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I gripped the bottle and smiled. Damn cherries.
XXXII
KATIA
The clock read past eleven,and Lucca hadn’t returned home or called. While I hadn’t asked about his last-minute trip to Texas, I noticed after arriving home that Arlo was gone too. They’d left together. That alone spoke of how crucial it was for them both to leave the city without its boss and underboss. It also showed the limited number of people aware of their absence.
Since I’d gathered and roped around the missing pieces, and understood how private this meeting was, I was growing impatient by his silence. I worried about his safety as time passed.
Slowly dread swept inside, creeping through the cracks of my dimmed thoughts. The loneliness only grew with the darkness inside the room. The one friend I’d counted on now hunted me with visions I’d only dreamed of. All conspiring, to my dismay.
I’d tried to occupy my mind by sketching on my tablet. However, as I held the cool and thin touch-screen pencil, the feel of my stringer-knife and its thin needle blade took its place.
My grip loosened with small trembles, and I closed my eyes. It slipped as I broke into a cold sweat, dampening my hands. But instead of cold chills traveling over my body, I felt warm sap over my hands. I snapped my eyes only to see red.
I scurried away from its feel, shaking it off and wiping my palms over the white bedsheet, and while they were clean, the ghost’s blood lingered.
No, no, no.
The dreams were brushing into reality. Stirring memories of bloodbath and recreating scenes I couldn’t flee.
I tossed the tablet and pencil to the side, and searched for my phone. I looked at it one last time in case I’d missed his call.
Needy to escape in his voice and calm demeanor, I tucked my pillow tight to my chest and lay over the mattress, watching as my phone mocked without his name written on its screen.
“Vino, Wex,” I called out to my two beasts and patted the bed for them to get on it, unable to wait alone with my mind tricks.
Quickly they both jumped, and the bed dipped under their weight. They tossed and circled around its edge trying to find space for them both. Wex flopped, and pinned my hips down as he laid his head over them. Vino snarled and shoved his nose to Wex’s neck in an attempt to move him.
“Stop fighting,” I cooed.
Vino growled and grumpily laid next to him, pushing me down onto the bed to place his head on my torso.
I huffed under their weight, and their bodies heated. Maybe Lucca was right. They were too big for our bed, too heavy to be treated as lap dogs. But at this moment, their warmth and long coat calmed the roars in my chest, gently easing death’s shadow.
I laid still, pinned beneath their frame, wide eyed and fingertips stroking their fur to replace the sin—even if it was temporary.
For nights, I’d relived that night, and maybe I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was.
I had killed a total of three men in my life.
Thefirstwasn’t intended. I hadn’t been the one who’d bled him to death. Leo did, but I was the only reason for his death. Not once did I ponder over his life.
Thesecondwas a poor bastard who’d stolen from me. My grandfather ordered his hunt.
“No one steals from a Vitelli, dolcezza.”
I was sent to condemn him to death by identifying him. Without batting an eye, I watched as they beat him to a pulp, but as his screams grew, I took the gun my grandfather had offered and ended his misery. My grandfather didn’t shy me away from the ugly. Instead, he taught me to embrace it. He wasn’t a kind man, but to me, Nonno’s treatment almost showed care. Care to acknowledge the blood that ran through my veins and the weight my last name carried. Nonno’s attention was the closest thing to affection I’d experienced. At twenty-two, I believed death brought us closer. As if I’d gained his respect as a woman by taking the life of a man who’d threatened our reputation.
The man’s death was fast, simple, and not a night passed without me losing sleep over it. After all, I was broken, or so I’d thought.
Maybe it was the intimate way I’d taken the life of thethirdthat night at the gala. Or the way I watched his eyes void of life while I sitting in ire calm, in a puddle of his blood. Immersing myself in his essence.
Or maybe what really haunted me wasmyself.
The way I’d disconnected and slipped into the thirsty fog of inhumanity. Either way, evil consumed my spirit.
My phone ranged and I answered, closing my eyes.
