Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89232 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
The minister keeps the service short. Afterward, he wisely doesn’t greet the mourners at the door as per the custom. How can he? He can hardly shake Laura’s hand and tell her how sorry he is for her loss while my mom is looking on. He can’t ignore her either. She and Daisy lost someone dear to them as well. He can only slip away, leaving us to deal with another painful situation.
The media stay on the outskirts at the graveyard when the coffin is lowered into the earth. That doesn’t stop them from snapping photos of Laura and Daisy on one side and us on the other. It’s a nightmare. Keeping up a brave show takes its toll. I’m grateful for Colin’s arm around my shoulders that keeps me steady. Through it all, I’m scanning the surroundings for a dark, tall man, frightened that I’ll recognize his features in the sea of faces.
As the minister says a prayer, the scene of Angelo bending over the body of my dad flashes in front of me. The memory comes uninvited from nowhere, wreaking that silent havoc inside me that will neither let me breathe nor drown. Instead, I’m trapped in a horrible place of suffering.
It’s hell.
I imagine snatching the gun from his hand and pushing it against his head, but even in my fantasies I’m a coward, because when it comes to the part where I pull the trigger, I can’t do it.
All I can do is hate myself more.
By the time the ordeal is over, Angelo hasn’t showed up except in my head, and I’m a mess, empty and hollow inside.
Chapter
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.