Page 16 of Where Dark Hearts Devour
Franco’s legs buckle and the wooden pew creaks beneath his weight. Before he can slide to the floor, Savero puts a hand to Franco’s throat, plunges his fingers inside and pulls out his jugular.
I finally find the strength to avert my gaze. I don’t turn my head—something tells me that if this was a test, turning away would get me an instant fail—but I direct my attention over Savero’s shoulder. I don’t see anything though. My focus is turned inward, working overtime to stop the tears that want to fall. My mama’s face flashes across my lids and I bite downhard on my lip, drawing blood. A frozen chill wraps around me raising all the hairs on my body.
In the distance, I hear Franco’s body thud against the flagstones, and the gurgling eventually stops.
It’s only when my face warms that I realise my gaze has settled on Cristiano. He’s staring back at me, his stance primed, his eyes full yet narrowed. I hold onto that stare like a life raft, half conscious of people moving around us, stepping over Franco’s body as though he’s roadkill.
I sense Savero hand the bloodied cloth back to one of his men, then he turns to me and Papa.
“Please excuse me. I look forward to seeing you at the hotel.”
I drag my focus back to my future husband and ignore the nausea crawling up my throat, burning up my chest. He is eerily calm, as though he extracts body parts from only partially dead people every day of the week—even Sundays.
“Of course,” Papa replies. His voice is hoarse.
We both watch Savero leave.
Papa’s arm has turned to stone; he doesn’t feel the heat of Cristiano’s hard gaze like I do, and something in me knows we have to at leastappearable to take this kind of shit in our stride. I squeeze his arm tightly. Imperceptibly.
Papa inhales beside me and I feel the blood pumping defensively beneath his skin. “We should get going,” he says. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Cristiano. You’re looking well, and more like your father than ever. You were just a boy when we last met.” I close my fingers around his arm to stop him from rambling.
My eyes flick back to Cristiano who smiles stiffly. I try to imagine him as a boy, but I can’t get past those sharp cheekbones and strong jaw or his sheer height. He’s overwhelminglythere, as though his presence has wrapped itself around me, blocking out all the light.
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but thank you,” he replies, smoothly. Too smoothly.
Papa straightens, snapping back to his more professional demeanor. “Well, it’s good to see you. I hope we can speak again soon.”
Even through the haze of shock, I can tell Papa genuinely likes Cristiano. I know when he genuinely likes someone, and when he doesn’t but knows what’s good for him.
“That would be nice.”
I hear the “but” in Cristiano’s tone and dart my eyes toward him. He drapes me in a loaded gaze that weaves a trail of fire from my head to my beige-clad toes.
“But this is only a fleeting visit. I’m not staying.”
I feel my heart drop an inch—probably in relief. I don’t know how I’d be able to cope living under this man’s glare while married to his brother. His sick, callous,murderousbrother.
What would Savero do if he knew I’d been out in the city alone, drinking and talking to men I don’t know? I hope Cristiano doesn’t breathe a word about it, because if Savero can tear someone’s throat out in the middle of a church no less, at his own father’s goddamned funeral, in front of his future wife and father-in-law, without so much as a blink, for simplyinterrupting, I don’t stand a chance.
I hear Papa bid Cristiano farewell as though there isn’t a dead bald guy at our feet and blood pooling around our shoes. I don’t respond. I’m not even engaged yet and I’m done with the tests.
As we walk, numbly, away from the church, oxygen returns to my lungs, along with the strange feeling that I’ve left something behind.
I check for my purse. It’s hanging from my shoulder. I check for my sunglasses. They’re on my head. I smooth down mydress. It doesn’t help. There’s a burning sensation on the back of my neck, and I hope I’m not coming down with the flu.
I turn around on impulse, and all those feelings disappear.
Cristiano is standing on the edge of the circle of mourners, his back turned to them all. He’s not paying any attention to the burial taking place behind him, nor to the sobbing women to his left and his right.
Instead, he’s staring. Dead ahead.
Atme.
Trilby
I’m barely holding myself together by the time we pull up to The Grand. Mercifully, my sisters have gossiped among themselves allowing me to hold back tears in the privacy of the car window. Papa has also stayed silent, the two of us bearing a secret that is already eating up my insides.
Witnessing my future husband callously murdering one of his soldiers at his own father’s funeral, then stepping over him like he’s a dead rat has filled me with the kind of anxiety a stiff drink and a mood-enhancing pill could only attempt to alleviate. And neither of those things are an option. I may not have been born into the Cosa Nostra, but I’ve lived on the edge of it for long enough to know what’s acceptable and what could get us outcast or even killed.
