“I can’t believe you let his friend get you,” I muttered to Bran, steering his car into the lot of the Hade Harbor hospital, St. Mary’s, a few hours later.
Bran grimaced. “It’s not my fault. A fucker like him shouldn’t have any friends.”
I parked and opened my door. “Come on then. What road trip is complete without a trip to the ER?”
“You take such good care of me, man.”
Bran’s shit-eating grin was more irritating than normal. I didn’t want to be going to the hospital and waiting around for him to have his leg sewn up. We were here, in the town where Angelo had settled, and where there was a Sophie Rossi living, according to public record.
Bran limped into the waiting area of the ER as I took the forms for him to fill out and dumped them on his chest.
“I’m going for a walk,” I told him shortly, before leaving.
First, I hit the restroom. The trucker’s blood was gummy under my fingernails, and I couldn’t get it out. That had been reckless. Killing off De Sanctis men was one thing. Antonio wouldn’t do shit about it. It was an unspoken rule of the underworld that we lived in that no one involved the cops. But killing a random rude trucker? One with friends? That had been a legal headache I shouldn’t be inviting into my life.
I caught the wild expression in my eyes in the mirror.
I was losing control of the beast inside. The one that Sofia’s death had finally freed. I didn’t know what would happen if I found her alive. Something dark and twisted that smelled like impossible hope had rooted in my chest since I’d discovered her coffin empty.
I washed my hands again and dried them roughly. Looking in the mirror, I knew that when I found her, which I would, if she was really alive, that the way I looked would scare her.
Good. The damage life inflicted on us should show, so we’d know where to direct our vengeance. My eyes were shadowed pits. There was nothing inside. My eyes, more than my tattoos, shaved head, or predatory energy, made people nervous.
I’d really become the monster Sofia had once accused me of being, and people knew it. They stayed back. Except for Bran, apparently, and Molly, my brother’s wife. Since she’d already married a demon, I guessed she was used to it.
I left the restroom and headed deeper into the hospital. I’d always found them fascinating places. A place where death walked the halls. Everyone knew it was there, but they tried not to look directly at it. Nowhere did the grim reaper walk with such acceptance. I, too, walked the halls without too many stares. Maybe people in the hospital are hardened to death, in whatever way it comes.
I found a cafeteria and grabbed a bottle of water, sitting in a secluded corner to stare out at the lights of Hade Harbor. It was dark already, and blackness seemed to yawn beyond the brightly lit cafeteria window. A long gulp of water wet my dry throat.
Is she really out there somewhere?
Then I heard it.
A voice ripped from the past. It was annoying, upbeat, and perky.
“I’m just grabbing a coffee for me and Sofia. We’re all done here. I’ll pick up dinner on the way home.”
My entire body tensed. I listened without moving. The rest of the cafeteria was reflected in the window, highlighted against the dark evening outside. A short figure dressed like a gym bunny with waist-length, dark-blonde hair was walking past me, balancing her tray of two coffees with a bottle of water, and her phone.
Chiara, or Cici Salva, as she went by here.
She breezed past me, and I was on my feet and following in a heartbeat. She walked down the hall, totally oblivious to being followed. I prowled behind her.
Chiara headed downstairs to the reception area. I got close enough to hear her phone conversation.
“No, she’s not coming for dinner tomorrow. She’s got a date with Edward Sloane. Anyway, how’s my little man? Are you guys having a nice boys’ night?”
Chiara listened for a moment, nodding. So, Angelo and Chiara had a kid. Interesting.
“Good. Well, tell my little lion I’ll see him soon. I have to go. I’ll see you at home.”
She was standing beside one of the chairs in the waiting area, and as she hung up, she tapped the shoulder of the figure sitting there.
A dark head was bent over a book and spoke without looking up. Her hair was short, and I could make out her slender stalk of a neck and the tip of one ear which she’d tucked her hair behind.
“It’s not a date.”
Her voice. Sofia.
Chiara rolled her eyes and perched on the opposite chair. I couldn’t see the dark-haired woman as she was facing away from me. Even then, I knew. It was her. My lastochka.
