she looked at Luka, met his eyes and in that moment she did know.
This was about their fathers.
‘Say nothing,’ Luka said. ‘I’ll get you a lawyer.’
It had all been perfect and now she had been plunged into a hell that burned ever hotter. Sophie was unceremoniously marched to a car. The entire congregation of the church, it seemed, had come out and were watching from the other side of the road. It was mortifying. The only saving grace was Bella, shouting to her friend, ‘I’ll get some clothes and bring them.’ She was already running down the hill towards Sophie’s home.
There was no time to thank Bella. Instead, Sophie’s head was pushed down as she got into a police car, but it didn’t come close to the loving way Luka’s hand had, only moments ago, guided her head.
‘Poutana...’ She heard the whispers—some even said it loudly. The people she had grown up with had all turned on her in one night and very soon she would start to understand why.
‘I suggest you don’t take your boyfriend’s advice and that you do speak,’ Sophie was told as the car started to drive off
Sophie said nothing. She trusted Luka to sort this out and she knew that she’d done nothing wrong. She rested her head against the window and lifted her hands to her tousled hair, feeling her mother’s earring, then moved her fingers to her other ear.
It was gone.
‘My earring,’ she started, and then stopped. She would speak with Luka later. It had to be in his bedroom, or maybe on the path as she had been led out.
She looked down at the car floor, wondering if she had lost it when she’d been pushed in.
‘So where’s your father tonight?’ she was asked, but Sophie refused to answer. She had given up looking for her earring and was now back to staring unseeingly out of the window,
‘There’s Luka’s father,’ the officer said, and Sophie started to breathe faster as she saw Malvolio being led by the police from the hotel. ‘I wonder where Paulo is,’ the policeman said. ‘Let’s take the scenic route.’ But instead of the beach road they were heading now towards the hotel and into a small side street, the same street that Sophie had walked down just a few hours ago. Now, though, it was filled with firefighters and the deli was alight with flames.
‘You were in there this afternoon, weren’t you?’ the officer checked, and there was no point denying it so Sophie nodded.
‘Your father went and visited them this morning,’ the officer said. ‘For the third time.’
It was then, Sophie knew, time for her to start talking.
‘SOPHIE DURANTE.’
Sophie stood as her name was called.
It had taken six long months to get to the trial.
After the arrests she had been released without charge the next morning but her father, Luka and Malvolio had all been charged with various offences.
The last six months she had spent living with Bella and her mother because, even from prison, Malvolio still ruled Bordo Del Cielo. Her father’s house had been signed over to him to pay for Paulo’s lawyer.
Sophie had been allowed a few short, monitored visits with her father.
She would have preferred to have seen Luka.
It was a terrible thing to admit perhaps, but at every visit she had ached for just a glimpse of him and she could no longer look her father in the eye.
‘You will hear many things in the trial,’ Paulo had said. ‘Some of the things will be true, but most are lies...’
Sophie simply didn’t know what to believe.
Trinkets and jewellery had been found in their home. Souvenirs, the police called them, for they had all belonged to victims.
Sophie knew they had not been in her home, she’d cleaned it after all. But she also knew that her father, though perhaps not a killer, had not been entirely innocent either and it hurt like hell to know that.
‘Malvolio would send me to warn people—it doesn’t mean that I hurt them...’ Paulo attempted to explain.
‘You went, though,’ Sophie shot back. ‘You terrified them just by passing on the warnings. Why would you say yes to him?’
‘Sophie, please—’
‘No!’ She would not simply ignore the facts. ‘You chose to say yes to him and, please, never say that you did it for me. He kept us poor.’
‘You have Luka.’
Sophie let out an incredulous laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you said yes to him just for that. I’d have had Luka with or without your help.’
She was confident of that.
Almost.
She couldn’t wait for the trial to be over, to go with him to London...to take up those tentative dreams and to run with them.
Sophie looked at her father. He looked so grey and gaunt and she knew she had to win the battle to forgive him and stand by him, for she was the only family that he had.
‘After the trial you can get away from Bordo Del Cielo and start over again,’ Sophie said.
‘I’m not leaving your mother.’
‘She’s been dead for seventeen years! Father, I am going to be leaving. I’m going to move to London with Luka. I just want to get away from here and all the people who have judged me.’ She ran a nervous tongue over her lips for there was one thing she felt her father ought to hear first from her. ‘You will hear things in court about me too, father. Things that you won’t like. That afternoon, when the raids happened, Luka and I...we were together.’
‘Sophie, you and Luka were practically engaged. You have nothing to be ashamed about. Walk into that court and give your evidence with your head held high.’
How, though?
As her father was led back to the cells Sophie asked, as she always did, if she could visit Luka.
He had no one. His mother had died years ago and his father was locked away.
‘Non ci sono visitatori ammessi.’
Again she was told that no visitors were allowed and then she found out that Luka had been placed in solitary.
‘Malvolio too?’ Sophie challenged. ‘Of course not.’ She answered her own question.
Luka wasn’t a security risk, Luka wouldn’t contaminate the trial, that would be Malvolio.
‘He rules even in here,’
