Sempre (Sempre 1)

“I know,” Vincent said.

Corrado turned to Carmine. “That mouth of yours is going to get every single one of us killed. If you can’t close it yourself, I’ll close it for you.”

* * *

The next day dawned when Carmine made his way up to the third floor, his chest constricting as he pushed open his bedroom door. He sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed a pillow, clutching it to his chest as tears formed in his eyes.

Every bit of composure he had was ripped away as he inhaled Haven’s scent, which lingered there. The grief swallowed him, refusing to let go until his father interrupted in the middle of the afternoon. “We’re leaving for Chicago soon,” Vincent said.

Carmine set the pillow down and wiped his tears, cringing at his torn, blood-splattered clothes. “I should change.”

“I prefer you stay here in case she shows back up.”

Carmine laughed bitterly as he stood. “She’s not a lost dog. She didn’t wander out of the backyard and get lost in the woods somewhere.”

“I understand, but you should reconsider. It’s dangerous and—”

“I’m going,” Carmine said, cutting him off. “If you don’t want me to go with you, I won’t, but I’ll be on the next goddamn plane whether you like it or not.”

“Fine, but you need to watch yourself, son. You can’t run off on a vigilante mission. I can’t focus on getting her back if you’re out there wreaking havoc and counteracting everything I’m doing.”

hat day, he had snuck out of work early to watch. Toward the middle of the game, a scrawny boy with tanned skin took a nasty spill, and someone’s cleat gashed his cheek. It was a superficial wound, so Vincent grabbed a first-aid kit from the car, sparing the boy a trip to the emergency room. “Thanks, Doc,” he’d said. “Oh, what did the doctor say when the invisible man asked for an appointment?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Sorry, but I can’t see you today.” He laughed hysterically at his joke. “Get it? Can’t see you? You know, because he’s invisible!”

Vincent smiled. “I get it.”

Halftime began as he finished fixing the boy’s wound, and Carmine ran over. “Dad! You came!”

Intense guilt hit him. “I did.”

Carmine threw his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “This is my best friend, Nicholas.”

Those words caught Vincent off guard. Carmine’s teachers all reported the same thing—he was closed off and shut down, so much so that it was as if he weren’t there.

Vincent’s pager went off as he stood there, the moment lost in that split second as the beeps rang out. The sparkle in Carmine’s eye dissipated, the child Vincent had grown accustomed to returning without a single word spoken.

But all hope was not lost, Vincent realized, because Carmine had someone. Someone he could be Carmine around—the young, innocent boy, haunted by demons others couldn’t see.

After their fallout, he watched his son spiral out of control. He was walking down the one path Vincent wanted him to stay far away from—the path leading straight to Chicago. But then she happened. The girl who had never been able to call her life her own taught a boy who had the world at his fingertips exactly what it meant to live. He wasn’t alone anymore.

Nicholas, however, was.

Vincent never forgot the joke he had told him that first day, because Nicholas was a lot like the invisible man. Drifting his way through life, unnoticed by most. Vincent saw him, though, even if he couldn’t fix him. And as he stood on that pier under the cloak of darkness, he wished he would have done something more to help.

He gazed down at the water, fixated on the spot where Nicholas’s body had disappeared moments before, and felt nothing but disgust. He had watched the boy grow up and had now sent him to a watery tomb like many of his adversaries.

“Oggi uccidiamo, domani moriremo,” he said, his gloved hand making the sign of the cross. Today we kill, tomorrow we die.

Vincent headed to his car hidden in the trees, and he drove away from Aurora Lake without looking back. He had already cleaned up the house, having hosed down the driveway and redistributed the gravel to hide all signs of the incident, but he had bigger issues he needed to deal with.

* * *

As soon as Vincent made it home, he slipped inside the room under the stairs and headed down into the basement. The place was cleaned out, the crates relocated elsewhere, so he had no problem navigating the room. He reached the large bookcase along the back and opened a metal electrical box on the wall beside it. He slid a section of panel down, revealing a small keypad, and punched in the numbers 62373.

There was a loud click. He slid the panel up, closing the electrical box as the bookshelf shifted a few inches. The door led into a safe room, or what his youngest referred to as the dungeon. The room, not much larger than a prison cell, had steel reinforced walls layered with bulletproof Kevlar.