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ғɪᴠᴇ 𝐷𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑚𝑎𝑠
❦
For the Changretta family, Christmas had never been a momentous occasion. It was never a time spent well with the whole family piled into one house. It was never spent laughing or talking or exchanging presents. It was definitely never a time spent with happy faces.
They were lucky if the ever attended church for mass. They were even more fortunate if they had more than three family members in one place to spend it with. It had never been a joyful time, and any other year, Maria would have been grateful of the fact. Despite being free of grief, she found herself saddened over the idea that almost the whole family would be together for Christmas under such circumstances. They would be without her parents and her younger brother.
Over the past few days since her angry outburst at Luca, she had barely talked to him. Instead she found herself staring at him whenever he walked by, the cross tattoo poking out from behind his tall collar tauntingly, as if he had angled it to tease her. Although it was nothing new, it irritated her to no end- in fact, it was laughable.
On Christmas Eve, Maria attended church as she always did. Luca had allowed her to go and had remained home, both for reasons of guilt. Though he chose not to go with her, Maria had noticed his men following her, stopping only as she crossed the threshold into the church, the guards being too god-fearing to even dare step in.
Elena struggled to sit beside her, her knees bending slightly as wobbled to sit. She was early in the pregnancy still, yet was far larger than most, much to her annoyance. Maria smiled comfortingly before turning back to the front, content to have a moments peace without her brother.
Her eyes were drifting across the filled pews before she even realised what she was doing. She was searching for someone that she hadn't admitted to have even remembered. She was searching for Arthur Shelby among the many faces, who she knew turned up out of guilt and negligence. But he wasn't there. Maria couldn't pick out his permanently dishevelled look from the rest of the remorseful collection that sat around the church.
Elena must have noticed her distraction, as she was nudging her, gazing at her suspiciously. Her hand was rested on top of her stomach again, and Maria found her eyes being drawn away from the pews and toward the small bump. She smiled softly, shaking her head dismissively, silently urging Elena to look away, to concentrate on the prayer.
That was when she noticed the man, he was sitting in front of her, a few rows away. She couldn't see his face because of the angle, but she could see his brown hair, that looked gingery in the candle lit area. His shoulders were smaller than the average, but squared and obviously strong and muscular.
The man turned, feeling the burning gaze on the back of his head, and Maria frowned. There was no bushy moustache or sad yet kind eyes. Instead there was an unusually fat face and pointed nose. It wasn't Arthur.
She didn't ask why he remained in her thoughts, when she wanted desperately to focus her attention of what was happening around her. She thought she may have helped him, given a either of hope to remain with his faith.
But then she remembered the letters that had been delivered that day. The black hand burned in her memory. Her family was the reason he wasn't there. Just like herself, they had driven him away from God and into the hating and fearful line of the bad.
Maria sat beside Elena at the table, a meagre plate of food in front of them each. They sat in silence, too afraid to speak and say the wrong word. Luca was furious. He had been since the morning. Antonio had been murdered within a day of the letters being opened on Christmas Eve, his body dumped the wrong side of the water. She remembered the man clearly: small and sly, a smirk always plastered thickly to his face. Maria hadn't spoken to the man, but that didn't mean she had no opinion of him- she thought him rude, and scarily subtle. But that didn't mean she hadn't grieved.
"Merry fucking Christmas then, eh?" Luca laughed bitterly, raising his glass into the air before taking a swift gulp.
Her fists were clenched, as was her jaw, making her face jut out in furious angles. The ringing sound of a gunshot rang through Maria's head, making her flinch harshly, her body washing over in a cold trance. It was loud enough for her to glance to her brother, to wonder if she wasn't imagining it, to think that he may have snapped. Luca sat quietly, no weapon in his hands. Yet the noise that filled her head for only a few seconds at a time was as clear as the painting on the wall beside her, the vast detail of it scraping against the inside of her memories.
Maria loathed the fact that she knew the sound like she knew the words to a song. She scorned her memory for bringing it up at such time, but it didn't feel like a memory at all. It was her brain telling her to be wary, warning her of what she knew was happening at the hands of her relatives. And it made Maria feel sick.
Someone would die at the hands of her family today, and Maria could do nothing about it.
