I could sense him nodding. ‘He idolized her. She was less like a mother and more like … a kindred spirit, I think. When she left, she took a piece of his heart with her.’
I couldn’t untangle the emotion in his voice – was it regret, or sadness, or something else? Empathy for his brother, for the closest person to him in all the world? Guilt surrounded me, tinged my words, as I tried to keep them even. ‘That’s so sad,’ was all I could say, because Maybe she’s better off would have been a lie, and I wouldn’t lie, not about this.
‘She was a dreamer,’ he said evenly. ‘She wasn’t meant to last in our world.’
There was something about the way he said it – the finality behind the words. He knew – or heavily suspected – she was dead, but he couldn’t have known it was my father who did it. I would have felt it, and there was only sadness, heavy and dark, between us now. No suspicion, or resentment. I was careful not to look at him, careful not to push for answers I already had.
She was a dreamer.
There it was: the simple truth.
Wasn’t Luca a dreamer too? Or had he stamped down that part of him just enough to claw by, to do what had to be done, to sacrifice a little part of himself every day? Or was he destined to meet the same fate as Evelina some day, at the hands of someone just as depraved as my father?
‘Try not to worry about Felice,’ Valentino said. ‘He’s capable of a lot of bad things, but he would never turn on us. He’s too interested in self-preservation. Besides,’ he added, ‘if he truly was that angry at my father, then why did he never stand up to him?’ He didn’t wait for me to guess. ‘Because he’s a coward. And cowards might dream of higher planes but they know their place, and they don’t step outside of it. Felice talks a big game, but he doesn’t stand behind his words.’
I wasn’t so sure. If Felice was truly loyal to Angelo despite his resentment, then where the hell was he the night my father shot him? He saw the entire thing, and yet by the time the ambulance came, he had already absconded. There was something not right about it – a niggling feeling at the base of my spine that had been growing ever since that night I overheard him ranting to Paulie. But what good would it do to bring it up? Angelo was dead and, like Evelina, it was my own father who had been the killer.
‘So, Sophie,’ Valentino said, ‘here we are, with the truth between us.’ He moved around the other side of his desk, and started rummaging in a drawer. I watched him in silence – the frown puckering at the edges of his lips, the way one eyebrow arched higher than the other. After a moment, he pulled back, with a box. ‘And now I’m going to give you something.’
‘A gift … ?’ I tried to decide what could possibly be in the box.
‘You don’t have to look so scared,’ he said. ‘Haven’t we already established that we’re on the same side?’
‘I thought that once before,’ I said.
Valentino sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘A fair point.’
He rounded the desk and handed me a knife. I took it, and stared at the switchblade – now so familiar to me – as it sat innocently in the palm of my hand.
‘Your switchblade?’
Valentino rolled his eyes. ‘Obviously not my switchblade.’
I turned it over.
Persephone, June 30th
‘Oh.’ I traced the perfect calligraphic letters, the flourishes, the etching of a falcon, wings half-spread.
‘A Falcone switchblade,’ I whispered. ‘My own switchblade.’ I glanced up at him, a smirk twisting my lips as a flurry of giddy energy rushed through me. ‘Val, you simply must stop giving me weapons like this, you’re absolutely spoiling me.’
He gaped at me for half a second, and I instantly regretted the levity of my response.
Then he laughed, and the sound was open and honest. ‘I was trying to think of an appropriate time to give it to you. This seemed like a good diversion.’
I fingered the engraving. ‘You got me this even though you know I didn’t go through with killing Libero Marino. Why?’
‘I need allies,’ Valentino told me plainly. ‘I know you’re loyal. I trust everything you just told me. Luca fought hard to have you accepted here, and I trust his judgement too. I wouldn’t deny him that. I wouldn’t deny him anything, in fact. But I want you on my side, Sophie.’
I nodded, probably a bit too enthusiastically. ‘Of course I’m on your side.’
‘Good.’ Valentino’s smile was fleeting this time. ‘Because I need you to stay here, with us.’ There was an unexpected intensity to his words. I glanced up at him. ‘I’m afraid I might be losing him,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘You know who,’ he said. ‘You’re not losing Luca. He loves you. You’re loyal to each other.’
‘I am losing him,’ Valentino insisted. ‘To you.’
‘It’s not a competition, Valentino.’
His eyes creased, sadness brimming at the surface. ‘Don’t make him choose.’
‘I won’t.’ I pressed my hand to my heart, without quite knowing why.
We fell into silence then, Valentino’s thoughts turning to somewhere beyond that room, the switchblade heavy and sure in my hand.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
NOTES
Paulie and Luca were on their way into the city by the time I was done in Valentino’s office. Nic had tried to attack Luca again, and then a call had come through about a logistics meeting with a Marino emissary ahead of next week’s peace talk. I wandered upstairs feeling incomplete, and a little anxious. Luca had said he loved me and I didn’t get to say it back.