35. Siena
Siena
T he heavy door creaks as we enter, and Franco pries open his eyes, lifting his head. He’s hanging from the wall by shackles, his body slack, his wrists bleeding where the metal cuts into his skin. His jeans are torn and stained, and it smells like urine and tarnished copper in the windowless cell.
When he sees us, he laughs, a dark evil sound, his gaze boring into me. “Look who it is,” he croaks out. “The newest addition to the Demonio harem of whores. Fucking stupid bitch.”
Compared to this room, Franco’s last room was cozy, even homey. This room is a torture chamber, much closer in size to the one I stayed in. There’s a sink on one side of the door and a long metal table on the other with a box full of rusty tools on the ground.
The concrete floor is flat by the door but slopes up toward the back wall covered in shackle rings and heavy, rusted out chains. Large drains line the center of the room where the slope ends .
Franco is attached to that wall, not just with shackles at the ankles and wrists but by a heavy metal ring wrapped around his neck that allows his head to do little more than droop slightly.
Dried blood and fresh blood stain his bare chest, filling in rivulets left by dirt and sweat, and darkening his jeans.
The stitches across his chest from where I shot him are inflamed and red.
I wait to feel something, anything. Sadness, shock, empathy, anger. But I feel nothing. I’m numb.
Tension emanates from Matti, and I briefly press my side into his, so he knows I’m okay.
Stepping forward, I tilt my head, looking Franco up and down, my voice calm.
“Franco, you are misreading the situation. The only bitch in this room is shackled to the wall. But call me a bitch if you want. Just know that this bitch is going to hurt you very fucking badly.”
Franco’s lip twitches into a sneer, his brown eyes coal black and beady. “You don’t have the fucking balls.”
“Having balls doesn’t seem to have served you very well, has it?
All I see when I look at you is a string of shitty decisions that show you to be the spineless little shit that you are.
And, not to state the obvious, but your so-called balls have gotten you shackled to a wall about to be tortured relentlessly… by a woman. Your baby sister, no less.”
Franco scoffs as I squat down by the box of tools next to the door, looking for what I want.
The box is full of rusty, blood-encrusted knives, pliers, saws in various sizes, and other tools clearly used for torment and death. I don’t relish the idea of touching one of these rusty tools, and oddly, this is a greater concern for me in this moment than what I plan to do with it.
I find what I want and pull it out by its handle, a medium-sized saw with a serrated blade and a handle with the least amount of blood. Grinning at Franco, I stand, weighing the saw in my hand, gripping its handle with first one hand, then the other.
Franco glowers at me, his eyes on the saw. “What the fuck do you think you’re going to do with that?”
“I’ve been thinking about Emily,” I say, ignoring his question as I move steadily closer to him.
“Quite a lot, actually. In fact, I can’t stop thinking about her.
What did she experience in those moments before she died?
Did she realize what was happening? Do you think, Franco, that she knew that her own fucking brother did this to her? ”
Without warning, I slash his jean clad leg with the saw. The broken teeth rip jaggedly through the denim and into his leg, tearing the skin along with the fabric.
It’s exhilarating.
Terrible, freeing, and exhilarating.
Adrenaline courses through my system as an avalanche of memories cascade over me.
Emily laughing with me under the covers when we were kids.
Emily screaming at me for ruining her favorite sweater.
Emily holding me tight the night before her wedding.
Emily in every iteration: joyful, furious, heartbroken, vengeful, giddy.
Every version of her I’ve ever loved rises within me, fusing with my wrath. My grief over losing her is no longer weighing me down. It rockets me forward, guiding my every movement .
Vengeance ices out whatever sympathy I once held for Franco, erasing any lingering attachment.
He is no longer my brother.
He is no longer human.
Franco shrieks, writhing in the chains. “FUCK! You fucking BITCH! I should have fucking killed you when I had the chance, you fucking cunt.”
Matti takes a step toward Franco, his fists clenched, but I catch his eye and shake my head slightly.
He steps back reluctantly, and I’m grateful.
I know he wants to strangle Franco, and he looks tortured that he can’t.
But there’s something else on his face, too, when he looks at me.
Something that looks like respect. Pride.
“You’re right, Franco,” I say, slashing at his other leg, the broken edged blade cutting into his flesh, blood dripping off the serrated teeth onto the floor.
Franco yells out, and I raise my voice to be heard over him.
“You really fucking should have killed me instead of her. Because Emily was a sweet soul, honestly, underneath all the sass. And as much as she would have been heartbroken to lose me, I don’t know if she would ever ‘have the balls’, as you say, to hurt you the way I’m going to hurt you right now.
But then again,” I say, slashing at his leg again.
“I bet you never thought I would, either.”
Franco pulls against the chains, rattling them against the concrete, his body shaking. He must have ripped open his stitches, because blood starts oozing out of the wound and down his torso.
“No, you dumb bitch. Not instead of her. I was so close to killing you that day at the law office.” He grunts out each word, breathing hard. “AJ had you hog-tied, and I was ready to take you out then and there.”
I frown, remembering the look on his face that day. It wasn’t vicious or violent. He looked cowed, powerless. “But you didn’t. You just stood there, Franco, and watched AJ fuck with me. If you were going to kill me, why didn’t you?”
