First Comes Blood by Lilith Vincent
7
Chiara
Abrush of mascara.
A dab of lipstick.
A lace veil drawn over my hair to cover my face. Light filters through the delicate net and embroidered blossoms. I can see out but the world can’t see in.
Dad’s waiting for me by the front door in a suit and tie. His gaze travels down over my dress, scrutinizing every fold of fabric, every button. Another man might tell his daughter, Your mother would be so proud, or You look beautiful, but that’s not Dad and it never was. Besides, we’ve barely spoken a word to each other since that night.
Outside, an enormous rental car is idling in the street and the driver helps me inside. I tuck my dress around myself so none of the skirt touches my father. The drive to the church isn’t a long one, but we pass down main streets and people peer in and look at us. They all know what today is.
I feel safe inside my veil. The veil is my protection, and I dread the moment he’ll pull it back and I’ll have to look up into his hateful face.
Dad and I walk up the church steps together and into the cavernous, vaulted space. Pale sunshine streams through the stained-glass windows. Organ music fills the air. A huge gold cross dominates the altar.
Hundreds of people are in the pews, and they all turn to look at my slow progress down the aisle at Dad’s side.
I try not to look at what awaits me at the far end.
I try not to.
But my eyes are drawn there despite myself, to a shiny black casket heaped with white roses. My insides seize with grief and panic. This is actually happening. I’m burying my mother, my only true protector in this world.
The scent of chlorine and blood fills my nose, each as hateful as the other. Water forces its way down my throat and into my lungs. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe—
“Chiara. People are staring.” Words spoken so low that only I can hear.
Dad pulls me toward the front pew. I grasp the back of the wooden bench and suck in a painful breath. It was better not to feel, it was better not to think about the horror of that night three weeks ago. My mother is here. My mother’s cold body that will never embrace me again.
Dad grasps my elbow and forces me to sit down. I see it again, the gash of her slit throat. The eruption of blood. Her slow fall into the swimming pool. An usher hands us both a booklet. In Loving Memory of Eleonora Mirabella Romano, with a picture of her smiling face.
I take the booklet in my black gloved hand and lay it in my lap. I twitch my black skirt away from Dad so that nothing of me is touching anything of him. To anyone looking on, they’ll see a father and daughter sank in mutual grief, side by side and drawing strength from each other in times of need. It’s only how things look that matter to him, not how they really are. He values that over his own wife’s life, and his daughter’s love and trust. The love between us shattered when he looked the homicide detective in the eyes and said, “I don’t know who did it. The coward escaped over the wall while I was trying to save my wife.”
After Mom’s body was zipped into a body bag and wheeled away, she lay in the morgue for three weeks while Coldlake police chased down any leads they could. There wasn’t much to go on. No DNA evidence on Mom. No witnesses. No murder weapon. The men disappeared into the night.
No one will pay for the crime of her murder. It’s all been smoothed away, like it never happened. Like she never existed.
I haven’t shed a tear since that night. Dad’s plan will go ahead despite Mom’s sacrifice. I’m promised, and her death was for nothing.
I gaze at the casket, the last remnant of her on this earth. She’s being buried in a new blue skirt suit I bought for her. As I sorted through her closet, every dress reminded me of Dad. One she wore to dinner with him. One she wore to a campaign rally. Her favorite that she wore to last year’s parade, where she sat alongside Dad and smiled and waved to the crowd. Every garment was tainted with the man who wouldn’t protect her when she most needed him.
She didn’t have to die.
This is all my fault.
The service begins, and after a sermon from the priest and a hymn, Dad gets up to give his eulogy. His face is somber and he seems to have the weight of the world on his shoulders as he casts his eyes around the congregation.
I close my eyes and drown out his voice with memories of Mom. Sitting in her lap at Granny’s kitchen table while they chatted about the neighbors and my uncles and aunts, drinking coffee and eating cake. Teaching me how to peel an apple in one long strand. How to pat the kitten she gave me for my fourth birthday. “Softly, sweetheart. It’s only small. Like this.”
She was the gentlest person, and she taught me how to be gentle and move gracefully through the world. Where is the gentleness and grace in my life now?
I open my eyes and turn to gaze at the casket, and a pair of eyes catch mine across the aisle.
My stomach spasms.
My fists clench on my black dress and I scream silently in the back of my throat, lips tightly closed.
He came here.
Here.
How dare he.
His lips curve into a smile and he dips his head in greeting, like this is a social event and not my mother’s funeral. I hold his gaze, my stomach churning. I don’t know if he can see my face through the black veil but I have to be strong even if I know I’m not. Because Mom was strong at the end, wasn’t she? She stood up to those monsters all by herself.
The service ends and we all get to our feet. The veil protects me from him, and the intrusion of the other mourners. These people didn’t know Mom, and they don’t know what she sacrificed for me.
