Chapter 6 Massimo #2
The hospital she’d been at had sent me her journal and a letter informing me that she and my sibling had died during the birth. One day, I vowed, I’d find everyone responsible for her death and send them to hell. It was the only thing that got me through those early years after her death.
It was like someone had switched the power off on the world, and after that, I only lived in darkness.
For decades I’d lived without a single light in the world and no one who would care if I lived or died.
Before then, I hadn’t known how loneliness could feel like a tattoo across your forehead, setting you apart from the world.
Those were the times when living started to feel like an unnecessary burden. A cruel punishment.
Seeing the pregnant girls walking around the institute here, getting treatment for mental illness, I wondered how many of them would be missed if they disappeared.
They were just like me.
Unwanted.
Unmissed.
Strays. The lot of us.
After the late dinner, I walked the darkened halls back toward my room. The upper floors were quiet except for the occasional shout. Some of the doors I passed had people murmuring in a constant stream behind them. Others were still as the grave.
I strode the halls, casting a long shadow in the moonlight. Dressed in a priest’s robes, I resembled my own worst nightmare.
I was halfway along the high-security corridor when a terrible scream rent the air.
I stopped, surprised by the sudden sound.
It came from a door up ahead on the right. I approached. All the doors had observation panels cut into them with thick shatterproof glass. Slowly, I slid aside the metal flap that hid the glass and peered into the room.
At first glance, I couldn’t quite make out what I was seeing. White sheets and a white nightgown.
Is she floating?
Then she moved, and I saw how it was only a trick of the light. Long hair spread across the pillows, the sheets tangled up around bare legs.
Katarina Dmitrova. Of course it was her. Since our very first encounter, it was like a tether had formed between us. When she’d looked at me outside in the snow and had immediately seen me. The real me. The monster inside. That link was pulling us together, again and again.
“I’ll open the door, Father,” a burly orderly said. “Kat can get a little worked up sometimes and needs to see a familiar face. She just needs to be woken up at night now and again. She’ll be fine once it passes.”
Kat? The orderly’s overfamiliarity annoyed me.
“Leave treating Miss Dmitrova to the professionals,” I ordered, and brushed past him as soon as the door opened. I stepped inside and tossed a glare over my shoulder.
“You can close it up. Lock it.”
“Lock it? But . . . she’s been dangerous in the past to the staff . . .”
“She’s not a danger to me; now hurry up and stop questioning my authority,” I commanded him.
He snapped his lips shut and pulled the heavy metal door shut behind me. It clanged loudly but didn’t seem to snap Katarina out of her nightmare.
Was it a nightmare or a fit? I wasn’t sure as I went to stand over her. She thrashed, the sheets coiling around her straining limbs.
She whispered something in another language over and over again. Was it Russian?
“To? idva.”
Not Russian. Wait, hadn’t Pavol said her friend, Mira, had been Bulgarian?
“To? idva,” Katarina repeated, tearing now at the neck of her nightgown.
I was going to have to wake her up before she hurt herself.
“Katarina, you’re dreaming,” I murmured with a gentleness I hadn’t known I still possessed.
I reached out and touched her feverish-looking skin.
She was burning. Her skin was sinfully smooth.
She was like a perfect marble angel, not meant to be touched or sullied with bloodstained hands.
She twisted from side to side, dragging the neckline of her nightgown down, exposing the slight swell of her breast.
Blood snapped through my veins, surging hot.
Jesus. Maybe I really was a devil. I wanted to touch this woman.
I hadn’t wanted to touch a woman in a long, long time.
It had all grown wearying. Hookups and awkward conversations afterward.
Clinging hands and missed phone calls. Pretending to be normal .
. . I didn’t want anything to do with that. I was done with it.
But Katarina saw me exactly as I was. Somehow, she knew. Her smooth, pale skin called to me, and in that moment, I wanted to mark it with my fingerprints. Make it red with my lips. I wanted to hear her scream my name.
“Sleeping around with married men? I’ve never so much as kissed a man.”
I’d never met such an untouched person. Her soul was squeaky-clean, her body inexperienced, her heart—lonely, just like mine. She couldn’t stay in this place. It would destroy her. She was special. She needed to be protected. Sheltered. Isolated from the real, harsh world.
I can take her with me when I go, a small, devilish voice whispered in my mind. She could be ours. We’ve never had someone to call our own. The devil inside me salivated at the thought.
Ha. And Katarina thought she was crazy.
She had no idea.
No one would miss her. No one would come for her. She’d be all yours.
Putting aside those thoughts, I tugged up her nightgown and covered her chest. Christ, she was rail thin. The girl needed food and sunlight, fresh air. She needed the real world. She was dying without it. She needed someone to take care of her . . . someone to belong to.
“Katarina, wake up, micetta. It’s only a dream.”
I touched her cheek when she failed to rise from the clutches of her nightmare.
Her skin was downy and plush, like the most expensive of fabrics.
She still failed to rise. Was she drugged?
I lowered my hand to her neck and circled it, pressing in just enough to inhibit her breath.
Her pulse surged beneath my fingertips. Life and warmth, right there within reach for once.
What is it like to be so vividly alive? I wondered idly, enjoying the feeling of her slender neck between my fingers.
I sank down on the bed beside her. A moth to her luminous flame.
Then the long dark fans of her eyelashes suddenly lifted, and she was staring right at me.
“To? idva. He’s coming. He’s coming . . .” she whispered feverishly, her eyes wide.
“Who’s coming?” I asked. Was she talking about me? Her Lucifer?
“He’s coming, Mira—he’s here. He’s already here, hide. Hide.” She turned to look at the corner of the room, and her face crumpled.
Ah, so she was still lost in her nightmares. But then, weren’t we all?
Then the tears came, spilling down her cheeks like someone had turned a tap on.
I froze. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. Anger was easy to cope with. Rage, mockery, fear, all of it was simple . . . but this grief?
I was lost.
I began to pull back just as her fingers sank into my cassock and she held me close to her.
“Don’t. Don’t leave me alone.” Her heartbroken whisper was enough to move even the dead lump of stone that lived in my chest, where a heart used to beat.
Her plea stilled me. People routinely begged me for mercy when their fate was already bought and paid for.
I was used to those desperate pleas. But comfort?
No one asked me for comfort. No one felt safer in my presence.
The idea was laughable, and yet, there was a tenacity in Katarina’s fingers in my cassock, holding me near her in a moment I knew I’d never forget.
She sank into my side, sliding down until her head was cushioned on my lap, and then her tears were sinking through me.
I froze; my breath stuck in my chest as she shook with her grief.
Slowly, like she was made of spun sugar, and one wrong touch would dissolve her completely, I rested a hand on top of her head. Her hair was like satin.
She cried, and I bore witness.
She wasn’t alone . . . and for once, neither was I.