Chapter 24
My mother once told me that the deserving always have a guardian angel, an angelo custode , watching over them to keep them on the path of righteousness. Of peace and love and light and all that.
She was once a very religious woman but after her life took a turn for the worst, Madre fell into despair, a lack of sanity and control, believing her angel abandoned her during the darkest point of her life. It was heartbreaking to witness the woman who lived by her faith as she managed a life by Padre’s side lose it all. God was no longer her saviour; her peace within the chaos. She stopped believing, attending church, and ended our nightly prayers when her brain finished rationalizing the recent events. God was no longer a coping mechanism for life’s struggles but a reminder of what never was.
“He didn’t listen to me beg when I needed him most. Why would he grant me well-wishes now?” To this day, her reasoning echoes through my ears.
At nine-years-old, I struggled to understand what could possibly drive her away from faith. Then I grew up. I learned what she suffered, what she gained, and what she lost.
Which is why I too stopped believing. Without her nightly prayers before tucking me in, I was raised the majority of my life without Him, and now, I see what many don’t. Religion is a farce, a belief that gets people through but doesn’t truly exist. By Padre’s side, the peace and love and light my mother prayed for didn’t exist. Instead, it was battles and viciousness and darkness.
Without Madre’s guidance and love, my development was shaped by death and blood. My choices were to either become Padre’s second-in-command, or die. Kill or be killed.
A brutality no kid deserved, but a lifestyle I endured nonetheless.
So while Madre’s claim that those who are deserving have a guardian angel could be true, I’m well aware that I’m not deserving. Not anymore. But in this instance, I believe her because I think one is currently hovering over me.
One with eyes so dark, they reflect the shadows of Hell rather than the rays in Heaven. So maybe she truly is my angelo custode , because no guardian angel of mine comes from above; that’s not where my soul is destined for. I know she’s mine because her expression says she is. The furrow between her brows as her head tips. Her lips move but whatever she says is lost in my mind’s blur.
Maybe I’m growing mad like Madre did for a short time after experiencing what she had. Or the pain originating in my leg is making everything fuzzy and senseless, causing hallucinations, which is more likely the reason.
She frowns, but my broken, injured mind views it instead as a smile. A smile from my fallen guardian angel, complete with black wings and horns, so perhaps Madre is right.
Il mio angelo custode is here because I deserve death.
And she’s come to deliver it.
“ Yebat'! Vanessa!” A female voice but not my angel’s.
“I found him outside in the tree line. Call the doctor now.”
“Are you sure?”
A pause. Is this the debate on whether my soul goes up or down?
“Death from a gunshot wound is too easy. I need answers, and he’s useless to me in this condition, so yes, I’m sure.”
“All right then.”
Pakhan.
Vanessa Volkov.
That’s why I’m in Russia rather than my beloved Italian lands.
Why living beauty is hovering over me, her lips moving as she speaks to the man on my right. Their conversation is muted behind weakness so I can’t make them out.
I despise being weak. Especially now. Especially here, in enemy territory.
Padre would be ashamed.
Madre would tell me to keep my head high.
Except both aren’t around right now.
“You, and your entire family will pay for what you’ve done to mine.”
Death is one way…and if I survive, certainly a preferred path to vengeance. After all, can’t get more equal than a life for a life.
But Ursin would give his own life before seeing me?—
And it’d be Vanessa’s worst nightmare.
If I survive.
If I survive, might just have to see how future events unfold…
White.
Heaven?
Nah, too easy. There were no pearly gates, fluffy clouds, or a gentle chorus of angels—all the things my mother claimed we’d see in the afterlife.
In the next flash, the light fades out in exchange for complete shadows.
Hell? Death coming to suck me down below? To burn my soul, probably right alongside my father for the criminal life he led.
“Zeno.”
With that simple sound, with my name spoken by my angel, colours bloom. Blue, purple, yellow, and green.
But mainly blue. A sapphire colour of eyes so multifaceted, so knowing, they draw me back to the top of consciousness. Lull me forward, promising a more painful death than what I nearly experienced.
Because when I open my eyes, ignoring the room around me or even the position my body’s strapped down in, it’s not a guardian angel above me.
No, Madre’s wrong, as I always knew she was. Someone like me doesn’t get one of those .
Instead death stands beside me in the form of the Merciless Queen.