He lunged forward faster than I thought an old man like him could move. His hand wrapped around my throat and slammed me into the wall. My spine hit hard. His face hovered inches from mine, the stench of whiskey and sweat filling my lungs.
“You think you can come here and talk to me like that?” he barked, spit hitting my cheek. “After everything I’ve done for you? You ungrateful little bastard!”
His fist hit my ribs twice, and each blow took the air out of me. I gasped, trying to pull breath in, but it burned like fire. My vision swam, but I could still see his eyes, the same ones that had haunted every nightmare.
I shoved back, shoved him across the table and onto it, climbed over him until I was above his face. He muttered something under his breath. The voice in my head answered him plain and clear,kill him, kill him, kill him.
“Do it,” he sneered. “You do not have the balls to finish what you started.”
Something inside snapped. I slammed my palm into my own forehead as if to knock the words out of me, but the voices only grew louder until I could not stand it, and I screamed.
I grabbed the lamp from the table and brought it down on hishead.Again and again.The sound of flesh against metal kept time with my breathing. Glass and bone and blood flew and dripped. When his body finally stilled, I threw the lamp aside and stepped back, dizzy.
I sat in the chair across from him and spat onto his face. I pressed my palm to my forehead and dragged it down, wiping my face from jaw to hairline. Then I tasted blood on my fingers and licked it off.
Finally, the voices stopped.
Something in the room had died with him. Tears stung the corners of my eyes, but then I laughed, a high, brittle laugh that surprised me with how easily it came. I had no control over it.
Blood puddled and crept over the papers on the table. One sheet caught my eye. I picked it up, and my name was printed there. His last will. He had left everything to me, hisonly son.
I laughed louder.
I picked up the old black phone on the desk and dialed his lawyer. I wanted every penny moved into my name as fast as possible. Now that I knew what silenced those voices in my head, I would need the money.
“Sì, Mr. Ricci,” a man answered.
“Dante Ricci is dead,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “This is Oscar Ricci. I am his only heir.”
“I will make the arrangements,” the lawyer said, as if he had expected this call. As if my father had planned for this.
My father had always been a selfish man who wanted his line to continue. But what he didn’t know was that his line ended with him.
I said nothing more. I folded the paper, set it on the desk, and stood up. Then I walked away.
After a long shower, the house felt alive again. Some lights flickered on, and then a scream echoed through the hall. I knew that voice.Maria.The old housekeeper who raised me.
I walked out, and as she saw me, she ran forward, arms open, tears already in her eyes.1“Caro mio,your father…”
“Got what he deserved,” I finished for her, pushing her gently away. “He killed Mom, and now he got what he deserved.”
She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What did you do,2bambino?”
“Something that should have been done a long time ago,” I whispered, pulling her into a hug.
She broke down completely, sobbing into my chest, her cries whispering through the house. And then the voices started again, crawling back, louder, sharper, cutting through my head. I held her tighter. Tighter. Until I felt the crack beneath my hands.
Her body went limp. Her head fell back, mouth open, eyes wide.
“No, no, no,” I said, tapping her cheeks, desperate. “No.”
But she was already gone.
Tears finally fell my face. I screamed, the sound breaking out of me. I had just killed the only person who ever truly cared about me. And I did it with my own hands.
I let her body fall to the floor and ran toward the office. The voices screamed now, words blending into a singlesentence:Love so hard it makes you die.
I froze. My hand gripped the banister, pressing hard until the wood bit into my palm.