Everything seemed to slow. Time lost its meaning. I forgot how to breathe, to think. All I could do was watch. That whirling blackness inside me returned tenfold. The cage around my heart, the one that meeting Sofia had shaken, finally cracked. My mind might have cracked, too, right then. I wasn’t the man I was when she’d known me. Now, inside my chest, a gnashing, bloodthirsty monster, snarled at the world. That chaos had settled inside me, and I’d known that for as long as I lived, I’d live in the eye of the storm. It was the compromise my broken mind had found. I could function, talk, and eat and walk like a man, but inside, it was never still, never quiet. Inside, there were screams that never stopped.
I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest to stop myself from striding around the corner and hauling her to me. A handy floor-length information stand obscured me from their view, and anyone who thought it odd that a man was lurking just behind it received a death stare that sent them on their way.
“Sure, it is. Well, he wants it to be. I don’t understand why you don’t go for it,” Chiara sighed dramatically.
Sofia sounded over it. “Not this again.”
“Edward Sloane is rich, handsome. Everyone likes him, and pretty sure he’s never killed anyone. I know that’s not your usual type, but you shouldn’t discriminate against nice guys.”
“Very funny. Thanks for the coffee. All the paperwork is done, so let’s go. I need to go and do some work on that portrait before my ‘date’ threatens to fire me again.”
“Whatever, die alone,” Chiara muttered, standing.
The dark-headed figure stood as well, stretching her lithe body this way and that, before picking up her bag. “I won’t die alone. I’ll come to your house to do it.”
Chiara laughed and looped her arm around her friend’s, turning her toward the doors.
I caught the first glimpse of my obsession’s face. My ghost, made flesh.
Dark eyes, ringed by long lashes, smooth olive skin. Her hair was short, chopped at the chin. She had a dark coat on and a black scarf wrapped around her neck.
Her full lips were turned upward in a grin as she made her way outside.
Sofia De Sanctis. A ghost no more.
I followed them to the parking lot, sticking to the shadows. My natural place. Even if they looked right at me, they wouldn’t see me. I didn’t just hide in the shadows, I was the darkness.
She headed to a beat-up old wreck of a Honda and got in, waving goodbye to Chiara. Just like a magnet was tied to my chest, I found my feet heading toward Bran’s ride. I still had the keys in my pocket. My eyes riveted on Sofia’s car, I started my own, my mind oddly empty, and closed the door.
The Honda pulled out, and I was right behind it.
The car headed north along the shore. I stayed close behind. I missed call after call from Bran, but I couldn’t answer right now. I couldn’t think about anything at all.
Night had fallen, and I rolled down the windows to let the cool air keep me sharp.
The Honda pulled down a quiet, winding road toward the ocean. It pulled into the driveway of the lone house that sat at the bottom of the road. As the headlights died, I pulled to the side of the street farther back and killed the headlights. It was dark. I had to get closer.
I slipped out of the vehicle just as Sofia got out of hers. She had a shiny plastic bag in one hand and her handbag in the other. I ventured closer, sticking to the shadows for a moment, before stepping out.
I strode down the street, my hand checking my gun as I went. A simple reflex.
She disappeared into the isolated house, with the yard that backed onto the water on one side and the woods on another. It was quiet. The kind of quiet that let a man like me know that there was no one around for a good distance.
No one to hear her scream.
Go in there and take her, the voice inside me growled. Take her where? I’d only just arrived in town. I had no place to stay, no idea where to go, or even where I could take a woman, against her will, and keep her. No. I couldn’t rush in, unprepared. Besides, I didn’t want her to see me yet. I wasn’t ready. I wanted to watch her. See her life. I wanted her to feel the jaws of her punishment slowly closing in, before they snapped shut on her.
A new game. A scrap for the beast inside, to soothe its mad hunger.
My prom queen, the only love of my wretched life, was alive.
I was relieved.
I was furious.
I was the happiest I’d ever been.
I was the angriest.
Above all, I was excited about something for the first time in seven years. A game finally worth playing.
I stood there in the dark watching for her, eyes trained for any sign of movement behind the shuttered windows, until a sharp ring cut through the night. It was my phone. I grabbed it out of my pocket and answered as I made my way back to the car.
“Dude, what the hell?” Bran sounded exasperated.
“I had to check something. I’m coming back for you. Sit tight. I’m on my way.”
