Page 57 of Absolution

“You’re a hitman for Uncle. Is that what you want me to say?” I spit.

“And as such, what do I do?”

A chill settles in the pit of my belly. These are the things I never want to touch, never want to acknowledge. “Kill people,” I whisper. “You kill people.”

He’s silent.

“This Kerry… is this someone you killed?” My voice barely carries. This feels important. Whatever it is, this has had a profound impact on my God-like brother. It’s as if a piece of his soul is missing, as if his aura is flickering, being consumed.

“No. She’s alive, but I might as well have killed her.”

“What did you do?”

He grabs my hands, clutches them in his large paws. “I hurt her bad, Ang. Really bad. I don’t know if she’ll ever forgive me.”

“What did you do. Tell me everything.”

“It’s… it’s too dirty.”

I scoff. “If you lived it, if she lived it, I can fucking hear it. Tell me, or I’ll force feed you kale. I have the fridge stocked.”

“You’re an evil bitch.”

“I’ve learned from the best, bro.”

Seeing my brother clenched up, his gaze empty, tears me to pieces. I caress his thick hair, longer than I’ve ever seen it before, as I stare emptily at the tattooed cross on his forearm. Religion. God. These Italian macho men all go to church and pray and make their confessions, then they go out and keep hurting people. It’s all such a farce.

“She was a hit. Luci ordered me to kill her because she knew something she shouldn’t. But she was beautiful, Ang, inside and out, just amazing. I couldn’t. I should have stayed away, but I couldn’t. She… I seduced her. I don’t think I gave her an option to be honest.”

My heart speeds up, the faint memories of the rape threatening to resurface from deep into that dark void where I’ve pushed them.

“Tell me you didn’t force yourself on her,” I exclaim.

He twitches and looks up at me. “No. Fuck no. It wasn’t like that.” He looks over my shoulder, at the windows, and his gaze turns distant.

I wait for him to continue, pushing and pushing to put the lid back in place. I can be okay for months at a time, and then something triggers me, and it rips me right back to when I was a proper little sixteen-year-old, very naive, very Catholic, very, very stupid and trusting of an old neighbor.

“What was it like, then?”

“After… I had to kill her anyway. Luci, he—” Christian gives me a look that makes yet another shudder run through me. “He didn’t give me a choice.”

“That’s sick. You slept with her and then you were gonna kill her? Like what? Right there, in bed?”

I’m nauseous. How can I love Christian, and Nathan, and my other two brothers, Matteo and Luca, knowing what they are? Am I just as sick as them?

He groans. “No. Anyway, I failed. She beat the crap out of me. Shot me, nearly killed me.”

“Oh! Was that when you were in the hospital last time?”

“Oh yes,” he sighs.

“One day your luck will run out, Chris.”

“It already has,” he says darkly. “Turns out we made a baby that night, a little girl who’s my spitting image. Long story short, she ran from me, I followed. I found her, in Canada, shit happened, and some good stuff too. And here I am.”

“You have a daughter? Is it Cecilia? Oh my God. Where are they now?”

“Apparently she’s back home.”

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