Page 2 of A Bond Beyond Blood (The Butcher’s Daughter Trilogy #1)

J ack

Anyone who has stepped foot inside a hospital or watched someone die of incurable disease could tell you that death has a smell.

And it isn’t that ‘roadkill on the side of the highway’ stench, but something more subtle.

Pervasive. Apparent in the chemical scent of cleaning supplies, the pungency of bleached laundry.

The disinfectant used to clean every touchable surface.

Death is heavy, palpable. An entity all on its own.

And it had taken up residence in my childhood home.

As I left the brisk chill of mid-December outside, I was assaulted by its presence. So overwhelmed that I found myself stuck in the threshold, one foot in and one out, unable to move forward.

After a brief deliberation, I gathered the last of my nerve and braced myself, then stepped all the way inside, closed the door behind me, and drew a stuttering breath.

Entering the apartment above Fiorino’s Meats didn’t hold the same allure as it did just a few weeks ago.

When I visited for Thanksgiving, the sheer joy of coming home was overwhelming.

Like a grandmother’s open arms or a warm blanket paired with a cup of steaming hot cocoa, this place embraced me with that uncanny sense of home .

Now, however, returning here felt like a curse. A shackle slapped around my ankle.

A tether.

The loud clink of a lock slipping into place.

Final .

That familiar scent of aged meat and Dad’s favorite lasagna heating up in the oven was gone.

His cigar smoke still lingered, but it was stale; he gave them up the day he received his diagnosis, which was almost comical now, all things considered.

He should have held onto that habit, continued to find joy in that one little act of rebellion.

He hadn’t died, not yet, but the cancer metastasized throughout his body had feasted on him from the inside out until, I’d been told, little of the man I love remained.

As I stood in the entryway, gnawing at the remnants of the Poppy Parade red nail polish still dotting my fingernails from an attempt to bond with one of Gio’s girls over Thanksgiving weekend, my thoughts returned to that day when my father gathered us around the dining table we’d eaten at countless times.

The table we kicked each other beneath or threw food across when he had his back turned. With scratches still carved into the wood from one of Leo’s rebellious moments, and that stain from the time Gio spilled mulled wine and it stained through the varnish...

Around that table full of countless memories, our father sat us down to break the news.

On that brisk Thanksgiving Day, surrounded by my brothers and their significant others—well, Leo’s wife and Gio’s flavor of the week—with plates stacked full of the feast Dad spent the entire day preparing, he told us about his diagnosis.

And then he told us that he’d already decided to succumb. To give up.

‘ The cancer is too far gone ,’ he’d said. ‘ Chemo won’t work.’

Well, not if he didn’t try , but my father was nothing if not stubborn, and he’d already made his decision, his children be damned. Part of me wondered what my mother would have said if she’d been here. Was she the type of woman who would have put her foot down, convinced him to fight?

But it didn’t matter and she wasn’t here.

The four weeks since that fateful day flew by in a blink.

I’d had four whole weeks to process the news.

Four.

Four weeks to accept his decision to die instead of fight .

The hospice nurse called yesterday to tell me it was time.

To come home.

To say goodbye.

And to take over.

Two years of college down and two more to go, now on hold indefinitely.

Because I couldn’t say no, couldn’t tell my father that I didn’t want to take over the family business.

My eldest brother had his own business to run.

Even though it was only a block away, Fiorino’s Deli took up all of Giovanni’s time.

And our middle brother couldn’t step into Dad’s shoes, not with a new wife and a baby on the way, happily living out their fairy tale on the west coast because my sister-in-law ‘wouldn’t dream of leaving California’—and Leo wouldn’t dream of doing anything to upset her.

So it mattered not that I had goals and dreams of my own—and a scholarship that would now be wasted—the onus of taking over fell on me, the baby of the family.

Because the men of the Fiorino family had always told me what to do and when.

Out of love, I knew, but control was control, no matter the motivation.

And I was the baby, the princess, meant to behave and do what I was told.

Because the men in my family knew better .

I hung my head and closed my eyes, breathing deeply to steel my nerves. The living room lay between me and the hallway that led to his room. Just a short few yards away, but I couldn’t bring myself to push off the front door and move toward him.

“Oh, honey,” Muriel said, her voice laced with sympathy as she entered the living room. “I thought I heard you come in.”

Lifting my head, I met the hospice nurse’s gaze, and the look of pity in her eyes broke my resolve. The tears slipped free, but I locked my jaw and tried my best to keep my composure.

In a blink, she was on me, pulling me into her arms and pressing me against her bosom like a scene out of a Hallmark movie. She soothed me with quiet murmurs as she ran her hand over my long hair. “It’s okay, honey, let it out.” After a moment, she added quietly, “You’re allowed to grieve.”

And something about that statement did it.

I broke.

The agony of grieving a man who still lived and breathed right there down the hall felt somehow even more profound than the knowledge that I came here to say goodbye to him.

Grieve him?

