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“Groomers don’t wait, Angel. Groomers don’t fight their sick urges that ruin children to protect their innocence. They just take it. How could you? How could you ruin everything with just one word? I thought you understood. After my wife and baby were murdered, all I wanted was to save someone as innocent as they were. Then I saw you, and I thought…you were my salvation. My road to redemption. If there was one thing I could do that was good, it was saving you.
“All I’ve ever done was protecting your innocence from the darkness of the world but most importantly from the darkness that lurked inside you. And all you’ve ever done is punishing me for it.
“From the day you opened the window for me to kill your father, and the day you agreed to come to Don Bellomo’s mansion only so he could capture your stalker, only to punish him for abandoning you, and the day you sold what I’d done everything in my power to save from your soul to Il Coyote, to that fucking miserable moment when you pushed me to take that soul myself, Angel.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
TINO
Angel was never innocent, and I had no chance at redemption.
Then why, after all the fantasies came crashing down into bitter truths, did my hands freeze around her neck instead of forcing that one last breath out?
Why did all I feel, as I sniffed out the light from her eyes, was a shattering pain as if my soul was being split in half?
Damn you, Angel. More than you’re already damned. More than you damned me. “Why can’t you just let me go?” I asked her as if she was the one strangling me, not the other way around, as if she was the one with the unbreakable hold on me that wouldn’t budge no matter what.
I stared at my fists that wouldn’t obey me anymore. Even my own flesh couldn’t put an end to the tragedy we’d become. Nothing could save either of us now.
Taking a step back, I swore in defeat, as my fingers dropped from her throat.
She collapsed on the floor, coughing wildly, treacherous life breathing back into her. One hand on her neck, she reached out to me with the other, still urging me to save her.
“No more saving you, Angel. I’ve tried everything and failed. I’m done.”
“Tino,” she rasped.
I crouched down and caressed her cheek. “Forgive me, my sweet Angel. The darkness won.”
She held on to me. “No.”
“You still don’t believe me? Allora, I’ll prove it to you when I come back.”
“Don’t…leave.”
“I have to. You destroyed my path to redemption, but it doesn’t have to be the same for Michele. I need to help him save his girl before the darkness swallows her, too.” I pressed my forehead against hers and then took one last kiss while what was left of her old soul lingered on her lips. One last kiss before it was all gone. “Rest, little girl. You’ll need it. Ci vediamo.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TINO
The marks I left on her neck colored it for weeks and were there to greet me when I returned.
She was sleeping—or pretending to be—when I arrived. The doctor assured me she was fine, though. No permanent damage and nothing that couldn’t be healed with time.
“Wake up, Angel.”
“I thought it was a dream,” she whispered, sober.
“What was a dream, Angel?”
“The window.” She stirred and rolled on her side to face me. “Back then, when he was… Nicky taught me to pretend those nights he came to my room were nothing but bad dreams. Things got fuzzy and blurry sometimes. For a while, I couldn’t tell what was real and what was a dream.”
“You remember the window?”
“In a dream.”
“But it was real.”
