After a dinner of canned soup and crackers, I sat on the phone with Leo for a good half an hour. He had his own phone, so I could call him at the hospital after visiting hours. I had offered to sleep with him in the chair by the bed, but he’d been insistent that I sleep at home. He worried more about me than he should.
The bouquet of lilies played on my mind. First, who the hell would give me them? Second, and most worryingly, how had they gotten inside the car? My rational mind reassured me that there had to be an obvious explanation. Maybe I’d forgotten to lock the door, and Edward had had a member of staff run out there and put them by my car as a surprise, for when I left, since he was clearly bent on impressing me. That was the logical answer. Still, the thought of them stuck on the edges of my mind, like a burr.
Trying to stave off my paranoia and loneliness at being home alone on a Saturday night, I decided to work a little on my most private, personal paintings. The ones that I never took off my property.
Painting had always been a hobby, though as a student, I’d been more interested in the history of art. In another life, one where Antonio De Sanctis hadn’t been my father, I’d have loved to work with old art, in restoration, or curation. Instead, even before he’d threatened the unborn child inside me, there had never been any chance that I’d have a job that I’d love. I’d marry who my father told me to, and that was it. The art degree he allowed me to get was just a way for him to keep me busy until my sell-off date. I took comfort in the fact that the shitshow that had been the last seven years had at least deprived Antonio of his virgin bride poker chip.
I headed outside and down the porch to the left side. Angelo had helped me covert the garage of the little house into a workspace. A studio of my own.
Inside the garage, I flipped the overhead lights on, the scent of turps and oil paint meeting my nose.
I approached a large canvas that was covered in a sheet. I knew what lay beneath it. It was something I painted often. A moonlit forest, with a starry sky, and the faint shadow of a boy with his head tilted back, looking up at the moon. Leo thought it was him, and it was in a lot of ways, but it was also his father.
I settled onto my stool and turned a light toward the canvas.
Reaching for my paintbrush, noticing a slightly scruffy-looking area of trees, I nearly knocked over the jar of fresh brushes I kept on the table beside my stool. As I bent to steady it, a hard knock sounded at the door to the garage.
I froze, my heart all but jumping straight to my mouth. After a moment, silence fell again. I felt unsettled, the memory of the flowers suddenly pushing back to the forefront of my mind. What if it wasn’t nothing? I wouldn’t be able to work until I checked it out.
Heading back through the main part of the garage, I neared the door.
This time, the knock thundered through the entire building. It was so loud, my hands flew up to protect my face, and I cringed to a stop. Heart pounding once more, I peeked at the door. It sounded like someone had thrown a rock against it.
My skin rippled with the feeling of being watched again. In a second, I was right back to earlier and that uncanny crawling sensation working over my skin.
“Hello?” I called, my voice sounding oddly loud in my ears.
I approached the door again and turned the handle. It opened easily. Stillness flooded through the crack, the kind that was particular to where we lived. The distant sound of waves crashing on the beach was not too far from us, and the hum of crickets living in the bushes filled the night with their music.
The soft murmur of far-off cars passing on the nearest road drifted to me. It wasn’t that late, only ten, and everything sounded normal.
Everything was fine.
Then why are you so scared? The mocking voice in my head needed to take a hike. I had to get a grip. I drew myself up to my full height and put my shoulders back. I was Sofia De Sanctis, I didn’t cower. No one might know who I really was here, but I did.
Striding to the nearest tool bench, I pulled a long screwdriver from its slot in the table and tucked the hilt into my palm. The shape was comforting, similar to a liccasapuni, the paranza corta weapon of choice. I might know it’s better to run, but if I had no choice, I could still fight. Even if it was just against the demons in my head.
Pushing the door open, I stepped out into the night. The streetlamps stopped a little way up the street and didn’t reach my property. I had motion sensors set up, however, to bring a floodlight on when triggered. It was angled at my front lawn, and the side courtyard, right in front of the garage.
Right now, the light was on.
Something had triggered it. It was probably just an animal. That was what usually triggered the light.
I couldn’t remember if I’d locked the front door. Maybe I’d forgotten, since Leo wasn’t home. I was distracted and sloppy. I’d never be able to work if I didn’t check.
