19. Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
CRUE
W hat a perfect night.
A bloated moon hangs heavily in the sky among dimly lit stars. The air is warm, with a light breeze blowing in from wherever, keeping me cool. In the empty sky, no clouds block the glorious gleam of the moon’s rich, decadent, cheese-colored glow.
That thing inside me? It's my shadow. What was once a source of turmoil, has grown cautious with time. Can it be? Has it grown soft, without a plaything to satiate its hunger? Of course not. It’s a voice in my head — a skull fuck shriek, igniting my base instincts. It keeps me tip-top, thus ensuring my survival.
It isn’t screaming, tonight, though. Tonight, it simply speaks. Calmly. Passing on the message I need to hear.
Release the reins. Loosen the shackles. Kill.
Make them hurt. Make them suffer. Kill all who stand in your way.
Feed on their anguish and bathe in their destruction.
But rarely as it happens, I’m one step ahead of my shadow this time. It is preaching to a dark choir. My mind is already made up and my decision is final. Those vile men will pay. Each will pay a pound of flesh for every tear Fiametta has shed in mourning. With my shadow’s guidance, and by my own hand, they will be welcomed into the black nothingness.
I’m outside her window again. Watching. Protecting.
The last is a lie, I know. I am telling myself what I want to believe, so that I feel better about seeing her trapped in her room with Tomas.
She won’t have to stand strong for too long. Mark’s car just passed through the house’s wrought iron gate. I find myself in a strange predicament with him, now. Saving Fia from Tomas will be his final act of kindness to me.
“I don’t want to talk to you, Tomas,” Fia says, as the lumbering lump of grizzly flesh approaches her. “Please go away.”
“What’s your relationship with Crue Amos?” he asks, and my blood runs cold. Colder than normal, anyway. Tomas stops in front of her, waiting for an answer.
“He’s—” Her mouth clamps shut as he lifts a hand. It glides through the air and reaches her cheek. It is not a violent movement, instead he chooses a tender embrace. She’s mortified and it burns bright in her eyes. “He’s a friend.”
“A friend who wants to kill me.” His hand drops lower, and he grasps her chin while his nicotine-stained thumb strokes her cheek. “Did you put him up to it?”
“No, I could never.” She lies with the grace of... well, me.
“He’s trying to tear our engagement apart, Fiametta.” He almost sounds sad. He’s better at faking his emotions than I thought. Better than I am. It pisses me off.
“You don’t want that, do you? What would your father think?”
“Don’t you talk about him,” Fia spits, and the ice-cold fear pinning her in place melts away to reveal fiery rage.
Give him hell, my Little Flame.
“Or what?” Tomas scoffs. Without warning, the hand clasping her cheek snaps to the back of Fia’s head. He grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks hard, until she’s forced to follow his movement.
I press my gloved fingers against the window and slowly ease it forward. How I’m managing to remain so steady, so calm, when all I can think about is tearing his head off his shoulders is beyond me.
But not my shadow.
Be still. It’s not time yet.
The unexpected message touches my mind. My shadow is usually jumping at every opportunity to slaughter.
No matter how much I want to believe I can do this on my own, I know I can’t. I have never been able to. Not since the black spot in the back of my mind first appeared, all those years ago, after I heard Mom scream, and I came running. She screamed some more when she saw me in the door. My innocent eyes drank in their first taste of death. Mom was buried in hot, sticky crimson. Her face, her eyes, her mouth — all red. My dad’s neck was the source. I had no idea what a jugular vein was, at the time. To my childish eyes, he had suffered a bad cut. One we could fix. He wasn’t dead, just sleeping off the pain.
My shadow was born from that blood. It kept me safe. It told me how to act and how to behave. It showed me the path of normalcy, and how to smile while I hunted and laugh as I killed. Most importantly, it never steered me wrong. It tunes my instincts and senses to one single goal: survival.
I wonder what that says about me, that my greatest teacher, is a voice inside my head.
So, I listen. I take my hand off the window and I watch as Tomas pulls Fiametta. Flings her into the tall cupboard door near the door. I pray she runs, but she can’t find her feet. She is too afraid of the monster looming over her.
