Even though Donatello had been stoic up until this point, he glanced at me when her rage reached his ears. It was the kind of rage that would point straight into the eardrums and try to explode them with its intensity.
“It must be the stress,” Donatello whispered, shaking his head. Sweat ran down his face, and he didn’t bother wiping it up.
Yeah, it could have been the stress, but there was more to this, and she was directing the wrath of it at me. I refused todistress her, since I was to blame for putting her in this spot, so I took backward steps until I was back with the crowd again. I could still hear her cursing me, threatening me, ragingat melike I had stolen something valuable from her and refused to return it. She switched from Italian to English then back to Italian again.
A woman in the crowd leaned toward me and whispered, “Rosaria Caffi has an evil temper. Not everyone knows this, but mycugina, who cleans the, ah,teatroin Napoli, met her once. She was fired after.” She made a slicing motion against her throat. “Mycuginadid not clean her space properly, or so the Caffi claimed. There was dust left on her counter, and the songbird did not like it.”
I allowed this woman to believe this was the reason Rosaria Caffi was screaming obscenities at me, but truthfully, I had done something to this woman that I didn’t even know about. What I knew about, the nightmare and what had followed, was not the reason, even though it should have been. I had insulted her worse than if I had killed her.
This woman was an effing tough act.
A trembling that started in my bones and made it to the surface shook me as precious seconds ticked. I crossed my arms over my chest, like the position could keep the quivering inside. The crowd started to grow thicker as both lanes had been closed due to the accident. Flares had been set out, giving the darkness a dangerous red hue. It was in that warning light that a man in a custom-made suit stood to the side, staring at me. There was no doubt he was Italian. He was beyond good looking, and even though it was hard to place his age, he was probably in his late forties to early fifties. He had a scar on his face. His inky hair was slicked back into a bun that rested at the nape of his neck. I wasn’t sure if he was studying me because Rosaria was still shouting at me or what.
If this was my stalker, the person out to kill me…he had me trapped. I had nowhere to run. My best option, and perhaps the most humane one for me, was to hop in the car with Rosaria and send us both crashing to the ground.
My eyes flew to the scene when the tree cracked again.
A few seconds later, it made almost a roaring sound when it finally snapped. It was as if it was trying its best to keep the weight but had succumbed to it. This woman and her car were too heavy to carry. The entire crowd, except for maybe the man in the suit, gasped, and a second later, the car was gone. But Rosaria’s voice echoed behind it,daughter of a whoooo?—
She took her last breath to insult me.
She almost sang the jibe.
The crowd rushed to where she had just been. Most of the tree was gone, too, except for the stump. It was almost impossible, though, to see anything over the side of the hill or mountain. Even a bright red Ferrari.
Donatello started to sob. He sobbed into his hands as if his heart had perished with her. I felt an immense sense of grief, too, at the loss of life, especially because I would have to live with what I’d done to cause it to happen. But since this thought was only inside of my head, I thought it freely: I felt immense relief that she was gone, as if she had shackled me somehow. It was the same way I would feel when the killer after me was either gone or locked up. Being shackled to fear was no way to live. But I would never forget Rosaria Caffi.
She said she would haunt me. I believed her.
We would forever be connected through my first moments in Italy and her last.
I had collected a stalker back home and a ghost in this new one.
What a winner I was turning out to be in life.
Police, or whatever was the equivalent of them in Italy, finally arrived on the scene. I wasn’t sure what Rosaria was talking about when she saidtheywould arrive before thehelp, but she was wrong. No one had come before the police to help. Still, I was glad the authorities had arrived. The man in the suit was stillloitering around. When he walked up to me as I stood close to the cliffside, I walked closer to the street.
He followed.
He came face to face with me, grinning. Up close, he was even more stunning than he was when he was lost in the darkness. But even the darkness couldn’t cloak how generally fine he was. “You have killed the wicked witch of Italy, ah?” he said in Italian-accented English, then winked at me. “I will alert the village.”
I opened my mouth to respond, to defend myself, but before I could find a response, he was already gone. The darkness cloaked him as if he were a part of it.
Chapter 8
A Doctor has been Called
My eyes opened to the scorching light of a new day. My entire body felt as if it were on fire, no place as concentrated as my chest. It felt as if staples and bolts were pulling my two sides together, the line meeting at my heart, and the skin had become hot and stiff. My mouth was parched, as if the flames had started a fire on the inside. My head throbbed with the echoes of a ringing bell still trapped inside my skull.
Down to the marrow of my bones, pain radiated through me.
It was almost as if the healing process had already started, but on a body that was empty of all its insides. Each stitching of the flesh that had been torn apart mended together in a pain so great, an anguished, a weak roar seemed to come from a hollow enclave inside of me.
The lion was dying.
Perhaps I was too.
My second heart could not be saved.
