Kiss Me in the Dark Anthology - Monica James Page 0,72

be wrong today. Matteo and I often confused one with the other and got punished as well.

Matteo took his knife and stuck it into the bowl with mashed potato that had stopped steaming before slipping the mash-covered blade into his mouth.

Marianna clucked her tongue. “One day you’ll cut yourself.”

Matteo shoved the knife back into the mash and licked it off again, his chin jutting out stubbornly. “I won’t.”

I pushed my chair back and stood. It wasn’t permitted to get up before dinner was eaten, but Father wasn’t home, so I was the master of the house because Matteo was two years younger than me.

I walked around the table. Marianna made a step in my direction. “Luca, you shouldn’t…” She trailed off as she looked at my face.

I looked like Father. That’s why she was more scared of me than Matteo. That, and because I was going to be Capo. Soon, I’d be the one to punish everyone for doing wrong things.

She didn’t follow me when I walked through the foyer and up the stairs. “Mother? Dinner’s ready.”

No answer. I stepped onto the landing, then approached Mother’s bedroom. The door was ajar. The last time that had happened, I’d found her wailing on her bed, but it was quiet inside. I pushed the door open, swallowing. It was too quiet. Light spilled out of the open bathroom.

Downstairs, I heard Father’s voice. He had arrived home from work. He was probably angry that I wasn’t sitting at the dining room table. I should have gone downstairs and apologized, but my feet carried me toward the light source.

Our bathrooms were white Carrara marble but, for some reason, a pink glow reflected in the room. I stepped into the doorframe and froze. The floor was covered with blood. I’d seen it often enough to recognize it, and its smell, a hint of copper and something sweet, was even sweeter today as it mixed with Mother’s perfume.

My eyes followed the river of blood, then the dried waterfall of red staining the white tub up to a limp arm. The white flesh was parted, giving way to dark red below.

The arm belonged to Mother. It had to be her, even if she looked alien. Masklike and stiff, her eyes were dull brown. They were staring at me, sad and lonely.

I moved a few steps closer. “Mother?” Another step. “Mom?”

She didn’t react. She was dead. Dead. My eyes registered the knife on the floor. It was one of Matteo’s, a black Karambit knife. She didn’t have her own weapons.

She had cut herself. It was her blood. I looked down at my feet. My socks were soaked with the red liquid. I stumbled away and slipped, falling back, crying out. My butt hit the floor hard and my clothes soaked up her blood, sticking to my skin.

I scrambled to my feet and stormed outside, my mouth open wide, my head throbbing, my eyes stinging. I collided with something. Looking up, I found Father’s furious face glaring down at me. He hit me hard across the face. “Stop screaming!”

My lips snapped shut. I’d screamed? I blinked up at my father but he was blurry. He gripped me by the collar, shaking me. “Are you crying?”

I wasn’t sure. I knew crying wasn’t allowed. I never cried, not even when Father hurt me. He hit me even harder. “Speak up.”

“Mother’s dead,” I croaked.

Father frowned, taking in the blood on my clothes. He moved past me toward the bedroom. “Come,” he ordered. I noticed his two bodyguards in the hallway with us. They watched me with a look in their eyes I didn’t understand.

I didn’t move.

“Come, Luca,” Father hissed.

“Please,” I said. Another forbidden thing: begging. “I don’t want to see her again.”

Father’s face twisted with rage, and I braced myself. He was upon me and gripped my arm. “Never again. You won’t ever say that word again. And no tears, not another disgusting tear, or I’ll burn out your left eye. You can still be a Made Man with one eye.”

I gave a quick nod and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I didn’t fight when Father wrenched me back into the bathroom and I didn’t cry again, only stared at the body in the tub. Only a body. Slowly, the roar in my chest quieted. It was only a body.

“Pathetic,” Father muttered. “Pathetic whore.”

My brows drew together. The women Father met when he wasn’t home were whores, but Mother wasn’t. She was his wife. Whores took care of