Page 17 of Beautiful Forever
“Mistress Stepanoff retired to her quarters after she arrived.”
“Thank you.” I get as far as the middle of the foyer before I stop in my tracks when I feel it. The emptiness, like a void of thick, unnatural silence, as if the house is holding its breath, waiting for me to…oh god.
My feet grow wings as I race up the stairs, my heart pounding as fast as my footfalls. When I get to the master suite, I find Mama on her bed, still wearing the black evening gown she wore tonight. She looked so pretty in it. Elegant and classy. She had worn her hair up in a sophisticated bun and secured it with sapphire pins, the ones she said my grandmother gave to her as “something blue” on her wedding day.
“Mama?” The soles of my shoes crunch over the pills scattered across the floor when I approach the bed. “Mama?” She’s too still. Too quiet. Asleep, but not asleep. “Mama?” I say more urgently, my hand trembling violently as I try to search for a pulse at the side of her neck. Hot tears pour down my cheeks.
Aleksei runs in, wild-eyed and panicked. He must have felt it, too.
“What—” He staggers back when he sees her. “No!No!Aleks, do something!” he shouts.
I can’t.
Because she’s gone.
“Why did she leave us?” Aleksei cries, falling into me, his sobs soaking my neck. Aleksei never cries, and I have no comfort to give him.
My gaze flicks to Father standing in the doorway, his face etched with devastation as he gazes upon his wife’s lifeless body.
Mama is gone. Aoife is gone. The only two stars that existed in my universe have disappeared, leaving only darkness to fill my sky.
I calmly slip the gun from Aleksei’s waistband.
Aim it at my father.
And pull the trigger.
Seven
Journal Entry
Thirteen years old
There comesa point in every person’s journey when they arrive at a crossroads. Where the decision to travel down one path and not the other drastically alters the outcome of their life. They don’t know which path is better. They don’t know what trials or perils may lie ahead on one and not the other.
Last night, I came to a crossroads. And I made a choice. I chose the road paved in blood.
What does it say about me that I feel nothing at all about killing the man who raised me? Shouldn’t I feel bad? Have remorse for what I’ve done? I’m a little scared that I don’t feel either.
There must be something broken inside me. Twisted. I really am Francesco Amato’s son.
“I don’t know what to do, Mama. I wish you were here to tell me what to do.”
A looming shadow blocks out the sunlight, casting its dark silhouette over the broken earth my mother is buried under. There was no grand funeral with flower arrangements, or grieving mourners, or words of comfort delivered in a sermon given by a priest. There was only Aleksei and me and our crushing heartache.
Pyotr drops to the ground beside me, his hand going to the back of my neck. A touch of comfort and solidarity. Our breaths come out as thin tendrils of fog in the cool midday air as he sits with me in the quietude of my grief. The bright sun that hangs in the clear-blue sky does little to warm my skin. It’s surreal how the darkest day of your life can be drenched in sunshine.
“The cleaners are almost done.”
I nod. It doesn’t matter if they bleach the entire house from roof to foundation, nothing will ever erase the image of finding Mama or what I did. I took a life. It doesn’t matter if Nikolai Stepanoff deserved it. I killed someone. There is no coming back from that.
My fingers curl into the dirt. “Where’s Aleksei?”
“Inside.”
I didn’t know what to do, so I called Pyotr. I couldn’t call the police. The Society owns a lot of influential people, but Aleksei and I are still minors with no other family in the States who can take us in. We would be put in the system. And what would happen to our home? The business and the money and everything else?
The toes of Drako Petrov’s black leather shoes appear to my left, the long hem of his wool coat flapping against his legs in the chilly breeze. Tall and imposing, his massive body bends at the waist, and he lays a bouquet of white lilies on top of Mama’s grave. Funny how he remembered she loved lilies. Father never remembered small details like that. What her favorite flowerwas. Her favorite movie, favorite book, favorite season, favorite color. Or he did and just didn’t give a shit.
