He lets me go and I shrink back, kneeling on my father’s chair. I remember how big it used to look to me. His favorite chair. Worn leather. The scent of the cigars he liked to smoke in here still clinging to the leather beneath that of the gasoline slowly creeping in here.
“I’d kiss you!” I cry out, desperate to stop this. I twist around so I can see him. He’s moved behind me, but the words come out choked because he’s tightening the rope.
He pauses. “Would you?”
“I would because you’re not a monster. I know it. I see it.”
He cocks his head, considers. “Really?”
I don’t understand. I can’t read him.
“I think you need glasses then,” he adds and starts to pull the rope.
I try to scream, but I can’t. I look up to watch the length of it move through the beam. Tears stream down my face as I stand, the chair moving beneath me on its wheels.
He’s going to hang me.
He’s going to hang me like his father hanged my father.
The chair stills.
“I got you, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
I try to drag in a breath.
“Don’t worry. Get on your feet now. Up. That’s it.”
I can breathe. There’s some slack in the rope. But as soon as I’m on my feet, he tightens it again, and that slack is gone, and I’m on tiptoe again.
If he moves, if he lets the chair go, I’m dead.
I look down at him and he looks up at me.
“You don’t want this,” I say, words choked.
“No, you’re right. I don’t want it for you. But I can’t let you go. Don’t you see? It has to end. And you’re the sacrifice. One way or another, you were always going to be the sacrifice. I’m sorry, Cristina.”
I think it’s the first authentic thing he’s said to me. And behind the madman, I see him again. I see that boy. The scared, hurt little boy.
But I also know it’s too late. Too late for him. Too late for me.
That’s when I hear commotion coming from outside
“There he is,” Lucas says, the Joker-like tone back, the madman. He switches the monitor on my father’s desk on. We watch the men gathered outside. Tobias and Damian walk to the front door and open it.
I’m surprised Lucas’s men are gone.
“Leave your weapons at the door,” he yells loudly. “And you come in alone, Brother. Alone or she swings,” he calls out. “I’m watching.” He’s behind me keeping the chair from rolling.
“I’m coming alone. Do not hurt her.”
“Aww. He does care,” Lucas says to me, making a face that makes me want to punch him or kick my foot into his nose. But if I do either, I’m dead. He lets go of that chair and I will swing.
The door opens a moment later and I take in Damian’s face, his eyes, as he sees me. As he sees the only reason I’m not dead is because his brother has his foot on the leg of the chair so it doesn’t slip out from under me.
“Cut her down and let her go.” He sounds calm, but I hear the tension in his voice. I’m learning Damian. “She has absolutely nothing to do with this.”
I want to tell him to run. To get out. It’s a trap. He must know it. He must smell the gasoline. Lucas is going to kill him. He’s going to kill us all. But every breath is torture, and it’s taking all I have to remain as still as possible.
“Don’t move, Cristina,” Damian tells me. He must see my struggle.
“When did you buy the house? I had no idea,” Lucas asks.
“Let her go, Lucas. I’m here. You have what you want.”
“No, not really. Actually, I don’t have anything I want.”
“Then tell me what the hell it is. Tell me and I’ll give it to you!”
Lucas stops, and I see the change in expression, like something’s dawning on him. And then I see that grin, the Joker-like one.
“You already are, Brother. Everything ends tonight. We all end tonight.”
I hear it before I smell it. A whoosh.
Fire.
Fire catching.
Fire racing to devour the gasoline.
Damian takes two urgent steps closer.
“Stay where you are. You come closer, and I let go of the chair.”
Damian puts his hands up and stops.
“You have to admit, it will be a poetic end, don’t you think? Everything back to where it all started. Sorta. I mean, I can’t take you back to the train tracks, but she hangs like her father did. Like she should have eight years ago. And you and me and Father, we all burn. Like we should have. But only after you watch her die.”
“You are not this person, Lucas,” Damian says.
Do I feel the heat of the fire already? Is that possible? I hear it coming closer. It’s raging.
“I’m exactly this person, Damian. Dad was right to choose me. I am what he wanted. I am exactly that. He must have seen it, too. Recognized himself in me.”
“You’re not like him.”
“I’m more like him than you’ll ever let yourself believe.”
“She’s innocent. Let her go. I’ll burn. If that’s what you want, I’ll burn. I don’t care. Let her go before it’s too late.”
“There’s the answer I was looking for. My brother’s in love.” Lucas turns his face up to mine. “Isn’t it sweet? He loves you. If you had any doubt, now you know. He’ll die for you. That’s the truest test, isn’t it? He wouldn’t die for me or for his sister or his mother, but he’ll die for you.”
Damian lunges for him then.
I would scream if I could as something explodes inside the house, and when the study door blows open, I feel the enormous heat of the fire on my face.
I see Damian’s hands around his brother’s throat, know the moment they go down because that’s the instant the chair rolls out from under me.
My feet race to find purchase, but there’s nothing beneath me, only air. I claw at the rope at my neck, but I can’t get under it. I’m choking, slowly strangling.
