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“Is she married?”
“No, but she wanted me to . . .” I could talk about violently killing people, but tell a priest the woman asked me to take a belt to her ass and punish her for being bad? That it turned me on? That seemed to be a hard limit for me.
Maybe it was harder to confess because my guilt didn’t rest on that part of the act. After all, I went back to Alyona Jovanovich the second night for more. Tied her up just like she’d asked.
And that third night, the things Alyona asked me to do to her, pulled me back for a fourth time. Last night. And it’d been the most fucked up of all the nights.
When I’d returned this morning like an addict, needing more, and she’d crawled to me on her hands and knees as I stood there naked and waiting for her, I’d snapped out of whatever twisted spell I’d been under, remembering when Rebecca had done the same after confessing she’d cheated. I’d wound up taking off from Alyona’s room with a rock-hard and unsatisfied cock, searching for a confessional.
The guilt stung and burned as I sat across from the priest.
“Two years without sex, and now that I’ve started, I don’t think I can stop.”
I also knew how I had sex would always need to be that way—a revelation I just came to, but I felt that truth in my bones.
“You will find love again one day, son.”
“No, I won’t. My heart is dead.” It died even before Rebecca did. It’d take a miracle for me to ever love and trust again. More than that. It’d take an act of God. Even then, it was probably impossible.
“You’re in a confessional feeling guilty. Do you think a man with a dead heart would worry about his sins?”
I ignored him, refusing to cling to the idea I could ever return to being the kind of man my wife married all those years ago. Not with everything I’d done, and maybe I didn’t want to be him anyway.
Deciding today’s confession was a bad idea, I left before he could offer any more words of wisdom, dropped the bag of cash outside the priest’s door, then stumbled into the first bar I came across.
Dropping onto a seat, I stared at a Kentucky bourbon on the second shelf and slapped several hundred-dollar bills on the counter. “The bottle.”
The bartender followed my line of sight and set a glass down in front of me alongside the bourbon.
I took the bottle before he filled the glass, turning it around to study the illustration of angel wings on the back. They weren’t open and ready to fly, but drawn together as if . . .
I closed my eyes as a conversation from almost a decade ago, with a girl I hadn’t seen in ages, filtered up from my memory.
“The devil was an angel before he fell.” Diana Mackenzie’s words and that beautiful face of hers came to mind.
I clung to the memory of her for another minute, then forced it away, back to the past where it belonged.
Opening my eyes, I capped the bottle and set it back on the bar. “If you’ll excuse me.” I threw more bills on the counter, deciding what I needed right now wasn’t forgiveness. I needed something more permanent. An ingrained, and engraved, reminder of who I was. A tattoo of those angel wings on my back.
Because that’s who I am—who I officially am.
I’m the devil.
The fallen one.
13
CARTER
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 2021
It was my first time visiting the private cemetery where Rebecca was buried since her funeral two and a half years ago. She had a huge monument alongside her parents’ one, just as she’d planned. Rebecca had spelled out exactly how she’d wanted to be buried. Typical Rebecca—needing to be in control, even in her death.
Dallas was at my side, quietly curled up against my leg, waiting for me, giving me the time he knew I needed.
Setting the roses down in front of the marble, I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets. It was early morning and bitterly cold for November, but I had a short window to slip in and out of New York without notice.
I stared at the name on the monument: Rebecca Barclay. Not Dominick. That had also been what she wanted. To die as a Barclay. I hadn’t thought much of it back then. I hadn’t been able to think much of anything other than guilt and revenge. But now? Well now, it hurt. Proved I still had a feeling or two left in me.
