“It doesn’t matter,” Morelli says. “I’ll pay for the damage. We need to get downstairs and take the car to the airstrip.”
I scrub a hand over my eyes and see bits of wood and plaster embedded in my knuckles. “I need to kill Parker.”
“You will,” Morelli says, with a touch of his old arrogance. “We’re not leaving because we’re running away. We’re leaving to collect ourselves, gather our strength and find a way to make Parker wish he’d never been born.”
Another silence, this one more loaded than the last.
“You mean it?” I say to Morelli.
“On my honor as a man, we will hurt Parker like no one has ever been hurt before. For Bobby’s father and Adriano’s mother and Alessia and… and…”
Morelli breaks off as his eyes fill with tears. He looks even younger, like he’s shrinking in front of me. “Sorry,” he mutters. “I don’t deserve to…”
He feels guilty, I realise. The three of us lost family members but Parker was too chicken shit to kill any of the coveted Morelli family. But why does that matter when his men snatched Eli’s dog, broke its back and all its legs and let it bleed out on the sidewalk? Morelli got his share of humiliation and disrespect. Even I knew he loved that dog more than anything.
Morelli’s phone slides to the floor as he starts crying, his hands clamped over his face. I move toward him and wrap my arms around his back. He smells like fancy cologne and soap and he buries his face in my neck like a girl but I don’t push him away.
“It’s okay,” I lie. “We can work this out.”
“I promise,” Morelli sobs. “I promise we’ll get revenge. Just come with me. Just don’t fucking kill yourself.”
I briefly press my cheek against Morelli’s head. “I won’t kill myself. I don’t want to…”
Tears well up inside me and then we’re hugging each other like assholes, sinking down onto the floor and howling for what we’ve lost and the revenge that has to wait.
“I’m sorry,” Morelli keeps saying and he’s so wrong to be sorry eventually I can’t stand it. I disentangle myself from him and walk back to Alessia’s side.
“Go to him,” I snarl at Bobby. “Help him out.”
But to my surprise, Adriano gets there first, reaching down and pulling Eli into his chest. He strokes the back of Morelli’s head as he weeps, mutters something soft in Ukrainian and I see tears sparkling in the gargoyle’s eyes. The sight of them almost as shocking as the sight of my dead sister.
Bobby joins the two of them, wrapping his arms around Morelli’s back and weeping like a little boy. His face is flushed with shame and rage, but I guess he needs the comfort more than he needs to be a man. Soon they’re all crying, screaming, moaning in a nightmare chorus. I don’t know who is making noise and who is helping.
I turn and look at Alessia. Some doctor or nurse closed her blue eyes to make it look like she’s sleeping. It doesn’t matter. She still looks like hell.
I dig in my pocket for my Marlboros, and light up. The hospital are probably going to sue me for busting up their walls, so why not have a few cigarettes? I stand there, chain smoking as I watch my friends fall apart and it occurs to me I know two things.
This happened for no reason and it’s all my fucking fault.
Present Day
January Whitehall isballed up on Morelli’s dark red carpet, still unconscious from her sleeper injection. I lean against the banister of the main staircase, waiting for her to wake up. I’ve heard all brides are beautiful on their wedding day, but she’s a pretty little thing. She reminds me of a colt, all legs and lashes and long, dark mane. And those tits… Mama Whitehall did a good job hiding them away. My eyes almost fell out of my head when the brat walked down the aisle toward me.
A moan falls from her red lips. Even twitching on the carpet, she looks too pure to exist. Like she’s been kissed by angels. It makes a man want to violate her. Or at least it makes me want to do that.
On the other side of the room, her useless bodyguard is still out cold. He didn’t get a sleeper injection; Adriano just kicked him in the head. I would have slit his throat and pushed him out of the van, but Morelli wants him alive for now.
“Mmmmff.” The brat turns over, her fingers contracting like kitten claws. Her eyes flick open. They’re green. Not psycho green like Adriano. Pale green with a dark ring. The kind that make you think of Irish hills and secret gardens. I push myself off the banister. “Evening, Tits.”
January squints at me. “Father Monastero?”
I grin. When we got home, I changed into black jeans and a T-shirt. I’d have kept the priest robes on but Morelli told me to quit showing off. “Not a real priest, dipshit.”
Her lower lip trembles and I watch as today’s events replay in her brain. She touches the side of her neck. “You drugged me.”
“I did.” The needle pierced her so easily. I’ll never get over how simple humans are to penetrate. How quickly you can turn the living into the dead.
January sits up, her wedding dress spread around her like a white puddle. Her eyes scan the entrance hall, lingering on the oil paintings and the fire roaring away in the corner. “Where am I?”
