Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) (35 page)

I struggled out of Donata’s grasp and tried to crane my neck to search the doorway again. She pushed me back into the kitchen, where Jack was lifting the bursting duffel bag on to the island. My mother’s eyes were closed but she was still
groaning softly, reality filtering back to her, piece by piece. Donata ignored her.

‘Sophie, I am going to do for you what I could not do for my sister many years ago. I am going to get those demons out of your head. Tonight is the beginning of the life you were meant to have. Tonight you will become a Marino.’

The door heaved again, and this time a dent formed in the centre of it.

Jack stretched his body over the stove and flicked the gas on, one burner at a time. I watched the air above them start to ripple.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ The realization came upon me like a bed of nails in my back. Before I could scream at them, Donata had clamped her hand across my mouth, suffocating the air as I tried to suck it in.

‘Family business,’ she said, and I felt the whisper of her smile in the hairs on my neck. ‘Let me explain something to you, Sophie.’ She was breathing so heavily I couldn’t hear myself think. ‘When I was a little girl, my sister stole my favourite doll while I was at school and cut all her hair off. When I got home, I seethed for two days and two nights. Then on the third day, I told her that in revenge I was going to go out to our garden shed, open the hutch inside it and take the head off her pet bunny rabbit.’

I struggled harder, but she clamped down, speaking faster. ‘Elena was terrified. She wanted to know when I was going to do it. As a matter of fairness, I told her I would do it in two weeks’ time, on the fourteenth day, and that I would wait until she was asleep so she couldn’t stop me.’

The gas was filling up the room with frightening speed. I
could already smell the sulphuric burn sticking to the inside of my nostrils. There was another crash – and this time Nic’s voice rang out above the thunder and the rain. ‘Marino, you coward! Open up!’

Nic. I shut my eyes tight.
Dammit
.

Donata was still talking. ‘Instead of coming on the fourteenth day, she spent every single one of those nights camped outside in a sleeping bag, waiting for me. Once she knew I was going to do it, she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t stand the suspense, the idea of not truly knowing when or how I would strike. Her protective instincts drove her to that cold, damp shed, and her fear kept her there. It deprived her of sleep, of sanity … and still, when the day came, I took the head as I swore I would.’

Jack was circling the kitchen. He had unstuck the cork noticeboard and wedged it beside the stove, and now he was dropping everything flammable he could find on to the floor, throwing tablecloths and napkins around the countertops like he was playing with streamers.

‘You see, Sophie,’ said Donata, ‘Elena has always been calculated, cautious …
predictable
.’ I could feel the smile in her last sentence. ‘Gianluca Falcone is every bit his mother’s son. He will always place himself where the threat is greatest. And that’s how I know he’s outside that door right now.’

As if in answer, the door clanged again and this time a hinge crumbled.

Donata’s laugh rang out. ‘The underboss is Valentino’s highest protection. He only comes out of his brother’s shadow when he knows real, palpable danger is near. Caution has brought him here tonight, and his predictability
will get him killed.’

I shut my eyes tight. Luca wouldn’t leave Valentino in the middle of a blood war.

There’s no way
.

We were facing the caving metal doorway from across the kitchen. Behind us the passage was free, safe from the destruction Jack was cultivating. As the full horror of their plan crystallized before me, Jack’s psychotic laugh surged through the kitchen, rising up with the gas.

‘Come on in, boys!’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

THE EXPLOSION

I
knocked my head backwards, smashing it against Donata’s collarbone.

‘Stop it,’ she hissed, wrangling me against her. ‘Or I’ll split your head against the stove and leave you here to burn with your boyfriends. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.’

Across the room, my mother stumbled to her feet, one hand clamped on her head and the other clutching her stomach. Watching the glazed expression on her face and the way her mouth was twisting with pain, I felt only dread.

‘Sophie?’ she slurred. She barely reacted to the fact that I was being restrained by Donata Marino. She double-blinked, flinching. ‘What is this?’

Her eyes grew as she noticed the acrid smell. She sniffed the air, her lip curling. ‘Oh,’ she gasped, whirling on Jack.
‘What are you doing?’ She staggered past my uncle, making a beeline for the stove.

Another metallic thump sounded and the floor reverberated. The lock on the door came unhinged.

My mother reached one of the burners. Jack dived at her. He grabbed her by the elbow and jerked her backwards, slamming her head against the island. She slid to the ground, leaving a streak of blood against the wood.

I screamed so hard into Donata’s hand that I almost suffocated myself. My knees buckled but she held me up, propped against her.

Jack yanked the gas line out from behind the stove and ripped it from the wall. It popped with a hiss and the air around it started furrowing. Coughing with violent force, Jack grabbed me and pulled me backwards, floundering across the kitchen, away from the fumes as they surged around us.

Donata took the duffel bag and retreated into the serving section as my uncle crushed me against him. My mother was lying in a sprawled heap between the stove and the island.

‘Let me go!’ I shrieked. ‘Let me help her!’

He held me inside the kitchen doorway, our backs to the diner, our faces to the metal door as it swung open. Through the thickness of the gas, Luca and Nic appeared in the doorway and every shred of hope inside me shrivelled up and died.

The alleyway stretched into the darkness behind them, where the dumpster had been tipped on its side. Trash was strewn everywhere. Wind and rain swept into the room, and the raging storm grew piercing and loud around us.

The Falcone brothers raised their guns.

