Chapter 7
Beatrice’s chest was rising and falling too fast. She stared down at the mess of a body in front of her. The last few minutes were a blur, but her bicep ached. She’d made that mess.
The black clothes she’d worn hid the blood well, but her feet were more than flecked in it. She smeared one of her toes in the redness.
Her eyes found those of the second man strapped to a metal table. Metal washed the easiest. It was the concrete floor below them that required constant bleaching to remove most of the stains.
Beatrice moved to the next cousin she’d chosen for her list. All of them deserved her blade. This one more than most.
His eyes were dark and wide even as they tried to glare. Glaring through fear was a difficult talent that you had to learn. Beatrice had learned it well.
She wiped the blade of the knife she’d used against his shirt. “It looks like I couldn’t hold back. I hope you’ll forgive me, since you know something about that.”
His grunt strained against the tape. She considered letting him speak, but only fleetingly. He’d had the chance to speak for long enough.
Beatrice leaned closer to his face, letting the tip of the blade slice against his cheek. “You remember, don’t you? What you did to me?”
He’d found her alone, cleaning one of the sitting rooms. She hadn’t yet learned to cower in front of the cousins. Her husband had made it clear that, though he might hurt her, she was his. She hadn’t thought any of the cousins were man enough to put that to the test, despite their constant mutterings.
He had proven her wrong. The pain of what he’d done had left her more tattered than usual.
She shouldn’t have tried to tell her husband. When he found her cunt more than dry, he’d taught her a lesson as well. The way his thrusting had pushed her ass into the bed while he had punished her had made her cry for the first time. If she’d thought tears would move him to relent, she’d been wrong. They only made him more furious.
The cousin had known what he was doing. Her husband had never been interested in anal. And by the time her husband was done with her, she hadn’t cared enough to argue further.
It wasn’t too long after that that her husband had found her in the hotel bathroom with a razor blade.
As the tip of the knife she held dug into the tape over the Albanian’s cheek, Beatrice was finally able to see it. Her husband’s face overlapped with that of his cousin.
This time, she drew death out. He’d stopped whimpering behind the tape long before his last breath left him.
She thought maybe that would make her feel whole in some way. Instead, the knife dropped from her numb fingers on top of his bloody chest.
The third cousin was crying, though the tape muffled his sobs. She felt no satisfaction from that either. The urge to kill him had fled.
Her eyes found Vespa. The woman was leaning in the far corner, watching her with a smooth, unreadable face, though her eyes narrowed. She studied Beatrice’s expression, and Beatrice had no idea what she was thinking.
She’d never understood Vespa.
Beatrice backed away from the table, her hand falling to her side. She stared down at her feet. Blood coated them.
Turning, she headed toward the door.
“What about the third?” Vespa asked her back.
Beatrice paused, but her hands no longer felt like her own. “You finish it.”
Vespa made a sound in her throat as she moved to the metal tray. “You sure? This moment won’t come around again. They’re all pretty much dead now.”
Beatrice looked at the mutilated corpses. “I’m sure.”
Vespa chose her own blade, holding it up to look at. “I might make it too quick.”
The last Albanian already looked like his soul had fled from his eyes.
“I don’t care,” Beatrice said. It was the truth. All she felt was emptiness.
Vespa crossed to the bound man, ripping off his tape. “Let’s hear this one scream, then.”
Beatrice left her to it. The screams that followed her to the hallway made her shoulders hunch. They’d stopped by the time she reached the outer, soundproofed door.
Her bare feet left behind smears of blood as she traced the path back to the house. She decided Vespa could deal with that as well. At least they were mostly dry by the time she entered the main house.
It took longer than she expected to clean the blood off of her. She turned the water colder and colder as she stood under the spray, hating the warmth.
Night had fallen outside. She stood at the window, waiting for the thoughts to come, but even her mind was empty. Like she’d already left the world behind. Like she’d already become nothing.
She remembered Montrell’s words. That she should do exactly as she pleased.
Had she really wanted blood? Or had she thought she should? That it was expected?
If she wanted absolutely nothing, did that mean she was no longer a person at all? Perhaps the person she remembered being had bled out on the bathroom floor so long ago, leaving an empty vessel behind.
She didn’t want to be dead. She wanted to feel. Anything.
Her feet carried her to the bedroom door.
Giulia had told her Montrell’s room was next to hers. The older woman liked to meddle. She often spoke of Montrell when she was around.
Beatrice entered, expecting to find him asleep. He wasn’t. He stood in front of the window, looking out into the night in a way that mirrored the way she had stood only minutes before.
When she let the door snap shut behind her, he turned her way. His face held the same expression that he’d been wearing around her ever since he’d barreled his way back into her life, the one that was filled with concern and caring and patience. Like she was fragile and would shatter in front of him at any moment.
There was a time he hadn’t looked at her that way.
She didn’t want him to look at her that way now. Her bare feet carried her to him.
“Bea?” His voice held a question. “Did you—”
She cut off his words with her lips. It would be fine, she told herself, counting on the numbness that had filled her.
Instead, memories flared within. She’d thought she’d forgotten. The ghost of who she had been fluttered in her memory, confident and certain of what she wanted. She’d been the one to push him onto the couch during their engagement period. She’d taken what she wanted because she’d been sure he had wanted it too. More than that. She had actually wanted it.
No heat rose from the kiss they shared. It was too buried in ice and fear.
Fear that there was no way it could be as it was.
His hands came up to her shoulders, making her stiffen in panic, a panic she’d been seeking.
