A Beautiful Crime

Chapter 4

Carina POV

When I was a little girl I remember mamma wanting desperately to leave New York City.

She called it, The City of Death.

I never understood what she meant. Papa had controlled the lens back then. I was only allowed to see what he wanted me to see.

And for all the beauty I saw my mamma reminded me of the thorns. I can still hear her to this day, her soft yet firm voice always telling me, 'Carina, be careful of the thorns. You must watch out for the thorns.'

I had no clue what she had meant.

The only thing I knew is that mamma wanted to take me as far away from The City of Death as she possibly could. She feared that it would one day stain my soul. Tarnish it black like it had already done Luca and Elio.

There was no saving them, she said. Papa made them become one with The City of Death. It was in their blood now, the city running through their veins and poisoning them.

At the age of thirteen I wasn't poisoned yet and mamma had held onto hope with bloody fingers that I would remain that way.

Papa kept my life strategically through a scope and mamma never wanted me involved with the family business.

Mamma kept me close to her side as much as possible. She would tell me that one day we wouldn't have to smell the stench of death and we would be free from the darkness.

But mamma was a dreamer. She wasn't born in The City of Death like Luca, Elio and I. Mamma was born in the romantic city of Florence, Italy.

In her youth they would hear the story of Dante and Beatrice. They grew up believing in love and that love is sacred. All the girls had aspired to be someone's Beatrice. And when my papa visited Florence from Sicily mamma swore she had finally found her Dante.

Their love was a fairytale in the beginning. Papa had written her poems just as Dante had written poems about Beatrice. He would bring her roses every time that they would meet. He'd take her to lavish restaurants and spoil her with jewels. Profess his love to her any chance that he could.

Papa was in love with my mamma.

Or rather he was in love with the idea of her.

Dante loved Beatrice because she was his savior. She was a force of good. A force so strong that Dante believed it made him a better man.

Mamma was the light of papa's life.

And mamma was so blinded by the beauty of the rose that she failed to see the thorns.

Papa was never her Dante. He was only an illusion.

And she was never his Beatrice.

Mamma held a light that papa wanted to snuff out.

She believed it was the city of New York that had changed papa, for he was not the man she knew in Florence.

I wish I could tell mamma that The City of Death didn't change papa, it allowed him to be his authentic self.

But I, too, was blinded, blinded by the rose until I was pricked by the thorns.

And now at the age of twenty-six the poison she had always tried to protect me from is flowing through my veins.

Over the months since my rebirth I have accepted the fact that I no longer hold the innocence that I once held so dear.

I do resent, however, that Luca and papa have made me disappoint my mamma.