‘You’d probably get sunburnt.’
‘And you’d spend all the time reading lame poetry. Or The Iliad for the fiftieth time.’
‘Look at you, knowing the name of an actual book. I’m impressed.’
I punched him in the arm. ‘You’re evicted from my dream.’
He laughed again but there was something else in it this time, a sense of empathy, of understanding. ‘Oh well,’ he said, leaning back down, away from me. ‘It probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.’
I laid my head beside his. The excitement had drained away again, and the blanket of reality floated down to cover us. Our sighs weaved together, into the air above us.
‘I killed a man tonight, Sophie,’ Luca said into the silence.
The meaning was implicit. There was no other life, there was only this one. And his die had already been cast.
‘I feel heavy,’ he said quietly. ‘I feel heavy inside.’
‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘I’m sorry.’ I was sorry. I was sorry that I had failed to do it; that he had had to take that burden from me, and that he was sad, right down in his bones, because of it.
I felt for his hand. He spread his fingers and laced them through mine.
Overhead, a star streaked a line of bright white across the sky. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘A shooting star.’
‘Mmm,’ said Luca, the sound rumbling in his chest. Another flash, this time over to the left. ‘There’s another,’ he said, clasping my hand a little tighter in his own and pointing with his other hand.
‘Do you wish on them?’ I asked.
‘Not in a long time,’ he said. ‘When I was young, Evelina and I would lie out here all the time and look at the stars. She taught me the constellations. Told me the stories behind them. We used to wish on them.’
‘She sounds amazing.’
‘She was.’ His voice changed, a sense of reverence in his words. ‘She used to talk about it all the time – this sense of possibility. You couldn’t see it, or touch it, but you had to chase it. She told me to chase it, no matter what …’ He trailed off, and I felt the sadness rise up around us like a lake. I was determined to keep us afloat.
‘Let’s wish tonight, then,’ I said softly. ‘In her memory.’
‘OK,’ he said, after a beat. ‘Let’s wish.’
‘OK,’ I said, smiling too, as more stars began to burst overhead.
We stayed like that for a long time, watching the sky as it lit up in silver streaks.
I wished on every shooting star, and all my wishes were for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE CLICK
By Sunday morning, Libero Marino’s ‘gangland’ murder was all over the newspapers. His brother, Marco, had released a chilling statement on behalf of the family. They were coming out for their revenge, and they wanted the world to know it. They wanted us to know it. Millie rang to tell me it was trending on Twitter. I feigned surprise and withheld the truth until she hung up.
The news was out there but Evelina remained, happily, police-free. I knew we had covered our tracks, but I still couldn’t figure out how the boys were escaping interrogations. Everyone knew the bloody history between the Falcones and the Marinos. At first, I thought that perhaps the police were just monumentally bad at their jobs, but it became clear that when two Mafia clans are at war, it makes more sense to turn a blind eye and let the criminals take care of each other. That was what Paulie told me. As long as innocents weren’t being killed, we were doing the city’s job for them.
I had been staring at Libero’s face in my mind all night, and I decided that eating some cereal at seven a.m. on Sunday morning would be preferable to trying to ignore the mental chant of Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Failure! Failure! Failure!
And that god awful question that pulsed uneasily in my mind: How are you going to shoot Jack? How are you going to avenge your mother?
I told myself it was different. I didn’t know Libero. He had never wronged me directly. His only crime was looking like Sara, and his face reminded me of how I had failed her. I couldn’t shoot him because it would be another betrayal. I owed Sara – I convinced myself that that was why I hesitated.
On the other, bloodier hand, I definitely wanted to shoot Jack. I had slashed a blade across his eye without the slightest hint of freezing, so when he did resurface, it wasn’t going to be a problem. I told myself that over and over again, hoping that if I said it enough times then it would become true.
I finished two bowls of Lucky Charms and washed up, enjoying the morning silence. I was even considering reading a book in the library to take my mind off everything. I wanted to lie low – at least from Valentino – while the lie worked itself into my bones, and I started to believe that I deserved to be here. I made my way down the hallway, appreciating the quiet while it lasted. In about two hours, Dom and Gino would be making enough racket for a small concert hall and Nic would probably come search me out for more target practice.
I padded down the hallway, following the faint sound of voices wafting through the house. I paused with my hand on the door to the sitting room, already ajar, and pushed just a little. It yielded easily, and I peered around it.
Felice was bent over himself, his words muffled by his fingers.
Paulie was beside him, perched on the armrest of the couch, one hand clapped on his brother’s back. ‘… time and time again. You have to let him lead the way he sees fit.’