Chapter 6 - Devil into her home.

Adriano

⫘☠︎︎⫘

There’s a spoon in my mouth.

A fucking spoon.

Warm, salty liquid slid down my throat before I could fight it, and by the time my brain caught up, she was already loading up the next hit like I was some half-dead pigeon she scooped off the street.

She made a soft sound, she sounded pleased, like feeding me soup was the highlight of her goddamn week.

Vincenzo, I needed my brother, Vincenzo.

“You’re awake again!” she chirped, and then made a face, “Well, Sort of. Ish. That’s okay. You don’t have to be all the way awake. I’ve got soup.”

What the fuck is happening?

My eyes dragged open, everything was bright, like the inside of a greenhouse had swallowed me whole. There were plants on every surface, hanging from the ceiling, climbing shelves.

And her.

She looked like springtime.

She was wearing an oversized pink T-shirt, hair in a lazy braid. No makeup, no shoes, just this barefoot, wide-eyed girl with the voice of a cartoon character.

God help me.

“Flan didn’t like the smell,” she said conversationally as she dipped the spoon again, “But she never does. She’s so dramatic. You’d think I tried to poison her with lentils or something.”

Another spoonful. She held it up to my lips like she was feeding a baby bird.

I wanted to curse, I wanted to tell her to get me a fucking cell phone so I can call my fucking brother and get the fuck out of here and off the drugs she had been feeding me but I was floating. My limbs weighed a thousand pounds and my head was made of smoke.

Wait, was she some psycho?

“You’re doing so good,” she cooked like she was talking to a baby. “I mean, your eyes are open now and your breathing’s steadier. Yesterday you were groaning and twitching, which the doctors said is a good sign.”

Soup again. I didn’t even taste it, it was something vaguely herbal, warm and had too much oregano.

She pushed a stool closer to the bed and sat down, still holding the bowl.

I watched her from the corner of my eye because I couldn’t do much else. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move without feeling like my stitches were going to tear wide open and spill my guts across her nice little bedspread.

“My cat uses a walker,” she said brightly, like that was normal. “It’s this little custom thing I found on Etsy. She’s got wheels on her back legs now. Zooms around like a little sausage on rollerblades.”

I blinked slowly.

What.

“She was abused. Her previous owner broke her spine and left her in a dumpster. Can you believe that?” her face twisted with anger, like the cruelty still hurt her to remember. “She was barely alive when I found her. All matted and shaking and full of fleas but we fixed her up. Didn’t we, Flan?”

Somewhere in the room, the cat meowed. A weak, croaky little sound.

Jesus Christ.

“She has anxiety,” Maddie added, completely serious. “But so do I, so we understand each other. Sometimes we both hide under the couch when there’s thunder.”

I would’ve laughed if I could. Instead, a strange noise came out of me, some half-breath, half-choke that made her freeze.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. “Did you just make a sound?”

She leaned forward, all excitement and hope and way-too-close. Her face was inches from mine, eyes bright, lips parted.

Fuck.

Even in my barely living, drug-fogged state, I noticed her lips.

Full. Pink. A little chapped. Probably tasted like soup and some organic lip balm called ‘Coconut Cloud’ or ‘Peaceful Bee’ or some shit.

She smelled like rosemary and laundry.

She was still talking, “You must be so uncomfortable. Do you want water? Blink twice for yes. Or... no, wait. That’s for Morse code. Do you even know Morse code?”

God help me, I couldn’t look away.

“Anyway,” she went on, oblivious, “I named her Flan because I thought she’d be sweet and wobbly. Turns out she’s a tyrant. Hates everyone except me. She clawed my boyfriend so hard he needed stitches.”

Boyfriend?

Where the fuck is the boyfriend? Maybe, he'd be of some help.

Soup again. She didn’t even wait for permission. Just nudged it at my lips with a cheerful, “Open up, you handsome menace.”

I’d kill a man for calling me that.

But from her lips, it felt less like mockery and more like a nickname you give a raccoon who keeps breaking into your kitchen.

Menace.

Fuck.

She stirred the soup again, blowing on the spoon, and watching me like she was waiting for a sign that I’d snap, spit, bite or do anything.

But I just laid there. Helpless. Drugged out of my fucking skull.

And all I could think was:

If anyone finds out about this, I’ll have to kill them.

And maybe myself.

She smiled again, so sweet, so proud of herself.

“I knew you were a fighter.”

Lady, you have no idea.

How can someone with eyes that soft have no fucking survival instinct?

She didn’t know me, she didn’t know what I’d done. What I’d do the second I could stand again. She didn't know my name. She didn’t hear the way people said “Capone” like it was a death sentence.

All she saw was a broken man in her bed.

Who was torn open and she stitched him shut.

Bruised, bleeding, breathing.

A stranger.

