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Sistine

T wo gun blasts that were as loud as explosive snaps of thunder echoed in the atmosphere.

I could not move, although it felt as if the wind and rain were shoving at me.

My hair had long ago been torn out of its tight bun from the wild hands of Mother Nature, and it was plastered to my head from the torrential downpour, invading my eyes from the insane gales.

However, my eyes were not entirely curtained, and what I had just witnessed, the sound of it, the noises as three people fell—it could not be erased from my memory.

An infuriated Nino and the crazed Benedetto Dandolo were going mano-a-mano with pistols.

Dr. Musa was between them, attempting to stop them.

Benedetto Dandolo fired first, but with the feral wind in his face, his aim was not true, and the bullet pierced through Dr. Musa before it hit Nino.

Nino fired at the same time as Benedetto Dandolo, who collapsed into the wet grass.

Nino and Dr. Musa’s hands reached out for each other, and they seemed to go silent at the same time, their hands still linked. Benedetto Dandolo was alone, gasping for breath, until…there was no breath left in him.

“ Dio mio .” I crossed myself. “ Dio mio .”

The three of them.

All on the ground.

Unseeing eyes turned up to the crying sky.

Blood pooled underneath their bodies and rushed down the steep hill.

The horse next to me made a distressed noise as she reared up, kicking her front legs in the air.

She reminded me we had foreign company. She already did not like the weather.

On the ride up the hill, Benedetto Dandolo could barely keep her in order.

Her eyes were wide and wild. I could feel the trembling underneath her hide, as if a thousand angry wasps were stinging her.

These foreign men, they seemed to be making her more uncomfortable.

Same, horsey girl, same.

My heart raced in my chest, but I held my head high, as high as I could under the circumstances— do not keep staring at people who were alive only moments ago, Sistine! —and kept my trembling hands clenched at my sides, hidden by the length of my sweater.

A man stepped up and smiled at me. His two front teeth glistened—they seemed to be gold-plated. His dark hair was plastered to his head from the downpour. His clothes stuck to his lithe body. He reminded me of Iggy, and when he opened his mouth and spoke to me, he reminded me of him even more.

Russian.

I shook my head. “I do not speak the language,” I said in Italian.

Let him try to figure that out, if he did not have my language.

He tilted his head, studying me. Enough of the test, he said something in his language to the other men, and then pointed his gun at me, waving it some.

My eyes quickly glanced down, but I knew I was not fast enough to grab any of the guns left behind by the…people on the ground. If I would have had a gun, I possibly could have made it out of this. I was quick, and my aim was always straight, the bullet piercing where it was supposed to.

However, I had no chance to snatch one. The men had fanned out, almost blocking my view of the bodies, and the leader was advancing on me. He knew he was pushing me back. Closer and closer to the anxious horse. I did not want to get behind her under any circumstances, or in front of her either.

The instinctual need to cry out for my husband overtook me, but even with the downpour, it was as if my throat was dry.

If I called for Mariano, these men might kill him, and if they killed him, he and I would be lying on the ground side by side as well.

I would refuse to allow them to take me from him.

I would mimic Dr. Musa, reaching my hand out to his right before the last breath left my lungs.

I also had my baby to think about.

I was not sure if any of us were getting out of this alive. Although there were only a few men advancing on me, I was almost positive, without seeing them, that there were more of them.

Benedetto Dandolo—the traitorous ass face!—had wild eyes as we stormed up the hill to find Dr. Musa, but it was as if he was looking for more men, and not ours. He muttered the entire time about fate and how it had gotten confused somehow.

He, Benedetto Dandolo, had been assigned by fate all those years ago to be a solider for it, and when he finally came close to his, he understood how wrong life had been all along.

Musa is mine, not Nino’s!

He was truly possessed—possessed in a way that was much different from the way my husband was possessed with me. Dandolo was obsessed with a woman who was not his. My husband was this way with his wife, me.

“Mariano,” I breathed out, my voice quivering. I had screamed out for him right after Dandolo had forced me on the horse, hoping he was close enough to hear.

Perhaps he could have shot him off the horse, but I was not so sure. The way Dandolo had positioned me, right in front of him, a shot through him would have hit me.

Where was my husband?

A sob that had been stuck in my throat turned into a whimpering noise.

I refused to allow these men to see or hear my fear, although on the inside, I trembled.

