Page 83 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part Two

This is wrong.

I feel wrong.

I stumble backward and shove Maria at the door. “Go outside.”

She digs in her heels stubbornly, and the delay costs the man his life.

The void inside my gut tears open. Violence shreds my veins, unspooling shadow ribbons from my bitter blood. They strike like vipers, latching onto the customer, and suddenly I’m reliving the sick, depraved thoughts he had of my sister like a movie. He stares at her blossoming body, watching her tongue curl around the melting cream, imagining things a grown man should never think about a little girl.

Then I see more little girls he thinks about. I see older girls too, ones in green bikinis, and my rage detonates. My shadows crush his throat and claw into his brain and body. I take his evil into myself, and he ceases to exist.

I can’t remember how we got out of that place, or what happened to the man, but suddenly I’m storming down the promenade, hauling Maria by the elbow.

“Keep your mouth shut,” I demand. “Do not tell Mamma and Papà.”

She rips her arm from my grip. Melted gelato drips from her forgotten cone, splattering across my knuckles. An ugly, unfamiliar fury twists her young face.

“It belongs to me!” she shrieks.

“I’ll get you a new gelato.”

“I’m talking about the bitter blood! It belongs to me. You stole it!”

“I don’t want it!”

“I’m the one with the mark!”

Shame curdles in my gut, hot and sickening. We reach the striped beach towels, and Mamma and Papà lower their sunglasses. The stench of fresh violence still clings to my skin, heavy enough to choke on.

Maria points a sticky finger at my chest. “He did it! He killed everyone in the shop!” She stomps her bare foot, kicking hot sand over the blankets. “He stole it from me!”

“Enough, Maria.” Papà stands, adjusting his linen cuffs. He spares me only a brief, calculating glance, and I swear I see his eyes grow distant. As if that’s the moment he stops thinking of me as a son. “Watch your sister, Francesco. We will handle the mess.”

My parents walk away to cover up my slaughter.

I collapse onto my towel on the shore. The sea glares back at me, vast and mocking. A large black fly lands on my knee. I swat it, but another lands on my cheek. Maria kneels beside me, screaming in my ear, demanding her stolen birthright.

The buzzing escalates, and my control snaps.

I twist around, shouting right into her flushed face, “Maybe you lack the strength! Maybe you are just a weak little girl who thinks she deserves everything in the world!”

Her jaw sets, stubborn and thick. “One day, I will grow to be stronger than you.”

I give her ballerina figure a scornful look. “That’s scientifically impossible.”

She leans in close with the eyes of a stranger, glimmering at me with hate. “You think you know everything, but you don’t, big brother.” She points to the mark imprinted on her thigh. “This makes it mine. He told me so.”

“It’s not up to our father!” It’s better this way. I feel sick and exhausted, and all I want to do is crawl into a hole and die. But she needs to see why it can’t be her. She doesn’t have the stomach for this. She shouldn’t have to!

I thrust my hand toward the wooden platform bobbing in the waves, where older boys dive off the edge, cutting through the dark water. “You can barely swim to the pontoon on your own.”

She climbs to her feet. “Watch me.”

A cruel laugh rips from my throat. “You won’t make it.”

But she marches into the surf until the water swallows her ankles, her knees, and her waist.

The buzzing multiplies, vibrating through my teeth. A deafening roar detonates in my skull. A black cloud descends on me, swallowing the sun in a violent eclipse. The sky bruises into a sickly purple.