Mafiosa Bonus POVs

The Deal (Valentino POV)

I was sketching a bird; a plume of deep-blue feathers, an orange beak and small beady eyes. Yellow claw-like feet and a long graceful neck that looped like a swan's. I had plucked the creature out of my head, woven the image from errant strands of colour and form and sketched until my mind went quiet. Sometimes, that's all I could do – draw until my thoughts ran out, until the violent images turned into something else. Something manageable. A dream, not a nightmare.

I was happy with how it was turning out. It was simple, vibrant. I had been sketching in charcoal for months and I had started to forget what it felt like – to see things in colour. The bird was something you would find across the world, in Sri Lanka or Indonesia, somewhere sunny and humid. It was the kind of bird that would wake you up in the morning, its melody trilling through an open window, soft and welcome.

Still, it felt incomplete. So I started to draw the cage, returning to charcoal to render it. It was black and domed with heavy metal bars, the lines slashed across the colourful wings, the proud beak, fencing it in.

I was almost finished with it when the knock disturbed me.

I looked at the clock beside the door – a hideous, grandfather-style creation that Felice had bought at some antique fair to make it seem like he was the kind of person who knew and appreciated antiques, and not just the appearance of them.

It was later than I thought. The bird and its cage had stolen hours from me.

'Come in.'

Luca slipped inside and shut the door behind him, his back against it. 'Sophie Gracewell is here.'

I set my charcoal down. 'Sophie Marino, you mean.'

'Sophie is here,' he said, a barb inside the words.

I rolled back from the desk, tried to shrug the stiffness from my shoulders. 'And?'

He crossed the room, took the seat opposite me like we were in a formal meeting. 'I told you she might come to us.'

I sensed the urgency in my brother, felt the seriousness of the moment converge on us. 'You did.'

'She wants our protection, Valentino.'

'Why us?' I was trying to untangle the unease between us, the idea that in this moment, I was a potential enemy and not his strongest ally.

'There's no one else,' he said.

I toyed with a different question in my mind, but the answer was already abundantly clear. For Sophie Marino to show up on our doorstep after the calamity of her last visit here, she must have had an invitation to do so. I didn't want to ask my brother because I didn't want to caution him for it. He knew the rules as well as I, and if he had broken them, then there must have been a reason.

'She's a Marino,' I reminded him.

He leant forwards, his elbows on his knees. 'Only in name.'

I watched him curiously. What was this emotion pulling him forwards, pressing his face to the ground? 'A Marino is a Marino, Luca.'

Inside my answer were the things I didn't need to say. We can't help her.

And in the hardness of my voice, the rest: you shouldn't have brought her here again.

He looked up at me, his expression unreadable, and I wondered if he knew what I was thinking, if he felt even a shred of contrition. 'She saved my life, Valentino.'

'I know.'

'More than once,' he said.

Something I would be forever grateful for. Though the words stuck in my throat; it was not the right time to say so, because it was a bargaining chip that would work against me in this moment.