Chapter 10 Caterina
Caterina
The decision of whether I should hide in this bathroom stall or try to escape and find an exit is made moot a handful of seconds later.
I’ve barely had time to pull the jack knife from my corset and steel myself to make a break for it when the outer door opens with a loud bang.
Margareta and her friend both scream as a man I’ve never laid eyes on aims his gun at us…
right before his head practically explodes.
With a sickening thud, the pulpy-headed body falls to the floor, his killer holding a powerful handgun and standing right behind him.
“Alessio?”
My husband’s gun wavers toward the three of us and my pulse pounds between my ears. The only emotion I sense from him is supreme outrage, his mood as black as a demon’s soul. It’s only his eyes that indicate any consciousness though little sanity. They strangely burn a more brilliant shade of blue.
But, as if some switch has been flipped once he recognizes me, he holds out his hand. “Come,” he barks at me. “Go hide,” he tells the other two women without a backwards glance once I’ve taken his hand.
“What’s happening? Who’s fighting? Is there war again?” I ask breathlessly as Alessio drags me along. I know it’s not the ideal time for questions but terror has turned Curious Cat into a Chatty Cathy.
If he hears my questions though, he shows no sign of it.
We turn toward an exterior exit at the back of the hotel’s party venue but, before we can reach it, more men I don’t recognize are coming through it. They’re not wedding guests. They’re dressed too casually and they’re armed with automatic weapons. “Dear God,” I murmur, certain we’re doomed.
It doesn’t stop Alessio who has the element of surprise on his side. Dropping down behind a caterers’ cart, he opens fire, killing all three before they have time to realize an enemy is near.
“Who are they?” I ask, creeping up behind him as he surveys the bodies.
“Bratva,” he spits.
Bratva. The Russian crime syndicate is attacking our wedding? With my fears over war breaking out within the Trio again, I didn’t consider how many enemies we still have outside of it.
Alessio leans down. “Let’s find out how useful you are, wifey,” he taunts, smirking when he sees my knife.
He takes all three rifles from the dead men, tucking his pistol into his holster and holding onto two while handing the last one to me.
I’m forced to slip my knife back into the bodice of my dress to safely hold the heavy thing.
“I’ve never fired one of these,” I say, numbly. “I could handle your pistol.” I wasn’t intending to let my abilities slip but it doesn’t seem to matter now.
“Just hold that and don’t shoot yourself… or me.” I want to be annoyed by his patronizing behavior but, honestly, he freaks me out. He’s so calm. I wonder if his pulse is even elevated. It’s unnatural to be this calm under such circumstances, isn’t it?
“Aren’t we going out the door?” I ask, looking back at the rear exit.
He shakes his head, leading me in another direction. “There may be more of them out there. It’s best if I keep you close.”
“But, if we both go-”
He spins, bringing his face down to mine, mere millimeters between us. “You think I’d run from these fucking pieces of shit?” he scoffs.
“Silly me,” I mutter when he turns back around, pulling me toward where the main battle is being fought. God, how many Russians are in there? How many of our men still stand and fight?
In the hallway, not far from the bathroom I was just in, I see Margareta’s friend on the floor, shot dead, and I stagger. “I didn’t even know her name. My brothers… are they-”
Alessio snarls something vile under his breath and snaps at me to keep up, his hand never letting go of mine for a second.
Inside the ballroom, our men are mounting a defense, using overturned tables and whatever is at hand as a barrier while they keep up a steady fire. Every Made Man is armed – not even a wedding would find them completely off-guard – but the Russians have automatic weapons.
I barely have time to register a handful of familiar faces before my husband is pushing me behind one of the make-shift barricades and onto the floor. “You, stay down.”
“Thank fuck,” Armando says from beside me as Alessio passes him one of the assault rifles.
He passes the other to a man on our other side and takes the one I’ve been holding before he crouches over me and opens fire. With the horribly loud, repeating fire so close, I cover my ears as my husband’s spicy cologne mixed with his sweat invades my nostrils. My heart pounds so hard it hurts.
