Chapter 6 Massimo
MASSIMO
“And when can we expect Father Vargas?” I asked Pavol.
We were eating dinner in the private dining room exclusively reserved for the three men who ruled over the institute in their holy robes, the ones Katarina called the unholy trinity. An opulent, dark-paneled room with velvet chairs and polished silver.
The Church wasn’t paying for this place; I’d stake my reputation on it. In fact, I was a little unclear on how much the real Church knew about Hallow Hall. It was an interesting discovery.
“He has to show the director around. Benedict likes to make sure that the grounds are up to scratch and that our more colorful patients are safe and sound and in solitary.” Pavol belched discreetly. I’d been topping his glass up continually, and it seemed like it was finally having an effect.
“Despite its appearance, Hallow Hall turns quite the tidy profit. It benefits all parties—the shareholders make money, and Vargas, Benedict, and I get to continue our work, as you know . . .”
“And the patients?” I mocked gently, but he was too far gone to notice.
“They are saved, or at least become useful for something, instead of being out there in the world sinning.” He hiccupped and stood, off to search for water.
Father Benedict hadn’t made it for dinner. The laxative I’d slipped into his coffee this afternoon had continued to take its toll on his colon. What a pity.
I sipped my red wine, noting it was an exquisite vintage. Yes, the unholy trinity of Hallow Hall wasn’t exactly on a strict budget.
I let my mind wander over the day. Killing time here until Vargas showed up was irritating, but I’d already ascertained that getting to him anywhere else would be near impossible.
I was impatient to be gone, though, given the information I’d uncovered only a few weeks ago.
When I’d gotten out of the Col Moschin, the Italian Special Forces, I’d started to poke into my mother’s past. I had found out where she’d worked, but figuring out who had been in management at the time had been a challenge.
I’d hit a dead end with the search until an old friend found a lead.
Fabi Carrozza . . . the now-dead millionaire who had knocked my mother up and sent her away.
But he’d fucking died without giving me the name of the place he’d sent her.
I needed to start working my way through his list of coworkers and acquaintances to see if anyone remembered more than him.
Maybe he’d had an assistant who had handled the admission paperwork or something.
I’d taken one step forward and two steps back and burned with the need to continue my search, but I was here, working.
Haunting the halls of this cursed place, waiting for my fucking target to appear.
Haunting the halls and watching her.
Katarina Dmitrova.
Just the thought of her sent a flurry of heat and curiosity charging through me.
Earlier, I’d nearly gotten carried away in Benedict’s office.
She was afraid of me but fearless at the same time.
Perfectly sane and sweetly crazy all at once.
Blessed by angels and talking to devils.
I couldn’t understand her, but it was clear that she was being mistreated here at Hallow Hall.
Yet, if you read her file, she was the one who had drawn blood, the one who was violent and unpredictable.
Interesting. I hadn’t met anyone interesting in a long, long time.
More than anything, she reminded me of my mother. A woman the world had turned their backs on. Was there anyone looking for Katarina? Would anyone miss her when she was gone?
I mused over those questions as Pavol made his way back to the table and sat heavily. I raised an eyebrow at him, taking in how much time had passed.
He was flushed.
“Apologies for keeping you. A patient was having some problems sleeping. She needed . . . tucking in.” He chuckled, his beady eyes darting about. His whole face was as pink as the ham we’d just eaten.
A dark feeling spread through me.
“Which patient?” I curled my fingers around the knife beside my plate. I could already imagine driving it through his fleshy neck. The white tablecloth would be so pretty sprayed with his arterial blood.
“No one you know,” he assured me. “You’ve only met Katarina so far, haven’t you? She’s a special case. Not to be touched. The director’s pet.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering what the hell that meant.
Pavol sighed and leaned back, a smile playing around his lips. What the fuck had he done in the twenty minutes he’d been gone?
Kill the fucker. Make him bleed. I could cut his balls off and feed them to him before he passed . . . some alternative therapy for him to choke on.
But then Father Vargas would never schedule his visit, and I’d never leave this place. I had a job to do, and that had to come first. Always.
