Page 53 of As Angels Sin

I roll onto my side and stare at him while he speaks. There’s so much I want to ask, so many things that could teach me more about Crue, but I won’t interrupt him. Not now. Those questions are for the future, when we’re older and life has rubbed off some of our edges. For when Crue softens and wants to open up and tell his story.

“My new title of killer brought more money than I knew what to do with, so I gave it to my mother. She shunned me, though.No blood money for me, I’d rather work. So, I let her. Not because I wanted her to be hurt, mind you.” He stops again anda flash of something dances across his eyes. It’s too fast to make out if it was happiness, sadness or whether his eye had simply spotted a tiny woodland creature flying by. “It was the opposite. Taking my money would have hurt her. Living on someone else’s heartache, more so.”

“I’m sorry, Crue.” His eyes move until he’s looking at me. The rest of him remains motionless.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because...” No one ever asks why, do they? Not to a sympathetic apology that’s meant to ease the stress and turmoil a conversation like this brings with it. “I feel bad about what happened.”

It’s the best response I can come up with. There’s a lot more I could do to express the emotions I feel, sorrow, remorse, and misery in his despair. I get the feeling Crue won’t understand anyway. It would be like trying to explain color to a blind man. Impossible.

“I don’t. You shouldn’t either.” He rolls his eyes back to look at the ceiling.

I nod, but his words make it worse instead of better.

“Once my pockets were well-lined, I killed for fun and for the thrill,” he goes on, avoiding any opportunities to linger in my emotional stew. “And to feed a different hunger inside myself. An endless, starving black hole, which demanded more, more, more.” That sentence sends a cold chill through my entire body. The crazy part is, I don’t even know what it means. “But I must’ve done someone special because it caught Lorenzo’s attention. Raised his interest and made him angry. He sent a group of four men to visit my mom not long after.”

Here it comes, the point of his story that I dreaded the most. I listen carefully, but stay quiet.

“Her bright red lips were cut and swollen when I arrived. She had black streaks running down her bruised cheek bones. Hersilken ensemble was clinging to her skin like fur on a wet cat. I couldn’t tell whether she was wet from crying or whether it was the rain that was pouring down on us.”

He clears his throat.

“I begged for the first time in my life.Take me and let her go. She has no part in this. She’s innocent. I begged and they laughed. I fell to my knees pleading, but they drowned her in the mud beneath their feet. I...”

He stops, and I want to hug him. Kiss him. Help him through the heartache.

“The point is they killed her. Lorenzo wanted to make it a lesson. Fuck with the bull and you’ll get the horns. I like to think he regretted it in the end, but I doubt that. He didn’t even recognize me.”

“Jesus, Crue, I—” I start, and this time he turns his whole head to face me. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. You asked and I answered. Matteo made me a promise that he would make Lorenzo hurt, the way he made me hurt.” He looks away again to finish. “And he wanted it to be you.”

“If it means anything, I forgive you, Crue,” I say.

I forgave him a long time ago, and I’m sure he picked up on that. On the off chance he hadn’t, saying it now is a way of freeing him. If he’s doing any of this out of some misguided attempt to seek salvation, he doesn’t need to. I don’t care. What happened is behind us, and we can look to the future together. More than wanting revenge for Father’s death, I want Crue at my side. Safe. And helping me raise our child.

It takes a long time for Crue to speak again. So long, in fact, that I almost think he’s fallen asleep.

“This is why I don’t fuck around with emotions, Fia. Partly because they interfere but mostly because I can’t. I don’t understand them.” An indiscernible sound rumbles through hisbody. “Look at the mess I caused because I tried to play human with you. I chose to help a wicked man because he mentioned my mother. I chose not to finish a job, because of afeelingI don’t understand. They only bring heartache, it seems.”

“That they do,” I say.

And more time passes, with neither of us making a sound. Crue’s thinking about whatever’s going through his mind. Regrets, maybe, or if he really doesn’tfuck around with emotions, what he’s going to do when he stands face to face with Matteo. I’m trying to process everything, all at once.

After a while, I realize that it’s not possible to do that. This whole mess stemmed from a bad decision. From my father challenging a man he thought could scare off easily.

One of his lessons to mewas never to underestimate anyone. Everyone has lived a different life to mine, and there’s no telling what roads led them to mine. It seems Father chose theDo as I Say,Not as I Doschool of training.

“Stay with me,” I say in a frantic whisper, when my thoughts grow too loud for me to stay quiet. “You don’t have to do this. We can run away together. Make a new life somewhere else,”

I throw my arms around Crue’s head, and am hit by a sudden wave of the emotions he speaks so badly of. I tug his head toward my bare chest. I want to hold him and comfort him, but I also want to promise him that everything will be okay. My actions speak louder than words with the last one, because I know if I said it, I wouldn’t be convincing.

He moves with my motion, and rests his forehead against my bosom.

He sighs. “I want to, but I can’t. Matteo Baronne won’t stop chasing us. He will hunt us to the ends of the earth. I won’t subject you or our child to that.”

Once he thinks that is settled, Crue doesn’t stir again.

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