Page 11 of Cryptic Curse

Of seeing her.

Even though she’s only eighteen.And married to my sister’s boyfriend.

God, we’re a fucking Jerry Springer segment.

I check my watch.Raven and Vinnie’s place is about a half-hour drive away.

Daniela will probably need some time to get ready, so she’ll get here in forty minutes or so.

And I’m betting she will get here before Eagle does.

4

DANIELA

Belinda has switched to Debussy now, her fingers drifting over the keys like smoke curling through the air.The notes spill out of her, soft and aching, like a whispered confession.

She’s playing “Clair de Lune,” but slower than I’ve ever heard it—haunted, almost hollow.She plays like someone remembering something they wish they could forget.

How apropos for Belinda.

And for me.

I lean against the doorframe, arms crossed, heart tightening with every pause, every suspended chord.I sneak a peek around the entryway.Belinda’s hair falls into her face as she bends forward, lost in the music, and for a second, she looks so fragile I forget to breathe.

She doesn’t know I’m here.

And I don’t move.

Because something about the way she plays—broken, bleeding, beautiful—tells me she’s not just performing.

She’s surviving.

The sweet strains drift through the room like a lullaby from a life I barely remember—gentle and sad and impossibly far away.And just like that, I’m not here anymore.I’m eleven again, curled up on the cold kitchen tiles in the middle of the night.

Everyone else is asleep.Or pretending to be.

I press an old cookbook to my chest like it’s a fairytale, tracing the faded pictures of pastries.The pages smell like flour and yeast.

Cooking was never just cooking for me.It was a promise that things could be different.That ingredients could be broken down and turned into something beautiful.

Later, it became a metaphor for my life.ThatIcould be broken and still make something worthwhile out of myself.

My father didn’t understand that.He let me cook because he wouldn’t let me learn music.It was a good way to keep me quiet and docile while preparing me to be a good mafia wife.

But he never saw what I saw.

He never knew that while he stormed through the house, I was learning the delicate science of balance—of salt against acid, of heat against time.I was building a world that made sense, one meal after another.

Now, as Belinda’s fingers move gently across the piano, coaxing out every tender note of Debussy’s masterpiece, I close my eyes and let myself fall back into that sacred place—a place where things don’t always hurt, where chaos can be contained, even made beautiful.

Like food.

Like music.

Like maybe, someday, me.

My phone buzzes on my hip.I move away from the conservatory door to answer it.It’s Vinnie.