30. Marisol
30
MARISOL
I choke back a scream. My feet feel like they’ve been sliced to ribbons, but I don’t dare check.
Run, run, run!
I have to keep moving. I hunt for the widest gap between the shards of glass and aim for it. It’s like pressing the ball of my foot into searing hot coals.
Junior steps behind me, his boots crunching over the glass, and shoves me against the wall. I bounce off and nearly fall, but catch myself at the last moment, tottering on my toes.
There’s no relief. All I can feel is white-hot pain.
I glance back and close my eyes just as quickly. I’m leaving behind bloody footprints with every step. Fifteen steps and I’ll be at the end of the hallway. The plan hasn’t changed.
Maybe I can throw myself down the stairs faster than Junior can run—but then I’ll have a broken arm to go along with everything else. And I still don’t know how he got in—someone might be ready to grab me at the bottom of the stairs.
Why the fuck didn’t I make Salvatore take both eyes? Don’t think about him. Where is he? Did Junior set a trap for him too? Focus.
“Where you headed, Mari baby?”
I grit my teeth as I shuffle forward. Twelve more steps.
“You know that little battle Turi’s going to? Wanna guess who started it?”
A tear scalds my cheek. I have to survive this. If he hurt Salvatore, and I die, he’ll get away with this. I have to survive, and I have to warn Salvatore.
“Any guesses? Come on, don’t be boring.”
Don’t be boring. “Conchetta?” I guess, hoping he’ll laugh.
After a pause, he does, and it’s a cruel, jagged sound. “The cook? I wouldn’t put it past the old bitch. Don’t let the sweeties fool you, she’s done time just like the rest of us. No. You have two more guesses, or I’m cutting your Achilles tendon.”
Six more steps. I can’t afford a wrong answer, although I want him to stay entertained enough not to lash out. “You.”
“Ding, ding! It was me. The puppet master, pulling all the strings from behind the scenes. It wasn’t even that hard. Turns out anyone can start a turf war with some can-do attitude, elbow grease, and a little network blackout. You plan that, Mari? Wanted to make yourself look good so Papà wouldn’t want to give you to me?”
Two more horrible, painful steps. Junior’s taking his time to follow, zig-zagging behind me.
“Did Turi tell you what he did to the Columbians after Matteo died?”
A plan forms in the back of my mind, but I don’t think about it too clearly. I don’t want him to pluck the hope out of my brain just to crush it.
“He went completely nuts. Slaughtered them all in a few nights. Rumor has it, he was covered head to toe in blood after. That’s who you sleep with at night?”
I crouch and lean over to pinch the largest glass shard and pull it out of my foot. Both feet are bloody, pulpy messes. My stomach roils, and I swallow a sob.
“Hoping to change teams?” Junior says with a laugh, and then I hear the clink of his belt buckle. I just need him a little closer.
More glass dusts the floor ahead of me, but I’m through the worst of it at least. Salvatore’s doorway is just out of reach.
“God, Turi would hate that wouldn’t he?”
I grit my teeth. I hope I live long enough to see what my husband will do to him.
As I tend to my feet, Junior takes another step forward and leans down to whisper something especially horrible.
Perfect . I curl as if I’m going to remove more glass but instead, I grab the edge of the hallway runner. With all my strength, I wrench it upward, launching shards of glass into his face.
“You fucking bitch!”
I lurch into Salvatore’s room and slam the door shut behind me. I hope I got his good eye.
Salvatore’s gun is on the bed, but the steel door of the bathroom is just a little further ahead.
I hobble to the bathroom. Almost there .
As I pass, I fling the floor mirror and a lamp to the ground, hoping something slows Junior down. He wrenches the door open, and his boot connects heavily with the mirror as he stumbles over it, shattering the glass.
My fingertips graze the steel door and with every ounce of force I can summon, I slam it closed.
A second later, Junior pounds on the other side of the door, screaming, “You fucking bitch! I’ll fucking kill you, a farti fottere! Sei un cazzo di puttana! Muori male!”