I did not know exactly why these men wanted me dead, but I had an idea.

My husband had enemies, and therefore I did as well.

Perhaps when Mariano went on the mission to save Stella from the Russians, these men had belonged to the men who had held her captive.

Iggy was a part of that. This was how Iggy came into my life in the first place.

These men knew what I meant to my husband, or they would have not been wasting their time with me. Also, they had my ring. Dandolo had ripped it off my finger and stuck it in his pocket. The leader must have noticed. He stole it off Dandolo after he died.

I stopped in my tracks when I realized the leader had switched directions.

He was pushing me closer and closer to the edge of the hill.

It was a steep drop. My eyes glanced to the side, then straight back to his.

I was not sure if he could understand me, and even if so, what was I to say?

Do not kill me? I would beg for my child’s life, my husband’s life, but mine?

I would not give him the satisfaction. Just as my eyes had done the night Rattler had me, I met his straight on.

The man with glistening teeth studied me longer this time, and then he advanced on me.

I went to move to the side, give myself a slight advantage.

Perhaps I could get to the crude road, run down it.

Or if the horse would calm, I could mount her…

but that did not seem possible. I would not have enough time.

I gasped when a bloodied hand wrapped around my waist and pulled me to his side. My husband kissed my pulse as he raised his gun and started shooting the men who held me captive, at the same time pushing me to the ground.

“Oof!” I landed in a puddle, the water exploding all around me. It did not stop. The rain was falling so hard, it ricocheted and splattered me in the face. Men were advancing on all sides, and it was all shoes I was seeing as I tried to crawl to a safer area.

It did not seem as if there was one. Men were falling all around me. I found a dropped gun, holding it for protection while at the same time, my eyes frantically searched for my husband. However, my eyes were full of water from the rain. I could barely see.

Lightning snapped from above, temporarily shocking the atmosphere. It hit what looked like an ancient tree next to the small villa, splitting it in two and causing it to catch fire.

I had never seen anything like it before.

The tree was up in flames as the rain poured down from above.

A vision of hell.

The heat of it felt like a warm, wet blanket covering the land around us. Half of the tree did not fall. It swayed with the intense breath of the wind. I was too close to it.

Mariano was shooting at men faster than they could shoot at him. I had heard how fast he was, but I did not understand it until I saw him in motion. Just as I did not realize how fast he was on the field until he carried me and ran.

I hurriedly stood, teetering a bit, and a man from the opposite side noticed me.

He came at me at the same time my husband was.

Mariano was not as far. My husband went to shoot at the advancing man, but his gun must have been out of bullets.

He flung it to the side, still racing toward me as the man did.

Another man was coming for me.

Closer than my husband or the other enemy.

He went down before I could even blink.

Iggy.

He held a smoking gun.

I backed up a pace to put more distance between me and the enemy and to get closer to my husband. Perhaps Iggy had saved me once, but I refused to allow him to take my husband from me.

My foot snagged on a rock.

It was tall enough to trip over, and my body went back, and then it felt as if gravity was sucking me down. I did not hit the ground right away, and my heart felt as if it was in my throat as I fell, fell, fell, my arms flailing, desperately searching for something to grab.

Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could have sworn I heard my husband’s voice crying out for me—a lion’s roar.

My back finally hit land, and I wished I would have kept falling. The hardness of it slammed the breath from my lungs, and I was desperately trying to grab hold of something again, force the air back in my lungs, but the momentum of the fall had me spiraling down the hill.

All this air, and I could not breathe.

I could not stop the forward momentum. I felt as if I was a rag doll that had been flung down the hill by a petulant child’s hand.

My sister’s hand pushing me down the steps.

Something stopped my downward motion.

A rock to my gut.

It did not stop me for long.

The rock was not fully secured in the ground. I collected it, dislodged it, as I flew forward.

My baby.

Mariano.

Perhaps their names came out of my mouth. Perhaps they were my last thought. In that moment, I realized I had been shielding my stomach, but I was not sure if it was enough to save my baby.

I could do nothing about my heart.

My husband’s heart that beat inside of my chest.

My eyes searched the sky but only found rain and fire. Then my body was launched into the raging tributary…an icy underworld’s arms waiting to bring me under after a rock slammed into my head. The storm seemed to be dislodging them from the steep hill.

The world went dark.