Page 2 of A Sinner's Truth

One of my biggest regrets is that Gio was the one to do it. Put a bullet between our father’s eyes. I should have done it myself. I was so lost in the shock, in the grief over finding Shelli the way I did, that I fucking froze. When she needed me most, I fuckingfailed her. I should have been the one to get vengeance for her, and I didn’t.

And I’ll never know why. The old man was always a monster—that much I know. But I never thought he’d stoop so low. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He took out his own wife when we were all little kids. Gio and I are the only ones who remember our mother. The other three were too young. That’s not to say I remember much about her. But I do recall how she was frightened of her own shadow. She was scared, all the time. And I get it now. I know what she was so afraid of. The monster she married.

As soon as the car pulls to a stop in front of our house, I jump out and walk straight upstairs to my room. The only good thing about this place is that Shelli was never here. I don’t have memories of her here.

I throw myself down on my bed, my head still pounding as I close my eyes. I groan when there’s a knock at my door and the handle turns. “What?” I don’t bother looking up.

“You sleeping?” a deep voice asks.

“No, I’m baking a fucking cake, Marcel. What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?” I grunt at my brother.

“Fucking hell, peachy mood you’re bloody in,” he snarks back.

I lift one eyelid to look at him. “Are you going to stand there all day? You know, wecanget you help for those creepy stalker tendencies.”

“Fuck off. I’m heading out. Call if you need anything,” he says.

Huh, guess he’s not my babysitter after all. I nod and salute him as he clicks the door shut and I close my eyes again.

Something sharp kicks me in the ribs. My hand snaps out, wrapping around whatever it is. Then my blurry vision focuses on a leg—a thin leg—and a sharp, pointy-toed shoe. My eyes move upwards until I’m glaring at the one person in this world who hates me just as much as I hate myself.

“Why the fuck are you kicking me?” I grunt while releasing my hold on her ankle.

Shelli’s older sister kicks me one more time before I roll over and stand up. “Why are you sleeping out here? And you smell like a fucking brewery,” she hisses.

“Nice to see you too, Kristen.” I smile at her. I’ll let her take her anger out on me, because I deserve it. I’m the reason the woman we both love is six feet beneath us. Literally, seeing as we’re currently standing on opposite sides of Shelli’s grave. The grave I must have fallen asleep on. Again. I don’t remember even coming here.

“Get your shit together, Santo.This…” Kristen waves a hand up and down my body. “…is pathetic, even for you.”

“I saw her,” I blurt out.

Kristen freezes. “What?”

“Shelli. I saw her,” I repeat.

“She’s dead, Santo. Your family made sure of that.” Kristen bends forward, lowering a bunch of yellow roses onto the ground. Shelli’s favourite flowers.

“She wants me to dig into something, to look for something,” I continue. When Kristen freezes and her eyes close for along moment, I get the reaction I was looking for. She knows something. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing. Leave her alone, Santo. Let her rest in peace. She deserves that at the very least,” Kristen says.

“Why would she want me to look for something?” I try again.

“She’s dead, Santo. You didn’t talk to her. Whatever you talked to was of your own doing. My advice? See a fucking shrink and sort yourself out.” With those words, Kristen turns around and storms away from me.

I sit down and stare at the tombstone. I hate reading the wordfiancée. She was supposed to be a wife. My wife. A few more hours and she would have been. “Whatever it is you want me to find, I need your help, Shelli. Give me something to go on. A hint, a clue, anything,” I beg her.

I don’t get an answer, not that I was expecting one. Memories of the weeks leading up to the wedding invade my mind. Shelli was a nervous wreck. I put it down to pre-wedding jitters. She wanted everything to be perfect. And then we found out we were pregnant, and her anxiety seemed to worsen.

But that wasn’t all that unusual, was it? She was just stressed out that things went in a different order than what we planned, wasn’t she?

I stare at the tombstone like it’s going to give me the answers I need. What if it wasn’t? What if I missed something?

“Were you hiding something? What were you hiding?” I run a frustrated hand through my hair.Where do I even start to look?

Our apartment. The one place I haven’t been able to go back to since everything went down. I can’t go there. I never officially moved out of our father’s house. He wouldn’t allow that. But I did buy Shelli a place of her own. And most nights, that was where I stayed too. It’s where we planned to live after the wedding.

My heart races at the thought of going there. It’s been months and I’m still running from the truth. The fact that she’s not ever coming back.

---