14. Carina
CHAPTER 14
Carina
I wish I could say that I didn’t get an ounce of shut eye. But as soon as my head hit the satin pillowcase I was out like a light. My slumber was deep. And it pains me to admit, but it was the most peaceful night of sleep I have had in over ten years.
It has me questioning, how does one sleep peacefully when the Devil’s chambers are around the corner?
And there’s a small voice inside my head, the one I don’t wish to be true, that says Constantine Donati may be the Devil to everyone else, but he isn’t the Devil to me.
The most damning part of it all, I find myself hoping it to be true.
Infuriated with myself I leave the bedroom, refusing to call it my own, and head out to explore what Constantine calls home.
Foregoing shoes my bare feet hit the cold marble floors with a soft thud. Holding the emerald silk robe closed, although it is already tied at the waist, my eyes take in everything before me.
His walls are painted a soft grey, so soft in fact they almost appear to be white. It creates a great contrast with the dark brown marble floors. Along the walls of the hall of the third floor, in which our rooms reside, several art pieces are hung on the wall, followed by pictures of himself with his family.
I shouldn’t be interested. I shouldn’t care. And yet I find myself more intrigued by the family portraits than the famous paintings.
As I stand before one portrait a deep ache flares inside my chest. And I realize as my mouth parts and a small whimper of pain releases I know what it is I’m feeling. Longing. Bittersweet aching longing.
In the portrait Constantine stands as a young boy between his mamma and papa. Even then, photographs have done him no justice. He’s nothing compared to the real thing, seen in actual flesh. His whisky eyes are soft and loving as he stares up at his mamma. His smile burns brighter than the sun. This is an angel before he had fallen. A boy before he became a man.
But it isn’t the vulnerability I see in Constantine, nor is it the love I see him wearing so proudly, that has me feeling longing.
It’s the way his papa and mamma are mirroring the same look back at him. Their smiles just as radiant. Their eyes pouring with love. The embrace of a mother’s warmth and the affection of a father’s touch.
I long to have what this young boy did.
I long to have a mamma who embraced me rather than shield me because of fear.
I long to have a papa who adored me rather than abused me.
I long. I long. I long.
My hand outstretches and my finger trembles as I go to trace the smile on each of their faces. But I snatch my hand away, as if I’ve been burned, when I realize what I’m doing. What I’m feeling.
If I am to live here, I can not, and I will not, allow Constantine to affect me anymore than he already has.
Stealing my spine I carry myself away from the portrait, fighting the urge to give a second glance, swallowing back the tears that threatened to come.
Descending the staircase I keep my gaze ahead. I allow my eyes to wander but never behind me.
His home is such a drastic contrast from papa’s. Perhaps because papa’s never once felt like a home, even when he had controlled the lens.
Papa had surrounded himself around his wealth. Displaying his greed with pride and yet always hungry for more.
And while you can see the luxurious life Constantine lives, his home is approachable.
His home, for the time being, doesn’t feel like a gilded cage.
I stand beneath the skylight, feeling the rays of the sun against my sinner’s skin hoping it will reach deep enough to cleanse my soul.
And I release a melancholic sigh knowing it never will.
Being burned by the light I try to seek comfort elsewhere.
But I come to a halt when I find a man who is a stranger standing before me in the living room, openly staring.
For it isn’t his regal looks that warrants a pause. The aristocratic nose and perfectly wavy chestnut hair. A face carved by Michaelangelo himself. It’s his eyes. Unfathomable as the depths of the ocean and as blue as its waters. If eyes are the windows to the soul this man before me has none.
Uneasiness unfurls in my stomach, causing me to take a step back of precaution.
The man stares at me blankly. And it’s downright unnerving.
His hollow eyes don’t leave mine as he says in a voice just as empty as his eyes, “Carina, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rico.”
I blink back at him, my hand flexing around the small opening of the satin robe. His eyes immediately follow the action. I wait for the lust to enter his eyes, even a flash of hunger from seeing the hints of ample flesh, but no. His eyes are just as vacant as before.
