Page 84 of Savage Saint
There's a soft knock on the wall.
"Butterfly?" Angelo's voice, rough and worried. "You okay?"
I don't answer. Can't answer. If I open my mouth, I might scream, and I don't know if I'll ever stop.
Angelo walks in, in just his boxers, hair mussed like he's been running his hands through it in frustration, eyes alert. He takes one look at me and crouches down.
"What happened?" he asks, not touching me yet. Smart man.
"I remember," I whisper, my voice raw. "I remember what I was."
His expression doesn't change, but something in his eyes softens.
"Washington," I continue. "A diplomat and his mistress. On silk sheets. And that wasn't the only one."
Angelo sits beside me on the floor, his shoulder almost but not quite touching mine.
"Kasia—"
"Don't." I cut him off, pushing myself to my feet. "Don't try to make this better. You can't. I was sixteen when I killed those people. There was Washington, Moscow, Warsaw… I was sixteen. Do you know what normal sixteen-year-olds do? They worry about spots and school dances. They don't murder people in their sleep."
I get up and pace the small bathroom area, unable to stay still.
"I'm a monster, Angelo. A machine built to kill. There's no coming back from that. There's no redemption for someone like me."
"Is that what you think I want? To redeem you?"
I stop pacing, facing him. "What else would you want from me?"
He stands, closing the small space between us. "I want you to stop running. To stop hiding from yourself."
"I'm not hiding. I'm seeing clearly for the first time."
"No," he says, his voice hard now. "You're still hiding. Behind this idea that you're somehow worse than anyone else in this fucked-up world."
My eyes narrow. "I killed people, Angelo. Innocent people."
"And you think my hands are clean?" He steps closer. "You think anyone in my family has clean hands? We're all killers here, Butterfly."
"It's different."
"Is it?" He looks at me, really looks at me, and I want to shrink away from what I see in his eyes. Not disgust or horror, but understanding. "You were a child. Trained and conditioned. Just like I was."
"I should have fought harder. Should have refused."
"And if you had, you'd be dead." His hand reaches out, hovering near my cheek but not touching. "You survived. That's not a sin, Kasia. That's strength."
I shake my head, backing away until my spine hits the wall. "You don't understand. I was good at it. I was the best. Part of me liked the power."
"And you thinkIdon't understand that?" He follows, not giving me space to retreat. "You think I don't know what it's like to excel at something terrible? To find a twisted sort of pride in it?"
I slide down the wall until I'm sitting again, suddenly exhausted. "I can't do this, Angelo. I can't be this person anymore. But I don't know how to be anyone else."
He kneels in front of me, finally touching me, his fingers gentle on my knee.
"You don't have to be anyone else. Just be you. Not who they made you, not who you think I want you to be. Just Kasia. Broken bits and all."
I look up at him, this man who kills without remorse, who has built walls around himself so high no one should be able to scale them. But somehow, I've gotten inside. And somehow, he's gotten inside me.
