Chapter 4 #2
It was the only thing that the hospital where my mother had died had bothered to send me, along with a letter informing me that she’d passed.
I carried it with me everywhere. My last remaining artifact of the life I’d lost. Once upon a time, when there had been a person in this world who’d loved me.
I opened the book to a random spot, my mother’s spidery script scrawling over the page.
And the devil would lay his hand upon his shoulder and take him to Hell, for the fires that awaited his return .
. . and then, my son, my only, would be at home.
For his eyes had always burned, and his skin had smelled of ashes, and in his reflection, the end of all days was shown.
This is the prophecy the angels showed to me, my boy, my only, and it opened my eyes.
For I lay with the beast, and his son I did birth.
You will be all and nothing, the beginning and the end of this world.
I’m sorry to the world for producing such a sin.
I am damned for all time, as the mother of the Devil.
The writing was jumbled and nonsensical. It ran on and was hard to make out in places, and yet the gist remained the same.
My mother, my poor, hardworking, beaten-down, angelic mother, had lost her mind before her death and been sent away.
I traced my fingers over the words scribbled on the page, my mind drifting over my conversation with Katarina Dmitrova. I was clearly the subject written about on these pages. My mother’s devilish son. The boy with the soulless eyes and the hellfire smell.
If my mother thought it, wasn’t it true? She’d called me a devil first, and now that little stray, Katarina Dmitrova, with her angelic sweetness and all-seeing gaze, saw it too.
I was a devil.
My reputation had only gotten worse once my mother died and I’d abandoned all hope. If I couldn’t beat back the darkness of the world, I’d join it.
No. I’d rule it . . . and Katarina saw me.
Mother, there’s someone else like you.
Fuck, what was I thinking? This fucked-up place was getting inside my head.
I didn’t have time to get distracted. I had a job to do, and another lined up right after, and another after that.
L’Ombra didn’t take vacations, and if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be here.
I’d built a fearsome reputation with my skills and was paid well for my work.
I killed. I hunted. I earned my money, and I paved my path to hell.
One day I’d get there. Probably in the not-too-distant future.
Fine by me. I wasn’t entirely convinced I wasn’t there already.
I had one thing to do before I went, and I was getting closer and closer to that goal every day.
Then, I’d take my long-awaited vengeance: for me, and for my mother and the life that had been stolen from us .
. . and bathe in the blood of those who had crossed us.
The people who’d taken her from me. They would wish for the sweet release of hell by the time I was done with them.
Slowly, I inched closer to them, my anticipation growing day by day.
How nice to have something to look forward to.
That night, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, smoking silently, dragging the poison into my veins as deeply as I could.
My mind kept returning to Katarina, and then my mother after her.
They had Katarina on a powerful mix of drugs that, as far as I knew, should only be used for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
My mother had briefly been on the same ones before she’d been sent away.
Don’t get involved.
A quick search revealed that that exact combination administered incorrectly could produce all sorts of psychosis symptoms, including auditory hallucinations.
How long had Katarina Dmitrova been taking those drugs?
As long as she’d been hearing her voices?
Who’d been slipping them to her before she’d even arrived here?
Don’t get involved.
I couldn’t save Katarina even if she wanted me to. I couldn’t save anyone, not even myself. I destroyed everything I touched.
I stubbed out my cigarette and turned on my side. A roughly hewn cross was nailed to the wall. It looked just like the one that my first boss had hung over the old TV in his café, the one the whole neighborhood would gather around to watch football on. His altar of choice.
Old Ricardo had been the last well-meaning adult to give my teenage self a lifeline . . . one that I’d promptly dropped. A man like him hadn’t deserved to be associated with someone like me.
Midnight, and I finally finished at the bar where I worked after school every day, or sometimes during if they needed cover.
“Here, take this home with you.” Old Ricardo, the owner, pressed a box full of leftover pastries and paninis into my hands.
“No need,” I muttered, and pushed it away.
Ricardo sighed. “Well, then, it goes to the cats,” he grumbled, opening the box and laying it on the wall outside the bar.
“They need it more.”
I watched as the usual little gaggle of strays made their way eagerly toward the box. Ricardo was softhearted with the animals around this part of town. The weekend would see him setting down bowls of leftover pasta for whichever animals were brave enough to try his wife’s cooking.
“No they don’t, and we both know it.” Ricardo salvaged a panino and wrapped it in a napkin, then tucked it into my pocket—and I let him, because he was right. It just stung to have to take food out of needy animals’ mouths. In the end, I was a stray, just like them.
I shook a cigarette out and lit up, taking a long inhale.
Ricardo locked up the bar and leaned against the wall next to me.
“Basta, boys your age shouldn’t smoke,” he chided, and hit me on the back of the head, even though he had to reach up high to do it. He stole the cigarette from me and put it to his own lips, inhaling deeply.
“And how about bad-tempered old men?” I teased.
He smoked the rest of the cigarette, then ground it out and flicked it away. Cigarettes were foul, but they helped with hunger, and a pack lasted longer than a sandwich would.