Out by the graveside, I watch them weep for her and console my father, and all the while his presence is prickling the back of my neck.
The wake is at our home, and I stand in a corner while waiters in white shirts and black bowties offer silver trays of sandwiches to the hundreds of people that are filling the rooms that Mom so lovingly decorated. They talk about politics and the upcoming election, interest rates and new hotel developments. None of these people are here for Mom. They’re here to rub shoulders with Dad and his friends and gossip with each other.
A folded copy of the Coldlake Tribune is laying on a side table and I flip it over, wondering what’s being said publicly about Mom’s murder. It’s today’s newspaper and the front page is dedicated to “The town’s beloved mayoress.” Her face smiles out at me, eyes filled with kindness.
My throat burns.
So beloved, that she ended up dead in a swimming pool with her throat slit.
I take a shuddering breath and quickly move my gaze elsewhere, and it catches on a paragraph of text accompanying the image.
…mayoress’ death potentially linked to the Black Orchid Murders eight years ago.
I frown. The Black Orchid Murders. Haven’t I heard about those? Teenage girls and young women who were brutally killed. I was a child and I don’t remember it well, but I think one or more of the women had a black flower shoved down her throat. No one knows who did it. So that’s how Dad’s going to cover up Mom’s murder: pin it on some unknown psychopath and let the case go cold.
I scan the rest of the front page and see my father’s name.
Mayor Romano has vowed to begin his reelection campaign against City Hall hopeful Christian Galloway in six months’ time. “It’s what my wife would have wanted,” he stated at a press conference last night. “She loved Coldlake. She died for Coldlake. I will prevail.”
“Read me my horoscope, Chiara.”
My stomach lurches.
I whirl around at the sound of a deep, mocking voice. He’s standing close. So close that I can see the individual shards of blue and green in his eyes, even through the lace of my veil. I haven’t wanted to take it off. I don’t think I’ll ever want to take it off.
“I’m a Sagittarius. November 29th. Do you think the stars say we’re compatible?” He smiles, showing a row of strong white teeth.
I look down and realize I’m still gripping the newspaper in my hands, and I throw it aside. When I try to step past him, he grabs my arm.
“I haven’t seen my pretty bride’s face in weeks.” He grasps the edge of the veil and draws it slowly back. I feel like he’s stripping me naked. The table is pressing against my back and I can’t move away from him, and then I’m looking up at him with nothing between us.
“Ah, there you are,” says Salvatore Fiore, a victorious glint in his smile.
“Pleased with yourself because you won?” I ask him.
Salvatore smiles wider and cups my face in his hands. The next thing I know his mouth is descending toward mine, attempting to claim another kiss that I don’t want to give him. I turn my face away sharply.
“This is my mother’s funeral. Have some respect.”
“How can I help myself when my bride is so beautiful?” he murmurs.
I look over his shoulder, expecting to see the other three looming behind him with a collection of smirks and sneers on their faces. I crane my neck as I peer into all corners of the room.
“Where are your friends today?”
The smile dies on Salvatore’s face. “Why are you looking for them when I’m standing right in front of you?”
“I was just asking—”
“Then don’t,” he snarls.
I stare at him, open-mouthed. His mood has changed as quickly as it did the night of my birthday. From polite to murderous in seconds.
“Excuse me.” I reach up to my veil to draw it down over my face.
He grasps my wrist. “No. Don’t hide that beautiful face away. I’d like to kill every man who looks at you, but I crave to see you even more.”
If he were Vinicius I’d accuse him of empty flattery, but I don’t know where I stand with Salvatore. He’s had me second guessing everything he’s done since that first kiss.
I draw the veil over my face with my other hand. “If I have to marry one of you then I’ll remain in mourning.”
His bride in black, to despise and destroy, till death do us part.
“Not one of us. Me. I’m going to marry you.”
I pull my arm from his grasp. I don’t know when or how it was decided that I’m going to marry Salvatore. Dad and the four men must have made the arrangement when I was upstairs in bed, paralyzed with grief beneath the blankets.
I wonder how much I’m worth. A few contracts? Building permission for a new skyscraper? Whatever it was, my father will have come out on top. He always does.
“What do the other three think of your arrangement?”
“How about you shut the fuck up about the other three?” he says through his teeth.
I don’t understand how he can speak about his friends with so much venom. Unless…they’re not friends anymore? Is that it, Salvatore won, but the price was his friends? Dad used me to drive a wedge between four powerful adversaries.
My eyes flick up and down Salvatore’s muscular, suited body. “I feel sorry for you. You came to my house so certain of yourselves. You declared to me that you couldn’t be bought, and yet look at you. You sold out, and now you’re alone.”
“That’s a sharp tongue you’ve got for someone who’s learned first-hand the price of disobedience.” Salvatore glances meaningfully at my throat.
