16. Carina
CHAPTER 16
Carina
I ’ve accepted the hand of the devil and I can’t help but feel alive. It feels as if currents of electricity are humming beneath my skin. The pounding of my heart crashing against my ribs, wanting to break free.
There’s a dangerous thrill.
A thrill in taking his hand, a hand that fits so perfectly in mine, filling the missing piece, that leads me to darkness.
And as much as I want to fight it, fight him, myself, I find myself giving in.
There’s a sweet intoxication I can’t deny. And I am afraid one day I will no longer be able to resist it.
For tonight, just one night, I’ll allow myself a taste.
But even I know all it takes is one taste.
All it took Eve was one bite from the forbidden fruit.
Will my fate be the same?
We enter the dining room, a feast before us.
My mouth salivates at the sight as the aroma of the delicious food assaults my nostrils.
Constantine, appearing as a gentleman, guides me to my seat, pulls out my chair and tucks me in.
His touch lingers against my skin as he walks away from me to occupy his own seat. To my own surprise he doesn’t take the seat at the head of the table. I’ve never known a man who is in charge not to take the head of the table. Papa had always insisted his seat at the head and if anyone dared sat in it their own head would be upon the table.
With our seating arrangement, with Constantine sitting to my left, I am at the head of the table.
I don’t know how that makes me feel. I’d rather not dwell on it, but I do feel a sense of power. A sense of rightness in sitting here. Because in our world it isn’t just a seat. In our world it’s more.
And I have the most powerful man who has given that to me.
The thrill returns.
And god help me, it’s addicting.
Feeling alive in ways I’ve never imagined possible I don’t allow the guilt to register. Not tonight. Instead I bring my attention to the dish placed before me.
More emotions crash and tumble inside of me like a catastrophic wave.
Before me is a well known Italian dish in Florence. Bistecca alla Fiorentina.
Tears burn at the back of my eyes. My throat constricts as my chest feels overwhelmingly heavy.
The night my mamma committed suicide was the last time I had this dish.
It was her favorite. A Florence tradition to share the meal, one my papa loathed. Luca in turn shared his resentment with the tradition while Elio and I indulged her.
Maybe she knew then, while she was preparing the meal, that it was going to be her last. Maybe she wanted one last time for us to share as a family. A family we hadn’t been since we moved to the city of New York. The City of Death. At that point papa was done pretending to be the family man he appeared to be in Italy.
Dante to her Beatrice he was no more.
My heart, the black and damaged organ, still aches for my mamma.
I hope her god forgives her for committing the ultimate sin.
In the dead of night, when the silence proves to be too loud, I wonder if my mamma with her Catholic beliefs forgives herself. I wonder if she believed so strongly why would she damn herself to Hell?
Her suicide in itself was out of character. It stood no bearings in her morals, her religion. But perhaps papa had finally broken her. Callously, he tore off her halo and destroyed her wings.
He had a hand in her death, even if he wasn’t the one who forced her to swallow the pills.
And now I feel as if I have a handful of pills trying to force themselves down my throat.
“I had Lucio prepare this meal because I thought it would please you,” I hear Constantine say in a surprisingly soft voice, “but if it offends you I can prepare something else entirely.”
My eyes finally tear themselves away from the dish and the memories to him. His gaze lies on my face expectantly, waiting for my command. But in his eyes I can see he’s trying to search for the answers. Constantine will always be a perceptive man. It’s how he’s acclaimed to such mass success.
It’s a terrifying thing, and yet freeing, to know I can never hide from him. To be seen.
“You cook?”
“You sound surprised.”
I glance down at his hands. Hands capable of killing, hands that have killed, and then imagine those same hands preparing a meal. And I don’t know what it is, but imagining Constantine doing anything domestic seems out of place.
I voice my truth. “I can’t imagine you in the kitchen.”
A ghost of a smile appears on his face. Eyes light with amusement. He really is a beautiful man. It’s pathetic how easily he can awaken me. Desire simmers in my blood.
And I want to hate him. I want to hate him for awakening me, but how can I when it feels this good?
“Tell me,” he drops his voice, “what do you imagine me doing?”
With that voice? Only dark and sinful acts.
Instead, I say, “Nothing domestic.”
He chuckles and it warms that damn organ inside my chest I thought to be dead. “I may be The Devil of The East Coast,” he says his infamous title with little care, as if it means nothing to him, “but I am still a man.”
“A man who can have people at his service for his every whim,” I counter. I know men of lesser stature who do such. Counting my own papa. You wouldn’t dare catch him preparing a meal, let alone fetching his own drink. Giuseppe serves him day and night with his countless other staff.
I let my mind for the briefest of moments wonder how Giuseppe is handling my absence.
He and Gino were the only ones who had shown affection towards me. The only ones who cared.
“I can,” he agrees easily. “But I value my privacy. And despite what you may think, Carina, I’m not a shallow man. Callous, to the people who I need to be to, but never shallow.”
There he goes again, evoking the questions of one’s morality. Of one’s goodness. Of how one can possess light when they are known for darkness.
And if he can, can I?
“Are you trying to convince me you’re a good man?”
He laughs and the sound, much to my dismay and utter disbelief, warms my chest. “No. I’m not a saint, Carina. Never claimed myself to be.”
“No,” I agree with him, then point out, “You claim yourself to be The Devil.”
“Tell me, what knowledge do you have of your Catholic religion?”
Despite the delicious food before me I’ve suddenly no appetite. I counter, “Aren’t talks of religion inappropriate?”
