Curse’s movements are efficient but unhurried as he dips his hands into the sink. Of course. He kills people every damn day. First for his uncle, now for his brother. This is probably as easy, maybe even as boring, to him as filing fucking paperwork.
But it’s not like that for me. The only people I’ve ever seen die were my own mamma and the man in the Montreal warehouse. And I wasn’t responsible for either of those.
I didn’t mean to push Marco. I didn’t mean for him to hit his head like that. But he was touching me, and he suddenly looked and sounded so much like his uncle. And the little girl I kept locked in a glass box inside my head started screaming so loudly that the clear cage had started to crack. It was going to shatter any second. My body moved without me telling it to. What I’d wanted to do in Taormina but was never able to finally happened here, twenty-two years later. Different man, same famiglia. Same last name.
“I killed him.”
I think I might throw up.
“No,” Curse says immediately, without emotion. “I did.”
“But I pushed him! And…And he hit his head so hard on the mantel…”
It was a beautiful mantel, too, all luxurious carved marble. With very hard, sharp corners.
“Who’s the one washing the blood off their hands right now, Aurora?”
His question drags me back from the bedroom where we left Marco.
“You are,” I whisper.
He nods, as if satisfied with my answer.
“That’s right,” he says. Calmly. Slowly. Like he’s trying to get through to a hyperventilating child. “When I got here, he was still breathing. Maybe he would have been alright after a head injury like that. Or maybe not. But I’m the one who cut his throat.”
Cut his throat.
He makes it sound like nothing more than taking a phone call.
He’d done it like it was nothing more than a phone call, too. He’d crouched over Marco’s head, and with a quick slide of his hands – and a fountain of blood – it was done.
“Soap.”
Dutifully, I grasp the bottle and pump soap into his palms. It’s strangely soothing to have someone telling me what to do right now. He’s washing his hands a little awkwardly, keeping his tattooed knuckles aimed downwards. The only tattoo visible right now is what looks to be a tiny letter on the palm of his left hand. But it’s distorted by the water and bubbles, and I can’t tell for sure. He rinses his knife, too, still keeping his palms aimed up. Once he’s done that, he pulls a fresh pair of leather gloves out and slides them on.
It's only then that I realize why he’s got new gloves back on, why he washed his hands palms-up.
He’s trying to keep his tattoos out of sight of any cameras.
“There’s no camera in the bedroom,” I say, my train of thought coming right out my mouth. “He told me when…when…”
I shudder.
Don’t be such a cold fucking fish, he’d said after my wedding dress had been discarded and his hands were sliding up my thighs. There are no cameras in here.
Those were the last words he ever said.
“Good,” Curse says. “Probably better if nobody saw you push him and then immediately make a phone call.”
He glances at my phone, which is on the counter beside us. With a few quick movements, he’s retrieved the SIM card. He puts the card down on the counter, using the tip of his knife to break it apart into tiny, jagged shards. Once it’s completely destroyed, he sweeps the pieces into the same sealable plastic bag he put the bloody gloves into before returning the bag to his pocket.
“Put it in airplane mode now,” he tells me, handing me my phone, “then turn it off.”
I do so. Before I can look up again, something cold and hard grazes the side of my throat.
His knife.
I try to flinch away, but his head is on the other side, the material of his black medical mask grazing my ear as he quietly says, “It’s going to look a lot better on the cameras if I’m forcing you out of here.”
