“They threatened my family,” I say, because I need her to understand even though I know she won’t. “They came here with weapons. They killed my guards. They were going to hurt you,and I feel nothing for men like that. I’d kill a hundred more without hesitation if it meant keeping you and Leon safe.”
She’s backing away from me now, slow steps that put more distance between us with each word.
“Feeling something wouldn’t change anything.” I try to take another step toward her, but my legs give out, and I have to catch myself on the tree. “They’d still be dead. I’d still have done it. The only thing that matters is that you’re safe.”
“Stop.” She holds up both hands like she’s warding off a monster. “Just stop. I can’t listen to this. I can’t look at you right now.”
“Mama?” Leon’s voice drifts from inside the house, high and frightened. “Mama, where are you?”
Mina’s face crumples. Fresh tears spill down her cheeks, and she looks toward the house, then back at me.
“I have to go.” Her voice breaks completely. “Leon needs me, and I can’t—I can’t be here.”
“Mina, please.” I’m begging now, and I don’t care. “Please don’t go. Let me explain. Let me make you understand—”
“Don’t follow me.” She’s crying so hard she can barely get the words out. “Don’t come near us. Just don’t.”
She turns and runs.
I watch her disappear into the house, and I’m still standing here in my ruined garden surrounded by dead men and destroyed roses, blood dripping from my hands onto the white petals I picked for her.
She kissed me. This morning she kissed me, and I kissed her back like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Now I’ve turned into a monster again in her eyes, and our perfect happy ending is in ruins.
21
Mina
Ipeer through the gap in Leon’s bedroom curtains, my hand shaking as I hold the fabric aside.
Below, in the garden, Cristiano moves among the rosebushes with Paulo and Nico. They’re wrapping bodies in plastic sheets. The men Cristiano killed. He’s favoring his left side, and there’s blood soaking through his shirt, dark stains spreading across his midsection and shoulder.
My hands tighten on the curtain. He should be lying down. He should be getting medical attention, but instead, he’s helping Paulo drag a body toward the garage, working methodically and indifferently. From the calm way Cristiano is acting, I know with horrible certainty that it’s not the first time he’s killed.
My stomach lurches, and I taste bile.
The garden was supposed to be our wedding venue. White roses and fairy lights and Leon as our page boy. Everyone we love celebrating us. But the garden is soaked in blood. Thedaydream we spun, that beautiful fantasy where we made each other whole, is crumbling to dust.
I’m left with the cold, harsh reality of dead men wrapped in plastic and my son’s father moving among the bodies like it’s just another day.
The garden shifts and blurs, and I see a different scene down there in my mind’s eye. The man moving between the roses is Cristiano, but he looks so much like Don Agnello it’s startling. A boy is cowering near the fountain. Leon, a little older than he is now, perhaps ten, with amber eyes and dark curls, trying to make himself small as his father rages at him.
I can’t hear Cristiano’s seething words, but I can see the cold fury in his eyes. The sharp gesticulations that have my baby cringing away from the enormous, enraged man looming over him.
And then the worst thing possible happens. Cristiano strikes our son across his face with the back of his hand, and the little boy stumbles backward into the roses, thorns tearing at his clothes.
Please, Papa, I’m sorry.
Leon’s childish pleading rings in my head, but Cristiano is unmoved. He hits my baby again, and Leon is bleeding now, and he’s trying not to cry because crying only makes it worse.
Cristiano’s hand rises a third time.
“No!” The word tears from my throat, and I whirl away from the window and the imaginary scene.
My eyes land on Leon, safely tucked into bed with Mom beside him while she strokes his curls. He’s all right. It was just my mind playing tricks on me.
But I saw Cristiano’s face this afternoon, cold and unfeeling as he killed those men. Exactly like his father. What if this is the cycle? Violence passed from father to son as sure as the ambereyes. They become their fathers, no matter how gentle they seem at the beginning. The violence is always there, waiting.