He counters back with a brow arched and a smirk from the Devil himself, “Have I ever been concerned with what’s appropriate?” His eyes stay steady on mine, studying me. I feel as if I’m a caught butterfly and he’s about to pull my wings apart. “Tell me,” he demands softly.
I swallow as memories of my late mamma come to the surface. She was the only one in our family who took the Catholic religion seriously. She worshipped her God, and in turn he never saved her from the evil she fell in love with.
“Why am I being tested on a religion I hardly practice?”
His lips twitch. “Because I’m curious to know if you truly believe The Devil, Lucifer Morningstar, is evil, or if the church corrupted your mind into believing so.”
Only the Devil would suggest such a thing.
“Are you trying to convince me The Devil as we know it, as we all know it, isn’t evil?”
“I’m not trying to convince you of anything, Carina. Free will. It’s what Lucifer believed in. It’s what got him banished from Heaven. Free will. What all humans have.”
“Lucifer had started a war against God,” I challenge.
“Because he was executing his free will. And because of it, because God was challenged, Lucifer was banished.”
I remain silent. I remain silent and Constantine’s eyes glow with victory.
I think of Elio. Of how he had started a war against papa. And because he challenged him, because he executed his own free will, it led him to death. Elio was killed by the orders of papa, his own God he had worshipped.
And I brought death to him.
All because of the fear of free will.
“You see it, don’t you?” Constantine pushes, as he always does. Testing my morality. Questioning my beliefs. “God himself isn’t even good, Carina. He killed an entire race. Committed adultery when he forced himself upon a woman who was married and got her pregnant. He encourages cheating and at points rape. And he will only accept you if you accept him as the one and only true God. Tell me, how many prayers has he left unanswered?” He pauses for effect and I can’t help but think of my mamma. She prayed endlessly and not one was called upon. “How many innocents has he failed? Now you tell me, Carina, is the Devil, Lucifer Morningstar, the angel God himself loved the most before he casted him aside, is he the evil one?”
My lungs feel as if they are submerged underwater. There’s a grasp on my throat denying air.
The truth in his words strike me like a viper.
My hand flexes against my throat and with a tightness in my chest I don’t recognize and pleading in my once vacant eyes I ask him in a strained voice, “Why are you doing this?”
In his eyes I see he takes no satisfaction in my anguish. There’s a tinge of sorrow there. For what, I have not a clue, but it’s there all the same.
“Evil is all about perception, Carina. The Devil you once knew you now sympathize. You see his goodness. And I wonder, if you perceive yourself differently, would you sympathize with yourself? Would you see your goodness?”
I swallow thickly, tears burning the backs of my eyes. “You’re wrong.” All the goodness I had died along with my brother.
“Am I wrong?” He challenges, his voice bolder, harsher. “Or are you continuing to pretend to be blind to the truth?”
My hands form in fists on the table. Ever so perspective his whisky colored eyes draw to the sight. They focus on them. Focus on how my knuckles are turning white from the pressure. Focus on how my nails are digging into my palms, breaking skin and dropping blood.
A reaction he evoked.
A reaction that makes me hate myself more than I did yesterday.
A reaction that makes me loathe him more than any man I know.
Because a reaction, a reaction proves how very much alive I am.
And he’s the only one.
The irony of it all. The man who damned my soul is the very same man trying to convince me I hold the light that he snuffed out.
And I become frustrated. My blood seething with anger. Body vibrating with a dangerous fury. My eyes, so very much alive, glare at him. And he has the audacity to smirk. “What truth am I blind to, Signore? My eyes are wide open.”
“Are they?” He persists and I have to bite down on my tongue to not lash at him. “You’re continuing to hold the wrong people responsible, mia leonessa .”
I spit, “Quit calling me that.”
“You hold me responsible for a crime I haven’t committed. You’re a loaded gun, Carina, ready to pull the trigger. But you need to hold your gun at the people responsible,” he warns me.
“And what makes you think you’re not responsible?”
“Because if you truly had your eyes wide open, Carina, the thought of even aiming the gun at me would never cross your mind.”
“I don’t fear you.”
His lips twitch. “No and you don’t know how much I admire your bravery.” Warmness spreads through my chest as tingles shoot up and down my spine. “But your reluctance, your reluctance to see the truth because you are terrified of what it means is the only thing about you I well and truly despise.”
Where there was warmness now resides ice. There’s a heaviness in my chest. A heaviness I can’t quite explain. A pain so terribly unbearable it feels impossible to breathe. My mouth is filled with a bitter taste. And that damn organ that only beats in his presence has fallen to the pits of my stomach.
It all feels too close to shame.
And as I refuse to meet his eyes I know it to be true.
As if he knows he demands, “Look at me.”
I refuse once again.
“Carina,” my name pours softly from his lips, caressing me, awakening me, tethering me to him without my say. And I cast my eyes upon his. “I will say this to you once and only once, do you understand?” I immediately take note of how he doesn’t speak in his native tongue. It’s as if he’s telling me I’m different from his soldiers, his capos and adversaries. He waits for me to nod and I notice how that’s different, too. I nod my head and he says, “You will bow your head to no one. Including me.”
And with every breath I take, the hatred fills my lungs, when it comes time to release, so does the hatred, little by little.
Perhaps my perception is changing.
But even I know that’s a lie.
It isn’t my perception changing. No, it’s something much more terrifying.
And, so, I stare back at him with a blank face, but those damn flutters I’ve never perished return with a vengeance.
And my heart?
My heart beats for him.