And she decided to save me.

Spoon. Smile. Soup. Sunshine.

I could’ve killed her.

And yet...

She brushed a wild strand of hair behind her ear and scooped another spoonful, humming under her breath, some light, stupid melody I couldn’t place.

“There we go,” she murmured, nudging the spoon toward me again. “Almost done. And you didn’t bite me once. That’s progress.”

I opened my mouth, more out of muscle memory than agreement, and let her feed me again.

Jesus. This was pathetic.

I should be out there, hunting those bastards. Tearing through the city like vengeance made of bone and teeth.

I should be bleeding them.

But instead I was lying here in some cracked-sink apartment that smelled like plants and vanilla soy candles, high on painkillers or some other shit, and letting a barefoot girl with cat scratches on her arms feed me soup like a feral animal she’d decided to rehabilitate.

She stirred the spoon absently, “You know, I never liked hospitals. Too clean. Too... white and the lights buzz. You ever notice that? That awful fluorescent buzzing sound? Ugh.”

No. I hadn’t because I’m usually the one sending people to hospitals.

“I figured if I took you in, you’d either die quietly or wake up and strangle me.” She smiled at that like it was a joke. “So far, so good.”

My mouth twitched.

She caught it, her eyes lit up like I’d given her a gold medal.

“Oh my God. Was that a smile?” she gasped, “You can smile. It’s more of a pain-grimace, but I’ll take it. Smiling means you’ve got a heart in there somewhere. And maybe you’re not planning to murder me in my sleep.”

She didn’t shut up. That was the thing. She kept talking and she never stopped, not for air, not for logic, not for mercy.

“There’s this raccoon that comes to my fire escape sometimes. I named him Remy, after the rat in Ratatouille? Except Remy’s kind of a jerk. He hisses at Flan. She tries to hiss back, but her lungs are weird. So it’s more like a wheeze.”

I blinked at her. How did one person have so many stories? And why were they all so... bizarre?

“You should meet my neighbor. She’s ninety-three and thinks I’m a witch. Keeps giving me garlic and muttering prayers in Spanish. She means well. I think.”

I stared at her.

So soft. So warm.

So fucking unreal.

And she sure as fuck didn’t belong anywhere near me.

“I mean, okay, full disclosure, you look a little dangerous, I think it's because of the tattoos,” she said in this way-too-cheerful voice, like she was commenting on the weather or the price of avocados, “Not judging! I swear, I’m not that kind of person. I love tattoos. Love them. Very expressive. Very artsy. Yours are super intense, though. Again, not judging! It’s just, I have this thing about violence. I hate it. I can’t handle it. It makes me all clammy and panicky and sick to my stomach, and I’ve seen what violent people can do, and it’s horrible, and I just… really hope you’re not one of those people. You know? The ones who hurt people for fun or like, because they feel powerful or whatever. God, I’m rambling. I do that when I’m nervous. You probably noticed. Please don’t be evil.”

She inhaled like she’d just completed a 5k.

Jesus Christ.

If she knew even one thing about me, she’d have thrown herself off the fire escape as soon as I bled onto her perfect, sunshine-colored blankets.

Please don’t be evil? Sweetheart, I invented evil.

Hell, I didn’t just take pleasure in it. I was good at it. Violence was the only thing I’d ever been born for. Some men were made to build, to teach, to love. I was made to crack bones and empty magazines into kneecaps.

I wanted to tilt my head, smirk just enough to make her second-guess herself, and ask her, What if I am one of those bad people, Sunshine? What then?

I wanted to watch the way her throat bobbed when she swallowed, hear her breath stutter just a little with fear.

Because fear was easy, fear was predictable, fear, I understood.

But her?

She was a fucking anomaly, a glitch in the system.

And she was talking so fast I was starting to think she didn’t even know what she was saying anymore.

“I mean, you can’t be a bad guy,” she rambled, shifting the bowl in her hands, “Because bad guys don’t say ‘please’ when they break into someone’s house all bloody and terrifying.”

She was trying to convince herself.

That’s what this was.

She wanted to believe I wasn’t the monster lurking in the dark. That I was just some unfortunate soul who stumbled into her little nest of sunshine and chamomile like I wasn’t soaked in the sins of a thousand men.

“Anyway,” she muttered. “I hope you’re not evil. That’d really suck.”

She set the bowl down and gently wiped the corner of my mouth with a towel. Her fingers brushed my jaw.

“Get some rest,” she whispered, all sunshine and lavender and fucking suicide. “You’re safe here.”

Safe.

I would’ve laughed if my lungs weren’t cracked glass.

Because somewhere between the drugs and the bleeding and the absurdity of this moment like her ridiculous soup and her crippled cat and her stories about raccoons, I realized something.

She’d brought the devil into her home.

And she was smiling at it.