‘Thank you, Mil.’

‘Of course,’ she said, her voice cracking. I made sure not to turn my head because if I saw the tears streaming down her face, then I’d lose the flicker of composure that was holding me together. I needed that, just for today. Just for goodbye.

CHAPTER EIGHT

UNINVITED GUESTS

‘Where’s your mom’s car? Did you take it to the Falcones with you?’

‘Maybe it’s in the auto shop or something,’ I brushed Millie’s questions off as we pulled up outside my house. The familiarity was not a welcome one. The empty driveway taunted me: Donata’s cronies had been here. ‘This is tough.’

‘I know,’ she said, leaning her head on my shoulder. ‘I’ll come in with you. We don’t have to stay long. Just get what you need.’

I steeled myself: a deep breath, a careful rearrangement of all the memories pressing against my heart. I glanced at my phone. Six more missed calls. Three texts from Luca. Two from Nic. One from Elena. (Girl, get your skinny ass back here now unless you want me to see you into the next life. Classy.) Luca’s texts had gone from angry to worried, and I was starting to feel bad. I had thought he would just infer from my absence that I needed some space.

I composed a reply to Luca, ignoring Elena’s entirely.

I’ll be back later. I’m scattering my mother’s ashes today.

Please don’t call me again.

It even hurt to type it. I tried to rub the pain from my chest, but it was no use. I was just going to have to breathe through it.

I unlocked the front door and we stood there side by side on the threshold, staring at the setting of my old life.

Welcome home, Sophie. Please enjoy this momentary stab in the heart.

The house was undisturbed, save for some drops of dried blood on the hall floor. Jack had obviously tracked back through here after I stabbed him in the eye.

How strange that the sight of blood no longer bothered me.

How strange that another’s pain would cause me such peace of mind.

How strange that I would wish my uncle, one of the closest people to me in the world, dead, and soon.

And that I would be the one to kill him.

‘Let’s be quick and careful about this,’ I warned Millie. ‘Stay by the door and keep it open, just in case there are any Marinos floating around here. If you hear or see anything, don’t hesitate to scream.’

‘You’re joking, right?’ Millie snorted. ‘I think you’ve been spending too much time with Felice Falcone, Soph.’

‘Well, you’re not wrong about that.’ I wished I was joking about the warning, but I knew I had to be on my guard. If the Marino family could smuggle my mother’s car out of Cedar Hill unnoticed, they could certainly get into my house, and I wasn’t dumb enough to stay even a minute longer than was necessary.

‘Although,’ added Millie, her tone turning sceptical as her attention fell on the bloodied floorboards. ‘That does look suspiciously like blood. Or maybe someone was just eating a scone really messily, and the jam got everywhere …’

‘Yeah, sure. Maybe Jack decided to make himself a random British teatime snack … you know, right after I stabbed him in the eye with a switchblade.’

Millie scrunched her eyes shut. ‘Oh, I really didn’t need that mental image again.’

I took the stairs two at a time. In my bedroom, I shoved the remainder of my clothes into a bag and grabbed a photo of my family – a Christmas shot from three years ago. We were dressed in matching Santa hats and hideously oversized reindeer sweaters, and smiling gleefully at the camera. My father looked at least twenty years younger, his face unlined by worry. My mother was as beautiful as ever, her hair framing her face in a golden halo as she pressed her cheek to mine. I looked at myself in the photo, and saw a stranger staring back. My hair was bright and glossy, my skin tanned. I was smiling so much my cheeks were probably hurting.

Jack had taken the photo. He had downed at least eight glasses of eggnog and kept swaying back and forth, and my father had been chastising him for it, my mother keeping her mouth shut. Swallowing her annoyance, because it was Christmas, and she couldn’t kick Jack out at Christmas. I wished she had. I wished she had kicked him to the other side of the world and left him there. At least he wasn’t in the photo. There was still the matter of my father and his lying eyes, but it was the best photo I had, and the only one I bothered to take with me. I left the rest – the DVDs and trinkets, notepads, all those prison letters from my father – all those false words.

The scent of lavender was fading from my mother’s bedroom. It took every ounce of strength not to lie down in her bed, bury myself in the duvets and never get up. I packed some of her jewellery, a sapphire teardrop necklace and matching earrings – I’d be damned if Donata Marino ever got her spindly fingers on them. I took my mom’s favourite sweater, too, pressing my face into it before folding it up.

After calling down to Millie to make sure she was still there – which she was, and obviously texting Crispin too, because she was giggling like a haunted doll from a horror movie – I slipped into a black shift dress and matching ankle boots. I brushed my hair out, swept it away from my face and looked at myself in the mirror. I was giving off a pretty potent Wednesday Addams vibe, but at least I was demure. I was elegant. My mother would have approved.

I looked at my phone. There was a reply from Luca:

Where are you now? Are you by yourself?