Page 5 of A Mastery of Crows

So fucking numb.

There is so much to do, so much to say – to all of them. And I don’t know where to start. Where to look first, to try and fix our broken pieces.

So instead, I breathe.

“Cat.” Warm hands are gentle on my cold skin, pushing back my hair. “We’re here.”

The popping in my ears told me that already. We’ve landed in Palermo, the brightness against my closed eyelids telling me that it’s morning, or something close to it.

I need to get up. To unlock my aching muscles and situp.

Move.

It physically hurts. I’m sotired, the exhaustion weighing me down as I force my eyes to open and meet Stefano’s dark gaze.

Even that requires effort. As if I have to tell my body what to do, or else it will not move at all.

His lips tighten as he scans my face. But his voice is soft. “You ready?”

My head jerks up and down, and he looks as if he’s going to say something. But he hesitates. “I need to get my mother.”

Iliana. I thought of her too, as I was laying here, pretending to be asleep to avoid the conversations I need to have.

I wondered if she felt as I do now, before she decided to block the world out completely. Wondered what the final straw was, that broke her spirit, that took her from a vibrant, happy woman to an empty shell.

I wondered if her straw was the same as mine.

A black canopy.

A bare back.

Cold hands on my skin—

Stefan looks relieved as I nod again, blinking those thoughts away. Plenty more rush in to take their place. I mentally force my limbs to uncurl, sensation rushing back in burning pulses as Ipush myself upright, the blanket that Dom pulled over me falling away as I look down.

Blood. Dried, flaking blood covers me, covers the pale material I dressed in to please my husband before I ended him.

I can’t leave the plane like this. “I need something to wear.”

They all stop at my words. Even my voice doesn’t feel like mine. Empty, monotone.

Gio steps up beside Stefan with a hooded sweatshirt in his hands and an apology in his eyes. “We don’t have much else until we get there.”

“There?” I take it from him and pull it over my head, dragging it down to cover the tattered remains of my gown.

He purses his lips. “The Morelli estate.”

My fingers clench in the material, so warm against my cold skin that I wonder if he pulled it off himself before giving it to me. Slowly, I nod in understanding.

Luc.

And—

Brushing away those thoughts too, I force a small smile to my face, as if it could possibly fool anyone. Gio watches me steadily. Dom moves past him to take my hand again. Gripping it tightly, as if he’d hold me together by that alone.

They wait for me. “Let’s go, then.”

Gio handles the arrangements as I walk off the plane, going ahead and murmuring to the men waiting for us. The airstrip is small. Private. Probably for the best, considering we all look as though we should be arrested on sight.