Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Cisco
The Naples summer sun beats down from a blinding blue sky, baking my skin. A swarm of black flies buzzes around my head, biting and relentless.
They are a plague this year.
I sit on a towel beside my parents and Maria, watching the ocean between glimpses of the crowd.
“Let me get a gelato.” Maria swats at the air. “I can see the shop from the promenade.”
My mother adjusts her sunglasses. “Darling, you are too young to go alone.”
“I don’t need a babysitter. I’m old enough.” Maria scowls, kicking burning hot sand into my shins. I’m too hot to growl at her.
Elena flattens her lips. “We will be home soon. Go and paddle in the water now while you still have a chance.”
“I don’t want—eeii!” Maria shrieks at a particularly large fly, smacking it with her hand. She points at it and growls, “I told you not to bother me today.”
I laugh. “The fly can’t understand you.”
She sticks her tongue out at me, but I see the disappointment in her face before she turns away.
I sigh and push off my towel. “Fine. I will take you.”
My father nods from his lounger farther down, waving us away. “The pests are thick today. Stay close to your brother, Maria.”
A flush of pride warms my chest at my parents’ trust in me to keep Maria safe. I am fifteen and strong enough to protect her, despite what they say about the dangers this family invites.
The shop isn’t far, but Maria forgot to bring flip-flops, so I carry her across the hot parts of the street.
She wriggles the entire way, trying to swat flies.
The stupid little chicken didn’t even bring a towel or shirt to block the sun from her skin.
I’m not even sure she put on sunblock. She will blister tomorrow.
I try to keep her in the shadow of my body as much as we can until we’re in front of the gelateria, and she escapes my hold.
When we push through the heavy glass door, conditioned air hits my sweat-slicked body. The crowd around the counter is at least three people deep, and Maria is impatient. She hops around the queue, searching for a faster placement.
“Patience,” I tell her. “We will have our turn.”
“What if they run out?” she whines.
“They won’t run out.”
“But look, the tubs are almost empty!”
Her shout draws the attention of people nearby, including a beautiful young woman in a green bikini and perfect breasts. My cheeks flush with embarrassment.
“Maria,” I hiss. “People are watching.”
She gives me a chagrinned look, folds her arms, and huffs. But she is the bella figura’s perfect pupil. She reins it in and acts her best.
Good. I give her a smile of approval and then return to staring at the woman in the green bikini. I’m about to say something when I feel movement at my side. I look back for Maria, but she is gone.
Fuck.
Eyes wide, pulse racing, I scan around the bodies and overheads.
I get up on my toes and try to see the counter.
It’s long—only one server, a slow and big old man.
Two seconds later, I feel a tug on my shorts.
Maria has returned, grinning from ear to ear as she licks from a cone in her hand.
The ice cream already melts, dripping a sticky trail down her chin and onto her swimsuit.
“What have you done?” I gasp.
She pouts. “Angelottis shouldn’t have to wait.”
The woman in the green bikini notices Maria and points at her, shouting, “How come she has a cone already? I was here first.”
Heads whip around.
“We should go, Cesco,” Maria says, but it’s too late.
“I saw her steal the ice cream!” A man from the front barges through those nearby. “She should be punished!”
His greasy gaze drops to Maria’s mouth as she licks off the cream.
Anger so sharp and hard hits me. It’s almost as if I can hear his disgusting thoughts, see how he wants to punish my sister, and it is sickening. I don’t care if she’s sinned. I’ll still rip that tongue from his mouth before I’ll let him get close to her.
That’s when it happens. A strange sensation crawls up my spine, like a thousand tiny ants prickling my skin from the inside. The feeling multiplies and morphs, growing louder and expanding into the air as if the crawling is both inside and out of my body, a thousand flies nesting beneath my flesh.
It points me to the male customer, connects us on an unseen level. I was right. He’s thinking evil, disgusting things about my sister. I see it in my head.
Take it. Take his evil. Save your sister.
A hunger like no other blooms beneath my ribs.
This is wrong.
I feel wrong.
I stumble backward and shove Maria at the door. “Go outside.”
She digs in her heels stubbornly, and the delay costs the man his life.
The void inside my gut tears open. Violence shreds my veins, unspooling shadow ribbons from my bitter blood.
They strike like vipers, latching onto the customer, and suddenly I’m reliving the sick, depraved thoughts he had of my sister like a movie.
