An Angel So Wingless (Titans and Tyrants #6)

Chapter 1

Aurora

Everything has stopped. The train. My breathing.

Maybe even my heart.

Alessandro Messina. Son of my late husband Marco. Great nephew of Carlo. Those eyes of his – of theirs – watch me as if pulled from a nightmare. My past mashing itself into my present.

Three generations of Messina men. All of them grabbing at me in their own ways. Trying to seize me for themselves.

He’s the only one left standing.

And he’s here.

The golden light of the train car glows along the black body of his gun, the dark brown leather of his gloves, the sleeves of his coat.

“Let’s go,” he says, as casually as if he’s picking me up for brunch.

For some normal and expected rendezvous.

The train car seems to tilt beneath me, nausea spiking against my spine.

Because, for the briefest of moments, I’m reminded of when Curse came for me in New York.

“Let’s go,” he’d said while Marco bled out on the floor.

Now, another man is telling me to follow him. While Curse is the one who is hurt.

“What have you done to him?” I hiss by way of reply.

I turn from him – not caring what he’ll do, not caring about the gun – and fall heavily to my knees beside Curse.

He’s still laying, insensible, bent across the table.

His breath sounds dangerously slow. Heavy.

Like it’s too much effort for his body to keep it up for long.

Across the table, I see the overturned cup.

The water that was meant for me. The one he tipped and let spill to the floor before it ever touched my lips.

Curse’s face is terribly pale. The tattoos at his throat look so much blacker now in comparison, like they’ve been freshly inked. Slashes and swirls of obsidian art.

No.

I cannot watch him die.

“What have you done to him?!” I ask again. It comes out shaking, shrieking, as my fingers pass desperately over Curse’s cold, damp brow.

“Get up.” Alessandro’s tone is snippy with impatience. When I don’t move, he reacts. I flinch, feeling the unmistakable press of metal against the back of my neck. His gun.

“Get up,” he repeats.

I wrap my arms around Curse’s ribs, locking my fingers against each other.

“No,” I whisper. “I’m not leaving him. Fucking shoot me if you want to. I don’t care. I won’t go.”

The words feel like they should just be bravado, but they’re not. I’m terribly, grimly at peace with the fact that, right now, I’d rather take a bullet than abandon him. Even after everything.

Alessandro sighs, like I’ve inconvenienced him. The pressure of the gun suddenly vanishes from the back of my neck.

“Can’t shoot you, Mamma,” he sneers, a sick reference to the fact that, despite him being older than me, he was technically my stepson for those few hours I was married to his father. “How am I going to marry you if I’ve blown a big hole in that pretty head of yours?”

The gun slides into my view. It plants itself against Curse’s forehead, directly in front of my eyes.

No!

The blood in my veins freezes, locking my limbs. I can’t blink. I’m suddenly tortured by certainty that if I let my eyes shut even for a second, Curse won’t be alive when I open them again.

“Get up and come with me,” Alessandro says, “or I’ll shoot him instead.”

“You wouldn’t,” I stammer, squeezing Curse harder. As if my arms can help him, heal him. Make him wake up and save us both.

“Of fucking course I would,” Alessandro says with a laugh, sharp and cold, like a knife. “I pumped him full of opioids to keep this shit simple. Clean. But I’m not above getting messy if I have to.” He presses the gun harder against Curse. So forcefully it makes his dark head rock with the impact.

“Stop! Don’t touch him!” I jump up, trying to get myself between Curse and the gun.

My body screams at me to do something, anything.

If I didn’t think it might make the gun go off, I’d grab Alessandro’s arm, hurl myself at him, scratch his fucking eyes out with fingernails still stained with the chipped wedding polish his papà paid for.

Alessandro takes advantage of my new position, seizing my elbow with his free hand in a grip I realize too late I cannot fight.

He’s not as big as Curse, but he’s not a small man, either.

He’s got large hands, strong arms, and he’s heavy.

So heavy that him simply throwing his weight to the side and starting to walk down the length of the train car is enough to send me into lurching motion.

“No!”

I lean back with everything I have, not caring if it pops my elbow right out of its socket. I will not go another step. Not one inch. Not without him. Not while he lies there, his breath slowing at a terrifying rate that makes me think that I’m the one who’s dying.