“Great security arrangements you have here, De Luca,” a cold voice clips sarcastically from nearby.
“Fuck off, Morelli.”
“Nico,” I whimper, ready to faint with relief, but he doesn’t hear me and, if my husband does, he doesn’t react.
I can’t tell anything from where I’m pinned down by Alessio.
All I know is that the guns fire in bursts and, in time, either we must have more reinforcements arrive or the Bratva didn’t bring enough men.
The firing grows more sporadic as men who were on the defensive shift to the hunters and occasional cries in Italian, Russian and English are heard from the wounded throughout the large room.
Just when I try to raise my head, an agonized gurgling noise greets my ears.
Alessio shoves me back down hard as I feel something warm and wet covering my back and left cheek.
Glancing up, I see the other man Alessio passed a rifle to clutching what’s left of his throat before he crumples and dies.
The champagne from the reception threatens to climb back up my throat, and my head spins from the sickening sight.
“Get her the fuck out of here!” I hear my brother shouting at Alessio. Where am I to go? I think, dazedly. I’m not safe, but I feel safer with Alessio than elsewhere.
“Mind your own goddamn wife, Morelli,” Alessio growls.
An instant later, I hear a woman’s scream followed by an awful silence as Nico rises to his feet, hurtling the barrier as if he’s suddenly bullet-proof. “Margareta!”
“Margareta?” I repeat in a whisper. What’s happened to her? Where is my mother? And, Frankie and Gia and Sofia and little Valdo?
Soon, the shooting ends and Alessio’s father, Don Vicini and my father are all shouting orders, telling their men to hunt down any remaining attackers.
“Any who are still breathing, we want them alive for when we cut them into tiny pieces later,” Silvio De Luca commands.
I tremble from the sick relish in his tone but, for once, I feel it’s justified.
Attacking a wedding with women and children present, it’s barbaric even in our world.
Alessio stands, his murderous glare fixated on something. He’s dropped his rifle but pulls his handgun again. I rise to my feet to see what he’s looking at - Nico.
My brother is crouched over his wife who’s bleeding from the shoulder and temple. “We’re going to get the doc to you. I’ll get you to the hospital,” I hear Nico promise but she stares at the ceiling, unseeing, and my eyes well up with tears.
And, it’s then that Alessio raises his gun, aiming at my brother’s back.
“No,” I whisper harshly, grabbing his arm and using all my weight to hang off of it until he’s forced to lower the weapon. “NO!” I say more forcefully when he glares at me with that same murderous look. I don’t care. I’ll fight him to the death if he tries to raise this arm again.
His eyes glitter dangerously as he looks me up and down like a monster considering its next meal.
“Very well. Consider this your wedding gift, my blood-splattered bride, the only gift you’ll receive from me.
But tomorrow is another day and blood cries out for blood, one way or another,” he says before he turns his back on me, dismissively.
“Caterina!” I feel my knees giving way as Dante rushes to my side.
With a final anxious glance at Alessio stalking away, I turn back to where Nico is still hunched over Margareta.
Even with the doc attending to her now, I know she’s dying.
He speaks a few words to my father who nods.
They send for an ambulance even though that will mean police interference.
“The babies,” I sob, turning into Dante’s broad chest for comfort.
“We’ll see if anything can be done,” he says with that same monstrous calm my husband possesses.
Monsters, every one of them. The men I love, the men I hate, and my husband.
I’m surrounded and there’s only one escape from them, one I know now I’ll never purposely choose as I watch my dying sister-in-law find hers.
Alessio has been dealing with his own men but he strides back over, staring at Dante as though he’d love nothing more than to slit his throat.
“I’ll handle my wife, Morelli. Go help your own fucking people.
” Dante stares back at him, that dangerous grin playing on his lips, but a word from my father has him relinquishing his hold on me.
“Armando, take her to the mansion at once,” Alessio tells my bodyguard no sooner than Dante has walked off.
Without a word, Armando leads me away, placing me in the backseat of the limo I arrived in earlier.
That feels like a lifetime ago. We were supposed to ride the elevator up to the hotel’s bridal suite for the bedding, but I’m being sent to the De Luca family’s stronghold instead.