My presence is another lie I’ll have to keep, just like how I knew Tomas killed her father. It’s better she doesn’t know I was here. Better she believes I am off, somewhere far away, and not holding back because of my own self-serving agenda. But dying tonight, to save her from a moment of discomfort defeats the purpose of my being there in the first place. I’m going to set her free for a lifetime. Unleash her flame upon this world, while those who tried to stifle it are buried deep.
Very, very deep.
“What have you told him?” Tomas applies pressure to his grip, raising his arm so that Fia has to stand on her tip-toes to relieve it. “Why’s he coming after me?”
“I don’t know,” she howls.
She isn’t lying this time. I let her believe it was about avenging Lorenzo, but I don’t give a shit about that man’s death. It’s moments like this that make me want Tomas dead. Watching him throw his weight around my woman. Acting tough, like he’s the boss, when in reality he’s a glorified worker bee. A puppet in the greatest show of them all.
No tears form in her eyes. I can’t tell if it’s fury or fear keeping them at bay. Her hands shoot up to his wrists, and her nails dig into his flesh as she tries to fight her way free. Tomas remains unscathed, as if her attack were a mosquito bite, not a hornet’s sting.
“Answer me.” Tomas says, and his free hand snatches the bottom of her t-shirt. He hoists it over her breasts, and licks his lips, hungrily. “What have you told him?”
She declines with a shake of her head. Still no tears, but her face is scrunched up as if they want to fall. Maybe the heartache from yesterday dried up her well.
“Nothing? Or you’re not going to tell me?” Tomas’s hand drops from her shirt, and engulfs her breast.
Fuck this. No matter how badly my shadow urges me to stay away, my efforts to save her will be meaningless if he breaks her first.
I won’t stand by and watch this. I can’t. She has to remain innocent. Pure. Fiametta cannot become another me.
“Well then, bride-to-be.” With his hand tangled in her hair, Tomas yanks Fiametta down. The force knocks her off balance and she sinks to her knees. The hand that he used to grope her moments ago, slips over his zip and he lowers it in front of her face. “Let me remind you of a wife’s duties.”
“Stop!” She shouts, crying out for help to anyone who may be brave enough to get in the way of the Napoli’s new don.
It will be me.
I push on the window again. It makes little sound as it cracks, and even less as it swings open. I lift myself higher.
Tomas shoves his hand into the open fly and starts wrestling with his sorry excuse for a dick. He struggles feverishly to break it out of his underwear.
Fucking loser .
“Don’t do this,” Fiametta’s turned to begging. If I had a heart to break, this would probably do it. “Please, stop. Let me go.”
I can’t look at her. I want to, and I want her to see me too. I want her to know that I wasn’t lying when I said I’m only one step behind her. She will never face anything alone while I’m around. She doesn’t have to be scared.
But I need to keep focused on him. One mistake, one slip, one moment of weakness, and I’ll face an untimely end. A bullet to the head, the heart or both and all because I took my eyes off the prize.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Mark’s voice erupts at the door, before I can slip inside.
Perfect timing.
I was about to launch myself inside like a fucking nuke. In my blind fury, I didn’t even realize I’d grabbed my ankle gun out of its holster. I tuck it away now, and watch my oldest friend reprimand the Napoli dog.
“What are you doing here?” Tomas snarls.
Mark snaps an arm forward and it wraps around Tomas’s throat. He lifts him up, squeezing tight, until the Tomas turns redder than a tomato.
Don’t you fucking do it. You took one of my kills. Don’t you dare take another.
“Fiametta, I presume.” Mark says, offering her his free hand to help her up. She takes it and stands, while Tomas kicks his feet and slaps at Mark’s wrist.
“Apologies for Tomas. He’s gone a little loopy since the incident.”
Without once looking at her exposed body, Mark lowers her shirt and as it falls back into place, so does Tomas, who drops to the ground. He gasps in big lungfuls of air, and stares up wide-eyed at the towering giant who could have killed him, if he’d wanted to.
“Come, Tomas. We have a lot to talk about.” Mark walks away as if nothing happened.
Tomas follows with his limp tail between his legs.
That’s it. Tomorrow, he dies.
I can’t tell if the thought is mine or my shadow’s.