The man who raised me. Loved me. Drove me crazy more often than not.

The man who did his best as a widowed single parent of three young hellions.

The man who somehow ran the butcher shop and this household without giving up on either—even when doing so would have lightened his load tremendously.

In the arms of this stranger, I crumpled to the ground and she lowered with me, rocking me as I cried.

“I should have come home sooner,” I sobbed, my hands clenching around her cable knit cardigan.

“No,” she whispered, “he wouldn’t have wanted you to miss your studies. He was so proud of you going to that big ol’ school upstate. His brilliant baby, he called you.”

Her statement gutted me and I shook with a deep wail as my heart ripped in two.

The acknowledgement of his pride meant little when he’d called me home to take over the store.

He was proud that I pursued higher education, just not proud enough to let me complete my four years and move forward into achieving my goals.

Her words felt like a slap in the face, but I knew that was not her intention.

And I knew it wasn’t his intention either, to make me feel like my dreams didn’t matter, and the guilt brought on by even thinking such a thing squeezed inside my chest to make itself at home between grief and agony.

My father built that shop from the ground up, and he did it for us . Every ounce of his blood, sweat, and tears went into creating something my brothers and I could depend on long after he was gone. It should have been an honor to step into his shoes...

Dad just didn’t account for the fact we might not want that honor.

So, in Muriel’s arms, I cried for the loss of my father. And I cried for the loss of my dreams.

Because, over the next few days, I would move back into my childhood home and step into my father’s shoes.

I would carry on his dream instead of my own.

And the tremendous weight of my grief was overwhelming.

M oments or maybe hours later, when the tears dried out and my throat was hoarse from crying, Muriel smiled sadly in that sympathetic, knowing way that made me feel like maybe the tear ducts hadn’t quite dried up just yet.

She gently swept her thumbs beneath my eyes to wipe the mascara streaks from my cheeks.

“When you’re ready, you can go on back and sit with him. ..”

She didn’t say the rest, but her unspoken words settled over me anyway.

Say your goodbyes.

And so, with a heavy heart, I rose to my feet, made my way down the hall, and prepared to do just that.

But when I stepped into his room, he was lucid, staring right at me with bright eyes.

My pulse stuttered. I looked over my shoulder, but Muriel hadn’t followed me.

Had I misunderstood what was happening here?

I’d anticipated him comatose, or at the very least in a deep sleep, the cancer having finally claimed victory over his mind, but—

“Jackie,” he said, and the childhood nickname brought a fresh rush of tears to my eyes. “Come, we haven’t much time.”

Bile rose in my throat at those words, but I hurried to his bedside, fighting to ignore the scent of death hovering around him and twisting my stomach.

Struggling to ignore the weight he’d lost in just a short matter of weeks, evident in his sunken cheeks and the way his clavicle stuck out from his body like the craggily roots of an old tree.

“The vampire will come for you,” he said, lowering his voice as his gaze flicked frantically around the room. “You have to be ready.”

My shoulders deflated as hope left me in a rush. He wasn’t lucid at all.

I slipped my hands around one of his and squeezed gently, my breath lodging in my throat at the sheer magnitude of this moment.

The once strong, calloused hands of the man who raised me were small and featherlight.

.. so frail between my hands. “Okay, Daddy.” My voice cracked so I cleared my throat. “I’ll be ready.”

“He saved you, Jackie, but he couldn’t save your mother.”

My brow furrowed as ice flooded my veins. “What?”

“Too much blood.” His eyes went distant, unfocused, but then they snapped back to mine. “We owe him now. Animal blood. Every month on the fifteenth.”

I sighed. “No, Daddy, I think you’re confused. Mom died during childbirth.”

And vampires don’t save lives; they take them.

“He doesn’t know about you. He’ll want you when he sees.” His eyes flicked around the room then landed on mine once more, before drifting down to lock on my throat. “Animal blood won’t be enough then,” he whispered.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Shaking my head, I said, “Daddy, I don’t understand.”

“He’ll want you when he sees.” His dark brown eyes grew wide then flicked to the space immediately behind me and a shiver skittered down my spine.

I jerked my head around, but no one was there.

When I took a deep breath and looked back at my father, his eyes were closed, the only sign of our brief conversation evident in the crease of his brow.

As I watched him, unable to move, Muriel slipped into the room, humming quietly as she moved around to the side of the bed.

She leaned over him and rubbed her thumb over that crease between his brows, then she went about fluffing his covers and checking his vitals, smiling sadly as she finally looked up at me.

“It’s happening, honey.” She motioned to my father.

“Tell him you’re going to be okay. Sometimes they wait for permission to go. ”

Jaw tight, I shook my head. Permission? No. No way. He couldn’t leave me. I would never tell him to go .

She smiled in that way again, then patted my hand and left the room.

I lowered my head, resting my forehead on his arm, and cried like I never had before.

Eventually my brothers would come, and maybe then I’d say my goodbyes. But not a second earlier than was absolutely necessary.