5

“Okay,I changed my mind. I didn’t want to come. This is a total downer,” Bruno complained, a few hours later, when we pulled up at the ornate gates of Silent Grove, a cemetery in New Jersey.

He’d called me just as Molly and Ronan had left me at some faceless hotel downtown. I’d only been in Manhattan a few hours and was already itching to leave. I’d been waiting seven long years for this moment, and I couldn’t fucking wait one more second.

“Like you had anything better to do.”

It was a dry fall day. Perfect weather really. I left Bruno at the car and pulled my cap low over my face, grabbed the stuff I needed from the trunk, and headed through the marked graves in the general direction of the De Lopez family plots. The graveyard was well tended and full of fresh flowers. Well, it seemed that way until I reached mylastochka’sgrave. It was bare of adornment. Even in death, Antonio’s daughter was an afterthought.

I kneeled on the wet grass, setting aside my supplies and laying a bouquet of lilies against the green grass that covered the woman I loved. I might have always been fucked up, but that I loved Valeria couldn’t be denied. She was my ghost, haunting my days, always just tantalizingly out of reach. The inscription on the headstone made me itch to visit Antonio De Lopez this second and even our debts.

Here lies Valeria Sophia De Lopez, dutiful daughter and beloved sister.

May she find the peace that eluded her in life, in death.

“Dutiful daughter?”I snorted into the still air. “Fuck you, Tony. I’ll get you for that.”

I backed onto a bench, positioned to look at the boring patch of ground that now held my little swallow’s cage. A prison she’d never escape. A bird flew from the underbrush right then, and I gazed upward, following its flight. Maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe in death, she’d escaped. Maybe she’d finally flown far, far away.

“I’m sorry he buried you here. You’d hate it.” I looked around the place. There wouldn’t even be a good view of the stars with all the trees overhanging her grave.

“They didn’t let me come to the funeral. We weren’t family, well, not in the way the penal system can understand.” I opened my palm and stared down at the S carved into my skin. It was a light scar now, silvery, but still there. If it ever disappeared, I’d cut it back in.

I eased a hand over my shaved head, the stubble bristling against my palm.

“I’ll be visiting your father soon. I hope you can forgive me for the things I’m going to do to him, but even if you wouldn’t, that won’t stop me. I’ll ask for your forgiveness, instead of your permission, myqueen, when I see you again.” I stood then, feeling cold through and through. “In the next life, or the one after. I’m a man of my word, after all, and I promised you I’d always find you. Wait for me.”

I pushed myself to my feet. The chaos inside my chest was screaming at me, louder than ever. It hurt. It really fucking hurt.

“First,lastochka, since I know how much you’d hate it here, I brought a little ‘fuck you’ to your father, so he understands that I’m coming for him. Nothing is better torture than fear, and I want him to be afraid. I want him to understand that his end is near. I’ll see you soon.”

Turning from the silent grave, I looped around the other De Lopez family plots and found the small church on the grounds and went inside. It was reserved for the De Lopez family alone, a place where Antonio could come and not worry about getting shot, apparently. It seemed he didn’t come too often, as I hadn’t seen more security than CCTV cameras. Antonio had always been sloppy, and now he’d only gotten worse. It’d would only make terrorizing and killing him easier.

There were a few chairs for prayer, an altar with flowers on it, and not much else. The chairs were padded and opulent-looking. Even when praying, Antonio thought a lot of himself. I couldn’t wait to teach the arrogant bastard the ultimate lesson.

I uncapped the gas can I’d brought with me and poured it liberally over Antonio’s chair. I could tell exactly which one it was, since it was the most obnoxious. I was surprised he hadn’t had it bedazzled with his initials or something equally tasteless.

When I flicked the lit match at it, it went up in a whoosh, and I enjoyed the sight.

I watched it burn, the air growing thick inside the incense-scented room, before leaving.

Soon, De Lopez, I’ll be doing the same to you.

I strode from the graveyard, with only more darkness dawning inside me. I’d thought I’d feel closer to her there, but I didn’t.

There was no hint of Valeria in that dreary place. Bones and decomposing flesh wasn’t people, and my lastochka had been in the ground long enough to be both.

She wasn’t here. Not even a trace remained.

She was gone.