Franco spits and turns his head from side to side, trying to shift the metal ring cutting into his neck.
His eyes gleam at me as he pants through the pain.
“Curiosity. I wanted to see what AJ was going to do to you first. Then slit your throat. Surprised your little boy toy didn’t tell you.
I’ve been trying to kill you for months. ”
Matti steps to Franco and smacks him across the face with an open hand, the slap echoing around the concrete room. Franco’s head bounces off the cinder block wall, and Matti spits in his face.
“Show her respect,” Matti barks.
I stare at Matti, my thoughts racing. Another secret.
Matti feels me looking at him, my thoughts drawing him to me like tractor beams. His jaw tics, and he takes a step toward me, but I step back.
“You knew he wanted to kill me,” I say. It’s not a question. It’s more of an acknowledgment of fact. Matti knew my brother was going to kill me. And he didn’t tell me.
“I took care of it,” he glowers, as Franco chortles gleefully.
“Trouble in mother fucking paradise,” Franco spits out with a sneer.
We ignore him. Matti knew Franco killed Emily. He knew Franco was gunning for me, too. Matti flexes his hands into fists, watching me carefully, sadly. Like he wants to take all this away. But he can’t.
Watching him, the realization hits like a bolt out of nowhere. I know him. I know Matti’s reasoning behind not telling me about Franco. He did it because he loves me. Because he didn’t want me to hurt anymore than I already was. He kept it from me because he loves me.
I don’t know if it’s the purge of grief that I’m in the midst of unleashing on Franco or a shift in the universe, but in that moment, I fucking love him for it. I love Matti for all that he is, for how he loves me.
For just a few minutes, there’s nothing and no one else in the world except Matti and I.
We stare at each other, my heart pounding in my throat. A second realization hits me like an ocean wave, washing me out and leaving me limp and beaten on the shore: I don’t just love him. I’m in love with this man.
I’m in love with Matti.
This new awareness must show on my face, because I can physically see Matti’s energy shift as he reads me, sees that not only am I not mad at him but that I adore him and how he loves me.
Franco screams, a bone-crushing screech of pain, breaking our reverie.
“Tell me why, Franco.” I ask, reluctantly taking my eyes off Matti and turning to Franco. “Why did you kill Emily? Why did you want to kill me?”
“Stupid bitch,” Franco snorts, spit flying out of his mouth and sweat running down his face. “You think I started this shit? This has been going on for years, decades, centuries, this Bellamorte/ Demonio war.”
“You, me, Emily: we’re all Bellamortes, Franco,” I spit out. “How does killing your sisters have anything to do with a war that ended the day Aurelio killed our father? ”
“I was taking back our family name,” Franco spits out. “On my terms. Not Aurelio’s. But you’re too fucking stupid to see that.”
“Franco, answer the question.”
For a long moment, he says nothing, sucking on his teeth and staring me down.
“How do you not see? Emily married the enemy, and that was useful to me for a while. But when her husband put that flash drive together to try to take Aurelio down, I had to stop him from ruining all the work I’d done.
” He grunts and shifts on his feet, barely able to support his weight.
“But if you let him release that flash drive, then he would have gone to prison for murder at the very least. If you truly wanted to take down Aurelio, that would have done it. Why stop it from happening?”
“That wasn’t the plan,” he says drily.
“Whose plan?” asks Matti.
I wait, saying nothing. Something like satisfaction is mixing with Franco’s defiance. He wants to tell us what he did, what his plans were. He wants to gloat.
“When you took the flash drive and Aurelio wanted you dead and your little boyfriend wouldn’t follow orders, it was my opportunity to double down.”
Matti crosses his arms. “You weren’t expecting Aurelio to be angry that Mikey was killed, so you thought killing Siena would even things out for you if he found out it was you who brought down the plane.”
“This is all bullshit.” I can barely see straight.
I can’t believe that some decades-old mafia beef was somehow responsible for Franco killing his own family.
“There is no war. You just wanted to play gangster, make some money on the side, even if it meant being a crooked cop. You’re a fucking whore, Franco. ”
“I’m the whore?” Franco hangs his head as much as he can and laughs hoarsely, his voice cracking.
“My time with the Demonios was just the first phase of a larger plan that you’re too stupid to see.
But you, you spread your legs for one of the top guys in the family who killed our father, and that’s different? ”
Matti growls and moves closer to him. “Watch yourself, Franco. She may not want to kill you, but I don’t need a reason.”
“How romantic. He’s defending his woman’s honor,” Franco says mockingly, then turns his attention to me, his eyes cold.
“You fucking disgrace. Are you going to trade in the Bellamorte name to align yourself with the right-hand man of our father’s murderer?
Or are you just going to pump out his bastards while he goes home to a respectable woman who didn’t sell out her family for dick? ”
A wave of nausea sweeps over me, my visit with Dr. Rossi an hour ago flashing across my mind. I shoot a look at Matti.
Franco’s face lights up with glee. “Holy fucking shit! I can’t fucking believe it!” He leans his head back as far as he can in the neck shackle and practically howls. “You’re already pregnant!”
My eyes are on Matti as his brow crinkles and his whole demeanor changes. He turns fully to meet my gaze, his eyes wide and questioning. He’s not happy.
I start to shake and drop the saw, the clattering of the blade on the concrete braided into Franco’s cackling.