Debt Of Ashes

The gunshots didn’t sound like movies. In movies, gunshots were clean. Pop, pop, done. These were wet, ragged like the meat hitting tile. Like the world tearing open. Ten-year old Alessandro pressed his back to the silk wallpaper in the villa’s hallway. His mum had told him to hide, but his feet wouldn’t move. Not when the gunshots sounds were coming from his father’s study. Not when his mother’s voice cracked through the door, not screaming but ordering. He should have stayed hidden but he didn’t. The first explosion lifted him off his feet. Heat punched down the hall, and the chandelier above the staircase screamed as crystal rained. Alessandro hit the floor on his elbows. The smell came next, not smoke it was sharper. Copper and gasoline and the perfume his mum wore when his father held charity galas. Chanel No.5 mixed with blood. ‘Sandro!’ She was there then, bursting from the smoke. Her white dress was not white anymore. One side of her face was too red, too wet. She didn’t limp. Valentina De Luca didn’t limp, even when the world ended. She grabbed his wrist, her grip was iron. Her other hand held a gun he didn’t know she knew how to use. ‘Look at me,’ she hissed. ‘Not the door-me’ But he had already looked. Through the smoke and the collapsing banister , the study door was gone Just a hole full of fire. And inside it men. No, _pieces_ of men. A shoe still polished. A hand still wearing Papa’s signet ring. Alessandro’s stomach tried to empty itself, but there was nothing in it. Mama had sent him to bed without dinner because he’d laughed at Uncle Carlo. More shots. Closer. From the front of the villa now. Automatic. The kind that meant armies, not arguments. His mother dragged him toward the window at the end of the hall. The one that overlooked the lemon grove. The one Dad said was too high for him to climb without help. “You go out this window,” she said. Her voice was steady. That was worse than screaming. “You run to the bushes. You do not stop. You do not look back. Do you understand?” He shook his head. The air was too thick. His ears rang. “Dad—” “He is done,” she said. And her eyes did something then that ten-year-olds should never see. They let go. Of hope. Of him. “You are not.” She wrenched the window open. Glass bit her palm and she didn't flinch. Outside, the night was on fire too. The garden, the pool house, the cars in the drive. Someone wanted nothing left of the De Luca name. Alessandro choked on a sob. “Please come with me.” She pressed her forehead to his for one second. It was sticky. “I can’t, sandro. If they see me run, they follow. If they follow, they will find you.Then she pushed him. Not gently. She _shoved_ him out the window like he weighed nothing. He hit the trellis hard. Wood snapped. A nail tore his thigh open, cloth to skin to muscle and he didn't feel it yet. He fell. Rolled. The bushes ate him whole. Thorns. Dirt. The stink of lemons gone rotten in the heat. He turned. He wasn’t supposed to look back. He looked back. The second explosion took the rest of the west wing. The force blew the remaining windows out. A wave of heat and light and _sound_ rolled over the garden, and Alessandro threw his arms over his head as flaming debris rained into the grove. When he looked up again, she was there. In the window frame. Burning. Valentina De Luca, one hand braced on the sill, the other holding that gun. She wasn’t looking at the fire. She was looking at the drive. At _him_. The man came from the flames like he was born in them. Tall. Suit ruined. Shirt white no longer. His face was strangely familiar a mask of blood and soot, but his eyes — Alessandro saw his eyes. Pale. Empty. Like the statues in the villa's garden. The man held a gun, too. It dripped. His mother raised hers. The man didn’t stop walking. Alessandro tried to scream. No sound came out. His throat was full of smoke and ten years of being told boys don’t cry. Her mouth moved. Two words. He read her lips over the roar of the fire. _Live, topo._ Then she pulled the trigger. The man didn’t flinch. He just kept coming. Step after burning step, through the garden, past the ruined fountain, toward the bushes. Toward _him_. Alessandro tried to crawl backwards. Thorns hooked his sleeves. His leg gave out. The blood made the dirt muddy under his hands. He couldn't move then from the bushes a young girl came out with green eyes and helped him out of the thorns and in a minute she was gone but those green eyes were etched into his memory. The man stepped out of the light of the fire. A monster. Blood soaked from his hairline to his collar. And he was smiling. Happy and cruel_. Like Alessandro was something he’d been waiting for. The man opened his mouth. Said a name. Then the world went white. Then black.