Kissing The Moon Goodbye - A Midnight Mafia Novel

Eighteen

Kate

I watched Alessio as he got ready for the day in silence. He didn't seem any different than he had yesterday. He was just as handsome, just as loving when he brushed his lips over my forehead and muttered good morning Rose when we woke, he didn't appear to have changed at all.

And yet I felt off. "Where did you go last night?"

"Hm?" He didn't pull his attention away from his shirt he was slowly buttoning. Not so long ago the simple task of forcing the button through the small hole was enough to have him threatening to set fire to his wardrobe. I often wondered if he had burned a few shirts behind my back.

"I woke up last night. You weren't here."

My lie was greeted with one of his own. "Where would I have to go? You must have woken when I let Donato out. He was whining. Couldn't have been gone more than ten minutes."

"I stayed up for awhile, it seemed a lot longer."

"Time always does slow down when you are waiting for something."

"Hm." I made sound back at him, not quite attempting words. We were both quiet for what felt like a long time before I caved first and broke the silence. "I hadn't even fallen asleep yet."

"The pain pills may have made you confused." He picked up two different ties, nearly identical and treated his hands as some sort of scale as he considered which was more appropriate.

"I took one this morning and I'm not the least bit confused here. You left last night. You snuck out of bed before I even fell asleep and you were gone for a long time." I left out the part of the story where I followed him as far as a few hallways down but was greeted by night patrol around every bend.

He finally turned back around to face me. "I went to see Padre."

"Why not just tell me that in the first place? Why lie to me?"

This time he was quiet for a long time before sitting down on the bed beside me. He tapped his index finger on his knee several times, it was a small sign of agitation and it made me nervous. He was rattled.

"I believe Padre is going to execute Sergio."

I was too surprised to answer right away. "What?" I asked after some seconds of senseless staring.

"If he hasn't already that is to say."

"What?!"

Alessio sighed. "I know my father Katherine, and he is not a tolerant man. Sergio just...he won't stop pushing, wouldn't stop pushing. We entered Padre's office and Sergio continued his disrespectful behavior."

"He was disrespectful?" I repeated in utter disgust.

"Padre is not the man you disrespect."

"So? You don't kill a man just because he hasn't respected you enough!"

"I have."

I closed my mouth abruptly. For a second my memory was trashed with visions of him in action over the years. Flawlessly killing with the Bonanao had taken us, dismissively having the gent Sully's throat cut when suspected of being a rat, shooting Nash. I found myself surprisingly speechless. When Alessio had explained to me the cross tattoo, scrawled with initials and how the represented that of the fallen, even my Nicolo, I had thought I was looking at the raw beating of Alessio's heart, but every now and then he gave me reason to doubt he even had one.

"Sergio is not someone I am fond of. I won't try to deny this. For years I've assumed he was already dead and not cared enough to validate this, I would be much more satisfied without his presence at our wedding, but the confirmation of his death right in front of my face...it's unsettling. I've known him since I was a child you know."