Page 94 of Just for a Taste

“Where’s Lucia?” I asked, balling up my fists.

Zeno looked away in the obvious manner of a guilty dog. It was one of those times where, in any other circumstance, I would have found the overtness endearing, or even adorable. But in this case, my greatest question was whether the beast had bared its teeth.

“Gone,” he replied after a painful silence.

My immediate question, and the realization that it had come so instinctively, rolled over me in a wave of nausea. “As in . . . gone-gone?”

“Are you asking if I killed her? Of course not!” Zeno scoffed, rising from the piano bench and tossing himself onto a chair. “You told me long ago she wanted to open a salon in the city. I simply funded her venture.”

“And Signora Carbone?”

He shrugged and took a long sip of wine. “Barone Sforza needed another conservatrix. She gladly took a position there.”

“And Signore Urbino?”

Silence. Dead silence, for God knew how long. Then, equal parts begrudging and matter-of-fact: “He’s dead, Cora. I shot him.”

Zeno might as well have knocked the wind out of me, the way my breath escaped me. I had always known, of course, but now the truth was inescapable.

Yet now that it was out in the open, Zeno held my gaze steadily. From here on out, I knew the answers would come out as smooth as silk, as though he were answering the time of the day. I wished I could stop myself from asking them.

“What about Basilio?”

“I caught up with him shortly after, once you were on the way to the hospital. He hadn’t gotten far.”

With each sentence, my voice rose, and now I spoke on the verge of yelling. “What did you do to him? How did you—”

“With a concrete block.”

I could practically see it: Basilio with his pretty face bashed in, arms and legs bent at horrendous angles, chest concave. Several ribs protruding from his chest, others impaling freshly burst organs.

Bile rose in my throat, but I couldn’t stop asking, “And your father?”

“I haven’t found him yet.” He sighed. Remorse showed on his face for the first time, far too late.

“And when you do?”

He darkened, eyes ablaze, nails digging into his armchair. “I don’t know. He almost killed you. Nothing I can imagine is sufficient justice. Regardless, I’d like to deal with him myself, unlike the others.”

I almost laughed at the surrealness of it all and could only echo his last two words. “The others?”

Zeno bore a hole into the floor with his eyes and gnashed his teeth. “What happened to you was no small operation. There were many others involved, like the man who drugged you. I don’t know if any of them met their ends swiftly, but even if they did, my father will not be afforded the same luxury.”

Faced with this realization, all I could do was look back at the beginning of our conversation. “What about Doctor Ntumba? Are you going to make her leave too?”

In only a sentence, I pulled him out of some sort of depth. “Noor? She has done nothing wrong. More importantly, she’s still treating—”

Finally, something in me snapped. “Come on!” I cried. “Let’s give up the act. We both know I’m healed! I don’t have a single goddamn stitch in me!”

Never had I spoken to Zeno in such a manner, and I regretted it for an instant at the sight of him genuinely wounded by the harshness of my words. But when I looked closer and saw that beneath the injury was his own guilt, I knew those words needed to be spoken.

I took a step back and turned away from Zeno, unable to meet his eyes. When I spoke next, my words were scarcely above a whisper. “I’m not better, and I never will be, will I? You’re never going to drink from me again, you won’t let anyone but Doctor Ntumba near me, and I’ll never leave this abbey.”

His silence was my answer.

I was once more left alone with only the gentle drum of my heart to break the silence. Discordant against its rapid rhythm, Zeno’s gentle footsteps slowly approached me. In a swift movement, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. He, too, was trembling.

“Even if it means sending away every other soul, locking you away, and barring every window, I will do what I must to keep you safe,” Zeno said, voice husky in my ear. “I will repent for the harm that befell the most important thing to me of all. I will make the world burn.”

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