Page 7 of Nicoli

Something changes. The air just got colder, and I’m shaking, my teeth clattering. “Momma?”

“Open your eyes, Mirabella.”

“Marco?” How did my brother get here? Where’s Maximo? Why aren’t they together? They’re always together.

“I said open your eyes.” I don’t like the way his voice sounds. It’s hard. Angry. It scares me.

“No.” I shake my head. “Momma said I shouldn’t.”

“You need to know.”

My heart beats impossibly fast. “Know what?”

“Mirabella.” It’s my mom’s voice, the cold instantly gone. “Don’t look. You promised.”

“I know, Momma. I won’t.” I suck in a double breath when I feel her kiss my forehead, her lips warm and comforting. My entire body shudders, and I lose control of my tears.

“My beautiful little girl.” She places her nose tenderly against mine.

“Momma.” I sniff as tears lap down my cheeks.

“I love you, Mirabella.”

“Don’t go, Momma. Please.”

‘Momma.’I jerk up, my palm flush against my chest as I gasp for breath. Sadness crushes me, my insides torn to shreds. Every bone aches, and my lungs screaming for air.

I yank open my bedside drawer, grab the bottle, and pop the cap, swallowing two pills. Whenever I dream of her, my eyes are always closed. She always asks me not to look. Why? I want to see her. It’s been so long, and I’ve already forgotten what her face looks like.

“Shit,” I mutter, wiping beads of sweat from my face with the back of my hand.

I hate waking up like this, feeling like the nightmare has stolen my breath. Whenever I dream of her, the sound of her voice, I wake up feeling like I lost her all over again, as if that night happened yesterday. Every nightmare is a reminder of what I truly am.

An orphan.

“Goddammit.” I slam the drawer shut, pulling my fingers through my tangled hair.

The pain is heavier today. The grief is screaming louder than usual. Of course, it is because today marks the seventeenth year of Maximo and me being orphans. Seventeen years since we lost our family.

God, it sucks.

I swipe the lingering tears from my cheeks and close my eyes, breathing deeply, visualizing the oxygen filling my lungs. Years of therapy, hours of sitting on a couch talking about my feelings, and the one thing I’ve managed to gain from it is how to breathe so I can have the strength to smile and pretend like my head is filled with nothing but unicorns, and my heart pumping little chocolate hearts all day long.

On an exhale, I force myself out of bed, my feet sinking into the plush pearl-white carpet as I move toward the window. The view is beautiful, especially at this time of morning when the sun starts to peek out over the horizon, the early rays sending a warm glow over the maple trees. In the spring and summer, flowers bloom in waves of yellows, whites, and vibrant fuchsia splashed across acres of green. But now, as summer rolls into autumn, the colors slowly lose their luster while the trees’ leaves trade their forest green for shades of ocher. No matter how often I look out my silver-curtained casement window, the view always reminds me of what I have to be thankful for.

I’m thankful Maximo and I are here, blessed with a life only the Del Rossa family can give us. Grateful they took us in and treated us as their own. I can’t imagine what would have become of us had it not been for Vincenzo Del Rossa refusing to let the foster system swallow us.

I catch my reflection in the large, ornate mirror of my platinum French vanity. The dark circles under my eyes are proof of a bad night, of the tears I cried in my sleep.

My fingertips trace along the scar that streaks down the side of my face. It’s barely visible to most, but I see it—a reminder of a sick man who blamed me for his perversions.

Micah was Vincenzo’s bastard son, a son no one knew about, not even Alexius. Last year, Micah forced his way into our lives by gruesomely murdering women at the Dark Sovereign clubs and slaughtering Isaia’s girlfriend. He then turned his attention to me, claiming I was the cause of his sins. That God wanted him to rid the world of beauty that has the power to make men fall from grace. Beauty that elicits sin.

A cold shiver runs down my spine at the memory of that day inside the Del Rossa mausoleum.

“It’s beauty like yours that leads so many sheep astray. Even me.”

“You need to repent for leading so many men astray.”

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