Page 84 of The Beautiful Dead

The streets were slick with rain when I stepped outside, cold air biting through my clothes. I inhaled, deep and slow, the chill burning in my lungs. The pressure in my chest eased. Slightly.

My feet moved on instinct. The cemetery wasn’t far, but it felt like a world away. And the dead? The dead didn’t ask questions. They offered a salvation the living didn’t.

Minutes bled together, and time became meaningless. Buildings merged into one continuous, looming presence, stalking me, and the streets all looked the same—even though I knew they had changed. Everything changed. The sky was a heavy, shifting blanket of blackness, rain slicing through the air like needles, pelting my skin, seeping into my bones. Trying to cleanse me.

Trying to save me.

I laughed under my breath. Too late for that.

The sensation of being watched hit me like a blade between the ribs—I wasn’t alone. In a city of thousands, that was impossible, but this was different.

A prickle of unease danced along the back of my neck, ice threading through my veins. I knew Domino’s presence, the way it curled around me like smoke, possessive and suffocating all at once. This wasn’t him.

This was something—someone else.

I paused at the corner of a building, scanning the murky streets. Nothing. No footsteps. No headlights. No one. But the weight of unseen eyes pressed against my skin, burrowing under it.

Shaking it off, I slipped through the broken chain-link fence that surrounded the cemetery. The pavement gave way to damp, leaf-littered earth. The taint of the city clung to the air, but the scent of rain-soaked mulch and decay slowly drowned it out as I picked my way through the trees.

The cemetery had been waiting for me. Its silent embrace welcomed me home. I belonged here amongst the lost and forgotten souls, among the dead that had stories to tell but no one to hear them.

Rain dripped from the skeletal branches, whispering against the marble headstones, soaking the earth until the graves bled mud. A perfect haunted silence. A place where time folded in on itself, where the dead weren’t forgotten.

My fingers traced over the cold headstones, names carved into history, their stories left behind in fading letters. I exhaled as the feeling of being watched wrapped around me like a noose.

A smooth, teasing voice whispered on the wind. “Didn’t think I’d find you here,piccolo agnello.”

I turned slowly, like ice cracking and reforming. The man stood a few feet away, lips curved into something almost friendly. But his eyes—dark, cold, calculating—told the truth. The haughty look on his face made it clear that he was the one who had been following me.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said, stepping closer. His gaze had raked over me, lingering just a second too long.

I didn’t move. But my fingers itched for the blade strapped to my arm. “Why is that?”I asked, tipping my head, watching his smirk twitch.

“It’s not safe for anyone.”

The corners of my lips curled. “I’m not just anyone.”

He had chuckled, mistaking my words for a joke. They always did.

“He’s not here to protect you now,bel ragazzo.”

A slow smile stretched across my face. “I need… protecting?”

“Something as beautiful as you?—”

I rolled my eyes, disgust curling my lips. Predictable.

“Should be cherished. Treasured.”

He was barely a foot away from me. The inches between us disappeared in the blink of an eye. I scarcely swallowed the hysterical laugh clawing up my throat.“See something you like?”

His smirk widened. So did mine as mania flowed freely through my veins. He hadn’t seen the knife, hadn’t even thought it could exist until I buried it in his side.

A strangled gasp had ripped from his throat, eyes widening as warmth spilled over my fingers.

“What the fuck—” he choked, stumbling back, clutching his side. “W-what did you do?”

I lifted the blade, blood glistening like rubies under the fractured moonlight. Twisting my hand, mesmerized as I watched the red drips slide over the metal. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

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