Chapter 21 Curse
Curse
Everything takes too fucking long.
Too long to come into full consciousness in the wrecked SUV. Too long to check over my own body for injuries – which include a fucked-up head and an even more fucked-up left leg. But nothing’s broken, far as I can tell. So I drag myself out into the rain.
That takes too long, too. And then it’s too long until I encounter another vehicle and force the driver out by gunpoint.
Too long to drive back to Toronto, to get my fake ID and passport – because I can’t show up in Toarmina with Titone stamped anywhere on my documents.
I wouldn’t make it out of the airport alive.
The ruling Russo famiglia that our papà betrayed, the famiglia that burned our childhood home – along with our mamma inside it – to the ground are still alive and well and powerful.
It’s well past dawn in Toronto by the time I’m in the air, Sicily-bound, with the name Cesare Titan inked into my identifying documents.
I spend the entire flight hoping against all that is holy that I didn’t dream Aurora’s words.
That I’m not wasting precious time, flying across an ocean to find her when she won’t even be there.
For some reason, in the stalling cells of my brain, she’s the clearest thing I can recall.
And all I can do is believe that it means the words I remember her speaking beside that car are real. Not New York. Taormina.
I can hear her even now. Like she’s calling me from across the ocean.
Begging me to come and find her.
Things take too fucking long at the airport, too.
Too long to exchange my stacks of Canadian bills for euros.
And when I see the line at the car rental desk, I already know I do not have the goddamn patience for that.
I’ll need a car, but I leave the airport, instead finding my way to the line of taxis waiting.
I walk up to the first car I see, its middle-aged male driver leaning leisurely against the passenger side door, smoking.
“I will give you five thousand euros in cash,” I say in Italian, “right now, if you hand over the keys to this vehicle.”
The taxi driver raises his brows in disbelief.
“What, is this a shakedown?” he asks. “Five thousand is not worth the risk! This is my livelihood!”
It would be so easy to kill him. Right fucking now.
But there are cameras and witnesses and no fucking time.
So I move onto the next one. But he says no too. I get through four of them before I suddenly hear a voice pipe up from beyond the lane of taxis.
“Five thousand cash?” A young man with a bag in one hand and a set of keys in the other is standing nearby. He’s not a cab driver. He looks like he’s just gotten back from a trip.
“That’s right. You got a vehicle?”
He nods, and I close the distance between us in a few massive strides. He’s a little startled by how fast I’ve made it to him, craning his head back to look at me.
“It’s in the lot over there,” he says, indicating the parking beyond the taxi area. “An old red sedan with one black panel at the back.”
“It’s got gas?”
He nods again, eagerly. “It’s not even worth five thousand euros. But it runs just fine. You pay that much, and you can fucking keep it.”
Without another word, I pull out the wad of bills for him.
His light brown eyes go round as coins at the sight.
Maybe he didn’t think I was telling the truth.
He’s so stunned that he doesn’t even reach for the money.
I drop it on the ground between us, swiping the keys from his hand before he even realizes they’re gone.
The first thing that doesn’t take too long in this entire fucking journey is locating the young man’s vehicle.
His description was spot-on, and there’s only one decrepit-looking sedan with a lone black panel in the lot.
It looks like it’ll fall apart if someone so much as breathes on it, but the engine starts just fine.
Exiting the lot, I let a mixture of memory and instinct drive me.
I only remember one house associated with the Messinas when I was younger, and that seems like as good a place as any to start my search.
It was a big, rural property. The last time I saw it was when we were leaving Sicily, driving to the airport after the fire.
I remember it being on a hill not far off the main road to the airport, with a church on the hill behind it.
But after driving for nearly an hour towards Toarmina, I’m beginning to doubt my memory.
That knock on the noggin could have done more damage than I realized.
I’m just about to head right into Taormina proper and start interrogating random people off the street when I see it.
The night sky is clear, the moon heavy and bright, illuminating the pale stone of the Messina house and the medieval-era church beyond.
There is a vehicle parked by the front door.
Somebody’s in there.
I don’t pull up the drive to the house, instead parking the car where it’s at least somewhat hidden by a stand of trees at the side of the road.
