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CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE THE BEGINNING

I waited on the doorstep at Evelina , counting the heartbeats it took for the door to open. Nineteen.

‘Sophie.’ Luca stepped out of the darkness.

‘I was hoping it would be you.’

He smirked. ‘What can I say? I am most people’s favourite.’

I bit back the retort I would have offered him under normal circumstances – Can your entire ego really fit in this house? Instead, I offered him the apology I owed him. ‘Listen, I didn’t mean any of that stuff I said to you in my room. I was just so sad and panicked and angry about everything. And, well, you were there and I couldn’t stop everything from bursting out of—’

‘Sophie.’ Luca raised his hand, frowning. ‘Please don’t apologize for the way your grief chose to be felt that night.’

‘But I was so rude.’

‘Well, you usually are rude, so I’m used to it.’

I shot him a withering glance and he swallowed it up with a grin. I’d forgotten how disarming his smile could be. It was his greatest weapon.

‘Jack came back for me,’ I said.

His expression darkened. He ran his gaze along my frame appraisingly. ‘Did he hurt you?’

‘No, but I think I cut his eye out with your switchblade.’

His eyebrows disappeared under black unruly strands of hair. ‘Is that right?’

The reason for my visit rested between us. He knew what it was, but I knew I had to say it. I had to make it real in order to move forward. And he had to hear it.

‘I’m on my own now,’ I said quietly. The realization was a sting, and saying it aloud seemed to take all my energy with it. ‘For the first time, I’m really, truly on my own.’

Luca came a little closer, like he was trying to enclose us in a bubble where the badness couldn’t reach me. We could have been anywhere in the world just then, because I could only see him. ‘Do you want to stay here?’ he asked. ‘With us?’

This was it – the first step. I was turning away from the sun and facing my destiny. I had to say the words. I had to make them real.

Unflinching, unblinking, I said, ‘If you let me stay, I’ll help you kill them.’

He gaped at me. ‘Is that a joke?’

‘I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.’

‘Marino,’ he said, his voice twisting. ‘That’s dark.’

I held his stare, ice-blue and blazing. For the first time ever I had a purpose edged with steel and fervour. I knew what I had to do. I had made my choice. The path was dark, but there was no going back.

This was my world. It had always been my world. It was time to stop fighting it and start living in it.

With drops of my uncle’s blood still staining my fingertips, I stood on the threshold to the criminal underworld, facing the Falcone underboss, and sealed my destiny.

‘I don’t want to be a Marino, Luca.’

He stepped backwards into the foyer, and I followed him inside.

‘OK,’ he said, his eyes still locked on mine. ‘Then be something else.’

We stood facing each other on top of the Falcone crest as a strange new warmth bloomed in my chest.

‘Any suggestions?’ I asked.

‘I can think of one.’