Is this how they did it to my father? That’s what he’d said, isn’t it? Benedict Di Santo had choked him slowly. Only snapped his neck after he’d had his fun.
Fire licks the walls, devouring wood. The drapes along the windows catch, and I’m fighting, spinning, and they’re still on the ground. My arms fall away as I wheeze the tiniest breath in.
Not enough, though. Not enough.
I feel myself slip away. As I stop fighting, my legs twitching as I take in my last smoke-filled gasp of breath and hang.
29
Damian
“You goddamn piece of shit!” I charge my brother, slamming him hard against the back wall.
Glass shatters in the other room, exploding in the fire.
“She has nothing to do with this. Nothing. This is you and me!” He doesn’t fight me, not right away. He’s laughing. He’s fucking laughing the laugh of a lunatic.
I hear her behind me, hear her gasps and choked attempts at breath, hear her terror. I force myself to focus, force myself to look at my brother who’s gripping me hard around the collar.
He won’t let go.
This is his revenge.
Because even if I don’t know who he is, he knows who I am. And he knows my weakness. He wasn’t fucking with me when he taunted me about Cristina.
All these years, I’ve felt sorry for him. He was my father’s pawn. Manipulated. Used. The sensitive one. The one I needed to protect even as he pummeled me with his fists. How has he become this person? This monster?
He’s got me by the collar. Even though I’ve thrown enough punches to see blood on his lip and the beginnings of swelling on his eye, he hasn’t hit me. Not once.
“Watch,” he says when I stop.
I hear her. She’s choking. Dying.
I look up to see her, see her struggle, watch her kick.
I promised to protect her. To keep her safe.
Lucas doesn’t let go and I realize that broken sound,
it’s not her. It’s me.
I can’t save them both. I have to choose. Tobias was right. It was a mistake letting Lucas live. And my mistake, my weakness, will cost Cristina her life.
Rage hotter than the fire that’s swallowing this house burns inside me. I turn, breaking free from Lucas’s grip.
Everything happens for a reason, I think.
Nothing is left to chance. Everything comes full circle.
He’s fighting me now. He’ll do anything to keep me from her. His eyes are locked on mine. As the fire burns nearer, my hand and torso throb, remembering the pain of the last time.
Does Lucas remember?
God. I can still hear his screams that night. I’d forgotten that part. Fire and smoke and burning flesh and a man’s screams.
He fights hard—we’re well matched—all while my Cristina swings.
But I have something he’s not expecting.
I reach into my pocket and take out the switchblade I confiscated from her earlier this evening. The one Lucas made and Michela gave to my wife to protect herself from me.
Ironic what I will use it to do.
I open it.
I don’t wait or think or consider. With the hilt in my hand, I do what I should have done at the strip club. I do what my brother asked me to do. Was he too weak to do it himself? Or is this a part of his vengeance? Will he take a part of me to the grave with him?
Flesh gives easily against the sharp blade. It’s a feeling I’ll never forget. But it’s not done. And I keep pushing.
Only when I’ve buried the length of it in his stomach do I stop.
Only then does everything stop.
He rounds his back, looks down between us, looks at the dagger in my grip, the blade buried inside him. It’s like he just realizes what’s happened. What I’ve done.
He looks at the circle of blood on his shirt, on mine, on my hands.
Blood. Warm blood.
Always blood with me.
Annabel’s blood.
Michela’s blood.
Cristina’s.
My dying brother’s.
It’s all on my hands.
Lucas looks up, meets my eyes, and I see pain. Old pain. New pain.
I don’t see fear, though. That’s gone. Maybe he was ready all along. Maybe I was wrong about having seen fear last night.
His hands go from my shoulders to my face, then down to close over my hands. I think he wants to pull it out, but he doesn’t.
Keeping his eyes on mine and with a choked grunt, he tugs it sharply upward.
He watches me, eyes dimming, and I think he wants to say something. I think…fuck…his knees buckle and blood leaks from the corner of his mouth. Still, his hands grip mine, grip that knife.
He’s slipping away. And I have to let him go.
I pull the dagger out. Release him. Let him drop. Knife in my hand, I let my brother go.
And I know the moment his soul leaves his body. I feel it. I feel my twin die because something inside me lets go, too.
But then from the corner of my eye I see her stop moving. Stop fighting.
No.
Not again. I can’t walk away again when they all die around me.
I won’t.
As if in some time warp, I turn to look up at her. Her eyes meet mine for an instant. A fading, dimmed violet haze as her body twists, dangling from the rope. Arms dropping to her sides. Her right leg twitching once more just before her eyes close.
The fire sends hot smoke in my direction, making me choke as I leap onto the desk and gather Cristina’s limp body to mine. I hold her, give her some slack as I use the bloodied knife to cut her down.
Fire licks up my back.
My god, the pain.
How can there be so much pain?
I keep the knife in my hand and hold her to me, cradling her head against me. Her arms and legs hang loose, her body boneless. I don’t look back. I don’t think. I step over my dead brother, then turn my back into the window and throw myself through it. It’s the only way to protect her as shards rip my back. I land hard, the impact knocking the wind from me.
