Page 29 of Be Still My Unbeating Heart

Bastian smiled. “The Druids would have loved it, I’m sure. They were all about blood and transformation.”

De Luca’s gaze shifted to look past him. “Did it…”

“Hurt? Not really. Apart from the dying, and even that only hurt for a moment.”

“Do you wish it hadn’t happened?” De Luca asked.

Bastian straightened. “I can’t change who I am, Inspector.”

“But would you…if you could stop what happened…”

“No,” Bastian said. “Becoming a vampire was the best thing that ever happened to me. It allowed me to be myself, truly and completely, for the first time. I didn’t have to fear for my life the way I did as a queer kid living in a backwater town. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder at night worried I’d be attacked, because Iwasthe thing in the night. I was the thing people should fear.”

De Luca’s leg juddered up and down. He said nothing for a moment, then he murmured, “I thought about leaving Vernazza.”

“But you never did. Why?”

De Luca looked down at the badge on his chest. “My father. I wanted to make him proud.”

“He is a poliziotto, too?”

A shadow in De Luca’s gaze. “He was the commissario. He devoted his life to protecting Vernazza.”

Bastian heard it.Was. Not retired, going by De Luca’s downturned eyes, but the other thing.

“What happened to him?”

De Luca studied his gelato. “There was a fire in a bar. Fire trucks struggle to get out here, the roads are so narrow. My father saved a dozen people before the firefighters showed up. He went into the burning building seven times, bringing more people out every time. But then he went back one last time, and he didn’tcome back out again. The smoke got to him. They found him later, curled around a dead dog. He died trying to save some guy’s pet.”

“How awful. Were you—”

“I was seventeen. My mother took it hard.”

Gelato dripped onto Bastian’s hand. He’d been so absorbed by De Luca’s story, he’d forgotten all about it. Seventeen was no age to lose a parent. De Luca must have felt a duty to his mother, and he had ended up entering the same work as his father, a local hero no less. He recalled what De Luca had started to say outside Micio Micio about the way the locals felt about him.

They already think I’m—

What? Bastian could only guess.

“You stepped into your father’s shoes,” he said. “Not an easy thing to do.”

“I had to do something.” There was tension in De Luca’s jaw. His eyes flashed blue steel.

“I’m sure your mother appreciates having you around,” Bastian said.

“She did.”

“Did?”

“She died last year.”

Bastian’s mouth formed a surprised O. Both parents dead, and De Luca could still only be in his twenties. His brusque manner made a little more sense, Bastian thought. The man had been through a lot. Perhaps it was the reason he stuck to the rules so fastidiously—they offered him an illusion of control.

Bastian felt warmth in his palm and realized he had reached out to touch the inspector’s arm. De Luca blinked at him in disbelief, and Bastian quickly removed his hand, clearing his throat.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

“Grazie.” Bastian saw both gratitude and conflict in De Luca’s eyes. He forced himself not to interrogate what that meant.