37. Isabella
CHAPTER 37
Isabella
I was curled up in a ball on the couch in the living room, staring at the TV without actually watching it. When I got home, I thought to check on Gemma, but then changed my mind. I didn’t think I could stand to be glared at while I was trying to cobble together a simple conversation. Instead, I sat down on the couch and hadn’t moved since. I wasn’t sure if Lorenzo came home or not; he hadn’t bothered to come look for me if he did.
Cristian, still dressed in pajamas despite it being closer to noon now, came into the room and dropped onto the other side of the couch. His eyes were on the screen, but he wasn’t watching it any more than I was. We sat, saying nothing, as the tension built and built between us. I haven’t seen him since I apologized for hitting him with the lamp , I thought.
I glanced at him and felt that flicker of anger melt away. Cristian was older than me by almost a decade, but he looked incredibly young sitting beside me. Young and lost. “Lorenzo told me what happened.” More like, he accused me of being at fault for what happened, but I wasn’t going to tell Cristian about that.
He didn’t look my way, but his jaw went tight. “Uh huh.”
More silence between us. Maybe I should just leave him alone? But, again, that lost look on his face kept me pinned to my seat. I had been failing miserably trying to help Gemma. No matter what I did or said, she refused to listen to me, refused to talk to me. Maybe I could be of more help to him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Cristian sucked in a deep breath through his nose and let it out of his mouth slowly. “I’d rather pull out my own eyetooth and show it to you.”
The baby thrashed in my belly, as if it could sense my growing anxiety, and I cupped my bump on instinct, rubbing gently to soothe the squirming. “That’s fair,” I said.
There was another stretch of quiet. “I am grateful to you though,” he said, almost whispering.
“Grateful?”
He hummed an affirmative in answer. When he didn’t explain what he meant, I knew that he didn’t want me to ask, but I couldn’t help it. “What for?”
“Without you, I wouldn’t have questioned anything,” he said. The moment the words were out of his mouth, it was like the floodgates cracked open. He turned to me, eyes wide and desperate. “Father David was an exemplary priest. He was kind, and he worked to build a strong community. But his calling didn’t stop him from doing horrible things to others to serve his own end.”
I swallowed down the taste of bile. “Good men do terrible things sometimes.”
Cristian shook his head. “Father David wasn’t a good man. He was a selfish coward who liked young boys.”
“Teens,” I corrected thoughtlessly.
He stared at me, completely dumbfounded. “How did you know that?”
“When Lorenzo took him down to the basement, I went with them.”
“He let you watch?” I couldn’t tell if Cristian was sickened at the idea, or envious.
“I insisted.”
Somehow, his gaze became even more intense. “I can’t tell if my brother is corrupting you, or if he finally found his perfect match.” His words were not a compliment.
“So, Father David wasn’t a good man,” I said, “but does one bad person who was able to hide the worst of himself behind piety make the whole system bad? Maybe you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater here.”
A strange, sick look passed over his face. “The other man who attacked you was also a priest.”
My stomach was going to turn itself inside out at this point. “What?” I remembered Lorenzo trying to extract that information out of Father David, but he’d said over and over that he didn’t know the man. “Father David said that he didn’t know him. He was just another low-level thug.”
“He lied.”
“To what end?” I asked, although I didn’t expect any sort of answer. “Is he actually dead? Father David said he performed the Last Rites.”
“He committed suicide.”
“Wouldn’t that mean that there would be no funeral for him? I didn’t think that was allowed.”
Cristian looked like he was in agony. “Before he killed himself, he wrote out his confession. It detailed what they did to you, and he named Father David as his accomplice. I found it in his personal desk when I was trying to pack things up for donations.”
“How did Father David get a hold of it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Either the priest sent a copy to Father David, or a Church official found it after the man killed himself and sent it to Father David instead of turning him in.”
The prospect of that was unsettling. “Why would the Church help him cover up something like that?”
Cristian opened his empty palms in a helpless gesture. “The Church has a dark history of smoothing things over for badly behaving priests. Father David was likely on the road to being transferred to another parish.” His lips twisted into a sneer. “Even so, I never imagined that I would meet a priest like that. I thought it was a bogeyman story, you know? But this has been haunting me for weeks,” he said. “I walked away when I realized that if I couldn’t tell good men from bad ones, then I might as well be with my family. The Cosa Nostra is full of men who couldn’t be called good, but they aren’t hiding that fact from anyone.”
He probably would hate it if I tried, but there was a part of me that wanted to pull him into a hug. It had to be so difficult to question everything that he had ever learned and all the people around him that he cared about.
There was also the niggling feeling that someone had confessed to almost killing me, and instead of punishing the man responsible, the Church covered it up. I rubbed my belly again, soothing myself now, but my skin felt tight, like it didn’t fit me all of a sudden. I was angry and horrified and had nowhere to put it all.
That thought brought me pause. Was this what Lorenzo was feeling right now? Anger that he had no place to funnel it toward. My fiancé was a doer. When one of his people was hurt, he wanted to fix it. Fight the monsters, get revenge. But mine and Cristian’s monsters were dead, so there was nothing to do. We simply had to get over it.
But that was nearly impossible. So what were either of us meant to do with this crawling feeling beneath our skin?
I pushed myself to my feet. “Is Lorenzo in the house?”
Cristian nodded. “He’s been in his office for hours. I think he’s been in meetings since he came back from breakfast.”
“Okay.” I could handle it if he had locked himself in his office for a meeting. Although Amalia would forever be one of Lorenzo’s people, she was also my friend, and she didn’t like it when anyone fought. I could count on her to get me the skeleton key. If it even came to that. I paused before I left the room. “You can always come to me if you need to chat,” I said. He nodded, giving me a stilted smile, but I didn’t let it go. “I know people who say that to be nice, but seriously, I’m here.”
His smile became a little warmer, more genuine. “Thank you, piccolina .”
I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I haven’t done anything yet,” I said. “Save your ‘thank yous’ for when I’ve done more than just offer my ear.”
I went up to Lorenzo’s office. The door was, in fact, locked. I rapped my knuckles against the hard wood. “Let me in,” I called.
There was no answer.
“I want you to punish me.”
There was movement, and then quick footsteps. I counted them until the door swung open. Lorenzo crossed his arms over his chest, looming over me from the doorjamb. My heart kicked in my ribs, and warmth flooded through me.
Behind him, Damian and Carmine were seated in front of his desk. I made eye contact with Damian. “Both of you get the fuck out.”
Carmine frowned, but Damian stood and dragged the older man after him. Lorenzo didn’t so much as glance their way as they passed on the way out.
Instead, his eyes were all on me. “Repeat what you said,” he demanded.
“Punish me,” I said dutifully.