Turning, I lay her down and look at her.
“Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” No more blood on my hands.
Not your blood on my hands.
Touching her face, I put my head on her chest to try to hear over the groans of the house, over the bellowing of the fire. But I can’t hear, and her chest is still. I smear my brother’s blood on her face as I try to rouse her. It’s on her mouth, her too delicate hands and wrists.
“Breathe. Breathe. Hate me but breathe.”
But she doesn’t. She won’t move and when I lift her hand, it just drops down to her stomach when I let it go. Rope still dangles from her neck. It’s done. What my father wanted. Too soon, though. She didn’t get that year Annabel had.
Dead.
No.
No, no, no.
Please. Fuck. No.
“Damian!” Tobias screams in the distance. I don’t look up. I don’t care.
“I’ll let you go,” I whisper close to her ear. “Just breathe. Just breathe.”
“Fuck! We need to move!” He’s closer.
Something crackles and bursts behind me. I smell burnt meat and feel the brand of an iron on my shoulder. But I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it.
“Just open your eyes and I’ll let you go. I promise.”
“Damian!” Arms pull at me. “Leave her. She’s gone. The fucking house is coming down!”
And as he says it, a beam big and heavy flies through the sky, flames like wings as it lands too close.
I get to my feet, but I don’t go when Tobias tries to drag me. I bend to lift her body. Limp, dead weight, she hangs over my shoulder like a ragdoll as I run.
An ungodly sound deafens us. When I look back, I watch the house topple, watch what’s left of it disappear into the flames, my brother’s dead body in its belly. His flesh soon to be ash. Dust.
Dead.
Like he wanted.
For a long moment, I can’t see through the thick smoke. Through the debris and dust.
I shift my grip on Cristina and drop to my knees on the ground. I lay her on her back, and even now, even in death, all I can think is how beautiful she is. How innocent. How she didn’t deserve any of this.
I push hair from her temple, but when I try to wipe the ash from her face, I smear blood along her cheek instead. I kiss her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. I think about how Lucas was right in his prediction. I break everything I touch. And she’s broken beyond repair.
“I love you,” I whisper in her ear. Apart from Annabel and my mother, I’d never said those words to anyone before Cristina. “And I’m sorry.”
A sadness like I’ve never felt twists inside my chest.
I wonder why people say they loved someone in the past tense when that person dies. Do they stop loving them then? Is that what happens? How conditional their love.
“I love you.” Present tense. “Do you hear me? Do you fucking hear me!” I shake her. Hurting her still. Even now.
Blood on my hands again. Always blood with me.
When I loosen the rope from around her neck, I notice how it cut into her skin. I pull it over her head, but before I can lean down to kiss her lips again, before I can whisper again that I love her, her body jerks violently. Her eyes fly open as she gasps for breath, hands to her neck, desperate for air.
She opens her mouth and I think she would scream if she could, but she can’t get enough air in.
Another choked sound. Me this time.
She clutches at me, hands falling away, grasping at nothing. I lift her to sit as she wheezes not believing my eyes. Not believing this miracle.
She’s alive.
Cristina is alive.
Her hand closes around my forearm and pain makes me hiss.
I look down at it, beneath her hand is the raw, red skin burned anew. Freshly charred flesh. The
smell is mixed in with all the rest of them.
But even through the pain all I can do is look at her and hold her to me. And I remember what I promised her just now. What I said I’d do if she’d only breathe. If she’d just open her eyes and take one more breath.
30
Cristina
“Just open your eyes and I’ll let you go.”
I do as he says and open my eyes to see Damian standing over my bed. I blink, sitting up.
“Hey,” I say, touching my hair to smooth it, wondering what I look like in my hospital gown while he’s standing there in a dark suit looking as impeccable as ever. Apart from a bruise on the side of his jaw, stitched cuts on his face, and the bandage around his hand and arm, he looks the same.
There are more bandages underneath the clothes, though. And he’s not quite the same. There’s a little more gray in the five o’clock shadow and along his temples. And as put together as he is I know the exterior masks the depth of the loss he’s feeling.
He killed his brother. His twin brother. Even if Lucas was crazy, even if Damian had no choice, he still pushed the knife into his brother’s belly and felt the blood spill from him.
And this is a man who has kept his emotions hidden for years. For all his life, probably. A man used to being on his own. Alone. Always alone.
The thought is unsettling. I don’t like it.
It’s been six days since the night our world collapsed around us. Crashed down onto us in a fire built of rage and fury and despair and too much hate.
“Hey.” He doesn’t smile. I see how his gaze darkens as it moves from the bandage on my arm to where they removed the tracker and finally to my neck. I know it’s bruised. I’ve seen it. Can feel how tender it is.
“Are they releasing you?” I ask, surprised. I thought I’d be out earlier than him.
“I’ve released myself.” The emotion I just saw is gone, masked. Shuttered. Shutting me out.
“What?”
“I have to take care of some things. How are you feeling?”
I shrug a shoulder, something heavy settling in the pit of my stomach. “I’m okay. Sit down.”
Unholy Intent Page 18