Every curse is audible. I double- and triple-check that the bathroom door’s locked, even though it should automatically lock when shut.
Turning away from Junior’s fury, I swing open a cabinet door and flick on the display monitor inside.
Through the camera in Salvatore’s bedroom, I watch Junior pace the room like a caged animal. He screams and hurls himself around in a fit of rage, kicking down the nearest nightstand and stomping on it until the wood splinters beneath him.
I still when he finds the gun I left on the bed.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
He’s already flung it to the ground by the time I realize he tried shooting into the bathroom. I skate my fingers along my body shakily. I’m whole. The room’s bulletproof . A weak laugh escapes my mouth.
Something scrapes along the floor outside.
I glance toward the monitor to watch with morbid fascination as Junior drags a heavy wooden dresser against the bathroom door, sealing me inside. Then he takes his knife and whirls to score deep cuts into the mattress. The chandelier is next. It falls with a horrible crash.
I turn away.
While Junior occupies himself with the remaining furniture, I scour the bathroom for something to staunch the bleeding. I drop to my knees and search underneath the sink where Salvatore had pulled out medicine for my lip.
I find a first aid kit, some rations and water, a gun, and— oh, thank God —an old flip phone. My heart pounds in my ears as I pop the battery back in and pray it turns on.
The screen flashes blue and loads.
I clap a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming in relief and joy.
I hope Salvatore takes his time with him.
The contacts list is empty, but I still remember Salvatore’s phone number from my road trip. I dial it.
The call fails immediately, and hope drives out of me like a punch to the gut.
That was his old phone number. I have no fucking idea what his new one is.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I search around the applications to find where Salvatore’s number might be hidden, but it’s fruitless. And my phone’s light years away in my bedroom.
I crush the heels of my palms against my eyes and try not to cry. Of course, I didn’t memorize his new number, because I’m a huge fucking idiot.
My head snaps up when I hear silence on the other side of the door, and I startle at Junior’s too-close face. His breath fogs the lens, so near it’s as if he can reach through to me.
“Gotcha,” he says. He plucks the camera, then the feed is cut, leaving me without any knowledge of what’s going on outside. Silence. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
For a long pause, nothing happens. Pain throbs in my feet, growing with intensity. I ease myself on top of the bathtub counter with a groan and set myself to pulling out the glass piece by piece with tweezers I find in one of the drawers. The biggest shards go first, rinsing away under running tap water from the faucet. My fingers tremble from too much adrenaline, and I have to stop several times to flex my hand, exhale, and try again.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Blood stains the back of my neck—although when I touch a finger to the skin, it’s not bleeding aggressively. Small miracles. My wet hair and bloody hands make me look like a vengeful ghost.
I smile. Maybe I am.
BANG!
I scream and jerk for the gun as something pounds on the door.
He can’t get me. I’m safe in here .
I clutch my gun with shaking hands. I hope the staff got out. I hope he didn’t kill them all or hurt them. I can’t name them even in my head, or I’m going to break down.
After several long, heart-pounding moments, I return to my feet. It becomes impossible to find any more glass splinters in the blood and raw flesh, so I do my best to work by touch. I let myself cry, smearing my tears against my shoulders when my vision grows too blurry.
I make a plan. The computer monitor is bright blue, but it shows the time at least—a little after three. I’m going to bandage my feet. I have water, a gun, and a phone. Maybe Junior doesn’t know about the gun. I could take him by surprise.
Hurry, Salvatore.
I spend the next few minutes in silence while I work.
Then the lights flick off, plunging me into darkness.
Junior cut the power.
Panic seizes me. I squeeze my hands against my knees in the dark as the running faucet hushes next to me. I turn it off and strain my ears. The only sound is my own pounding heartbeat.
The monitor is still on, showing a tiny square of blue light. After my eyes adjust, I realize I can make my way around the bathroom. It must be connected to a different source of power, although now that Junior’s cut the feed, it’s just a glorified clock.
A wave of emotion threatens to tow me under, and I catch myself on the tub at the last minute. I force myself to breathe. One thing at a time. I grab a roll of gauze from the first aid kit and wrap each foot several times to fashion shoes, freezing to listen whenever I hear a whisper outside the door.
