16. Nicki
"You are not using yourself as bait," Vitorio says angrily, pacing up and down the small living room in the cabin.
"How else do you think we are going to get Sasha to come out of hiding? It's the only choice we have." I say, for the tenth time, throwing my arms in the air in annoyance. "You will be right there watching nearby. I won't even be in danger."
"Let me meet with her."
"Vitorio." I huff angrily. "She will not come out of hiding for you. She made it sound like she hates your family and doesn't trust any of them. There is no other way. I have to meet with her."
He slumps into the sofa next to me, running his long fingers through his dark hair. His eyes are broody and narrowed with annoyance, his brows knotted deeply.
"Hey, it will be ok." I try to reassure him. "You'll be there. Danny will be there. What danger could I really be in?"
"We don't know who she is working with." He grumbles.
"Well, that is exactly what we have to find out - and to do that - "
"Fine." He throws his hands in the air and stands up again. "Fine."
Danny wasn't thrilled with my idea either, but at least he was easier to convince than Vitorio. He gave both of us a burner phone, so that we could stay in touch during the operation, and I can feel the reassuring weight of it in my pocket.
I am standing alone near the tree line of a public park on the outskirts of the city. It is secluded, and not a very popular place, so no one else is around.
I feel really exposed, and alone, but I know that Vitorio and Danny are somewhere in the trees, watching me closely.
I kick at the earthy ground and pace up and down waiting for Sasha.
I made sure to keep my call with her short and cryptic, but as friendly as I could. I made it sound like I desperately needed answers, without giving away anything that I knew.
I have no idea how I am going to get her to tell me anything.
But she did agree to meet me, so I am guessing she wants to talk.
I squint across the grassy patch of the park at a figure walking towards me. The sun is rising just over the hill and the sharp rays are interfering with my vision.
I lift my hand to shield my eyes a bit and breathe a sigh of relief when I see that it is Sasha walking in my direction. I don't see anyone else nearby. She came alone by the looks of things.
I do my best to stop fidgeting or pacing as she makes her way over the open space.
She reaches me and looks as nervous as I am feeling.
"Nicola." She smiles tightly.
"Sasha, thanks for meeting me I really - "
A loud roar of an engine thunders through the air and from around the side of the tree line a massive car comes screeching towards us, quickly joined by a second vehicle.
"What the fuck is this?" Sasha yells.
"I don't know," I yell back, feeling frantic.
Spinning on her heels she starts running. I glance between her, and the fast-approaching car and decide to run as well.
I am headed straight for the tree line where I know Vitorio and Danny is hiding. The only place I feel safe is with them.
But I am not fast enough and one of the cars spins to a halt in front of me and men pour out.
One of those men is Luca. I stare in disbelief.
"Grab her." He yells, and I am surrounded. They grab my arms and legs and launch me into the air. I kick and scream and fight against them.
"For fuck’s sake. Hurry up." Luca snaps. Wait, check her pockets."
Rough hands pat me down and my heart sinks when the man finds my burner phone and rips it out of my pocket, throwing it away from us.
Someone yanks the trunk open and I am thrown roughly inside. The first thing I notice is the stench, as I turn towards the opening to beg them to let me go.
In the background, near the tree line, I see Vitorio bolting into the open, his eyes falling on his brother, and me - then the trunk slams shut, and the car growls as someone revs.
Doors slam as the men pile back inside. I can't think about the smell. I need to do something.
I turn my body in the darkness, brushing against something wet and sticky, but I ignore it, fighting nausea, as I kick repeatedly against the backlight fittings until one of them breaks loose and daylight pours into the trunk. A blast of fresh air penetrates the thick putrid smell inside here.
I have to shift my body again because I want to hang my hand out of the backlight and try to signal someone for help. Anyone. Anyone at all.
I shift to the side brushing over the sticky mess again, and gag, fighting vomit as the smell washes over me. It's in my clothes, on my skin. I twist, to let the light deeper into the trunk so I can see what it is.
The severed head of a man, with his swollen rotting eyes bulging out of the sockets, oozing body fluids, thick dark blood, and decomposing brain matter.
I try to take in a breath, but the air is contaminated now, now that I know what I have been brushing up against. I have been breathing in death and decay.
Panic surges as I shove the head away from me and it flops away making squishing sounds. It rolls to the back of the trunk and lands between two other severed heads.
I start screaming, with everything inside me. I scream, and I won't stop screaming until I can't breathe anymore.
Then I pass out.
Blissful, detached, oblivion.
I open my eyes as someone's shoulder keeps punching into my stomach. I am being carried, slung over the broad shoulder of a man, as he walks into a warehouse. I blink, fighting for clarity.
Images of the rotting body parts make me gag and the man carrying me freaks out.
"Fuck." He shouts." It's not bad enough she smells like fucking shit, now she's going to puke on me." He tosses me onto the ground and steps away from me.
I scoot backward, my back hitting against a wall.
Luca walks over to the man, his finger pointed right into his face. "Pick her the fuck up and do your fucking job."
The man sneers but leans down to grab me again. I kick and scream, and he laughs. "No one can hear you, princess. No one ever hears the screams from this place."
