Vipers Read Online Free Page A

whip. My little whip
.
    He turned around sharply and left the room, walking toward Maione.
    Â 
    They’ll understand. They’ll have to understand.
    I did it for you, to protect you. So that you’d understand that it’s me, I’m the right woman for you. So that you would know that I and I alone know what you are, and what you want.
    I can see you now, that time you came into my room, gripping my arm so hard that it hurt, staring into my tear-filled eyes, whispering through clenched teeth: it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.
    But I don’t care. Whether or not it’s true, you’re my man, just like I’m your woman. The two of us together, we’ll get out of this. Because you’ll finally understand that I’m the right one, the one who cares for you: because I’ve protected you, I’ve put your safety first.
    Not like that damned whore, who stole your soul. Who blinded you.
    Because you can work as a whore, or you can be a whore. And she was a whore right down to the bottom of her soul.
    But now she’s dead.
    Which is better for everyone.

V
    A ugusto Ventrone looked the angel in the eyes.
    He admired its light-blue coloring, its intense expression, which was at once pitying and determined; ready to provide comfort and to inflict punishment, annunciating and exterminating. That’s what an angel should be like.
    He put the statue back on its shelf, next to the shop’s front door, and looked outside: afternoon sunlight filled the street, and a few flies were flitting around in the low light. Spring had come. Punctual as ever.
    Augusto allowed himself a quick smile. Not that he was in the habit of smiling: he was the most unsmiling twenty-year-old in the neighborhood, and possibly in the whole city. And really, why would he smile?
    First of all, the merchandise they offered in their shop had to be sold with earnest sobriety, in certain cases with something approaching grief: and he was a born salesman. Their customers came in expecting a murmured recommendation. “Award-Winning Purveyors of Sacred Art, Vincenzo Ventrone and Son,” read the sign. Sacred art. Nothing playful, nothing funny. The religious expected a sophisticated adviser; private individuals interested in decorating a home chapel, a family tomb, or even just a nightstand in their bedroom, wanted the understanding of a professional: for smiles, they were welcome to try the undergarment shop, just fifty feet down the street, on the opposite sidewalk.
    Nor had life given Augusto any particular reasons to be cheerful. A mother who’d died too young, no brothers or sisters, and a father who’d lost his head over a whore.
    At first, Augusto had actually been quite tolerant. After all, after five years as a lonely widower, one could understand why Vincenzo Ventrone, who wasn’t so old that he couldn’t hear the call of the flesh, should have gone in search of comfort. And all things considered, better a brothel—with a discreet side entrance where you’d pay no more than a few lire—than a money-grubbing young lady from a well-to-do family looking to get herself situated, or even worse, a fortune hunter with children of her own, who could replace him as the heir to the family business.
    But then matters had taken a strange turn. His father’s visits to Il Paradiso (how blasphemously ironic, that name: astonishing that the authorities should allow it!) had multiplied until he was going daily, sometimes even more frequently. It was inevitable that other customers, that even a number of high prelates from the bishopric, would see him emerge from the bordello with a stupid, ridiculous grin stamped on his face, his celluloid collar unbuttoned, his tie askew, traces of lipstick smeared on his cheeks. And the idiot, instead of hiding in the shadows, just doffed his hat and called out hello.
    With a shudder, Augusto remembered how he had learned that his father’s affair with