Chapter Two – Giselle
As the days wore on, I was visited by a lot of people. Ironically, Luca visited me more often than my own father did. As much as I tried to be icy towards him, he didn’t seem to mind or care, or maybe he was oblivious. He was so chatty, too. And his laugh… his laugh was actually kind of nice.
But don’t get me wrong. That didn’t mean I was starting to like him or anything.
I got a bunch more flowers, more get well gifts. Nothing else from Atlas. All the while, Zander stood outside my room, only leaving when he needed to go to the bathroom or when he went to grab some food from the vending machine down the hall. My father sent someone to take over for him temporarily on day three, which allowed him to go home, shower, shave, and change his clothes.
He was starting to get a little rank.
My body was itching to get out of the hospital, get back to normal, but I was told I’d need to go at things slowly. Getting shot in the gut meant my body had a lot of healing to do. It’d be weeks until I could move and feel the way I did before getting shot.
I wasn’t visited by Shay or her boyfriends; not that I was expecting to see her or them. It wasn’t like we were besties. My father had told me to go after her boyfriends, and she’d known it. If she wanted to get back at me for trying that, shooting me to injure, not kill, would be one way to do it.
Did I think it was Shay? No, I didn’t. I didn’t think it was her. If I had to point a finger, I’d still say Atlas.
I was busy eating lunch—you know, the shitty hospital food that left a lot to be desired—when someone walked past the guard in the hall and turned to come into my room. Zander was still out, which was fine. He’d gone without sleep these past few days, so he definitely deserved some time to himself.
Plus, like I’d mentioned before, he was starting to smell.
The moment someone walked in, I glanced up, swallowing down the Jell-O that was currently in my mouth. Cherry. It always had to be cherry. It couldn’t be a better flavor, no. Just cherry. Yuck.
And the person I saw wasn’t anyone I was expecting.
Wearing his priest garb, Father Ezekiel stood near the door, holding onto what must be a small bible. His black hair was slicked back, his square jaw set as he stared at me with bright, dazzling blue eyes. The fluorescent lighting in the room did nothing to help his skin tone, and yet he still looked ten times more attractive than a priest should be.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to visit you sooner,” he said, strolling over to the chair beside my bed and sitting down. Even though he was a priest, he looked out of place, and I couldn’t tell if it was because he was on the younger side for a priest, or if his body was simply too thick and muscular beneath that black outfit.
“I wasn’t aware you were even coming,” I said. “You didn’t have to.” In fact, I kind of wished he didn’t. This guy… I really didn’t know what to think of him. He reminded me of Father Charlie just because he was a priest, but beyond that, there were no similarities between the two men. Zek, Ezekiel, whatever the hell I was supposed to call him, was exactly the kind of priest you’d imagine for a group of criminal kings and queens.
“Until one applicant is chosen, we are operating under the fact that you are all possible Black Hand members, each one of you future heirs,” he said, staring at me in a way that made me feel like he could see through the tray hovering over my midsection with the food, past the blanket covering me, and through the hospital gown clinging to my body. Like he could see straight into my soul.
There was something uncanny about him, something I couldn’t put my finger on. What he’d said to me when he’d come to the house to give me back Father Charlie’s cross, that I didn’t need to worry about Atlas or his boys finding me—the insinuation that he’d done something to them—rose up in my head.
“I can pray over you if you want, do a sermon for you,” Ezekiel said, hardly blinking as he stared at me. “Or, if you really want me to go, I can leave. I assume you’ve had nothing but a parade of visitors since coming here.”
I should’ve told him to go, because seeing him in that suit made me think of all the times I’d gone to Father Charlie, just to be with him. Hear his advice, bask in his warm presence. The man who’d saved my life three years ago, the one who’d given me purpose again… he was dead, and now his killers’ gang had found me. Everything had come full circle, so did it really matter if I spent a little time with this priest?
“You don’t have to go,” I said, continuing to eat even though I wasn’t really hungry. If there was one thing I looked forward to, besides getting out of this hospital and no longer having machines attached to me to keep track of my heart rate and a bag of fluids pumping in me, it was the food. I couldn’t wait to have an actual meal. “But no sermon needed.”
Listening to him read from the bible was the last thing I wanted. As much as I’d tried with Father Charlie, I still struggled with the whole concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful God who forgave sinners, regardless of their sins, as long as they desired repentance. I wasn’t a believer, even if it would bring me closer to the memory of my mother.
“Very well,” Ezekiel said. He didn’t ask how I was feeling—which was usually the first question out of anyone’s mouth as soon as they walked into the room. Instead, he chose to say, “Is there anything you’d like to talk about? I will, of course, keep anything spoken between us confidential.”
I looked at him, lifting my eyebrows at him.
“I mean it. I did not get where I am today by spilling secrets. I am the Black Hand’s priest. I can be yours, too.”
“My father thinks someone who’s competing with him to get on the Hand tried to kill me,” I said. I picked up the plastic spork that came with my food and moved around the mashed potatoes that had come with a small slab of mystery meat. Not my kind of thing.
“That could be true. Though Atticus said not to go after anyone else, it’s possible someone tried. You did draw an awful lot of attention to yourself wearing white, and you are the only named female heir of the group. All eyes were on you from the beginning.”
“I don’t think it’s true.” He said nothing to that, which caused me to add, “Remember when you said some men came looking for me?” His face was emotionless, no telltale signs of any emotion hiding inside him. “You said I didn’t have to worry about them.”
“I did.”
Ezekiel was not a super talkative man, not when he didn’t have to be, apparently, and I sent him a frown. “What did you do to them? Did you… did you kill them?” Asking a priest whether he murdered some people was not something I ever thought I’d be doing.
Father Charlie never would’ve killed anyone, no matter what crimes they committed, but this guy? I didn’t know him well at all. I couldn’t say what he would do, but I knew the fact that he was a priest didn’t matter. If there was one thing I’d learned from Father Charlie, it was that everyone sinned. Just because he was a man of the cloth didn’t automatically make him a cut above the rest.