Page 8 of Bad Bishop

An eye.

A human one.

Hiseye.

I wanted to drop it but I knew better than to defy him.

He leaned forward, until our noses almost touched. He smelled of blood, gunpowder, and dark, haunted woods. It was an oddly pleasant, sinister scent, and it seeped into my system, touching a corner inside me I didn’t even know existed.

“Tell your brothers that next time they fuck with me, enter my territory, or otherwise disturb my business, I’m going to hunt you down, fuck every hole in your body, slash that pretty throat, then dump you at their doorstep to bleed out. Understand?”

I was going to do no such thing.

For one thing, my brothers weren’t supposed to know I understood their language, let alone spoke. For another, I wasn’t his errand bitch.

I stared at him defiantly, saying nothing. I had a feeling he knew I understood him.

“Good.” He straightened, releasing my throat from his hold. “Now run,Gealach. Because when I catch? I kill.”

I sprang to my feet and sprinted back inside barefoot, leaving my canvas and pencils outside, as fast as I could before he changed his mind. Panicked breaths tore at my lungs.

Halfway through the journey to my front door, I realize he ripped the spaghetti straps of my nightgown. My breasts were exposed. Every inch of my upper body was smeared with his blood.

I felt the ghost of his hands slithering up and down my flesh. Warm and callused and alive.

Weeks after, I’d ask myself if he was a figment of my imagination.

A nightmare. An omen.

But no, he had to be real.

I knew.

Because I kept his eye.

CHAPTER THREE

LILA

TWO WEEKS LATER

“Madonna Santa, Chiara, your daughter is such a beauty. What a shame she’ll never marry!” Tammy, Mama’s friend, raked her gaze along my frame, clucking her tongue.

I wore a pink chiffon dress with off the shoulder pleats and a tight corset. My long pale hair tumbled in waves down to my waist, haloed by a tiara of snow-white roses. They were real roses, twisted into one another. The tiny thorns dug into my skull, but Mama always said that beauty was pain.

Mama picked the tiara and outfit.

She dictated my wardrobe. My activities. My future.

I felt a little ridiculous in the white satin gloves and high heels. Like I was playing teatime with my dolls, something I did publicly sometimes to make people believe I was mentally delayed. Ihatedthe teatime routine and always thought it was overkill. But as Mama said—in our world, one can never be too pretty or too cautious.

Besides, it wasn’t every day my eldest brother was getting married. And to a princess from the Outfit, no less.

Sofia’s family was well known in Chicago. So influential were the Bandinis that the wedding attracted none other than the president of the United States, Wolfe Keaton, and First Lady Francesca Rossi-Keaton.

Luca and Sofia stood in the far corner of the room, careful not to touch or look at one another as they politely mingled with their guests. My brother was tempered in movement and thinking. Eerily still and cold as a fish. He looked like he was attending his own funeral, not his wedding.

Sofia seemed to share his desolation. Misery was stamped on her lovely, tan face like the angry welts of a belt.