Mad by Chloe Esposito Blog Tour

Today it is my stop on the blog tour for what is possibly the most Summery cover sent my way so far this year but don't be taken in by this alluring picture there is a sinister storyline hiding inside that will give you a chill on these hot evenings!

Mad by Chloe Esposito is out NOW!

Chapter Seventeen


I look at the hand as though it were a stranger’s; I don’t seem to recognize it. I can’t remember who it belongs to. I don’t know the back of my own fucking hand. It’s shaking, shak- ing so hard I can’t steady it. I try to reach the handle and open the door that leads out to the patio, leads out to my sister, but I can’t quite grasp it. My fingers tremble, my palm slips away and I can’t – can’t even open the fucking door. 

Ambrogio’s on the phone again, speaking to his ‘friends’. Who are these guys who owe him a favour? Who dispose of dead bodies in the middle of the night? I don’t care as long as they get rid of her. I never want to see her again. I don’t know how long I stand here trembling with my hands flap-flap- flapping like a bird’s broken wings, but – eventually – the handle snaps down and I step through the door. 

It’s dark. It’s quiet. I expect to see a policeman leap out from the shadows: ‘You’re under arrest!’ – or hear Salvo sprint- ing up the driveway: ‘Ma che cazzo hai fatto?’ But it’s silent; there’s no one. The cold night air is making me shiver. The tempera- ture seems to have dropped by twenty degrees. Beyond the pool, the garden stretches out into nothing, nothing but black- ness. The light from the villa illuminates the pool and the long, monstrous figure of my sister’s corpse, lying along the edge of the water.

 The stars look down at me, judging me, blaming me, like trillions of tiny eyeballs, the eyes of God. The moon is begin- ning to set behind Etna. Soon, the sun will rise and reveal the bloodshed. The postman will come. Salvatore. Emilia. I need to hurry up.
I concentrate on moving my legs. And I’m walking, one silent foot after the other, soft slippers padding. Dreamlike, I’m float- ing, walking on air. I look down to steady myself, focus on the ground to stop myself drifting up, up and away. I’m weightless, lunar, walking on the moon. I stop a few inches from my sister’s head. A pool of blood spreads out from her skull: a slick black lake. And now that I’m here, I don’t know what to do. I just stare. Once again, I am staring at Elizabeth, silent and speech- less. Elizabeth’s body. Elizabeth’s face. Elizabeth’s hair. A shiver runs down my spine. She’s dead and I killed her. So effortless. So quick. It’s like nothing has happened. The stars are still shining. I’m in the same garden. The volcano’s still there. It doesn’t seem real.

 I can’t believe it. 

I need more proof.

 I reach my hand towards the blood, extend a finger, dip it in. The blood feels warm in the cool night air. It feels slippery, thick and wet. I study my fingertip: shiny, red-black. It’s some- thing instinctive, primitive, primal. I have to do it. To check that it’s real. I lick my finger: warm, wet iron. Unmistakable. Blood.