In a flash, Jack manoeuvred me in front of him until I could feel his chin against my head, his noisy exhales rippling through my hair. ‘Go on,’ said Jack. ‘Shoot at us, why don’t you?’

Luca lowered his gun.

Nic hesitated.

The moment seemed to stretch interminably. In that instant, when even the thunder seemed to quell, my whole life rested at the mercy of Nic Falcone’s trigger finger. I looked inside the barrel of his gun, studying those two black circles, one delicately poised above the other, and felt the nearness of my own death.

‘Nicoli,’ warned Luca.

Nic’s arm was twitching. ‘I can still get him.’

‘Nicoli.’

My eyes were spiking with tears. ‘The gas,’ I rasped. ‘The gas is on.’

Nic’s gaze grew wide with understanding. Finally, he noticed the smell, the thickness in the air, and he flinched. He lowered his gun.

The door slammed shut behind them, teetering on broken hinges.

‘You’re scum, using them like this,’ said Luca to Jack. He was inching forward, moving without trying to make it look obvious. ‘You’ll have to walk out of here sooner or later, and when you do we’ll get you.’

‘You wouldn’t risk her life.’

He raised his eyebrows, his feet sliding soundlessly towards us. ‘And you would?’

Jack’s grip tightened, his arm clamped against my throat
until I was choking. The lights in my brain were flickering, the edges of my vision blotting with black smudges.

Dimly I saw my mother’s hand clutching the island as she tried to lift herself from the floor. Her hair was streaked with blood but her mouth was moving, slowly, testing out syllables.

‘Do you want to find out what I’m capable of, filth?’ said Jack.

Luca curled his lip. ‘I’ll gut you, Marino.’

Jack shifted with alarming speed, pushing me backwards through the door. I tumbled into the main diner as he slammed the kitchen door behind us.

‘Mom!’ I screamed as Donata appeared from the darkness behind me and flicked her Zippo lighter through the server window.

The blast erupted in a flash of bright orange. It ripped across the kitchen, exploding in a resounding boom that shattered all the windows. The walls shook and I was thrown backwards, across the till counter and on to the diner floor.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

INFERNO

T
he kitchen was bursting with flames. Dark, grey smoke billowed out through the serving window. The wood was crackling, breaking off into huge splinters that plummeted towards the floor.

Behind me, Jack and Donata had made it to the front entrance with the duffel bag. My uncle’s hair was singed, his face blackened from the blast. He was doubled over, clutching the doorframe. ‘Come on!’ he panted at me. ‘We have to get out of here!’

‘My mom’s in there!’

I stumbled towards the kitchen, screaming.

Howling.

Shrieking her name.

‘She’s gone, girl,’ Donata shouted.

Jack’s voice arced above hers. ‘Come on!’

I ignored them, and this time my uncle didn’t come back for me. They charged into the night, their bounty won.

Through the serving window I could see a thick wall of flames splitting the kitchen in two. It was licking the right-hand side by the stove and spreading along the wooden countertops, devouring the tablecloths and cork board. I pushed closer, my eyes watering against the scalding heat.

Nic and Luca were slumped against each other on the other side of the room. They had been flung backwards in the explosion. Luca’s head lolled against his shoulder. His eyes were glazed. Nic was doubled over beside him. He wasn’t moving either.

My mother wasn’t with them. She had been close by the door when the explosion hit, and I strained to see if she had made it into the darkness, but the alley was impossibly far away and my vision was blurry from the thickness of the fire. I called out to her but the flames rallied against my words, swallowing them.

Grabbing a cloth from under the counter and holding it over my face, I wrenched the kitchen door open and the fire surged towards me, knocking me backwards. I covered my face as I skidded across the ground, hitting my head on the back of the counter. The doorway was a block of thick, black smoke, rolling over my head and out into the diner.

I rose to my knees and pushed through the doorway, keeping my head bent low beneath the smoke, and the rag tight against my mouth. The air was torturously dry and my lungs felt like they were crumbling inwards, blackened and parched. My mother wasn’t inside – I couldn’t see her
through the flames and the smoke. I realized that soon she would be looking for me. I had to get out before she came back in. I ignored the burning in my chest and set a course for the boys, keeping left against the wall as I crawled across the hot tiles.

The fire roared like an untamed beast, surging ever closer as I pulled my body across the floor, cutting my hands on glass as jars popped and splintered around me. The back door had been blown off its hinges in the explosion. The alleyway beyond winked at me through crests of amber.

When I reached the boys Luca was half-conscious, his head bobbing off his chest as he tried to lift it. Nic was still crumpled in half. I grabbed Luca by the shoulders, shaking him.

‘Luca!’ I slapped him across the face. ‘Wake up!’

He started to stir, his eyes igniting with a dull flicker of recognition.

I shook him again. ‘Get up! We have to get out.’

The fire was creeping closer to our huddled circle, the flames growing hot against my back. Pots and pans were clanging to the ground, rolling against my ankles, and putrid smells were filling the air.

Luca was coughing violently. I pulled him by the shoulders and he pitched forwards, dragging himself to his knees.

We turned to Nic, scrabbling on either side of him. Luca lifted his brother’s crumpled torso up so that he was facing forwards. His eyes were shut and his forehead was mussed with black. Luca shook him, his movements frantic with dawning horror. What if he didn’t wake up? What if the blast had been too much for him?