Page 8 of Deadly Confessions
I dry off. Dress in clean clothes. Cotton shirt. Loose pants. Bare feet on the cool tile of my apartment.
The apartment is small. One bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom. A bookshelf overloaded with crime novels. A small table with no chair. A window that faces the courtyard where my neighbor hangs her laundry. The space is functional. Sparse. The only objects that matter are in the bedroom.
I go to them now.
The crucifix is mounted on the wall above a narrow table. Carved wood, old, given to me by Father Domenico on the anniversary of my first year. Below it, four candles in brass holders. Matches. A folding knife with a bone handle, the blade thin from years of sharpening.
I light the candles. One by one. The flames are small in the dim room. I close the curtains.
I kneel.
The tile is hard under my knees. I welcome it. The discomfort is part of attonement.
"Signore, accogli questo sacrificio come atto di giustizia. Ho agito come Tuo strumento. Ho portato la Tua sentenza dove la legge degli uomininon arriva."
(Lord, accept this sacrifice as an act of justice. I have acted as Your instrument. I have carried Your sentence where the law of men does not reach.)
I pick up the bone-handled knife. Open the blade. The edge catches candlelight.
I pull my loose pants above my left knee. Above that. The inside of my thigh, where the skin is thin, where the scars from fourteen years of this ritual map a history that no one will ever see. White lines, healed. Pink lines, newer. A topography of penance written on the most private surface of my body.
I press the blade.
The cut is shallow. Precise. One inch, maybe less. The skin parts. Blood beads along the line, dark in the candlelight, welling slowly. The pain is bright, clean, specific. Nothing like the blurred psychic weight of what I did on that boat. This pain has edges. Boundaries. A beginning and an end.
The blood runs down my inner thigh. A single line. I watch it travel.
"Con il mio sangue, libero il dolore che ho causato. Con questa ferita, porto la sofferenza su di me.Nel Tuo nome, è finita."
(With my blood, I release the pain I caused. With this wound, I bear the suffering on myself. In Your name, it is finished.)
I close the knife. Set it on the table. Press a clean cloth against the cut. The cloth turns red at the center, then stops.
The candles burn. The crucifix looks down. My knees ache on the tile.
I am on the floor of my apartment with blood on my thigh and a prayer on my lips and a dead man on a yacht in the Porto di Mergellina, and the distance between those two things is exactly the width of this ritual. Without it, I am a killer. A murderer. A girl who cuts throats on Wednesday afternoons.
With it, I am God's hand.
I close my eyes. The candles warm my face. The cut throbs once, then settles into a low pulse that matches my heartbeat.
I stay on my knees until the candles burn halfway down.
Chapter 3
The Don's Weight
Niccolo
The man doesn't die quietly.
That surprises me. They usually do, by the time they reach this stage: when there is nothing left to bargain with, when the money is already gone, when the name they've traded on for thirty years means nothing in a room with no windows. At that point most men go quiet. They fold inward. They accept.
Caruso doesn't accept.
He's still talking when Enzo's hand comes down. After that he goesmute for a few seconds.
"You said we had an arrangement."