Steeling myself, I started across the courtyard toward my porch. As I got closer to my stoop, my light came on, flooding the front step with light. I jerked to a stop as I saw my front door.
This time, a new lily bouquet sat at my door, tied with another pristine black ribbon.
Purity, innocence, rebirth, death. I’d looked up the meaning of lilies. It hadn’t been comforting. They reminded me of my mother’s funeral.
As I got closer, moving forward in shuffling steps, the screwdriver feeling like a hot poker in my palm, I saw that they weren’t perfectly white. There were dark-red droplets sprayed across them, like paint against a fresh canvas. Blood against white petals. All beliefs that I was overreacting fell away.
Terror filled me, and I fumbled with my phone, even as I rushed up the stairs toward the door. I had to get inside. It felt like a hundred eyes were on me as I stood on the stoop. It was official. This wasn’t just in my head. Someone was watching me, threatening me in some undefinable way. Trying to scare me, and it was fucking working.
I dropped the screwdriver as I dialed 911.
As I bent to grab it, my finger poised to call, a message came in, the sender unknown.
Only the guilty cower from judgement, prom queen.
Every single other thought fled my head as I stared at that sentence, ripped straight out of my darkest fantasies. It couldn’t be real. It was impossible. Nikolai was in jail, and he thought I was dead. It couldn’t be real. But, if it wasn’t him, then someone had found me who knew all about me. Someone with a very personal grudge to bear.
My terror piqued, even as I spun around and looked out at the dark road. There were a hundred places to lurk and never be seen.
Nothing moved on the quiet street, and tears stung my eyes.
“Hello?” My voice echoed around the empty street. I felt stupid, scared, and poised to run if a shadow moved my way. “I’ve called the cops. They’re on their way!”
My phone chimed again.
Liar.
I tore my eyes from the screen and looked into the darkness. I fancied I could feel eyes on me, but maybe I was just paranoid. No matter what my mental damage was, one thing was certain. Someone had set these flowers up and bled on them.
“Nikolai?”
I didn’t know why I said it. My rational mind knew it was impossible, and yet his name filled my mind. Someone was fucking with me, and my first thought was that it could be him? It was probably kids. The little hellions who went to Hade Harbor High were just spoiled and sadistic enough to think harassing a teacher at night outside her home was a fun game. It was a nickname that kids could use. Why not? I’d even confessed once to a few students that I’d been a prom queen back in my heyday.
Spinning on my heel, I dismissed my partially completed 911 call. The cops wouldn’t do anything about this, and I didn’t like them sticking their noses into my life, if I could avoid it.
I unlocked the door and cast a last long look at the street, before stepping inside and slamming the door. The noise echoed around the empty living room, the dark woods lingering just outside the dark windows at the back, mocking me with their secrets.
I sank down into a rocking chair that stood just on the other side of the sliding glass doors that overlooked the back patio, and stared out at the night, my phone gripped in my hand. I couldn’t go up to bed right now and sleep soundly. I was too unsettled.
I stared at the dark woods that ran across the end of the backyard, my skin creeping.
I could swear that the dark stared back.
Sunday was rough. I’d barely slept the night before and was jumpy and on edge all day. I spent most of it at the hospital. I wrestled with whether to tell Chiara and Angelo but decided not to. They had already spent too much time fixing my problems. They were friends, not babysitters.
As time passed, I started to think I was overreacting. The kids who’d decided to mess with me would really enjoy how on edge they’d made me. The worst part was how thoughts of Nikolai had pushed into my head. I kept seeing him. Stolen glimpses around the hospital, walking the halls, a specter in black, ducking into a cab, disappearing around the bend in the stairwell. Like his memory was a ghost haunting me, or some kind of messed-up wishful thinking. I did a hundred double takes, only realizing I was wrong with closer inspection. It made me feel like I was going crazy.
After the hospital, I drove home by the grocery store and ran in, quickly locating the frozen meal section. I loaded up on a couple of dinners for while Leo was away from home. I cooked all his meals, usually. It was better for his health and compromised immune system. I didn’t care about my health, only his.
There were only a few of the type I liked left, right at the bottom of the freezer, and I had to stick my head deep down inside the freezer section. When I straightened, I piled the frozen dinners haphazardly on top of the freezer and glanced up, hoping to snag a nearby basket.
