Page 60 of Taming Seraphine

“How was any of this my fault?”

“It wasn’t,” he replies.

The backs of my eyes burn. Not with grief or unshed tears, but with the pit of resentment that’s simmered in my veins since my life turned to shit.

“They were selfish,” I rasp.

Mom and Raphael risked everything for their affair, and now they’re dead. Dead and gone, like the girl I used to be. Raphael had to have known Dad was a monster, but I can’t believe they ignored the risks that came with crossing him.

I swipe past Raphael’s picture to another photo I don’t recognize, but stop at the next. Dark brown eyes stare out from craggy features that have haunted my nightmares since the beginning of my imprisonment.

“You recognize him?” Leroi asks.

“He’s the one who wrapped his hands around Mom’s throat,” I say through clenched teeth.

“Julio Catania,” Leroi replies. “He’s still alive and still living in New Alderney.”

“Let’s go after him now.” I move to get up, but he wraps his large hand around mine.

Leroi exhales. “He’s not going anywhere, and we still have to search through the rest of the photos.”

I give him a sharp nod, my fingers itching to draw blood.

Finally, we’re making some progress.

TWENTY-TWO

SERAPHINE

We spent the rest of the morning looking through pictures of Dad’s employees. It’s easy to remember the ones I want to kill because they feature prominently in my recurrent nightmares.

Sometimes, I’m not peeping through the gap in the door, I’m inside the room, screaming at them to stop. Other times, Dad grabs me and hands me over to his guards.

After so much time in captivity or in the company of perverts, my brain has filled in the gaps so the dreams are as vivid as real life.

In the end, we only find four viable targets out of the seven men who attacked Mom: Julio Catania, Paolo Rochas, Mike Ferante, and Edoardo Barone. Two others were killed when Leroi detonated explosions around the mansion, while another died last year.

I hope they’re suffering in hell along with Dad and the twins because any death that isn’t the result of slow torture is far too quick.

We also found the twins’ driver, Pietro Fiori, who took me to and from my assignments. I’m not sure if I want him dead. He never once threatened to detonate my chip with the remote, and there were times when he got out of the car to carry me into the back seat because I’d been injured. But then, he knew I was a prisoner but failed to help. Leroi suspects Pietro might know where Dad has hidden Gabriel. I’m not so sure, but that won’t stop me from slicing pieces of his flesh until he screams something useful.

While new sofas are being delivered to replace the blood-soaked ones that were disposed of, I pass time coloring in pages from the book I bought from Wonderland.

When I get bored with filling in the lines, I pull out the blank notebook and draw a picture of Leroi sitting in the full lotus position with his hands resting on his knees. His eyes are closed in meditation, and empty thought bubbles rise from his head.

My lips curl into a smile. Beside him, I draw myself, mirroring his pose, except my thought bubbles contain screaming faces and knives dripping with blood. After coloring my hair with the yellow felt tip, I tilt my head and examine my work.

Leroi thinks that killing the men on my list will cleanse my thoughts. That after the last man is dead, I’ll no longer be haunted by my past, but I’m not sure that’s true. I add little red droplets to my thought bubbles and make them drip into my hands.

Afterward, Leroi takes me across town to a high-rise building overlooking the ocean.

“Is this where Pietro lives?” I ask as we exit the car.

“We’re visiting an associate who will make you look less like yourself.” Leroi places a hand on the small of my back and leads me up a paved walkway to the building’s entrance.

I shrug him off. “Why are we wasting time on disguises? Gabriel needs us now.”

Leroi’s steps halt. He turns to face me, his eyes sharpening. “How many men did the Capello’s force you to kill?”

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