My knees start to tremble but I clench my fists and remain on my feet through sheer force of will. “You’d throw my mother’s murder in my face the day I bury her? I know I’m more useful alive than dead right at this moment. I may as well say what I really feel while I’m still able.”
“Enjoy it while you can. Fifty weeks left, and counting.” He gathers up the edge of my veil, puts his lips close to my ear and murmurs, “For me, it will feel like an age.”
His lips find the soft skin behind my ear and he plants a slow kiss there. My future husband lingers where he is, inhaling the scent from my neck. I have fifty weeks to find a way out of this marriage. My mother died to save me from this match. I can’t let her sacrifice be for nothing.
Salvatore draws back, his blue-green eyes dark and gleaming. “If you ever need anything, you can count on me. Always.”
To do what? I’m in school. My problems are my mother’s death, math homework—and him.
I stare at his chest through my veil, willing myself not to fall apart in front of him.
And then finally, he’s gone.
I plant my palm against the table and take deep, ragged breaths. How dare he come to Mom’s wake and gloat over my suffering. I stare around the room and down the hall, peering into the rooms beyond. Dozens of people are standing in groups, eating tiny sandwiches and talking. No one knows the truth about what happened that night except me, Dad, and four dangerous criminals.
I could scream it at the top of my lungs.
Mom was murdered.
Murdered.
And none of you care.
The crowd parts, and I see Dad staring back at me, his expression as grim as his black suit. Did he see me talking to Salvatore? Does he know how much I want to scream to everyone about what happened the night Salvatore, Vinicius, Cassius, and Lorenzo came to my birthday party?
Which of them will kill me if I let one word of the truth drop from my lips?
I go and sit up on the second-floor landing, listening to the jumbled conversations downstairs. Every now and then a word floats up to me.
Sometimes it’s my name.
Mostly it’s Dad’s, or campaign, or votes, or strategy.
I don’t hear Mom’s name. Not even once.
Hours pass, and then the voices start to thin out. Soon there’s a little conversation, but mostly the clink of plates and glasses as the catering crew packs up. As dusk falls, even those sounds recede.
I draw the black veil from my hair, leave it on the stairs and get to my feet. It’s the moment I’ve been anticipating and dreading, the moment Dad and I are finally alone together.
I find him in the empty living room, tapping away on his tablet. I suppose he has lots of emails to catch up on after a day wasted on his wife’s funeral. I stand in front of him, rigid with hatred, until he finally looks up.
“Yes, Chiara?” he asks, fingertip poised over the screen.
It’s the first time we’ve talked since he came into my room three days after my mother’s death and informed me that I’d be marrying Salvatore.
“A good day’s campaigning?” I ask, my throat tight.
I search his face for a hint of the father I once knew. He was always austere and more interested in me intellectually than emotionally, but he was never this cold. Something happened to him these past few months that made him switch off from Mom and me completely.
Now, looking into his eyes is like gazing into a dark abyss.
Dad turns his attention back to his tablet. I dart forward and snatch it away from him. “Why didn’t you prepare me for this? Why didn’t you prepare Mom? She didn’t have to die. You should have told—”
Dad’s temper suddenly flares and he snatches the tablet from me. “I taught her to do as she was told! I thought she knew her place. Not well enough, apparently. Not when it came to you.”
“She loved me. You were supposed to love both of us and protect us. Nothing you did could have prepared me for this.”
“What’s done is done. You’ve had weeks to accept that you’re promised to Salvatore Fiore, and you have a year to prepare yourself for the wedding. I’m not rushing you into anything.”
I stare at him, unable to believe what I’m hearing. “I could go to the police. What would become of your plans then?”
“Shall I call Salvatore and tell him, or will you?”
I step back and swallow hard.
“I thought so,” Dad sneers. “You’d better think long and hard about this world and your place in it. There are consequences if you don’t marry Salvatore. If you refuse, what else are you good for?”
I scream and fling myself at him, fists raised to beat his face, his chest, anywhere I can land a hit. He grabs my wrists easily and throws me aside, and I go tumbling to the carpet.
He looms over me. “You’d better learn to behave. In one year, you won’t be my problem anymore, and I can assure you, your husband won’t spoil you as much as I clearly did. Prepare yourself, Chiara. What happens next is up to you.”
“Nothing about this is my decision,” I seethe, getting to my feet. “Nothing.”
I stay where I am and stare at my father for several silent minutes, watching him work, but I may as well be staring at a brick wall. I’m waiting for some sign of feeling.
Regret.
Humanity.
Mom wasn’t the only one who died the night of my seventeenth birthday. It was a turning point for all of us. A threshold of no return, and now there’s no way I can reach Dad. To be a human being again he’ll have to feel the unimaginable pain of what he’s done. Instead, he’s chosen to shut down that part of himself forever.
I turn away, wiping tears from my cheeks, and walk slowly upstairs.
I have fifty weeks to find some way out of this marriage and this family. Mom’s death won’t be for nothing.
I swear it.