Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

Angelo

When I arrive on Corsican soil, my father is dead. Disappointment and dread fill me as I walk into the hospital, but my sorrow and dejection weigh heavier.

I'm too late.

My family wait in the hallway outside the room to which a demure nurse directed me. Someone stacked chairs along the wall. It's highly irregular to let that many visitors into the ICU, but my father was dying, which meant they would've made an exception, and we're not just any family.

Uncle Nico sits with his head hanging between his shoulders. Uncle Enzo has his fingers steepled together as if in prayer.

Prayers won't help any of us. It won't bring my father back. It won't make the last moments of my mother and sister's lives less terrifying, and it won't bring peace to anyone.

Uncle Enzo straightens when I approach. Toma and Gianni jump to their feet. Uncle Enzo's face is somber as he stands to greet me.

I grip his hand with a firm shake, accepting the support he offers. My vocal cords feel as rusted as if I haven't used them in years. My voice scrapes in my throat when I speak. "When?"

"Just after two," he says, squeezing my fingers while grasping my shoulder in his free hand.

The muscles in my jaw bunch. Violence boils inside me, demanding an outlet. Vengeance demands justice. Killing Edwards wasn't enough. My whole family is gone, just like that. My father was sick, but he was doing much better. The operation added another few years to his life. The cigarillos and the fatty meat didn't kill him. It wasn't the cancer that finally got to him. Grief did. That's why he gave up.

"He went peacefully," Uncle Nico says. "He got what he wanted."

Justice.

He got to push a gun against Edwards's head and look him in the eyes before pulling the trigger.

My vengeance is long from being satisfied. I haven't even scratched the surface. The monster lurking inside me wants more. It's not happy with the simple transaction of an eye for an eye. The only currency it's interested in is measured in pain and suffering. It doesn't care about fairness or justification. That's the nature of monsters. They're selfish.

Uncle Nico lets me go. "We waited for you before moving the body."

His quiet, respectful words pull me back to the present.

I nod, burying the harshness of my feelings under a layer of curtness. "Did he suffer?"

"It went very fast," he says, lowering his head.

I nod again. "I appreciate that you were here for him."

"We'll give you a moment," Uncle Enzo says, patting me on the back.

To pay my last respects.

Toma and Gianni file past, each shaking my hand with a courteous show of compassion.

"I'll start the funeral arrangements," Uncle Nico says, turning down the hallway.

Again, I can only nod. My voice doesn't cooperate. My chest feels too small for the darkness bleeding out into every corner of my being.

Their footsteps echo down the corridor, and then I'm alone. All that's left is the bright, white silence that reeks of disinfectant and the door in front of me. I grip the handle, push it down. The overhead tungsten light crackles. It stutters almost unnoticeably before going back to humming like static noise. My hand on the cold metal doesn't falter. It pushes the door open, letting that generic lifelessness of a too bright, too white hallway into the space.

The private room is as white as the rest of the ward. The only splashes of color come from the flowers in the vase on the trolley at the foot-end of the bed. My father lies pale under the covers, his hands folded on his chest and his eyes closed.

I'm grateful for that, grateful that I don't have to look into the lightless eyes of my mother again. Going to the bed, I sit down in the visitor's chair that's pushed up to the side. The doctors here know us well. Knew him well. They'll give me a moment, as long as I need.

I rest my elbows on the bed and take my father's cold hand. No moment can be long enough. This is how Sabella feels. But I harden my heart, because in this very significant moment, I hate her more than I've hated anyone, and it's the hatred that ties us together. In a strange way, it's the hatred that makes me feel closer to her. Bonded. It's the hatred that makes me want her more. For what reasons, I'm not in a state of mind to examine.

Pressing my mouth to the back of my father's hand, I kiss his ring, the one that's identical to mine. Knowing there's a woman out there who wears that mark both settles me and makes me restless. It soothes the man I once was while stirring the beast.

I have an inkling these feelings will forever be at war in my chest where my promised bride is concerned. I desire and despise her in equal measures, a situation of my own making. However, the monster doesn't care. The selfish part of me that survived the massacre of my sentiments can only register that the man who raised me is gone. The man I admired and loved blew out his last breath while I was consulting a doctor about the welfare of a woman whose family destroyed mine.

Here, at my father's deathbed, a realization shoots like a well-aimed arrow straight into my brain. Sabella and I were always destined to destroy each other. There's no other way. There's no turning back. We both paid too dearly. The cost of being together is too high to give that goal up now. Neither of us have a choice in the matter any longer. We're already barreling down this path of destruction, and there's only one end to this game.

We're going to finish it.

No matter how long or what it takes.