That’s all right, Mr Falcone,’ said Detective Comisky, shifting to the side so he was no longer standing between Felice
and the doorway. He gestured at the door. ‘We don’t want anything from you. We want to proceed with this private interview. If you would please leave now.’

Felice threw his hands in the air, clapping them together once. ‘Of course,’ he said with blithe indifference. ‘I have to be with my nephew anyway. I heard all your questions this morning tired him out, and I would hope you don’t plan on doing the same thing to this poor girl. I’m quite sure she needs her rest, and even more sure that this investigation is an utter waste of your precious time, which could be spent more productively elsewhere.’ He left the room without so much as a backward glance.

My mother released her grip on my shoulder and exhaled in a choked puff. My palms were slick with sweat even though Felice hadn’t looked at us once when he was in the room.

‘Well, then,’ said Detective Comisky. ‘We’ll resume.’

The interview was concluded a couple of minutes later. That was on Day Two. Two days since my life had flipped upside down and changed everything I thought I knew. There were so many things that haunted me, questions woven inside the nightmares. And there were people, too. People I never wanted to see again, people I never wanted to meet, and people who still owed me answers. And though I didn’t know it at the time, there was someone just like me, trapped on the other side of that world, trying to get out.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MAFIA QUEEN

A
t first my mother refused to leave my side. She just watched me, statue-like in her chair, blood-red eyes drooping with tiredness as she clutched my hand in hers and told me it would get better. Her voice shook as she said it, and I wondered at her reluctance to be apart from me – was she afraid of leaving me by myself, or was she terrified of being alone?

When she could barely open her eyes from exhaustion or speak without yawning the ends of her sentences, she agreed to go home and sleep. It was almost over. The next day I was getting out. After that I would never have to set foot in a hospital room again.

The sound of her retreating footfall was replaced by Nic’s surer steps. He was returning from his brother’s bedside,
where he spent the other half of his time, his guilt splitting him in two.

‘Hey,’ he whispered. He leant over me, subtly assessing the bruises, like he always did. Maybe he didn’t want me to feel self-conscious about it, or maybe he didn’t want to remind me where they had come from.

‘Hi.’ I was lying down, feeling the weight of my tiredness on my lids. He looked as exhausted as I felt. ‘I’m trying not to fall asleep.’

‘Sleep if you need to, Soph. I’ll be here.’ I didn’t notice him move, but I felt the soft pressure of his fingers as he brushed my hair from my face.

I didn’t want to sleep – sleeping meant dreaming and dreaming meant nightmares, and then before I knew it, I’d be awake and screaming all over again. I shook my head, but I could feel the threads in my brain going slack. ‘You should go,’ I told him, my tongue thick in my mouth. ‘Visiting hours are over.’

I caught the quirk of his lips as he pressed them against my hand, smiling. He had zero respect for visiting hours. Among other things. ‘I’ll wait until you fall asleep.’

I let my eyes close as the feeling of safety surrounded me.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘Forgive me, Sophie.’

I wanted to. It was easy in times like this, when I was too tired to think, too distracted to remember. It was easy to listen to him whispering to me, his fingers stroking mine. If I thought too much about those hands – what they could do, what they had already done – then I wouldn’t have been able to hold them, to let them trail softly along the bruises on my face.

If ‘sorry’ could have made it all better, I would have walked right out of the hospital and never looked back. But deep down I knew the boy who watched over me with quiet attentiveness was the same boy who had put a bullet in my uncle in the warehouse. And yet when Nic looked at me with those gold-flecked eyes, it was hard to ignore the flutter in my stomach, the weakness in my arms when I tried to push him away.

The line between right and wrong was a dark, blurry gap, and I had fallen down inside it.

When I woke up screaming, there was something hovering in the blackness – a strange winged shape upon the walls. I tried to blink it away, but the form grew crisper, taller. Real. I strangled my screams and sat bolt upright, crushing myself against the pillow. ‘Who the hell are you?’

Either this was the creepiest nurse in history, or I was about to get murdered. She edged closer to me until the half-light from underneath the door flickered along her frame. I had only seen Elena Genovese-Falcone twice before – once in Valentino’s portrait of her, and once in a newspaper article about the funeral of Don Angelo Falcone, Nic’s father. She had been in Europe when Nic and his brothers had first moved to Cedar Hill.

In person, she was statuesque. Her frame was narrow and crisp around the edges – a consequence of tight-fitting, tailored clothes. The tip of her nose swooped upwards into a point and her dark hair was wound into a bun. She was gripping the bars at the end of my bed. If we were in a superhero movie, she might have ripped them right off, the way she was
tensing her fists around them.

‘So,’ she said. ‘
You
are the Gracewell girl.’

Her voice was plummy, and edged with a faint Italian accent. It wasn’t a question, more of an accusation, and I had the sudden sense of being caught in a trap. Which was stupid, considering that was my name and she hadn’t exactly jumped any hurdles to figure it out.

‘Yes,’ I said, a tremor tripping through my voice as I reached for the bedside light and flicked it on. ‘That’s me.’

The room lit up and I felt marginally more confident. I could probably duck and roll if I needed to, but as far as I could see she wasn’t brandishing a weapon. Unless you counted the patronizing smirk. The light had enveloped her harshly, illuminating a made-up face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her hooded eyes were a familiar searing blue.

I smoothed the greasy wisps of hair away from my face. Let her take a good look at what her family did to me. Let her see the yellowing bruises, my swollen cheeks. I would stand my ground – I would show her I wasn’t afraid. Even if I was totally and completely terrified. ‘May I ask what you’re doing in my room at this hour, Mrs Falcone?’

If she was surprised by my knowledge of who she was, she didn’t let it show. I guess any halfwit could nail a game of ‘Spot the Falcone’. Just look for the shampoo-commercial hair or those I-might-murder-you eyes.

Her lips reset into a thin line. ‘You and I have a problem.’

‘And what problem would that be?’

She straightened, folding her arms across her chest.
Well
. She was tall. ‘You have done
something
to my sons.’

Sheesh. Talk about being selective with information. ‘If you’re referring to Luca, then yes, I did do something. I saved his life.’

‘Something
else
,’ she clarified with cool indignation. ‘Don’t try and be smart with me.’

I guess saving her son was not going to earn me any brownie points. ‘I have returned to a
disastro
. Nicoli is pre-occupied. Distracted. You have gotten inside his head, like a worm.’

I slow-blinked at her. ‘Did you … did you just call me a
worm
?’

‘That’s what you are. An American worm.’

‘I am not a worm.’ That was a particular combination of words I never thought I’d have to say. Was this how mobsters insulted each other? If I was braver, I might have called her a dung beetle and stuck my tongue out. ‘I’m a girl,’ I added for further clarification, feeling a little bit like an indignant two-year-old.