Chapter 1
Aurora
The first time I saw Curse Titone was the day he saved my life. I was six years old in Sicily.
The second time I saw him was the night he ended someone else’s. I was sixteen years old in Montreal.
The third time he somehow manages to do both at once.
Tonight, I am twenty-eight years old in New York. The man I married mere hours ago lies in a pool of blood at my feet.
Curse is holding a knife.
His eyes are black and empty now.
Once, I thought he was my guardian angel. He pulled me from the salt-choked waves so I could breathe again. In turn, I worshipped him. He was like a dream to me. The object of all devotion.
When I prayed, I prayed to him.
But even the best dreams can shatter like glass. Even angels can falter, can fall.
So many moments that I wished he would once again come and save me, but he didn’t.
So many moments that I wished that he had just let me drown that day.
But he’s here now. With the knife and the blood and those eyes that I don’t recognize. He’s still so fucking beautiful. A monster with a face like a god.
And a name like damnation.
“Let’s go,” Curse says. The first words I’ve heard from his lips in more than ten years.
“Where?”
He doesn’t answer. Does it even matter? Do I have a choice?
If there is a choice, I’ve already made it.
I leave my husband’s body behind and follow the monster, leaving bloody footprints as I go.
Chapter 2
Aurora
Papà took me to Sicily two months after Mamma died. Before that, I’d never left Buffalo. In a way, it had made sense to my six-year-old brain. My entire world had changed now that Mamma was gone. Why shouldn’t the landscape around me change, too?
And change, it did. We went to Taormina in the summer. I still remember that sun, sun the likes of which I’d never seen in Buffalo, even on the clearest, hottest days. It poured over the island, making sand glow and sea shine like clear turquoise glass. Even through the bleary-eyed haze of my grief, I could tell the place was beautiful. And it was so much better than being home without her, waiting for her to walk through a door that she never would again.
Taormina became a sort of sanctuary. At least at first. It had water and heat and distance from everything I’d lost.
And Taormina had Curse Titone in it.
He wasn’t called Curse Titone then. He still had his papà’s last name, Giordano, not that of his Titone uncle. The Giordanos were a family with business connections to my papà. We rented a villa close to their home, and they came to visit us after a few days. I found each one of them intimidating in their own way. Giuseppe Giordano for his height and the shark-like gleam of his dark eyes. His eldest son, Elio, was huge at fourteen, broad-shouldered, hard-jawed, and already part of the men’s business. I don’t think he even noticed I was in the room. Elio’s mamma Florencia frightened me because she was warm and kind and it made my chest hurt badly when she hugged me and tried to feed me from the enormous platter of food she’d brought. She was such a wonderful mamma, and I didn’t have one of those anymore, so I didn’t know what to do with her or the viciously barbed longing she inspired.
And then there was Accursio Giordano.
Curse.
He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, with the bone structure of an angel and hair the colour of coal. He was eight years old then, two years my senior. Old enough that he exuded effortless cool to someone like me just by existing, but not so old that he was completely out of my orbit the way someone like Elio was. He didn’t follow his brother or father into the other room to talk business with Papà. He stayed with Florencia and me.