She was no longer empty. The awful thing she’d become writhed inside.
He pushed her away gently, his face lifting from hers.
Montrell had always made her feel small. Once upon a time, that had added to his sexiness. She’d reveled in how delicate that had made her feel.
Her husband had been nowhere near as big, but he’d shown her what it meant to be physically weaker. That there was nothing sexy about it.
As Montrell’s hands continued to cup her shoulders, the panic spread. His body threw her into shadow. Instinct had her lashing out, just as she always had.
Every time she had fought, things got so much worse.
The flood of adrenaline made her blind. Her throat closed on the building scream. She couldn’t let it out. If she screamed, he’d only choke her. It was worse when he choked her because sometimes her body responded.
The grip on her shoulders had dropped, and no one was hitting back, even though she punched and jabbed. She blinked as her body slowed. Her punches had hit flesh. Montrell hadn’t been wearing a shirt, and his broad barrel chest was hairier than the smooth muscle of others she’d seen. The skin was red where it shone through the hair.
The corner of his mouth held blood, and red was veining within the white of his right eye.
“It’s okay,” Montrell was saying through his split lip. “It’s okay, Bea. It’s only me.”
There was no ‘only’ when it came to someone like Montrell. She took a step back from him.
He did nothing to stop her. The pressure of his hands before had panicked her, but he’d meant to push her away, not drag her deeper into her spiral.
“Not like this,” Montrell said, his eyes still so fucking kind. There was no sexual intent there at all.
The deadness returned, making her cold all over.
“But if you need to keep hitting me, I have no problem with that.” It must have hurt his lip, to spread it in his standard grin. “You’re here for pain. I get that. So come on. Let me have it.” He motioned with his hand.
Beatrice stepped back again.
The creases appeared near his eyes as he continued to smile. “Sex, though, that won’t be about this. Not about pain. If you come for that, it’ll be because you want to feel good.”
She shook her head, but the words behind the denial were still locked in her throat.
Turning, she ran from the room, suddenly relieved by her continued numbness. It was safer. They both had to accept what she had become.
Montrell made his way back to the outbuilding. Vespa was still there, cleaning the room. The bodies were gone.
“You could have had the boys clean up,” he said, bending to pick up a bloody knife that remained on the floor.
Vespa was rearranging the other instruments on the metal table, her fingers precise as she lined them up. “I don’t mind it,” she said, but her fingers continued to fiddle.
“I didn’t expect her to not kill the third.” Montrell frowned at the bloody fingerprint on the blade he held it between two fingers. “I almost didn’t move out of sight in time.” Beatrice had asked him to leave. He’d only been able to make her think he had.
“She realized it with the second.” Vespa scowled down at the tray. “That it’s not going to bring it back. That nothing will.” Her eyes shifted to Montrell. “You can’t fix her.”
“I don’t want to fix her.” He hoped to show Beatrice that she wasn’t broken. Montrell set the knife on the still-bloody table.
“Liar,” Vespa said, but there was no venom in her voice. “But that’s just like you. Big softie.” She shook her head, not smiling like she usually did when she accused him of that. “And shit, you’re a mess. That new wife of yours make your face look like that?”
Montrell’s hand lifted to his throbbing eye. Beatrice had gotten in a few good jabs, but it’d heal soon enough. “She needed it.” His gaze shifted back to her. “Do you?”
“I’m good,” Vespa said. She waved a hand around the space. “This was for her.”
Montrell hated the look in Vespa’s eyes. Like she was lost. His friend was never lost. “But I heard the way you took care of the third. We’ve never talked about it. You never wanted to.” Montrell took a breath, then rushed to ask the question he’d tried to ask once before. “Did my father’s men—”
“We’re not going to talk about it.” Vespa’s chin was tilted defiantly, her eyes hardened. “Ever. They’re dead. I killed them.”
Montrell wiped his bloody fingers along his slacks. For once, Vespa’s manic energy didn’t comfort him. “You just said that didn’t matter. That killing them hadn’t helped.”
Vespa shook her head. “That’s not what I said. It mattered.” She nodded toward the table. “This made a difference. It just doesn’t rewind things any.” She moved toward the chemicals in the corner but didn’t bend down to grab the handle. “I would have suggested she do this, but your wife was already there asking for it. Made me not hate her quite so much.”
“Do you really hate her, Vespa?” That was one thing he’d never understood about his friend. She never seemed to make friends with other women.
“It’s not like I like her.” She scowled down at the chemicals. “I regret what happened with the other girl.”
Montrell knew who she meant. He’d barely paid attention to the woman at the Di Salvo estate the last time they’d been there. He’d been surprised that Vespa had stopped to talk to her. Vespa had agreed with him that the hitman the girl belonged to wasn’t a Coronella problem. Hell, the hitman had been responsible for Vespa’s arm. Him and the Bratva, but that group wouldn’t recover, not with their pakhan now dead. “You didn’t put her in a coma, Vespa. And she’s awake now.”
Vespa shook her head again. “I should have never given her my gun. I fucking encouraged her toward death.” Her hand gripped the plastic handle, jerking the container of chemicals off the ground. “It’s best if I don’t interfere with your wife.”
“That’ll be difficult. You’re coming with us, right? To her father?”
Vespa nodded. “Where you go, I go.”
Some of the tension left Montrell at the reminder. “Always.” He crossed to her and took the cleaner. “Let’s finish things here.”
Vespa let him take it, but she shook her head. “This here will never be finished,” she muttered, then bent over for a second container.