Epilogue
Katarina
Spring was blossoming all around us in Naples as we parked the car as close as we could get to the site, and got out to walk.
Fields of poppies and anemones lined the roads. We made our way through twisted olive trees, stepping over the cyclamens growing beneath. A haze had settled over the early-morning ground, as yet undisturbed by the crews of workers who were excavating the site.
Massimo was quiet, and I reached out a hand to lace my fingers through his.
We made our way through the trees that hid the charred remains of Ospedale di Santa Maria from where we’d parked.
Here, the extraction was well underway, with large sections of the ground already dug up. Tents had been erected to sort the uncovered remains.
I walked past a few of them until I felt Massimo’s hand tug me to a stop.
“She’s here, isn’t she?” he murmured, looking across the wreckage of the hospital.
I nodded. “Yeah, I think she is.”
He sighed, his hand tightening on the bunch of snowdrops we’d gone to five different florists to find.
“She’s here,” he said again, mostly to himself.
“And now she’s not alone anymore. None of them are,” I pointed out.
The excavation of Santa Maria had started quickly after the atrocities of Hallow Hall had come to light. Massimo had worked with a detective he’d met after the fire, who’d taken the case and run with it. Thanks to Giada and her sources, it had garnered a lot of attention.
The Church and twisted priests and exiled former doctors, organized crime and an isolated hospital just outside the city . . . it had all the ingredients that the public ate up. They wanted more information. They wanted justice, and the police had no choice but to give it to them.
I got to see firsthand how it was when you had tech skills, power, and money at your disposal to avoid suspicion.
The deaths at Sergei’s mansion were ruled as in-house Mafia fighting.
With so many unidentified bodies to find on the grounds of Hallow Hall, the police couldn’t really afford to care too much about Mafia men killing one another.
Next up, thanks to Massimo and his information from Blackwood’s house, drip-fed to the police to direct the investigation, was the ruin formerly known as Ospedale di Santa Maria.
A river ran through the middle of Santa Maria’s grounds. It was pretty, or it would be, if it weren’t for the charred skeleton of the hospital.
Massimo stopped on the bank, transferring the snowdrops between his hands.
“She’s here . . . all around me.”
I pulled a snowdrop from the bunch and held it in the air.
“In that case, you don’t need to wait to find her bones. We can honor her here. For Sara.”
I dropped the flower into the rushing river and watched it get carried away downstream.
Massimo smiled at me and then followed my example, pulling one snowdrop, and then another, and letting them fall into the water.
His last goodbye. Closure, finally.
Later, we watched as the excavation started up.
“What do you think will happen to this place once everything is over with?” I wondered.
Massimo shrugged. “I don’t know. Salt the earth and move on. It’s a beautiful spot. It’s a shame that the stain of such terrible things will remain here,” he muttered.
“Hmm, it is a shame. I bet you could buy this land for a steal, once everything is said and done and all the investigations are concluded.”
“And do what with it?” Massimo asked.
I thought about it. “Well, the weather is good here, dry and warm. It’s close to the city. What about a cat rescue?” I suggested.
Massimo blinked at me. “A cat rescue?”
“Mm-hmm, for all the little strays.”
“Finding Gravy and bringing him back to our home has really given you a false sense of confidence about how easy it is to look after animals,” Massimo teased.
“Ha, not false confidence . . . just certainty that we could hire the right people to run it.”
Massimo chuckled and shook his head. “I never know what the fuck you’re going to say next.”
I tossed my hair and grinned at him. “Don’t you just love that about me?”
He was still smiling, and now he simply nodded. “Yes. That, and everything else.”
Massimo disappeared as soon as we got back to the hotel, and I had a call from Giada.
“How was it?” she asked immediately. Despite her being half the world away, we talked every day. Even though Sergei had fallen, there were more locations with similar kinds of establishments to Hallow Hall that we didn’t know about yet.
None of us would rest until we found them all.
“Grim, but there’s hope there. Someday, it’ll not be such a dark, depressing place.”
“Good, though speaking of dark depressing places . . . I’ve got something for you.”
She rattled off the address of a place in Palermo.
I immediately thought of Tatiana’s mother.
Tatiana was right now happily in Turin, attending real school for the first time in her life, living in the townhouse with us and Paolo, and a kindly old nanny whom Massimo had brought in, a woman who seemed to think it was her job to spoil Tatiana rotten. I loved her already.
“You want me to forward the information to the cops?”
“Hmm, not yet, I think.”
I turned to look at Massimo, who’d just appeared in the bedroom doorway of the beautiful suite we were staying in. Fuck the cops. They could clean up the sites and figure out who had died and trace their families, but I didn’t trust them for more than that.
“Ok, shall I give it some time . . . say a few weeks? It would be sad if anything terrible happened to the folks in charge there.”
“Yeah, it would be such a shame,” I agreed, a wicked smile curving my lips as I looked at my husband.
I said goodbye to Giada and hung up.
Massimo approached me. I could hear the thundering sound of the bath running in the other room. The man loved to fuck in the tub.
“Who was that?”
“Our IT specialist. She has a location for us to visit . . . our second honeymoon stop point,” I said with a grin.
“Hmm, why do I think this one never made it onto any top-ten destination lists for honeymoon ideas?”
“Let’s just say it’s specific to us,” I murmured. I leaned up and threaded my arms around his neck. “Would you go to another Hallow Hall with me?”
“In a heartbeat,” he answered immediately.
“Would you hurt someone for me?”
“Without question.”
“Kill for me?” I added.
“Just tell me who, angel. You’re my conscience. I kill on your command.” He leaned down and grabbed my ass, hauling me closer.
“Good to know. So . . . you want to make a deal with me?” I teased.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to make deals with devils?” he said back, picking me up and carrying me toward the bathroom.
I nodded solemnly. “Yes . . . so I only make an exception for one. My own personal devil.”
“Good,” Massimo growled. “Don’t go making me jealous. You’re my wife. If someone needs killing, I’ll do it. Now, let’s seal this deal the old-fashioned way,” he said, and put me down next to the bath. It was a huge soaker tub and was already steaming.
“With a kiss?” I asked with mock innocence.
Massimo laughed. “A kiss? Those babies aren’t going to make themselves, micetta. Strip, wife. The water’s waiting.”
And so I did.
There was nothing I wouldn’t do for my husband, the killer, the soldier, the sinner.
God’s favorite monster.
Thank you so much for reading Katarina and Massimo’s story!