Chapter Forty-Three Hollow

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE HOLLOW

The second I set foot in Evelina , I climbed the three flights of stairs to my bedroom, grabbed a towel and locked myself in the bathroom. I stood under the shower, and watched the steam rise up off my skin, the red smears fall away with the soap. I washed my hair so many times I lost count. I opened my mouth and swallowed the water. I sat down and curled my arms around my body, and let the beads slide down the back of my neck. I wanted to be clean.

I couldn’t make myself clean.

After an eternity, I shut off the water, wrapped myself in a towel and padded back towards my room. The house was eerily quiet. Paulie had said there would be an immediate debriefing when we got home. I had shunned it.

I slipped into sweatpants and a hoodie and climbed into bed. I didn’t know what time it was. The sky was beginning to dim outside. I tried not to think about what they were talking about downstairs. I tried not to think about my father, about Jack, about any of it.

I was bone-tired. Without triumph or contentment. There was no joy in watching Jack fall. There was no relief, as I had hoped. I just felt hollow; empty. I felt broken.

Irreparably broken.

Luca had been right. This wasn’t the answer. But I was so wrapped up in it now, it didn’t matter any more. I had cast my die. I had taken a life. I had lost every last tether to my old identity.

My mind slowed down, and the blackness crept in.

A quiet knock at the door. Luca. I peeked at him from underneath the covers. He had changed into a T-shirt. His arm was bandaged all the way up to the elbow. He was pale, his black hair stark against the rest of him.

He just stood there.

We watched each other, everything we might have said communicated in that one long look.

I’m sorry.

He sat down on the side of my bed, and brushed the hair from my face. ‘You were brave today.’

I blinked up at him. I thought this would unite us, but I could feel the hollowness in him, just as I could feel my own. This was no victory. Even if we had gotten Donata too, the emptiness would have stretched on, devouring the rest of me, until I was nothing.

I was nothing.

I was worse than nothing.

I had nothing.

Luca traced his fingers along my hairline, waiting. Waiting.

I was so tired.

‘I feel empty,’ I told him.

‘I know,’ he said.

You were right. I wanted to tell him he was right, but of course he already knew. He was wearing the anguish of today on his face, too. It was deep in his eyes, in every careful breath. There was no respite from Valentino’s passing, no feeling of a great wrong being righted. There was no relief in knowing my mother’s betrayer was in the ground, in seeing my father fall the way I once believed he deserved to.

I pushed the covers back and moved over. Luca lay down beside me, his arm around me as I rested my head on his chest, and listened to the sound of his heartbeat thudding beneath me. He curled his hand around mine.

‘Sleep,’ he said. He pulled the covers over us, and pressed his lips against my hair. ‘I’ll be here.’

I drifted into the blackness, into oblivion, as exhaustion swept over me like a wave.

Hours dragged by, when evening turned to night, and slowly, dawn crept in, flashing streaks of orange and pink across the sky.

When I woke up, Luca was gone, and I was alone again.