“She’s a special case,” he said again. “Honestly, she might have been released a long time ago if not for the incident with her friend.”
I thought for a moment and took a leap. “Mira?”
Pavol blinked at me. “She told you about Mira? She needs her medication adjusted, then. She’s not meant to remember anything about all that.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, nothing new. Mira was a street kid, some other poor Bulgarian rat who Katarina became friends with here. She was pregnant, at sixteen, no less. Just street trash. She ended up here instead of on the streets, a lucky break for a girl like that.”
I watched him speak, letting my anger curl around me like smoke, savoring it. I couldn’t act now. I would act later. This man wasn’t leaving here alive, I decided.
“And?”
“And she didn’t appreciate what she’d been given,” Pavol said, touching his cheek in a way I was certain was subconscious. He had a thin scar there. So Mira had gotten him somehow. Good.
“She was in solitary when the baby came. She had a rough birth; she and the baby both passed.”
I was watching Pavol’s eyes at the moment he lied. He was a piss-poor liar. His eyes glided to the side, gaze fixing somewhere in the distance.
“Katarina took it hard, I guess. She blamed the staff and the doctors here. She didn’t understand that accidents sometimes happen.”
“Of course, you seem to have a disproportionally high number of pregnant patients.” You could hardly ignore the number of young women, some little more than girls, who were clearly expecting.
Pavol shrugged. “A lot of fallen women come to the Church for aid when they have nowhere else to go.”
I nodded. “But this isn’t the Church. It’s a private enterprise, isn’t it?”
Pavol’s jovial expression dropped as my words sank in, but I plastered a smile on my face, trying to seem as nonthreatening as possible.
It worked somewhat, but I’d still made him nervous.
“Still, it must be such a comfort to the community to have a place people can go if they find themselves in trying times,” I added to smooth his ruffled feathers.
He nodded vigorously. “Exactly! It’s not like we’re encouraging them to have relations outside of wedlock. We just help clean up the consequences.”
Clean up the consequences. There was something utterly distasteful about that phrasing.
I nodded. “Bless you, Father, and everyone at Hallow Hall. May you reap all the consequences of your hard efforts.”
I stood on the crumbling balcony outside the dining room and smoked.
Pavol had disappeared again, and Benedict was still on the john, probably.
The night was sharp. Snow blanketed the trees and grounds.
Spring should be coming soon, but this close to the mountains, you never really knew when it would arrive.
Torino was a majestic city. The weather here was nothing like the weather where I’d grown up in Naples.
Thinking about the pregnant patients brought thoughts of my mother to the surface. A subject I rarely let myself dwell on. But here, in Hallow Hall, it struck too close to the bone.
My mother’s descent into madness started when she’d gotten a job at a steel plant in a town outside of Naples.
For a while, things had been good. My mother had always been religious, pious, and God-fearing.
She’d prayed every day, never missed church, and whenever she looked at me, for a bright and shining moment, I thought that maybe I could be good, too.
Then she’d gotten pregnant. My father was long gone, having died abroad in the military.
My mother hadn’t dated; it just wasn’t even a possibility.
She’d gone to church, worked, and cared for me.
That had been her life, and she’d never once complained about it.
Then the pregnancy. After that, people started to see her differently, and me by extension.
I was no longer a war hero’s son but the son of a whore.
They turned away from her at church and ignored her conversation in the street.
Silently, as a whole, the entire community had turned their back on her. She soon had only me.
No matter how many times I’d asked her, she wouldn’t tell me who the father was.
She’d only told me it was her shame and she’d bear it alone.
Regardless, the pressure got to me. I’d started to get into fights and learned how to inflict damage quickly to even the score.
I’d started to skip school to avoid those fights, and then got arrested.
Slowly, my life slid off-kilter.
The owner of the steel mill, that rotten prick Fabio, had her institutionalized when she’d tried to take her own life at work one day .
. . Well, that was his story, anyway. I didn’t believe it.
I hadn’t believed it at thirteen when it had happened and overnight I was shipped off to live with my aunt and uncle, and I didn’t believe it now, decades after her death.