He tosses me into the back of an ice-cold room and slams the door. I hear a deadbolt snap into place on the other side.
"Let her simmer in there for a bit." I hear Luca's voice.
I turn in shock as the cold air sits like needles against my skin.
I am in a freezer -- a massive freezer the size of a room.
I shake in disbelief when my eyes scan over the shelves of bodies, severed heads, arms, torsos, and feet.
What is worse is that even in their grotesque frozen expressions and bloated rotting states, I can recognize some of their faces. These are the men that we questioned, the ones who kept disappearing.
Luca is somehow involved in all of it. Everything.
My body continues to shake, from cold or shock, I don't know.
With everything that is happening right now, I need to be more focused on survival. I have to move. The walls are iced over and the bodies on the shelves look frozen solid. If I don't want the same thing to happen to me, I have to move.
I start doing little jumps from one foot to the other on the slippery steel floor, holding onto the railing of a shelf to stop myself from losing balance.
I keep moving, as my legs begin to ache, and my lips begin to go numb.
I keep moving as my eyelashes start to frost, and my lungs burn.
I don't know how long it has been, but I am shaking so badly I can barely hold myself up.
The deadbolt snaps open, and the door pushes wide, letting a blast of warm, room-temperature air into the freezer.
Instinctively I rush towards it and almost collapse into Luca's arms.
He grins, lifting me against his body.
"Hey, beautiful. Are you ready to have a little talk?"
I sneer at him, but in reality, I don't think my face moves at all.
My teeth are chattering loudly as I shiver.
"Come on little bird. Let me take care of you."
He lifts me into his arms and cradles me against his chest, walking away from the freezer to an office in the room next door.
He sits down on a sofa with me still in his arms.
He strokes my cheek with the back of his fingers. "You are so beautiful, even now." He says gently. "You really should have taken my offer, the first one, and just been my date. You should never have gone along with my brother's interfering plan."
I try to speak. I try to tell him he is a monster. But nothing comes out of my aching lips.
He brushes his thumb across my bottom lip. The warmth of his touch is almost painful.
"You should have chosen me." He sighs. "Do you want to know when I chose you? It was the very first time I ever saw you. The first time I set my eyes on you. That is when I chose you. Around six years ago now. Your father was doing business with mine, and one day, I saw you at your home, when my father stopped by to drop something off for yours. I can't remember what. It doesn't matter. All that matters about that day is that it was the first glimpse I ever had of you, and from that moment onwards I have loved you -- more with each passing year as you grew into the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."
He brushes his cheek against mine, and I manage to turn my head away from him, despite the pain it causes in my body.
He chuckles. His arm is wrapped securely around my back, so he knows I can't get far.
"That day, the day I saw you, I left the woman I was seeing. I couldn't be with someone else when my heart belonged entirely to you. But you pushed me away. Every time I spoke to you… every time I asked you out… you pushed me away. I waited. I waited for years. But my patience started wearing thin."
He takes a deep breath, and I try to rock my body away from him. I am terrified. My heart is racing, which is at least starting to warm me up, and I almost feel as though I might be able to just… I lift my arm and kick out with one of my legs, finding I can move.
Luca grabs my wrist and locks it against his chest. He laughs again.
"You can't get away from me now, Nicki. You belong to me. I love you. You and I are meant to be together. You are here with me forever now. It is how it is supposed to be."
"Fuck you," I say in a dry whisper, and kick again, rolling off his lap. He lifts his arms, laughing, and lets me scoot across the floor away from him.
I push myself painfully to my feet, looking desperately for a way to escape.
He doesn't even try and get up to stop me.
I bolt out of the office door, slamming headfirst into the solid, muscular chest of one of his henchmen.
He wraps his arms around me, and I squirm wildly.
I grab at his jacket and pull and tug and make as big a scene as I can.
Luca and the man laugh.
"I think she needs a little more time in the freezer. She'll come around eventually." Luca waves his hand in dismissal and the man picks me up off my feet and throws me back in the freezer.
I land on my hip on the frozen steel floor and cry out in pain.
The door slams behind me and the deadbolt snaps.
I reach my hand beneath my shirt and pull out the cell phone that I stole from the henchman's pocket.
There is hardly any signal in here. I move around the freezer, holding the phone up to the corners, and waiting to see if I can get a bar of signal.
I find a hesitant bar right in the corner, near the vent.
Coming back to the floor I type out a message, telling Vitorio that Luca has taken me, that I am in the freezer, and can he please come and get me. Tears stream down my cheeks as I type. I click to add my location to the message.
Then I stand with the toes of my sneakers on the edge of a shelf, gripping the cold iced surface of the railing with my frozen fingers. I reach my arm as high as I can towards the vent and wait, watching the screen to see if the messages are going through.
The location link sends quickly, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
But the written message isn't sending. It's just sitting there - doing nothing at all.
My arm begins to shake and my foot slips. I lose my balance and the phone drops out of my hand. It slams into the solid steel floor and the screen shatters.
"No." I cry out. Stepping off the shelf. I hurry to pick up the smashed phone, but it is no longer on.
I sink down to the floor, my entire body aching and shivering again.
"Please Vitorio. Please come." I whisper.