Chapter 13
MATTEO
We’re in the bushes surrounding the quiet, dark house.
The white porch and awning seem to glow in the beams of moonlight that are filtering through a gap in the clouds.
It’s illuminating the grass too, making it look just like the waters of the ocean stretching out behind our backs, slick, black and glowing with a light that’s not actually real.
I’ve shut off my thinking part, the part of my mind capable of remorse and compassion.
But some of it is still filtering through, making me think how this house looks like a ghost house, because everyone hiding in it will likely be no more than ghosts come morning.
Except maybe the two Codelli women. Hopefully.
Because I don’t see Codelli coming without a fight, which means Caputo’s plans of harming no one probably won’t be realized.
“Go, go, go,” Caputo’s whispered command comes. And then I’m moving with the rest of the twenty or so guys, emerging from the bushes and from underneath trees all around the house.
I’m with the group that reaches the front porch. Caputo is in front, and he makes short and nearly silent work of opening the front door. No alarm blares. I was kind of hoping it would, I realize as it doesn’t.
“Basement,” Caputo says and points at himself, me and three others. The rest he sends to other parts of the house.
I follow him down the hall and through the kitchen where he has no trouble finding the door that leads to the basement. Or picking the heavy lock on it. A lock that, in the ghostly moonlight filtering in through the kitchen windows, looks like it was newly installed recently.
The wooden stairs leading down into the darkness creak, but not as badly as I’d want them to be. The room smells of old blood, disinfectant, and that weird smell of new bandages that’s at once faint but pervasive as hell.
Screams echo above us. Women’s screams. Men’s yells.
A shadow moves in the corner of the room a moment before a deafening shot blasts. The bullet flew so close to my head I could feel its hot wind as it passed. It lodges in the wood somewhere behind me with a loud, but harmless thud.
Some of the guys take cover, but Caputo rushes the shadow and I’m right on his heels. It’s a man, the white of the bandage covering his abdomen shining in the faint light streaming down the stairs from the kitchen.
Caputo has him on the ground and disarmed in a series of short, stacked movements that look easy, effortless.
“You fucking bastards,” the man says, and I realize it’s Rafaelle. Maybe I knew that from the onset. I don’t know. My mind’s too disconnected.
“Where’s the rest of the family?” Caputo asks, kneeling on Rafaelle’s back and pressing a gun to the back of his head. But Rafaelle just laughs.
“You’ll never find them.”
Caputo cocks the gun, but I grab his arm before he can pull the trigger.
“Ferro’s gonna want to question him if they’re not here.”
Caputo gives me a look that’s full of snakes and suspicion, but I’m not wrong and he knows it.
Rafaelle just laughs again. “Might as well shoot me now. I’m never gonna talk.”
Caputo stands and hauls him to his feet. The wound on his stomach must’ve opened because the bandage is quickly turning from white to black. “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
Thudding footsteps come down the stairs.
“The house is clear,” a man says. “Are the Codellis down here?”
“Just Santi,” one of the others with us informs them.
“Fuck,” the man says. “They’re not up there either. How the fuck did they leave the house without us seeing?”
Rafalle laughs again, the sound echoing and bouncing off the walls. “It’s because you’re incompetent.”
Caputo punches him in the stomach, making more blood erupt through the bandage. “Where are they?”
Rafaelle is trying to catch his breath. He can’t laugh now, but he’s shaking his head. “Too far for you to reach.”
I resist the urge to tell Caputo it’s a good thing I stopped him from shooting the man. Faint police sirens are coming from somewhere.
“We gotta go,” the man who came down the stairs says. “We can’t question him here.”
“Grab his other arm,” Caputo instructs me and together we drag Rafaelle up the stairs. I’d expected him to put up more of a fight, but it seems my stab wound wasn’t all that innocent after all. That’s the thing about gut wounds. They kill slowly. But they kill all the same.
Good. Maybe now Ferro and the rest will stop suspecting me of trying to betray them.
Of course, it’d be better if Rafaelle was dead. Because under torture, who knows what he’ll say. I really need to stop trying to save these people. They’re all already dead anyway. The sooner Gianna accepts that, the better.
We’re out of the house and across the lawn, packing into the cars before the first sirens reach the house.
“What the fuck went wrong at the police station?” Caputo asks the man driving the car me, him and Rafaelle are in as we speed down the road, headlights off.
“Seems someone from the house called them,” the guy says. “And there was some confusion regarding how much force to use to stop them from coming.”
Caputo curses and leans back in his seat. “Ferro’s not gonna like that.”
“But at least we got this bastard, right?” the guy in the driver’s seat says. “That’s gotta count for something.
They both sound more worried than I expected them to be. But it proves my point that Ferro doesn’t handle failure and incompetence in his men well. Rafaelle has passed out beside me. His face is ghostly white in the moonlight. He could very well be dead before we reach Ferro’s mansion.
Then I’ll see with my own eyes how Ferro handles failure. And I’m not looking forward to it.