I walk the hundred metres or so to the house, moving slowly, stealthily.
It’s harder than it should be. My leg hurts like a motherfucker, but I ignore it.
My head hurts, too, and that’s harder to ignore, because it’s affecting my brain, my train of thoughts.
But I don’t need to think to do this. To slip into this house without being detected.
Keeping to the shadows, I arrive at the side of the house. I consider picking the lock of the front door, but decide to do a quick lap of the building. I find other doors – like glass ones at the back. I stare through, seeing furniture. But not Aurora.
There’s another set of glass doors, higher, leading from a balcony into a second-floor room.
Probably a bedroom. Based on the size of the balcony, I’d guess that it’s the primary bedroom of the house.
If Alessandro is here, that’s where I’ll find him.
And the way that there’s an iron trellis right beside it, a ladder built right into the fucking wall, feels like it’s got to be some kind of sign.
Yeah. That’s my way in.
Fire shoots up my femur and into my hip as I climb. My breath feels like it’s whistling through my head like wind. The plant matter that’s been climbing up this trellis is surprisingly hardy, making it difficult to grasp the metal bars.
But even so. Even fucking so, I make it. Softly, I leap down onto the surface of the balcony.
And, Christ fucking help me, there she is.
She curls in a pool of moonlight, her hair spilling around her like silver. She’s on the floor. The fucking floor. At the foot of the bed like a dog.
That alone would be enough to sign his fucking death warrant.
Strange how even down on the tile like that, she’s still so goddamn beautiful. My sleeping angel.
I didn’t realize just how fucking terrified I was of what I’d find here until now.
Until I see her, alive, breathing, and, as far as I can see, unharmed.
I heard her voice before, but I didn’t even know if she was injured in the accident.
It’s only natural that she should have made it out unscathed, and I would be the one taking the brunt of it all.
I’d take that for her a hundred times over.
As I set myself to unlocking the door, I scan the room for Alessandro Messina and find him snoring away in the bed. The bed he didn’t let her fucking sleep in.
Is this the most abhorrent part? Finding her on the cold floor and him in the bed?
Or would seeing her in the bed with him have been worse?
It’s all fucking bad, all fucking wrong, all the possibilities and the realities. By the time I get the door open, stealing through it like some dark spirit, I’m vibrating with the need to kill him.
But I don’t start with him. Forever and always. First and last. It has to be her.
Crouching soundlessly beside her, I brush starlight strands of hair from her face.
“Angel,” I whisper.
Her eyelashes are dove grey as they flutter, her skin pearlescent in the light. When her eyes open, her pupils are huge, swallowing the blue.
“Curse.” She says my name like a prayer. “Am I dreaming?” Her breath catches. “Are you a ghost?”
“I’ve never believed in ghosts.” I brush my knuckles along her browbone, then the tender, hollow place beneath her eye. There’s wetness there. Her chest heaves.
“Don’t cry, angel,” I murmur. “Your monster is here now.”
A look of joy so pure it almost looks like pain passes over her features.
But it doesn’t last long. Fear bolts into her expression, her eyes widening and going behind me.
I twist at the waist and raise my arm just in time to block the swinging arc of a lamp coming down at me.
I knock it to the floor, shattering the bulb, before I launch myself at Messina.
He flies from the bed, tangling in bedsheets, tripping before fully freeing himself.
He’s running for the bedroom door, but I block him, sending him tumbling towards the bathroom instead.
It’s there that I catch up with him, there that I can let my violent nature truly unfold.
I’ve been so caught up in Aurora that I haven’t killed anyone lately.
And it’s finally catching up with me. The ravenous ruin of it.
I grasp the back of Messina’s neck and bring his head down, face-first, on the edge of the stone counter. He gives a shout of pain, then a bloody gargle.
“Did you touch her?” I ask him, wrenching him back up so I can hiss it directly into his ear. He doesn’t answer, so I smash his face down again. Teeth fall like loose pebbles into the sink and onto the floor.
“Did he, Aurora? Did he touch you?” I ask, raising my voice so she can hear.
I can see her from the corner of my eye, watching from the bedroom with her hands plastered over her mouth. Slowly, she lets them drop so she can answer.