“We’re old and on the way out anyway. We’ve got nothing to lose,” Ricardo said.
“That’s not something exclusive to age, you know. Some of us were born that way.”
Ricardo gave me a sideways glance. “And your mother?”
That little reminder felt like a shard of ice piercing my heart. Anger threatened to erupt at his poking such a raw nerve, but it drained away at the kind look on my old boss’s face.
“Exactly. Even if you had something—someone—worth saving, it doesn’t mean that you can. Then you’re lonelier than ever, worse, maybe, than if you’d never known what it was like not to be alone.”
We stood in silence for a beat or two before Ricardo spoke.
“I think that’s the most you’ve ever spoken to me at one time.”
That pulled a chuckle from me. “You sound like my teacher.”
“Ah, Signora Vasco was cursed with you as a student, wasn’t she? Poor soul. She’s aging rapidly, teaching that class.”
“The school year’s almost over. She’ll recover. She’s well-meaning and irritatingly optimistic,” I muttered, and pushed myself off the wall. “We had career day today.”
“Yeah? What did you tell her you wanted to be?”
I grinned at him. “What else? Sicario.”
Ricardo coughed, and I patted him on the back when he didn’t stop.
“Take it easy, I’m not getting paid yet to take you out.”
“Very funny,” he said, wheezing. “You told your teacher during career day that you want to be an assassin?”
“Well, she said to think about your talents . . . so . . .” I sighed and shrugged.
Ricardo shook his head. “If you need help coming up with a list of your talents, I’ll tell you them.
You work the coffee machine like you designed it yourself, you cook well, you clean diligently, you’re always on time.
You respect the customers, you help with the books.
You have a lot of talents, Massimo. A bounty. You’re just not counting those ones.”
“So, I can be a barista the rest of my life with those gifts?” I wondered curtly, flattered by his compliments while knowing they were undeserved, and feeling pissy because of it.
Ricardo shrugged. “I’ve no children. You can take over the bar, and I’ll retire. Problem solved.”
My breath hitched in my chest. I couldn’t turn to look at the old man who had treated me with kindness from the very start, even when I’d fucked up.
Especially when I’d fucked up. In my most selfish heart, I wanted to take him up on that offer.
Become part of his family. Keep the café going and make sure this town would remember him, even when he went .
. . but I couldn’t. I was a person who ruined things.
Everything I touched crumbled to ashes. I didn’t want to be Ricardo’s burden. He didn’t deserve that.
He could tell my answer by my expression. He sighed. “Come to church with me this Sunday, Massimo. It’s not too late—”
I tutted and shook my head at Ricardo. Hope was a dangerous thing. Hope that a soul could change, be redeemed or saved . . . that a life could turn around, could be deadly. I wouldn’t risk Ricardo for an ill-fated shot at changing my life. I knew my worth, and it was lacking.
“You think some man in a costume can save my soul? Cleanse me from my sins? My confession would burn a mere mortal to ash on the spot,” I murmured.
Ricardo held my gaze. He couldn’t understand a life without faith . . . in a greater power, in humanity, not only in others, but in yourself.
“There is no forgiveness for me. I know what I am. I know I’m destined to burn—I do not fear death, or the hell that awaits me. But I will see my vengeance served before I go . . . and then I’ll happily burn.”
Ricardo stared at me for a long moment, like I was the Antichrist, and then crossed himself.
Ouch. If I had a functioning heart, that might have hurt.
“Your mother, God rest her soul, wouldn’t have liked hearing you talk about yourself like that,” he said quietly.
I nodded. “I know, but she’s not here, is she? She’s not here, and I’m just the leftovers.”
Silence fell between us. I wanted to call back my harsh declaration and make Ricardo smile again, but I couldn’t find the words.
Ricardo cleared his throat. “Well, I better get home. The wife worries.”
I reached out and clapped him gently on the shoulder, and to his credit, he didn’t flinch. He was a good man. Better than I’d ever be.
“Go on home to your wife. Cross your chest to ward off evil and throw that salt over your shoulder. Very few people don’t deserve the pit, but you are one of them.”
He hesitated there a second. Usually, he tried to make me come home with him for a hot meal, but not tonight. Probably never again. I didn’t blame him for it.
“You live your good life, keep being kind and generous with strays like me. One day, you’ll keep the heavens godly, and I’ll keep the hell fires burning. Everyone has their place.”
I watched Ricardo leave, calling cats as he went, picking up little pieces of litter from the street and chatting with everyone he came across.
I lit up another cigarette and stared at the Napoli skyline. There was a concert going on at Arena Flegrea, and the orange cast shining over the building made it look like the entire city was burning.
Sicario.
Assassin.
It really did have a nice ring to it.
What would Old Ricardo think of me now, lying here in a cassock? But Old Ricardo had passed years ago, leaving the café to a nephew. Sometimes I thought about how different my life might have been if I’d taken him up on that offer.
I lit another cigarette and stared at the cross.
I guess I’d never know.