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Prologue
Yet it would be your duty to bear it…it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what is your fate to be required to bear.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
DALIA RICCI
The Past
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
My pulse quickens, the fear simmering beneath my skin at what I know I have to do.
Run.
“It has been four years since my last confession.”
The grating separating us smells musty, but I lean my cheek against it anyway. The walls of the confessional moan. Old, like everything else in Devils Ridge, Texas.
The heart of the De Luca mafia syndicate.
The heart of Hell.
“What ails you, my child?”
Everything.
I am helpless to men, to fate, the insignificant pawn housing a future queen in a game far greater than her.
I don’t say the things my heart feels. Instead, I cradle my stomach.
I’m not showing. I still have some time. Not much but perhaps enough to figure out my options.
“I slept with a married man.”
And I liked it.
Until I didn’t.
And still, he wouldn’t stop.
Father Luciano says nothing.
I can picture him.
The scattering of blond hair covering next to nothing on his receding hairline. His pudgy fingers pressed together like a steeple. His white clerical collar choking his thick neck. The all-black attire and stuffy booth running sweat down his hunched back.
Father Luciano. Two years my senior. The twenty-four year old who looks a day shy of forty. I’d pity him if I didn’t need to reserve my pity for myself.
My lips let loose a breathy sigh as I wait for his response, unsure why I bothered coming here. It felt right at the time.
The sigh is too seductive, but I can’t help it. Half the men in this town tell me I am a goddess. The other half tells me I’m a curse.
I know which half I believe. It is not the same half that visits me at the Landing Strip, leering at my body as I strip away my clothes and dignity to their praises.
I wonder, for a moment, what Father Luciano thinks as his breathing deepens, and the wooden bench on his half of the booth creaks with stilted movement.
He knows who I am.