He stares at her blossoming body, watching her tongue curl around the melting cream, imagining things a grown man should never think about a little girl.
Then I see more little girls he thinks about. I see older girls too, ones in green bikinis, and my rage detonates. My shadows crush his throat and claw into his brain and body. I take his evil into myself, and he ceases to exist.
I can’t remember how we got out of that place, or what happened to the man, but suddenly I’m storming down the promenade, hauling Maria by the elbow.
“Keep your mouth shut,” I demand. “Do not tell Mamma and Papà.”
She rips her arm from my grip. Melted gelato drips from her forgotten cone, splattering across my knuckles. An ugly, unfamiliar fury twists her young face.
“It belongs to me!” she shrieks.
“I’ll get you a new gelato.”
“I’m talking about the bitter blood! It belongs to me. You stole it!”
“I don’t want it!”
“I’m the one with the mark!”
Shame curdles in my gut, hot and sickening. We reach the striped beach towels, and Mamma and Papà lower their sunglasses. The stench of fresh violence still clings to my skin, heavy enough to choke on.
Maria points a sticky finger at my chest. “He did it! He killed everyone in the shop!” She stomps her bare foot, kicking hot sand over the blankets. “He stole it from me!”
“Enough, Maria.” Papà stands, adjusting his linen cuffs. He spares me only a brief, calculating glance, and I swear I see his eyes grow distant. As if that’s the moment he stops thinking of me as a son. “Watch your sister, Francesco. We will handle the mess.”
My parents walk away to cover up my slaughter.
I collapse onto my towel on the shore. The sea glares back at me, vast and mocking. A large black fly lands on my knee. I swat it, but another lands on my cheek. Maria kneels beside me, screaming in my ear, demanding her stolen birthright.
The buzzing escalates, and my control snaps.
I twist around, shouting right into her flushed face, “Maybe you lack the strength! Maybe you are just a weak little girl who thinks she deserves everything in the world!”
Her jaw sets, stubborn and thick. “One day, I will grow to be stronger than you.”
I give her ballerina figure a scornful look. “That’s scientifically impossible.”
She leans in close with the eyes of a stranger, glimmering at me with hate. “You think you know everything, but you don’t, big brother.” She points to the mark imprinted on her thigh. “This makes it mine. He told me so.”
“It’s not up to our father!” It’s better this way. I feel sick and exhausted, and all I want to do is crawl into a hole and die. But she needs to see why it can’t be her. She doesn’t have the stomach for this. She shouldn’t have to!
I thrust my hand toward the wooden platform bobbing in the waves, where older boys dive off the edge, cutting through the dark water. “You can barely swim to the pontoon on your own.”
She climbs to her feet. “Watch me.”
A cruel laugh rips from my throat. “You won’t make it.”
But she marches into the surf until the water swallows her ankles, her knees, and her waist.
The buzzing multiplies, vibrating through my teeth. A deafening roar detonates in my skull. A black cloud descends on me, swallowing the sun in a violent eclipse. The sky bruises into a sickly purple.
A thousand wings beat against my eardrums. The swarm engulfs me, choking the air from my lungs. I stumble toward the shoreline, swatting mindlessly. Through the shifting gaps in the black seething mass, two small hands windmill above the churning foam.
A sharp, piercing sting bites into the side of my neck. I slap the flesh, and wet, oily sludge smears across my palm, but the sting shatters the haze.
I can see clearly now. The sea roars, loud and absolute. Those flailing hands refuse to wave. The dark water drags her down.
Maria is drowning.
Heart leaping into my throat, I plunge into the churning water. Salt burns my eyes, making it hard to see, but I kick like a madman, clawing through the violent swell to reach her.
When I get there, it’s all wrong. This is the same dream I’ve always had, but this time it’s mixed in with the memory of that day at the beach.
All my life, the memory of her drowning haunts me, and she always wears her Sunday white dress.
She thrashes about in a damp swimsuit. There’s no pink silk ribbon in her brown hair.
But she is blond . . . isn’t she? What’s even stranger is that no rosary beads are hanging around her neck.
I am dreaming, but I reach for her nonetheless. I always reach for her. My fingers only graze her hand, and the ocean rips her away.
The next thing I know, I’m back on the burning sand, hacking salt water from my lungs. A crowd gathers around me. Their faces are all warped masks of pity and horror.
“A rip current,” a stranger says. “We watched her go under . . . she didn’t come up.”