Page 37 of Sinners Atone
He’s just hard to miss.
He’s the type of man you’d spot first in a crowded room, and decide to walk back out the way you came in. He’s huge—six-foot-five, a conservative guess—spends all day lifting heavy things and has to have his clothes tailor-made kind of huge.
If one was brave enough to look at him closely, only then would they realize he’s related to Angelo and Rafe. He has the same green eyes, sharp bone structure, and dark features. He’sbeautiful, in the most objective sense. Look a little harder, and you can see what I should have seen three years ago.
The evil.
There’s so much darkness inside of him it bleeds through his pores and sits on his skin. It’s in the fading initials on each of his busted knuckles, in the cross etched onto the side of his neck. I see it in the angles of his skull under his buzzcut and in the thickness of his beard. It’s in the hard lines of his face too, from the permanent scowl to the violent scar that cuts across it.
I’m not usually one to judge a book by its cover, but since that book make himself at home in my living room and threatened me, well, I think have every right to assume what that book is about.
Gabriel Visconti is as terrifying as he looks.
Even more terrifying now that he’s staring right at me.
His gaze is filled with cold disdain. As ifI’mthe one who broke intohishouse and he’s stewing over the fact I got away with it. The irony twists inside of me like a hot dish rag, but I rather like having a tongue, so I look away.
I stare down at my heels and curse myself with all the letters of the alphabet. My body is humming from lack of sleep and an unwavering sense of fear. I’ve done stupid things in my time, but not turning on my heel and running when he crossed my path that night is up there with the worst. Sticking my tongue out at him and not locking my damn front door, battle for second place.
As my new pink peep-toes sink slowly into the muddy grass, injustice flares up my spine.
He won’t get away with what he did last night. A man like him belongs in a cell—probably a padded one—and not on thestreets of the coast. I don’t want to wish Rory’s big day away, but the moment it’s all over, I’m marching straight to the Devil’s Dip police station and telling them everything.
A strangled noise comes from my right. “Okay.” Tayce sniffs, ripping the fresh tissue out of my clenched fist. “What mascara are you using?”
I glance up at her. She’s turned a rashy shade of pink, and a wet black line dribbles from her eye to her chin. “Are you crying?” I whisper. “Christ, I didn’t even know you had tear ducts.”
“I’mnotcrying,” she hisses, dabbing at her cheeks with a shaky hand. “It’s hay fever. From all the trees and shit.”
I’d usually revel in the chance to point out it’s December and in the years I’ve known her, she’s never complained about allergies once, but here I am, staring at Gabriel again.
I’m more subtle this time. I face the arbor and only move my eyes to find him. I’m looking so far to the right that my retinas ache, but even from this angle, I can see he’s not listening to a word of the officiant’s impassioned speech.
It’s crazy to think he’d smiled that night. Though, now I’m sure it was the dark playing tricks on me. I could have sworn he’d laughed too, but it must have been a moan distorted by the wind and the passing of time. Because as he slowly scans the horizon, his expression is stone, and I can’t imagine him being capable of anything else.
Rafe stands beside him, dabbing the corner of his eye, his lips stretched into a small smile as he watches the wedding unfold. Gabriel looks as though he’s been dragged kicking and screaming to a distant relative’s funeral by his mother. How can he look so bored on the happiest day of his brother’s life?
It suddenly dawns on me like a new day: he’s not a creepy local legend, the man’s a psychopath.
He has to be.
My mind races as I recall the last therapy session I had before Uncle Finn and I moved out of Seattle.
Camilla was a glam woman with a constant-perfect blowout and a soft voice. She listened more than she talked. After thirty minutes of nodding at my every word, she’d slid a laminated infographic over the table and tapped at the title with a long French tip:Signs of psychopathy.
Each characteristic was its own bullet point, with bolded keywords and cartoon diagrams. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember what they were.
Antisocial behavior. Well, duh. Check.
Impulsiveness. I’m no expert, but breezing into my home with a bunch of knives less than three hours after I pissed him off, sounds pretty impulsive to me. Check.
Lack of empathy. Psychopaths don’t feel fear or guilt, and considering he hasn’t gone on the run or fallen to my feet with a groveling apology—which I absolutely wouldnotaccept anyway—makes for a definite double check.
Being charming.
Okay, that one doesn’t make sense. I’ve given sponge baths to patients in comas with more charisma than Gabriel Visconti.
Hmm.
