Chapter 24 #3
“Yeah, don’t be sorry, Joelle,” Chiara adds. “You don’t have to do this if you can’t.”
“I want to.”
She nods before telling us the rest of what I know will be a horror.
“I never saw those other two men before. But they looked older than the other man. They approached us, asking what happened, and when we told them, they pretended to help at first, and one of them even examined my car. But suddenly, the other older man grabbed Kayla, knocking her on the side of the head with a gun. Elsie and I screamed for help and started to run away, but we had nowhere to go. As Elsie ran, the man from the restaurant shot her leg and dragged her back while she cried. I stopped running then. I knew they’d take me anyway, dead or alive. ”
Tears are running down her face now, and mine. My heart clenches, feeling her agony.
“They knocked me out too, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a dark cage with voices whimpering all around me. I called for my friends, but they weren’t there.”
She uncaps the bottle and drinks some more, then hands the rest to Enzo, whose face is hard as the fist on his thigh rattles with the force of his anger.
“The day I met my son’s father, he took me out of the cage and put a black woven bag over my head as he led me up the stairs. When he took the cloth off my face, we were in a bedroom, and, um…”
“Fuck!” Enzo growls, his hand jumping to the back of her head and turning her to him. “Tell me who he is. I’ll fucking tear his body apart limb by limb.”
“You can’t put yourself in danger for me. I just need you to find my boy.” Her chin trembles with a sob. “The rest doesn’t matter.”
“Like hell, it doesn’t. I’ll kill that motherfucker if he isn’t dead already. I’ll make him suffer for days, and that won’t even be enough.”
His breathing grows harsher with every second he stares into her shattered gaze. I can see how much she means to him, how much he means to her.
“Tell me who it is, God damn it. I need to know, baby.”
We all wait in bathed silence for her to say something.
“I didn’t know his name at first, or who he even was, but later I found out he was in charge of all the women and children they held in cages. He was the one that the men who watched us answered to.”
Dante places his hands on my shoulders from behind, his fingers biting into my skin.
“One night, when he did what you can only imagine, he asked me to call him by his name. He—he said his name was…” She looks at Chiara and then at me as she swallows heavily. “It was your uncle Agnelo. He raped me repeatedly. All the others used a condom. My son is his.”
“I’ll fucking kill him!” Enzo roars.
My body grows ice cold. It’s like I’m numbed in place. Just when I think my family couldn’t stoop any lower, there’s something else that shocks my system.
“He’s gonna fucking die painfully for this,” Enzo swears, the back of his hand under her jaw as he lifts her eyes to his. “I’m so damn sorry, baby.”
His arms clasp around her, holding her tight.
“He’s mine, you hear me?” he tells his brothers. “I’m going to be the one to kill him.”
Chiara runs off the chair, and when I turn back to see where she went, I find her grabbing a garbage pail from beside the table we ate at and hurling into it. Dom runs after her, helping her, while I don’t know what to do or say.
Dante takes a seat beside me.
“I can’t believe how evil my family is.” Tears leak out of the corners of my eyes. “What they did to her, and to the other women and children. It’s unimaginable.”
“I know, sweetheart.” His arms come around me, scooping me onto his lap. “You’re not at fault for who your family is.” His thumb moves along the base of my jaw while his eyes delve into mine. “It’s not on you or Chiara. You hear me?”
I nod, leaning into his hold, just as Chiara walks back over.
“I’m sorry,” she says to Joelle. “I’m sorry for all of it. If he were here, I’d kill him.”
Joelle stands, stepping toward her and gently taking her hand.
“I don’t blame you or Raquel.” Her eyes dash to me for a moment. “You’re not responsible for their actions. Don’t be so hard on yourselves.”
“Yeah.” Chiara slips out of her embrace, pacing, as though she can’t come to grips with any of this.
But neither can I. It’ll take a while to digest the level of evil my family has enacted on their victims.
“Sir?” One of Dominic’s guards marches over to him. “One of the cameras on the other side of the fence malfunctioned,” he says quietly. “The men are looking at it.”
“I’ll go check it out.”
Dom gets to his feet, and as he does, my eyes land on the man behind them.
The chef.
Now that I’m really paying attention, there’s something about him. I tilt my head curiously as our eyes meet, and I find familiarity there. I can’t place him, but I know we’ve met before.
But where?
I force myself to dig through my memories, but I’m still unable to figure out where I could’ve seen him.
He stares at me, his almost-black eyes cutting into mine, as though recognizing me. And when he rotates toward the grill, I gasp as I find the tattoo of a sparrow on his neck.