Page 83 of Be Still My Unbeating Heart

“I’m no angel,” he said quietly. “I spent a lot of time angry. I wanted to leave Vernazza. There was nothing for me here, but Mum needed my help looking after Enzo, and then she died…. I wasn’t a very nice person for a while. Enzo’s the one who wanted to be commissario one day. He’s just like my dad. But the force wouldn’t take him, not with his condition. Enzo took it poorly and…well, I suppose I wanted to do it for him. I joined the police force to make up for the fact that he couldn’t.”

De Luca looked at him, then the door. Bastian’s heart swelled. But he could see the heaviness of this duty, how it weighed on De Luca. He could also see the remnants of that anger in the way De Luca sat on the edge of the bed, tense and stiff. And he knew that feeling better than any other.

“Sometimes anger keeps us alive,” Bastian said. “Keeps us going when we have nothing else.”

“Yeah, well.” De Luca squeezed the bedsheet. “It didn’t even work out how I wanted. Arianna hates me. She thinks I should be spending all my time with Enzo instead of working.”

“The gelato girl? Why does her opinion matter?”

De Luca sighed. “She’s Enzo’s fiancée. Or, she was. They got engaged in high school. When Enzo’s health deteriorated, Arianna wanted to move in and look after him. I told her that wasn’tnecessary. I was still grieving Mum and, well, Arianna didn’t react well. She barely talks to me anymore and she only visits Enzo when I’m not here.”

“That’s something of an extreme reaction.”

“That’s Arianna.”

Bastian gave a small chuckle. “I guess it is.”

His smile slipped as he realized the scent of De Luca was overpowering in there. It was all over the room, infusing the air with his delicious aroma.

Curiosity moved Bastian’s hand to a lamp resting on a chest of drawers, and when the light flicked on, he looked around in wonder.

Guitars hung over the bed. An electric piano sat in front of the window. One wall was covered in CDs, and Bastian saw that they were meticulously alphabetized. He recognized the spines—A Flock of Seagulls, Bronski Beat, Cocteau Twins…

“Is this your room?” Bastian asked, even though the answer was obvious.

De Luca’s ears flushed, the most endearing kind of confirmation.

“I didn’t know you played,” Bastian said, nodding at the instruments.

“I haven’t in a while.”

“Play something now?”

De Luca’s hands knotted together and he ignored the request. “I’m sorry for keeping Enzo from you. It’s just difficult to talk about him sometimes.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“You’ve been so open with me from the start, and I’ve told you nothing.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Bastian said, voice soft. At De Luca’s questioning gaze, he added, “I know what it’s like to live withguilt. With anger. It follows me around every day.” He arched an eyebrow. “You’ve met Whitby.”

“I have, but what does that have to do with anything?”

Bastian ran a hand through his hair, his fingers trembling. “She’s the last person I killed.”

De Luca slowly straightened. “I don’t follow.”

“Five years ago, I was just like the mayor’s husband. A little less crazed, perhaps, but I allowed the hunger to control me. And I was soangry. All those years I spent being called a monster by the people back home, it left a mark on me. When I was turned and became anactualmonster, I found an outlet for that anger. A way to punish people who would judge and condemn me. I hunted the kind of people who made me feel small and broken, and I madethemfeel small and broken. I killed a lot of people.”

He bowed his head. “One night, I was so angry, I was half mad. I attacked the woman who lived in the flat next door. She had invited me in once before, when she was new to the building and needed help moving in her possessions, and I had left her alone since, perhaps on some level sensing that she could be a problem. But that night, I forced my way inside and I fed on her. When I was done, I passed out. When I woke up a few hours later, the woman’s cat started screaming at me.”

Bastian could see that he had lost De Luca.

“She was a witch, love. The woman I killed was a witch, and the cat was her familiar. The witch—Whitby—must have known she was about to die. With her final breaths, she cast a spell. She cast her soul out of her body, and into the cat. A magical survival mechanism, I suppose.”

De Luca ran his hand over his face. “That’s…I didn’t…”

“It’s a mindfuck, I know.”