Chapter1
Aurora
Everything has stopped.The train.My breathing.
Maybe even my heart.
Alessandro Messina.Son of my late husband Marco.Great nephew of Carlo.Those eyes of his – of theirs – watch me as if pulled from a nightmare.My past mashing itself into my present.
Three generations of Messina men.All of them grabbing at me in their own ways.Trying to seize me for themselves.
He’s the only one left standing.
And he’s here.
The golden light of the train car glows along the black body of his gun, the dark brown leather of his gloves, the sleeves of his coat.
“Let’s go,” he says, as casually as if he’s picking me up for brunch.For some normal and expected rendezvous.The train car seems to tilt beneath me, nausea spiking against my spine.Because, for the briefest of moments, I’m reminded of when Curse came for me in New York.“Let’s go,” he’d said while Marco bled out on the floor.
Now, another man is telling me to follow him.While Curse is the one who is hurt.
“What have you done to him?”I hiss by way of reply.I turn from him – not caring what he’ll do, not caring about the gun – and fall heavily to my knees beside Curse.He’s still laying, insensible, bent across the table.His breath sounds dangerously slow.Heavy.Like it’s too much effort for his body to keep it up for long.Across the table, I see the overturned cup.The water that was meant for me.The one he tipped and let spill to the floor before it ever touched my lips.Curse’s face is terribly pale.The tattoos at his throat look so much blacker now in comparison, like they’ve been freshly inked.Slashes and swirls of obsidian art.
No.
I cannot watch him die.
“What have you done to him?!”I ask again.It comes out shaking, shrieking, as my fingers pass desperately over Curse’s cold, damp brow.
“Get up.”Alessandro’s tone is snippy with impatience.When I don’t move, he reacts.I flinch, feeling the unmistakable press of metal against the back of my neck.His gun.
“Get up,” he repeats.
I wrap my arms around Curse’s ribs, locking my fingers against each other.
“No,” I whisper.“I’m not leaving him.Fucking shoot me if you want to.I don’t care.I won’t go.”
The words feel like they should just be bravado, but they’re not.I’m terribly, grimly at peace with the fact that, right now, I’d rather take a bullet than abandon him.Even after everything.
Alessandro sighs, like I’ve inconvenienced him.The pressure of the gun suddenly vanishes from the back of my neck.
“Can’t shoot you,Mamma,” he sneers, a sick reference to the fact that, despite him being older than me, he was technically my stepson for those few hours I was married to his father.“How am I going to marry you if I’ve blown a big hole in that pretty head of yours?”
The gun slides into my view.It plants itself against Curse’s forehead, directly in front of my eyes.
No!
The blood in my veins freezes, locking my limbs.I can’t blink.I’m suddenly tortured by certainty that if I let my eyes shut even for a second, Curse won’t be alive when I open them again.
“Get up and come with me,” Alessandro says, “or I’ll shoot him instead.”
“You wouldn’t,” I stammer, squeezing Curse harder.As if my arms can help him, heal him.Make him wake up and save us both.
“Of fucking course I would,” Alessandro says with a laugh, sharp and cold, like a knife.“I pumped him full of opioids to keep this shit simple.Clean.But I’m not above getting messy if I have to.”He presses the gun harder against Curse.So forcefully it makes his dark head rock with the impact.
“Stop!Don’t touch him!”I jump up, trying to get myself between Curse and the gun.My body screams at me to do something, anything.If I didn’t think it might make the gun go off, I’d grab Alessandro’s arm, hurl myself at him, scratch his fucking eyes out with fingernails still stained with the chipped wedding polish his papà paid for.
Alessandro takes advantage of my new position, seizing my elbow with his free hand in a grip I realize too late I cannot fight.He’s not as big as Curse, but he’s not a small man, either.He’s got large hands, strong arms, and he’s heavy.So heavy that him simply throwing his weight to the side and starting to walk down the length of the train car is enough to send me into lurching motion.