After I finish, I ease myself down onto the bathroom floor before letting out a sharp hiss of pain. Okay, I definitely missed a few spots. A lot of spots. I crumble to my knees and suck in a breath. The hard part’s over. I can do the rest.
I slide the gun to the toilet, then do the same with the rations and the water. Crawling on hands and knees, I make my way over so I can pull myself up to sit on the lid.
“What’s the plan?” I ask the bathroom trash can. It doesn’t reply.
I desperately wish I had my phone in here and not Salvatore’s. I could do a lot with my phone. But with this ancient piece of crap Salvatore left me? It can’t even access the internet. Maybe I can use it as a projectile.
I don’t need to be told not to call 911. Even if they could help us, it’s far more likely they’d see the address and send someone in the Outfits’s pocket. And I have no idea if that’d be Salvatore’s or Aldo’s pocket. I could be making things a lot worse.
I shiver and wrap my arms around myself. Without the heat running, the bathroom’s getting chilly.
Who the fuck knows what else Junior’s doing out there? If he gets to the staff, he’s going to torture them to get to the codes. He’ll torture them regardless.
Tears well in my eyes. Maybe he’s cutting up Nola right now while he makes Camillo watch.
Then I remember Junior’s smell. Blood and gasoline.
Gasoline.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck !”
I suck down one of the water bottles before taking the rest of the gauze and bandages to add more padding to my shitty shoes. I can’t stay. He pushed the dresser to the other side of the door to trap me in here. He’s going to light the house on fire.
I crawl to the bathroom door and use the handle to drag myself up. My reflection makes eye contact with me in the mirror.
“You wanna go instead of me?” I ask her. The bitch is silent.
I pull the handle down, inhale sharply, and throw myself against the door.
Pain explodes through my shoulder and feet. I bounce off the steel door and crash against the bathroom counter.
“Ow…”
My vision blurs with tears. Okay, that door’s not moving.
I make my way back to the toilet and sit on the lid. When I unlatch the safety, the gun settles more deeply into my hands.
I think.
The staff knows where I am. And even if they’re all dead, Worm should have some notification set up. The house couldn’t burn that quickly. Salvatore will know where I am. If he’s still alive.
I never told him I love him.
I was going to. I just… I liked teasing him by not saying it, and he did lock me in a basement, and he’d had such a long head start to loving me first, that I wanted to wait longer before I said it back. And… I was scared. What if I said it, and it broke him out of whatever spell that made him so drawn to me?
I twist the wedding ring on my finger. Would I feel it if he died, like a jerk of an invisible string around my heart? Or will he leave like Kristin, gone in a blink?
Grant never found out I stayed with his mom’s dead body for an entire day, wailing over her until the police came to her door on a noise complaint and took her away.
If my husband’s dead, I’ll find his body too and lay next to it every night until I’ve made every soul who’s ever done him wrong suffer. I’ll whisper to him every night all the ways I loved him.
The throbbing pain in my feet worsens as the minutes crawl by. My ass aches from sitting on the toilet seat lid, so after a while, I shift to the floor. I dig through the rations until I find a chocolate protein bar that tastes like the blade of a dusty computer fan.
Somehow, this isn’t where I thought my life would end up.
I thought I’d be Grant’s not-so-happy little wife. Instead, I ended up with a man like Salvatore. Whose existence puts my life in danger. Who never leaves me alone or gives me a single moment of privacy. Who makes me exercise and eat food that isn’t just candy. Who forced me to marry him.
I never told him I loved him.
The power kicks on, and I startle. I must’ve dozed off in the darkness. I freeze, glancing at the camera monitor. It’s six a.m.
A rustling sound outside the bathroom sends me scrambling back to the wall.
With shaking hands, I raise the gun and point.
Junior found the door code. I have one chance to get this right. I flick off the safety. Outside, the dresser scrapes along the floor with urgency.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The bathroom door unlatches, and I inhale and exhale with control.
One chance.