Ripped Veil - A Mafia Romance

ELYSSA

SOMEWHERE IN THE DESERT OF NEVADA

To serve is to find peace.

To obey is to find happiness.

To listen is to find truth.

The words repeat in my head like a dirge. How many times have I said them? Too many to count. Every dawn, noon, and dusk for the last nineteen years. Every day of my life.

Fumbling shapes flit through my subconsciousness. My head hurts. So do my legs.

I can smell the strong accents of incense and fire. Patchouli oil. Desert sand.

And something else beneath all that, something sharp and wet and metallic.

My eyelids remain stubbornly closed as if I'm not in control of my own body. It's easier to remain blind sometimes. It keeps you from seeing the monsters.

Heat suffuses the dry air around me and seeps into my body. That's what finally forces me to open my eyes-the heat. Why on earth is it so hot?

My vision blurs as I push myself into an upright position. More questions bubble to the surface. Why am I on the ground? Why do I feel the indents of the floorboards on the side of my cheek?

I blink a few more times, temporarily distracted by the layers of tuille draped in front of my face. I'm so used to simple cottons and softened white linen-the uniform I've worn all my life, the same one my parents wear, and my friends, and everyone I've ever known-that the tuille over my head feels invasive, strange, unwelcome.

I swat at the fabric, but it follows my every movement. My head spins and the room tilts for a moment, forcing me to take stock of where I am.

This... isn't my room.

Fear pierces through my body as the thought settles. My room has roughened adobe walls that I'd painted an ugly yellow when I was too young to know better. It has a thin mattress lying bare on the floor and a loose board in the corner where I stash all the books I don't want Mama and Papa seeing.

This is not my room.

In here-wherever "here" is-the walls are polished wood. The floor doesn't creak. The bed frame is iron and ornate, far fancier than anything I've ever seen, and the sheets are twisted and half-ripped off the bed like someone has thrashed them to the floor in the throes of a nightmare.

Everything is tilted and leery and wrong. But what is wrong? I can't remember anything about how I got here. Like today is the first day of my life.

I wait for the unsettling disorientation to fade, but my memory is still patchy. Gauzy flashes wisp across my mind, but they don't linger long enough for me to decipher them.

I decide to focus instead on what I see right in front of me. But it's so hard to see, to make sense of things. The world keeps spinning, colors bleeding together.

It reminds me of the time when Father Josiah made all the women and girls gather in the main hall of the Sanctuary to drink the purity water. He said it would cleanse us. But all it did was make a lot of us sick.

Mama couldn't eat for two days. Carrie Wilson vomited her guts out after just one sip. Old Mother Hobbs had taken right to her bed.

Father Josiah insisted that the purity water had worked exactly how it was meant to. "You're cleansed!" he'd boomed in that gravelly voice of his. "All your sins swept away like desert sand after a rainstorm."

To make sure, he had met with all the women individually after the fact. I'd been exempt because I was only six. Mother Hobbs was exempt, too.

Not that it mattered much. She died three days later.

We held a prayer circle after the burial to thank Father Josiah for purifying Mrs. Hobbs's soul before she was taken by the powers that be. He stood in the middle and soaked up our prayers and told us to say them louder. "I've been sent to guide you to salvation," he said again and again. "Let me guide you. Let me guide you."

My finger slips in something sticky and warm. I look down at my hand and as I do, my confusion intensifies.

I didn't even realize I was holding something until now. Something heavy and solid. I hold it up in front of my whirring eyes. The first thing I notice is the graceful curve of dark wings carved into the metal. They rise up a swooping swan's neck to the point of a beak.

It's a paperweight, cast iron and expensive by the looks of it.

And the whole thing is drenched in blood.

Panic starts to pulse through my frozen body, but it hasn't yet crested. I have to avoid hysteria. Hysteria is just another outlet for sin, Father Josiah always says.

I struggle to my feet. I fall a couple of times, still so dizzy that it feels like I'm on a ship at sea, but I keep trying until I'm upright.

The room spins again. I refuse to fall back to the ground, though I do think about how easy it would be to succumb to the disorientation and simply fade away.

Because the alternate is remembering how I got here.

And I'm not sure I want to do that.

I finger the folds of my tuille dress. Another realization hits me like a slap in the face. It's not just any dress: it's a wedding dress.

The confirmation is on my head.

Filmy material tickles the side of my neck and when I go to bat it away, I realize that it's attached to my head.

A veil. I'm wearing a veil.

Oh God... If this is my wedding night, then something has definitely gone very, very wrong.

The panic surfaces again, but I push it down. Hysteria is the enemy. I cannot react. I should not react.

I drop the paperweight. It clunks to the floor. My fingers come away from it, sticky with dried blood clinging to me like a second skin. Without thinking, I brush my hand against the folds of my dress. Of course, it leaves a dark crimson smear.

Don't panic, Elyssa. Don't panic. Do not panic.

Shivering, I take a step forward and stop short when I notice something sticking out from around the edge of the bed.

A naked foot.

My shivering worsens. I hear the howl of a coyote from somewhere in the distance and my gaze flits instantly to the bedroom window. I can see only darkness beyond the glass, but I've grown up on this land. I don't have to see the rolling acres of desert to know what's out there.

My eyes slide from the window to the mirror propped against the adjacent wall. Beneath it-and beside it and lining every available surface in the room-are hundreds and hundreds of candles, all lit and flickering. The flames look almost blue in the moonlight.

That's why it's so hot in here. That's why I'm sweating.

My reflection swims in the mirror. Confirmation of what I suspected when I first came to-it is a wedding dress I'm wearing, and it is a veil on my head. The smear of blood on the skirts does not belong to me.

Scariest of all is my face. It's not even the expression, which is both terrified and confused. It's the makeup caked onto my skin.

Rogue on my cheeks, a dark red lipstick on my lips, a pale foundation applied with a heavy hand. I look so white I'm nearly lifeless. A corpse made of clay.

I've never worn makeup once in my life. I wouldn't even know where to start with it.

Which means... I've done none of this.

Automatically, my gaze falls back to the foot peeking out from behind the bed. I can't ignore it anymore. I take a shaky step forward, my stomach roiling uncomfortably as the man takes shape before me.

He's tall. He's wearing dark pants and no shirt. He's fallen facedown, but his head is turned to the side.

"No," I whisper to the empty room. "No!"

The candles seem to flicker manically, spurred by the burgeoning panic that's turning my chest into a block of ice.

I lurch forward, my hand reaching out to touch him, but I stop at the last moment. Instead, I fall to my knees next to him. I want to touch him, but fear has taken my hands captive.

"Father Josiah," I whisper.

I can't tell if he's breathing or not. But I can see the nasty crater on one side of his face. It looks like paint. It looks like syrup. It looks like...

I forget about the sin of hysteria in that moment. I gasp as the shocking realization scorches through me like a lightning bolt. I collapse and scurry backward on my hands and knees, as far away from Father Josiah's body as I can get.

"Oh God, please, no..." I beg to no one in particular.

I stare desperately at the flickering candles as tears start to run down my cheeks. Each drop carves a track in the thick makeup.

"Stop," I plead helplessly to my reflection in the silver mirror. "Stop staring at me."

The simple facts click together ruthlessly. I woke up with a bloodied metal swan in my hand. There's a dead man in the bed with a hole in the side of his head. One plus one equals two.

I killed him.

I killed him.

I killed him.