Page 79 of Dreadful
She’s wearing low black heels and a long, black puffy jacket, but her hurried gait catches my attention. Her head is down, only lifting for furtive glances, as if she’s afraid of being followed.
I slow the video down and watch intently. On every well-lit corner, she huddles into the shadows, ducking her head farther away from the light. Away from thecameras.The longer I watch, the more an uneasy feeling churns in my stomach.
When she glances up at just the right angle, the light reveals the same face I saw earlier in the night, but couldn’t inspect because she’d kept her head ducked from me. The facial structure is different, as if she’s wearing something to disguise her features, but with the bright light shining on her, I know exactly who it is.
The breath in my lungs freezes.
Tallie.
“What’re you up to,vipera?” I murmur.
I try to rack my brain for any detail I saw last night that could hint at where she’d been before I got there or why she was out so late and rushing home. My memory is hazy, but from what I do remember, she was already in her pajamas with her hair braided into a crown on her head.
She makes it to the residence entrance to her building where she finally slows down, raises her head, and pulls back her hood.
That’s where she fucks up. She’s wearing a white bonnet. The kind a Victorian maid would wear. The kind my mother prefers her staff to wear. Like the maid that worked at the Vincelli Sunday dinner last night.
The one whose fists shook when my mother ordered her around like a bad pet. The one who backed away every time I talked to her. The one who anticipated my needs before I realized them.
Why the fuck was Tallie at my uncle’s last night? And why the fuck didn’t she say anything when I came to her afterward?
My uncle kicked Tallie out of the dining room, so I don’t know how she would have reacted if she’d seen me getting stabbed. I thought she’d been upset when my cousins grabbed me, though. But then, when hernonnihad asked her to stitch me up, she’d hesitated. So was the emotion at dinner all an act? Why would she draw attention to herself as part of an act?
On the monitors, Tallie enters the bakery’s back door. I arrive on my motorcycle shortly after, and it takes me ages to make it to the front. There was plenty of time for her to change and get ready for bed. Meanwhile, the black car travels up and down the streets, still prowling for whatever it was they were searching for. By a stroke of shit luck, the sedan travels up the street just as Tallie’snonnicarry me inside.
“Cazzo.”
As soon as I’m inside, the car speeds up and leaves the North End.
They were stalking me, and I led thebastardosright to the Amorettis.
This is my fault. Tony is dead because of me.
Pain, rage, and confusion hollow out my chest, and I sag from the emptiness. The need for answers barrels to the forefront of my mind. I spend the next few minutes searching through the feed at ten-times speed as far back as I can go before the system uploads to a cloud portal. Whenever I see Tallie leave the bakery, I slow it down and follow her with every camera feed I have in the neighborhood.
The first thing I notice is Tallie periodically walking around Fleet Street with fliers for the bakery. She leaves them at different businesses every round, but shealwaysstops by Luciano’s Cuts, never failing to hand the flier to Raze personally. My heart twists. Something deep inside me almost wishes it was because she was interested in my cousin first, but I have a sneaking suspicion her motives are much worse.
The more I see, the more my suspicions are confirmed. She’ll wait around for Raze to come get the flier, and she even brings him dessert samples, but other days she goes out of her way to pass the shop for seemingly no reason. No matter what, she scowls every time she passes. It’s unnerving how many times she waited across the street, watching me as I came and went, and yet I never saw her. A strange theory starts to build, and I write it down before I forget.
Bringing Raze desserts to get to me?
Even thinking it makes me feel crazy, so I push the thought aside to keep watching and take notes.
I become engrossed in the footage all the way up to the day we met. On that morning, she left at the crack of dawn in a long puffy jacket and bulky, black hiking boots and came back after a couple of hours with dried mud staining the top. I scratch down my question on the paper. It’s yet another stretch, but I need to find out…
When did the gardener die?
The next time I saw her, the night at the Revere, she’d lied about Gio picking her up to take her home. She arrived on foot much later than she would’ve if she’d left at the time she’d said. I follow her path all the way back to the Revere Theater. At one point, she took off an oversized coat and stuffed it in a dumpster. The longer I follow her back to the theater, the faster my heart races.
On a hunch, I switch to the camera feed for the parking garage behind the Revere and zoom in on Alfonso’s murder. At the time, I’d assumed the attacker was a man. I zoom in closer, though, and quickly recognize the extra-long trench coat.
What the fuck?
The attacker had accused the driver of killing their parents. Did Claudio order Alfonso to kill Tallie’s parents? Claudio only became the boss after my father died, but he’s been giving the “car accident” order for decades. At the time he was murdered, Alfonso had probably had tens—if nothundreds—of “accidents.”
Tallie has been stalking me, potentially killed two of Claudio’s men, and she was at the dinner last night. Is she after Claudio, too?
“Goddammit.”