“I never even saw my mother or the others to know if they’re safe,” I murmur to myself as Armando checks his gun and tells the driver to go.
***
My eyes are red but dry when the electronic gate beeps and swings open, cameras following the car through.
The De Lucas all live together under one enormous roof.
They take the wolf symbolism of the Trio seriously, citing that a pack sticks close together.
Their palatial residence with its sprawling grounds is in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Las Vegas.
I haven’t been here since our betrothal dinner though I know the bulk of my belongings were sent over yesterday.
I couldn’t eat breakfast, and I never had a bite of the dinner that was to be served at the reception. Doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry. I’m not sure I ever will be again. I feel… lost.
Armando is silent for a change as he leads me into the mansion, deftly punching in the security code. He knows this house far better than me. I’m a stranger here and now it’s supposed to be my home. His phone rings and he answers. I can tell from the few words he says it’s important.
“The other girls? Valdo?” I ask when he ends the call.
“All safe.” I breathe a sigh of relief. “Your mother is as well.”
Emotion starts to overtake me. I feel like a child desperately wanting my mommy. “Margareta?”
“Dead. The twins are being delivered via cesarean at the hospital but we don’t know yet.”
I swallow my urge to cry, silently saying a prayer for them. “Was that one of my brothers or my father who called?”
He stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “I don’t answer to them. That was Alessio. He wanted you to know. Come, Caterina.”
He escorts me upstairs to Alessio’s suite.
Not much has changed from my one trip here.
My eyes are drawn to the full-length mirror beside the walk-in closet.
I look like I stumbled out of a horror film.
My fairytale wedding dress is bloody and torn.
My carefully styled hair is a bird’s nest, strands of it sticking to my cheek from the dried blood. My eyes are wild and frightened.
Drawing a deep breath, I pull the knife from my corset again to complete the image in the reflection. “I look like Satan’s bride,” I say quietly to myself, sounding amused. Sounding deranged.
“No, you are Alessio’s but, yes, you do.” I jump, having already forgotten Armando was even in the room. He smirks at my knife. “Your brother is said to be the best with a blade. I suppose it makes sense he’d give you one.”
I spin toward Armando, not even sure what I mean to do. “It’s mine, my birthday gift.” What if he takes it? It’s my last defender.
He steps closer but carefully. “I wouldn’t advise knife play this early in the marriage. Not with Alessio.” I gasp as his meaning hits, and something unexpectedly gentle flashes in Armando’s dark brown eyes. “Hey, I was teasing you. I know my friend better than he knows himself sometimes.”
Whatever that’s supposed to mean, I don’t find out because Armando leaves, saying I should shower and rest, that he’ll be guarding my door to keep me safe until Alessio arrives.
I can’t shower. I can’t even easily remove this dress on my own. The adrenaline has bled off by now and a mixture of shock and heavy fatigue sweeps over me. The bed calls to my tired limbs, but I don’t dare lay in it.
Choosing a corner facing the door, I sink down, my full skirt billowing around me.
Clutching my knife, I wait for my husband to arrive, remembering the look in his eyes when I stopped him from shooting Nico in the back.
‘Blood cries out for blood, one way or another.’ Shivering, I curl into a ball but I’m past tears.
Bibi warned me not to cry anyway, didn’t she?
The day wears on as I keep my vigil, wondering what’s happening without the strength to seek any answers. The room grows dark, and my eyelids grow heavier. Night is upon us. It would nearly be time for the bedding if the day had gone according to plan.
I’ve nodded off when the sound of a banging door draws a scream from my throat. But it’s not an unknown man with a gun like in the nightmare I was having. It’s my husband, covered in blood and stalking toward me with a twisted grin and fury burning in his eyes.
“Finally time for the bedding,” he drawls.
Terrified, I scramble to my feet and shake my head. A breathy ‘no’ slips past my lips as I point my knife at him, preparing for what will likely be a futile resistance.
“What’s this, my darling? Only a steel kiss to welcome your hero home?” he mocks as he keeps coming ever closer.