Page 78 of A Beautiful Crime

“You aren’t capable of human emotion and I imagine it must be exhausting to portray yourself as someone you’re not. If you don’t pretend with Constantine,” I allow myself to say his name because I know he isn’t here. And a certain thrill goes through me as I do. A bubble of excitement. A tingle of pleasure. I really do loathe him, I do. I then continue, “and you don’t pretend with anyone else I wish to be no different.”

He stares at me for a moment. Although his eyes may appear to be blank I can practically feel him assessing me. As if I’m a code he’s trying to crack. Finally, he nods his head and I release a breath. “I thought you didn’t feel threatened by me,” he states rather than asks.

“I don’t.”

He tilts his head to the side, probably a habit he’s adopted from Constantine when engaging in conversation. “And yet you released a breath of relief after giving me an order.”

I swallow.

He was assessing me.

“I didn’t know how you would respond,” I told him honestly.

“When giving an order you shouldn’t fear how I will respond, or how anyone responds,” he says bluntly. “Fear can be a tool, Carina, but in order for it to be used to your advantage you must not feel it, you must instill it.”

I blink wide eyes at him. “You want to fear me?”

His face remains blank. “I’m incapable of fearing you. But you, Carina, you should be feared. If the men in our world smell it off of you they will never respect you, nor will they tolerate you. You will forever remain prey.”

“I’ve never had the luxury of the choice to become anything other than a pawn. Women will always be prey in this world.” There’s a bite in my tone. Defensive. I’m being defensive. Rico has verbally backed me into a corner, opening my insecurities and now the wound is festering.

“A very misogynistic way of thinking, don’t you agree?”

“How is it when it’s fact,” I reply harshly. Men will never know the obstacles and trials women face in this life. They will never be able to understand what it is like to be us. To be denied at every turn. To have to fight ten times harder. To have to prove your worth. To climb the highest of mountains only to still be seen as inferior.

Women have always been viewed as the weaker sex. All because men have easily wounded pride.

“Everyone waits for a choice so they have something to blame if they fail,” he says. “If you want something, Carina, you take it.”

“It’s not that simple.” And it’s immoral. And I swore to myself I would never become like my papa. I would never become like Luca. Men who take without remorse. Men who take from those who aren’t willing to give.

“Except it is. You have much to learn.”

My nose scrunches as my lips twist with disgust. “I don’t wish to learn. I have no desire to become like any of you.”

He cocks his head to the side once again. His fake mannerisms are more unnerving than his stillness. “You need to change your perspective, Carina. Or else you’ll never survive in this world.”

I jut my chin out like an insolent child. “And what is that?”

“Good and evil. Right and wrong. Black and white. There is much more to this world than separating it in two parts.”

“And how would you know?” I insist. “You can’t even feel.”

“No, I can’t,” he agrees. “But I do know fact. And the fact of the matter is, Carina, the world and the beings that inhabit it are far more complex than that. And that includes you.”

But I can’t accept that to be true. I’m too far gone. Lost in the dark abyss without the chance of seeing a flicker of light. Any goodness I had died that fateful night. I was once innocent but that innocence has been paid with in blood.

There is no light inside me. There is no good.

And even if I had the flicker of light inside me that Father Frank believes all of us to have, aren’t I just snuffing it out with my damning infatuation of the Devil himself?

But I’m only lying to myself. I know this to be true.

Because the Devil himself, Constantine Donati, the man of sin and temptation, the King of the Underworld, the man who thrives in darkness, has brought me glimpses of the light I thought I would never see again.

He’s a man known to be evil and yet he shines his flicker of light upon me. He bestows upon me his goodness.

It’s the Catholic guilt I had instilled in me by mamma, I know it is. It’s the Catholic guilt that has me believing I don’t deserve it.

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