“No love making of any kind?” I mocked, sitting up against the headboard. “I guess that went out window the moment you sat on my face. You taste divine by the way.”
“Fuck you,” she said, as she pulled the sheets around her and reached for her laptop beside the bed.
“You already did, three times, and quite nicely I may add.” I laughed when she glared at me.
Neither of us had spoken on the car ride over. We didn’t even look at each other, yet there was still sexual tension between us, because there was always sexual tension between us. By the time we got home, both of us were horny and annoyed with one another. Sex seemed to be the only thing we could agree on.
I knew she was using me as a distraction. She didn’t want to focus on the shit in front of her. Neither of us did really, so instead we’d had our fill of brandy, wine, and sex.
All of the sex had calmed her down, and now she was ready…or at least I hoped she was ready. Two bullets from her were enough for a lifetime.
She sat next to me and placed the flash drive in as I leaned back to see the list. Hundreds of names, some of them I knew, some were before my time, others I had never even known existed. Each person had a name, photo, date of birth, and the day that they were murdered going back at least twenty-five years… Aviela DeRosa had been killing for a long time.
“Orlando,” Mel whispered softly, as she looked at the name and photo. It didn’t say Orlando but Iron Hands.
“She didn’t kill him,” I stated the obvious.
I tried to grab the laptop, but she slapped my hands away and did it herself.
“Iron Hands. Arsenic,” she read before freezing. Inside the file was a photo of what happened to be another list with dates and doses.
“She poisoned him,” Mel whispered. “For six years straight. She poisoned him slowly. Orlando never knew because he always figured he would get cancer. He had done everything to prevent it, but when it came, he just thought there was no fighting it. That it was too deep in our family line. She gave him cancer. She poisoned him and just waited.”
When I grabbed the mouse from her, she didn’t fight me; she was in too much shock to fight.
“What’s your grandfather’s name on your father’s side?” I asked her trying to sort through.
“Ignazio Giovanni, the second,” she said, still dazed.
When I hit enter, there he was. He died at sixty-one after being diagnosed with stage four colon cancer; he died in four months, his dosage of Arsenic were ten times higher than Orlando’s. They wanted him dead, fast, but without raising suspicion.
“Orlando had an older brother, Francesco Angelo Giovanni. He died at twenty-six.” She searched and he came up as well. He died a year before his father. Two months she spent killing him. It seemed the only person she tortured for so long was Orlando.
One by one, Melody typed up names of who I guessed were her family, and one by one they popped up.
“She’s been killing off your family for years,” I whispered. But why?
“And now she’s coming after the last Giovanni.” Mel tensed.
“You’re a Callahan, not a Giovanni,” I said. “And she isn’t coming near you, or anyone in this family, unless it’s in a body bag.”
She looked back at me, her eyes blazing with fire.
“Everything I know is a lie. She’s the only one that knows the truth. When we get our hands on her, we can break her, but we’re not going to kill her until I know the truth,” She said before looking back at the screen.
But, as I went through the list, looking for any of my past family and finding none, I wondered if a woman like Aviela, who had killed the father of her child, and left that same child for dead, could be broken.
How could you break something that was obviously never whole to begin with?
FIVE
“All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.”
—P.D. James
MELODY
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been seven days since my last Confession, in that time I have…”
“You have lied,” Father Antony interrupted me.
“Yes, father and I…”
“You have killed, stolen, and much worse,” he cut me off again. Only a man of God could do that and still have his tongue.
“You’re going off script, father,” I whispered, leaning against my seat. He could neither see me, nor I him, but I felt more comfortable. Not because I felt ashamed, more because I liked the darkness here; it was the only place I wasn’t afraid of it. I liked the peace it gave me within the church.
“Yes, well I cannot offer you forgiveness.” He sighed. “You’ve come in here once a week for the last year asking for the same thing. Yet neither I, nor God, can forgive you for something you do not truly wish forgiveness for. It doesn’t work that way.”