Page 1 of Sinners Atone
My father had these rules.
They were mostly bullshit, hammered together from age-old clichés and Hollywood one-liners, but when he spoke them into existence, they had a nasty habit of hardening into prophecies.
I was born bad because he said I would be. He said I’d withhold my first breath out of spite, and that not even shoving the family’s silver in my mouth before I took my second would pacify me.
Now, I’ll take my last exactly where he said I would: in the dark that made me The Villain.
My laugh echoes through the forest, deep and bitter, before morphing into a spluttering cough.
Guess death isn’t so funny after all.
Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I scan the black sky. I learned the first time I died that the long tunnels and the white lights weren’t meant for men like me. Hell, after everything I’ve done, God is more likely to cut his electricity and draw the curtains than signpost me to heaven. I’m looking for a different light, an orange one, and when I spot it filtering through the branches, I bite out a curse.
It isn’t growing any fucking closer.
I press my palm against the gash in my side and glare up at it. I’m dying, but I’m not delusional. There’s no miracle waiting for me at that streetlamp, but if I reach the lamp, I’m on the main road. Then all I have to do is cross it and I’m at the church. It’s my only chance to warn my brothers.
My brothers.
Fuck.
A new kind of pain behind my sternum drives me onward, but as my boot strikes soil, a white-hot heat roars up my leg and explodes in my stomach. I stagger backward and clip something with my heel, and when a whirring noise prickles my ears, my muscles tighten.
I’ve tripped over that fucking “play” button.
I knew it was coming because it always comes. It’s a myth that the worst part about dying is the pain or the uncertainty of what comes next. It’s not. It’s the part where your life flashes before your eyes and there’s fuck-all you can do about it.
I tried outrunning it once; it only chased me. Tried closing my eyes, but it just projected off the inside of my eyelids.
Knowing I can’t spare the energy fighting it, I clench my jaw, steady myself against a tree, and reluctantly wait for the show to start.
The Beginning plays out in Technicolor.
Nine summers spill out from between the trees and swallow the darkness whole. Days roll out along the forest floor; long and lazy; grass-stained, sunburned. Even the October wind warms and thickens, bringing with it the smell of chlorine and that sunblock I hated so much.
A memory of Angelo putting me in a headlock and smothering my face with it dances against the trunk of an oak tree. My mother pretending not to notice while she flips through a magazine by the pool plays out on another.
Amusement rattles my next exhale, and I rub my thumb over a mud-caked knuckle. The first scar I ever got was from the day I was strong enough to twist out of my brother’s grip and sucker punch him in the nuts.
Then the days fade to terracotta. Summer nights never got dark in The Beginning. They were always lit by bonfires in the garden and the torch I’d tuck under my chin to tell my brothers ghost stories around them.
Rafe’s shrieks rustle between the branches, and a cold snap brushes my cheek as Angelo’s laugh chases after it. He wasviciouslong before it solidified into a nickname.
When the next sound echoes in my ears, my smirk fades. All the fresh blood in my mouth congeals and threatens to choke me.
“Gabriel.”
Fuck. I’d be an idiot to close my eyes. Being this close to death means there’s a good chance they won’t open again. But when my mama’s voice shoots through the night and pierces my chest like a second stab wound, I squeeze my lids shut and drop my head back against the tree.
Maria Visconti was a woman with many hobbies, but her favorite was believing in bullshit. She believed some chick named Eve ate an apple and caused all the evil in the world, but if she’d just wished on a stray eyelash, everything would have been okay anyway. Every shiver was someone walking over her grave, and every black cat to cross her path was a sure sign she’d soon be lowered into it. The bearded dude in the sky, the fortune teller at the fair. Even the smackhead who hangs outside the Visconti Grand Casino and swaps tourists a lucky penny for a dollar.
She believed everything everyone told her to.
Except her husband and his rules.
“Gabriel!”
I grit my teeth and turn away from her voice.