That was when I saw him again.
Nikolai Chernov. In the flesh. This time it was more than a glimpse.
It was a memory. It had to be. This had happened to me before. When I’d first arrived in Hade Harbor, I’d seen him everywhere. I’d kept expecting him to show up. How could prison stop a force of nature like Nikolai Chernov? It was impossible.
Slowly, I’d realized that it wasn’t him, and bit by bit, I’d learned to ignore it. Today, though, something was different. All the times I’d known Nikolai, he’d been wearing one of his past outfits, one from my memories. Ripped jeans and dark t-shirts, leather jacket and shit-kicking boots. Now, the vision of Nikolai wore black slacks, perfectly fitting his long, lean legs, and a black dress shirt, open at the neck. He leaned against the meat counter, watching me like a wolf watched a rabbit it was about to devour. He looked casually deadly in those clothes. No longer a volatile heir to a dangerous throne, but the king himself. His head was shaved severely, revealing new tattoos scrolling across his scalp. I’d never imagined that before.
He wasn’t grinning. The twisted, mocking charm he’d always had was overlaid with seriousness. It wasn’t like him at all.
My hand slipped on the boxes of frozen meals, and they cascaded to the floor.
I looked down at them, hurrying to crouch and pick them up, as people looked at me, stepping over the mess I’d made.
When I looked up, Nikolai was gone.
Maybe no one was messing with me at all. Maybe I was just going crazy.
That night, after checking the locks on my doors ten times, I dug out the old burner phone I had rarely used. It had one number in it.
Renato answered on the second ring.
“Sofia? What’s wrong?”
His familiar voice made me feel things I didn’t know how to process. When I’d lost Nikolai to prison, forced into a lie by my father, I’d lost my brother as well.
“Nothing, I mean, I’m not sure. Probably nothing. I just wanted to see what was going on. How’s father?”
“Still alive, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
A fucked-up pang of disappointment went through me at those words. What kind of monster wishes for their father to die? I could only be what he had made me.
Ren cleared his throat. “I’m glad you called. I was trying to figure out a way to reach you.”
“Why? What is it?” I held my breath, my heart beating painfully. That damned shortness of breath that I always got before a panic attack. I forced my breathing to calm, counting in fours to slow down the creeping anxiety.
“He’s out. Nikolai Chernov walked a few days ago.”
Somehow, I’d known my brother was going to say those very words before they hit my ears. It might have felt impossible, but it was inevitable. Of course he’d find me. Of course he would.
“He’s really free?”
“Yeah, he’s really free. Fuck knows how, considering what he got up to inside. I have no idea, except that Ronan Black might be able to argue Lucifer himself back into Heaven. He’s out there, Sofia. I thought you should know.”
“Does Father know?” I gripped the phone tightly.
“He knows. He isn’t happy about it.”
“But he can’t do anything. That wasn’t the deal. He can’t break it now. Nikolai Chernov is safe from the De Sanctis family,” I reminded my brother. I knew I didn’t have to. We were both aware of the terms I’d agreed to years ago, but I needed to hear the words to reassure myself.
“Frankly, I’d be more worried about the De Sanctis family being safe from him. He visited your grave. Security informed me. He burned down half the fucking chapel on the grounds. Not only that, but he’s also targeting De Sanctis men. He’s graduated from lunatic to serial killer in prison. You need to be careful.”
A fist of agony and guilt clenched around my throat, choking my words. I nodded, a lone tear dropping down my cheek. When I thought of Nikolai, the tears were never far away.
“Anyway, I better go. These calls should be short. Don’t forget your end of the deal, piccolina.”
“I know. I know the bargain I sold my soul for. You don’t need to remind me.”
“If he finds you, call me right away. If he’s a threat… call me right away.”
“If he’s a threat, then no one can save me from him. Calling you won’t help me. No one will be able to help me.” That simple fact was absolutely undeniable. My confession remained unspoken. I think he’s already found me.
Ren was quiet for a long moment before sighing. “One day, this will all be over, and you can come home.”
“Home? Casa Nera was never my home. It was only ever my cage.”
And Nikolai Chernov was the man who had set me free, and I’d thanked him by betraying his trust.
It was a debt I could never, ever repay.
My greatest sin.
