Page 76 of Vicious Souls

KINGSLEY

Dante hands me the envelope, and I smooth it between my fingers, then turn it over and over in my hands before I settle my eyes on my father’s neat cursive writing on the front. My writing is chicken scrawl next to his amazing curve.

“Saul said your father asked that you read the letter in the presence of my father and me, but I thought you’d want to read it on your own first.”

I glance at Dante, register the darkness in his fathomless eyes and the tension in his body. It’s getting harder and harder for me to read him, despite the time I’m spending with him. I know he hates things he can’t control, and there is no telling what’s in this letter. Whatever it is, it’s important enough that my father wants the Accardis to hear it.

“No.” My tone is firmer than I intended. “For whatever reason, my father wanted you both present when I read the letter, so I’m going to honor his request.”

“You don’t have to…”

I cut him off before he can go any further and ask him to call his father. My palms itch to open the envelope and unfold the letter within, but I’ve made a decision to wait until both men are in the room, and that’s what I’ll do.

There is an awkward tension in the room as we wait for Durian to arrive. Dante buries his head in his phone while I stand at the large sliding door that leads to the terrace. I quietly watch the night as it engulfs us in its cloudy shroud, waiting for Durian’s arrival.

When I turn back toward the living room, I stand where I am and watch Dante. A wayward lock of his hair falls across one eye, his face resolute in its concentration on his phone screen. As if sensing me watching him, he speaks without looking up.

“Are you nervous?” he asks me.

I maintain my silence for the longest time, my breath catching at the sight of him. Every time I look at him, it’s like I am seeing him for the first time. He looks up, catches my eye, then motions to the seat beside him. I take long strides until I reach him, curling my legs under my thighs.

“I’m not nervous. Just worried.”

“About what?”

I notice the way he swallows his own concern and fixates on mine.

“Everything. Things between us changing.”

“This letter could be our downfall,” he whispers. “Or it could strengthen us.”

I understand that he’s right. This letter is whatever we make it, regardless of its contents. But that doesn’t take away from my fear.

“My father had secrets,” I tell him. “When I think about him as a man, all I remember is what I saw at face value. I was never able to scrape the surface and get in deep. I didn’t know the man beside a handful of days throughout the year in which he was just… my father.”

I shrug nonchalantly, looking down sadly. There is so much I had missed out on. So much I had never been privy to and I was never exposed to. Learning about my father’s life now after he was gone was like learning the history of a stranger. That alone made me feel completely and utterly desolate. The last of my biological family is gone, and I would forever be on my own, the last Murray standing.

* * *

Durian Accardi has become soaccustomed to me, he greets me with a kiss on my forehead when he walks through my front door. He throws a worried frown in his son’s direction and directs his question at no one in particular, asking about the somber mood in the room.

“Kingsley wants to read her father’s letter,” Dante tells him, and an imperceptible look passes between father and son.

Durian shrugs, not following.

“I wanted you here when I read the letter,” I say. “Like my father requested.”

“Your father, God rest his soul, was prone to drama. I’m sure the old fool meant to give me one last swift kick to the nuts.”

I almost smile at that. Almost. If not for the thought that my father’s last words to me were encased between the lines of a sheet of paper carefully folded into a fraying envelope now in my possession. The contents of the envelope could change everything. Or it could not. But something sharp pinches at my heart as I consider the unknown. Do I really want to know? Do I really want to risk the changes that this letter could possibly unleash?

“Before I open this envelope,” I start, looking at both men, “I want you to know that nothing in here will change anything between us. I will always be grateful for the help you’ve given me and the humanity you’ve shown me.”

There. I said it. That’s what I was most afraid of; that what my father wrote between the lines of the page would paint the Accardis in a bad light and turn me against them. When I could never imagine a life without them in it. I could never imagine anyone else other than Dante by my side. Regardless of what comes to pass.

I slide my finger under the seal and force the fabric of the envelope apart, release the letter and shake it out, looking at my father’s neat, measured script.

“It’s dated a year ago,” I tell them.

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