“Christ,” Alessandro says through gritted teeth.

I’m barely aware of the swing of his arm, the flash of dark metal like an omen, until the gun strikes my temple.

For a shattering second, I think maybe I’ve been shot after all.

There’s no pain, only a bright spasm of white that goes across my eyes, like a shooting star through my head.

Stunned, I feel my legs buckle seconds after it actually happens.

By the time my stuttering brain catches up, Alessandro has hauled me all the way to the train car’s exit.

He’s got a thick arm around my waist, dragging me bodily down the little metal steps that lead to the train’s platform at Union Station.

My vision shutters, winding down to blackness before blinking back in.

The scene is nothing but streaks of colour and dizzying motion.

More stairs, pale and leading upwards. I don’t even know how I get up them.

My vision wrinkles, black like scrunched silk, black like his hair, and suddenly we are at the top of the stairs.

There are so many people.

I scream at them. Scream that I have left something behind, something so fucking important, but I can’t remember what.

When no one stops, I realize the screaming is only inside my own head.

“Nice and easy,” Alessandro murmurs, keeping my side pinned to his as he maneuvers me through the faceless people. Why can’t I focus on any of their features? All I’m aware of are scarves and coats and shiny shoes.

I don’t have a coat.

Is that what I have left behind?

That can’t be right. My mind thrashes as if against quicksand. It feels like I am swimming inside my own head.

Cold air hits me. It’s a sobering slap. I gasp, choking, sucking it down. Wintery night stretches above us while downtown Toronto surrounds us below. Streetlamps and buildings and cars and snow. Snowflakes are falling, settling on my hair like a blessing, on my skin like a curse.

Curse.

I manage to make a sound then. A real one. It’s nothing but a whimper of complaint, but I know it’s real. Because Alessandro hears it. And he reacts.

“Shut the fuck up or I will hit you harder next time,” he snarls close to my ear. “Maybe I can’t put a bullet in you yet. But I’ll still marry you even if you’re too fucking concussed to say ‘I do.’”

I barely hear him. Barely care. Curse.

I’ve left him behind.

Memories batter me then. Because there, emerging from a car on the street before me, is a face I haven’t seen in more than twenty years. That face is older now. Harder. Scarred. But it’s him.

“Elio!” It comes out as nothing more than a scratch of sound.

Quiet as a child tearing the corner off a piece of paper.

But he hears me. He fucking hears me. His eyes slice through the milling crowds, landing on my face with vicious focus.

He stalks across the pavement, flanked by three men and all in black.

His hand shoves beneath his jacket and I know he’s got a gun.

“Leave me!” I scream hoarsely. My tongue feels too big for my mouth. “Curse! Curse is on the train! He-”

I fall, colliding with leather that makes my soupy brain think that somehow I’m back in the train car with Curse. Back on that bench with him. But no, this is a regular car. A taxi, with a driver who’s now twisting to peer at me curiously.

“Start driving,” Alessandro snaps, slamming the door shut.

The cabbie seems to know better than to ask where he wants to go right now and pulls away from the curb.

My heart is in my throat, stuck there and throbbing.

My eyes burn, but not with tears. They feel like cracking embers in my head.

We’re getting further and further away from Union Station.

Further and further away from Curse. My head is sore and slow, but my mind feels at least a little clearer now.

Like a train that’s found its way back to the correct track. I know what’s happening.

I know who I’ve left behind.

My hand goes to the door handle. Breathing hard, I scan the street outside. I’ll jump out. Make a run for it. Try to find my way back.

“Don’t even think about it.” Alessandro slides closer, grasping me firmly by the back of the neck, the way you’d grab a dog. The tips of his fingers sink into my hair, loosening my bun. Fingers just like Marco’s. Just like Carlo’s. I want to climb out of my own skin. “Do not make a fucking move.”

What should I do? Alessandro has a gun, and if I try to get help from this taxi driver, he could just end up getting threatened or shot.

I can’t jump out of the car with Alessandro holding me, either.

But I can’t keep going. Can’t remain passive.

Because the path that Alessandro has me on now will take me all the way back to New York if I let it.

I don’t want to let it. I don’t want to let things just keep fucking happening to me.

If I could just get the gun…