Going After Heaven (Mafia Romance)

Chapter Forty Three

I swallow my guilt with the last bite of my lunch. Hoping to hell they don't travel the same route. My lunch in my stomach, I can take. But the guilt will kill me.

Business is business Heaven Gate.

That stern ice-cold voice that comes out when I make actions that require lives to be lost howls in my head.

This is business. Business should be business.

I gulp the last of my tomato-stuffed water. That was what she called it right? I mean I know flavored water. Had lemon-flavored water once and didn't like it because hell, I want my water to taste like water and not some artificial sprinkled lemon flavor. But this is good. This is different. Maybe someone else would have chewed the tomatoes but I don't like unprocessed veggies. So I leave them in and go to drop the dish in the sink.

When Greta left, every bite was a hard pill to swallow. And every swallow was like a stone piling up in my throat, blocking the way.

I don't feel good about any of this. Not about the fact that Gabriele is dying or the betrayal Javier will feel if he ever finds this out. I am no fool to think secrets will forever remain secrets. But more painfully, there's a ninety-nine percent chance that I won't be here to defend myself and say it as it truly is.

Deflated from the thoughts that have somehow crept out of the dungeon to invade my mind, I take heavy gaits up the stairs to the bedroom.

This wasn't how I envisioned today.

I wanted to let myself live truly for just today. I wanted to let myself feel. I wanted out and away from the life I have been plagued with for just today. But here I am, with thoughts worse than the ones I had escaped from.

I move to the wooden wall that serves as the door to the walk-in dresser and press the orange button. I walk in and flip through my things in my box to get the Harlequin comic book I brought with me. I can never go wrong with my all-time favorite superhero.

Reading comic books is the one thing from my life before the massacre that I still maintain. I fear if I let it go, I will lose myself completely. I will lose them completely. And with that, the memories that make all of this worth something. I will lose the memories that are propelling me into going to see Black Rifle.

I walk to the wall across. I press the orange dot and walk in as the door of the library if we can call it that, opens. I turn on the lamp on the desk, then plop myself on the couch, aside from guilt I feel full. Sated. And really in need of more sleep.

I start to read through pages, my eyes flipping across Harlequin's colorful splash and the letters on the glossy paper. Letters that start to dance, popping out of the pages and swirling around me.

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I open my eyes and the lamp is turned off, replaced by the burnt orange hue from the loosely hanging chandeliers. My comic book is on the desk by the side of daisies wrapped by a yellow ribbon.

Gabriele.

I sit up and reach for the flower, my lips curl to form a smile as I pluck the note attached to it and read.

-Dress up and come down for dinner, dinner.

My cheeks heat up and those drowning thoughts from before are reduced to shallow waters, barely making it above my feet.

I slip the note back into the daisies and sniff, not the daisies please, just the euphoria of the moment. Of this moment. Then I look around to be sure that this is not a dream. That this is happening to me. For me.