“She’s a fucking Regazza,” Leo knows immediately who I’m referring to. Of course. “Nothin’ she ain’t seen before.”
Yeah. I just spent a hundred euro on lunch I hope she doesn’t lose.
I hang up with Leo. “Looks like we have to do that errand sooner than planned.”
She winces and wrinkles up her nose. “Oh, yuck. I’m sorry.”
I’m surprised by her sympathy. I didn’t expect it.
I only shrug. “It’s alright.”
It isn’t, though. I’m here to identify one of Leo's brother’s sons. His nephew, my cousin. Leo hardly knew him, but Jenoah and I went way back.
“Did you know him?”
I swallow the weird lump that rises in my throat and takes me by surprise. “Yeah.”
Why’s my vision all blurred? I blink in surprise and take a left onto the freeway.
Elise sighs. “That really sucks. It’s miserable work.” She shakes her head. “I had to identify a body once.”
“Did you?” That surprises me. We usually shelter the women in The Family from death, at the very least.
“Yeah. Fire to a home when I was younger. My nanny was killed. I was unscathed. My father thought that I was the target, so he went off on this rampage and made me go identify her. Back then, you remember how rudimentary things were in Italy.”
I huff out a laugh. “Some things never change.” I’m on my way to identify a body that’s rotting because it’s sat in a morgue for way too long.
“I didn’t really know her well. I’d only just met her. So that didn’t bother me so much as actually going into the morgue, you know? So cold. So scary. I imagined dead people walking the halls, and ghosts coming to claim their souls.”
“I don’t think it works that way.”
“Do any of us really know how it works?”
I don’t answer. We don’t. Plenty make a good case for exactly what she fears.
I park at the furthest end of the lot to prolong our walk inside, but once indoors, I’m greeted as if I’m a king. Sometimes my status comes in handy. Sometimes, it fucking grates.
“Mr. Rossi.” An older, staid woman in a burgundy pantsuit meets me at the door. She speaks to me in Italian, and I answer her. Elise watches us, understanding every word. I’m welcomed to the morgue, I’m their honored guest, anything I need, blah blah blah. Seems an odd place to be treated so well.
“This way, sir,” she says in Italian, gesturing for me to follow her.
When she gives Elise a curious look, I nod. “She’s with me.”
Saying that feels oddly familiar, something I’m not used to.
Even the cool air and clean interior doesn’t hide the stench of rotting flesh. Our guide hands me and Elise scented cloths to hold up to our noses as we enter. “You can sit outside,” I tell her. There’s nowhere for her to go, and my staff’s outside the door. They follow me everywhere.
“No,” she says, shaking her head, then pleads with me as if to soften telling me no. “Please, Tavi. I want to see.”
I hold her gaze for a moment before I nod my consent. I want to know why, but I don’t ask. She wants to see, so I’ll let her.
It feels oddly nice having her here. For once… for goddamn once, I’m not alone.
When they roll out the body, my body tenses. Elise wordlessly reaches for my hand.
I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve her kindness or her gentleness. I should be her owner, her master, not someone who cares for her.
But I take her hand.
I’m not prepared for the wave of emotion that washes over me when I see my cousin’s pale, lifeless face. I don’t see my cousin lying on the bed before me. I see so much more, like demonic visions come to haunt me in my sleep.
The faces of everyone I ever loved—Romeo, Orlando, Marialena and Mario, Rosa and Santo, Mama and Rosa’s little daughter Natalia, even baby Nicolo, flood my vision. Each lifeless face is cold and pallid and still. I flinch at every image, accosted by the nearness of death. The scent is overwhelming.
“Yeah. It’s him. Jenoah,” I say, and my voice sounds strange, as if it isn’t my own.
“Thank you, sir,” the woman says in Italian. She goes to cover the body, but something makes me stop her.
I reach my hand out in front of her, my voice hoarse. “Stop. Fermare,” I say, my voice hoarse. The two women watch me as I peer closer at the decaying body and swallow the bile that burns my throat.
This was no mere accident.
I trace a reluctant finger at his throat, covered in lacerations. The cuts and bruises and swollen skin aren’t enough to hide the telltale signs of strangulation.
I take out my phone and snap pictures.
My words roll out, harsh and cold, in clipped Italian. I want to see the coroner.