His eyes return back to mine and instead of trepidation from the emptiness I oddly find comfort. My shoulders ease as my hand rests at my side.
Seeing this change he states bluntly, “You don’t see me as a threat.”
Sensing he appreciates honesty I reply back, “No.”
Testing he takes a step towards me, and when he sees that I have no intentions of retreating he keeps his steps towards me until there is a healthy distance between us both.
Constantine Donati is known as The Devil of the East Coast, this man before me should be known as the Grim Reaper. A man who has no qualms with taking souls.
“As long as you don’t betray Constantine I will never be a threat to you.” He isn’t threatening me, not in his tone nor in his words. He’s merely stating a fact. Promising my death as easily as one promises a child a piece of candy.
Truth be told I have no intentions on becoming a threat to a man like Constantine. I do, however, have every intention of not being consumed by him. Which is proving to be more difficult with each moment we find with one another.
I wish I could kill my curiosity about him. My fascination and painful attraction. But the man is a magnet, I can’t help but be drawn to him.
And I loathe him and myself because of it.
“Where is he?” And I loathe myself even more for asking of him.
“Tending business,” Rico answers vaguely. I don’t expect him to give me the details of Constantine’s business affairs. It would be a conflict of interest. And after all, when is a woman an integral part of the business in the mafia? “He’s expected to return in time for dinner.”
I had almost forgotten about that. How he had ordered me to dinners with him for the remainder of my stay here.
And I’m expected to obey without question, without resolve.
Again, men confuse me for the wrong type of bitch.
And if I am the Queen he proclaims me to be I answer to no one, even thy King himself.
What was it that Constantine had said to me at Saint Peter’s Cemetery at mamma’s grave? A Queen demands respect. You can’t expect people to treat you like royalty when you pose as a doormat.
No truer words have ever been spoken. And I’ll see how true they are when I deny his order at dinner tonight.
Let’s see the respect I am given then.
“How are your wounds?” Rico asks and there’s not an ounce of care or worry in his tone nor his expression.
I raise a cool brow. Bravely I ask, “Do you even care?”
His face remains perfectly stoic. A blank canvas an artist would love to create. “No,” he responds flatly.
“Then why ask?”
“Because I’m told it’s polite,” he answers, which only sparks more questions.
“Are you capable of being polite?”
“I’m not capable of any human emotion, Carina. But when Constantine gives me an order to be polite to his future Queen I do my best portrayal of what I perceive politeness to be.” After my re-birth I had always thought that I was dead. My humanity was stripped from me, my innocent blood shed until I was dry, and I believed I wasn’t capable of feeling anymore. But that isn’t the truth. How can it be when Constantine, the man who forced me to become a pawn on papa and Luca’s chess boards, is making me feel little by little every time I’m with him. And even when he’s not near I still can’t help but think about him.
The man who had a hand in killing me is bringing me back to life.
And yet here’s a man who truly doesn’t feel. I see it to be true because it’s in his eyes. His mannerisms. The way he talks and the constant bored expression on his face.
Life seems dull to him. Everything does.
And for a moment, albeit a small one, a twinge of sorrow passes through me.
“I would prefer it if you didn’t pretend,” I tell him.
“Pretend,” he repeats in that same monotonous tone that I’ve adopted the past couple of months. Whereas this is natural to him.
“You aren’t capable of human emotion and I imagine it must be exhausting to portray yourself as someone you’re not. If you don’t pretend with Constantine,” I allow myself to say his name because I know he isn’t here. And a certain thrill goes through me as I do. A bubble of excitement. A tingle of pleasure. I really do loathe him, I do. I then continue, “and you don’t pretend with anyone else I wish to be no different.”
He stares at me for a moment. Although his eyes may appear to be blank I can practically feel him assessing me. As if I’m a code he’s trying to crack. Finally, he nods his head and I release a breath. “I thought you didn’t feel threatened by me,” he states rather than asks.
