Page 3 of Keeping My Bride

Chapter 2

Luca Vitale

I WOKE UP early that Tuesday morning, starving. Mama told me my body is going through some kind of growth spurt, and it’s like I can’t get enough to eat. She always makes me a big breakfast before I go to school, so that I can make it until lunch time without my stomach eating itself.

With my guts grumbling, I go downstairs to the kitchen. The house is quiet, but I know Mama will be awake. She’s always the first one up.

When I walk into the kitchen, I slip on something wet and almost fall. Gripping the counter to steady myself, I look down at the tiled floor and see something dark and shiny. My first thought is maybe it’s dirty water or some kind of cleaning product, but it smells like pennies, not bleach.

My feet are covered in the liquid, and I flip a switch nearby to see what the heck I stepped in. It takes a few seconds for my brain to process what exactly I’m looking at.

Blood.

There’s blood everywhere.

Why is there so much blood?

And then I hear it. Something scratching against the tile floor. I walk around the center island and see my mother, crawling towards me. Her throat has been slashed, but she’s still alive as blood pours out of the wounds in her neck.

“Mama!” I yell, panicking. I rush to her side, falling to the floor beside her. She collapses into my arms, gazing up at me with fear in her eyes. Three deep slashes are on her neck, and I can’t stop staring at them.

She’s trying to talk, but no words come out. Quickly, I cover the wounds on her neck with my hand the best I can, but I can feel the blood pushing out between my fingers. “No, no, no!” I cry. “Someone help us!” I yell. I don’t know if anyone will hear me, but I can’t leave her like this.

Mama’s eyes drift closed, and I scream for her to wake up. “Please, Mama! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

Her body goes limp in my arms, and I sit there, stunned. I hold her tightly to me, rocking her like she used to rock me to sleep when I was a baby.

If only I had been a few minutes earlier, I could have saved her. I could have seen who did this. I could have killed them instead.

I rock her gently, and I cry.

My mother’s dead.

She’s dead.

She’s dead.

She’s dead.

“Luca!” my father’s voice roars as he barges into my bedroom, effectively waking me out of the nightmare I was having.

I sit up straight in bed. I’m covered in sweat from head to toe, and it takes me a few seconds to realize where the fuck I am. I don’t have the nightmare about my mother’s death often; but when I do, I always wake up confused and terrified.

My father walks over to the nearby window and rips open the drapes. I squint my eyes against the glaring light and slowly sit up to look at him through narrowed eyes and a growing headache thanks to the rude awakening and my hangover. “Good morning, Father,” I tell him sarcastically. “This couldn’t wait until noon?”

“It is noon,” he hisses.

“Shit!” I grab my watch on the nightstand and realize he’s not lying. I slept half the day away thanks to all that booze last night and the great sex that followed soon after with a girl whose name I can’t even recall. I don’t normally indulge in that much alcohol, but I was feeling particularly sad and depressed last night. Today marks the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I just wanted to feel numb last night, knowing that today would be so hard to get through. But now that I’m awake, I realize I went about it all wrong. I’m not numb at all. I feel fucking horrible. And having such a rude awakening by my father is not helping matters.

“You weren’t answering your phone, so I had to stop by here in person.”

Grumbling, I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms. “What did I do this time?” I ask, assuming that’s why he’s here — to gripe about something I did or didn’t do.

“We need to discuss your grandfather’s will.”

I swipe my hand down my face and grumble. My grandfather passed away last week. His funeral was the other day, and it was the second saddest day of my life, after my mother’s funeral.

“Get cleaned up,” my father instructs. “I’ll be downstairs waiting for you.”

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