“I don’t.”
He tilts his head to the side, probably a habit he’s adopted from Constantine when engaging in conversation. “And yet you released a breath of relief after giving me an order.”
I swallow.
He was assessing me.
“I didn’t know how you would respond,” I told him honestly.
“When giving an order you shouldn’t fear how I will respond, or how anyone responds,” he says bluntly. “Fear can be a tool, Carina, but in order for it to be used to your advantage you must not feel it, you must instill it.”
I blink wide eyes at him. “You want to fear me?”
His face remains blank. “I’m incapable of fearing you. But you, Carina, you should be feared. If the men in our world smell it off of you they will never respect you, nor will they tolerate you. You will forever remain prey.”
“I’ve never had the luxury of the choice to become anything other than a pawn. Women will always be prey in this world.” There’s a bite in my tone. Defensive. I’m being defensive. Rico has verbally backed me into a corner, opening my insecurities and now the wound is festering.
“A very misogynistic way of thinking, don’t you agree?”
“How is it when it’s fact,” I reply harshly. Men will never know the obstacles and trials women face in this life. They will never be able to understand what it is like to be us. To be denied at every turn. To have to fight ten times harder. To have to prove your worth. To climb the highest of mountains only to still be seen as inferior.
Women have always been viewed as the weaker sex. All because men have easily wounded pride.
“Everyone waits for a choice so they have something to blame if they fail,” he says. “If you want something, Carina, you take it.”
“It’s not that simple.” And it’s immoral. And I swore to myself I would never become like my papa. I would never become like Luca. Men who take without remorse. Men who take from those who aren’t willing to give.
“Except it is. You have much to learn.”
My nose scrunches as my lips twist with disgust. “I don’t wish to learn. I have no desire to become like any of you.”
He cocks his head to the side once again. His fake mannerisms are more unnerving than his stillness. “You need to change your perspective, Carina. Or else you’ll never survive in this world.”
I jut my chin out like an insolent child. “And what is that?”
“Good and evil. Right and wrong. Black and white. There is much more to this world than separating it in two parts.”
“And how would you know?” I insist. “You can’t even feel.”
“No, I can’t,” he agrees. “But I do know fact. And the fact of the matter is, Carina, the world and the beings that inhabit it are far more complex than that. And that includes you.”
But I can’t accept that to be true. I’m too far gone. Lost in the dark abyss without the chance of seeing a flicker of light. Any goodness I had died that fateful night. I was once innocent but that innocence has been paid with in blood.
There is no light inside me. There is no good.
And even if I had the flicker of light inside me that Father Frank believes all of us to have, aren’t I just snuffing it out with my damning infatuation of the Devil himself?
But I’m only lying to myself. I know this to be true.
Because the Devil himself, Constantine Donati, the man of sin and temptation, the King of the Underworld, the man who thrives in darkness, has brought me glimpses of the light I thought I would never see again.
He’s a man known to be evil and yet he shines his flicker of light upon me. He bestows upon me his goodness.
It’s the Catholic guilt I had instilled in me by mamma, I know it is. It’s the Catholic guilt that has me believing I don’t deserve it.
Not after what I have done to Elio.
Not after killing the girl my mamma adored.
I allowed The City of Death in my veins.
Became corrupted just like papa and Luca.
God forgive me, I’ve tasted the barest hints of sin in the name of a man and I crave for more.
I hate that I do.
I hate that I want him just as much as I despise him.
And yet I’ve never felt more alive. My body has never responded to anyone like it has with him.
And in my black beating heart I know it never will with anyone else.
Him and I are tethered to one another.
Heaven and Hell couldn’t separate us.
I know this. I do.
But I fight it at every turn.
I resist him at every whim.
I deny us again and again because damn him, he’s right.
I am afraid of the darkness I possess.
I’m terrified of the person I’ll become.
One who dances with the devil and not only enjoys it, but falls in love with him with every step.