44. Grit Porridge & No Washcloths
Grit Porridge & No Washcloths
Bianca
“Iknow we might die, but who did you piss off to feed us this mess?” Stephanie’s face twists at the brown-gray slop dripping from her spoon. “I can’t tell if it’s grits or porridge.”
“It’s probably poisoned,” I grunt from the sliding glass door that refuses to budge.
A survivalist camp will see me. I’ll be damned if I go through this shit ever again.
We’ve been trapped here since yesterday.
The gas that knocked us out didn’t wear off until this morning when we woke up on a bed.
The room resembles a four-star hotel with a view of the sea, which would be a destination Stephanie and I would consider for a girls’ trip if we weren’t sitting ducks waiting to be killed.
Our phones are gone. So are our shoes, which is weird. Who gasses someone unconscious but cares enough about their future victims scuffing the floor with their heels?
I shift my weight to push against the glass harder. Damn this door.
Steph crosses her legs. “Any luck?”
“Negative,” I heave through another push. My pencil skirt strains over my thighs. “Come.” Grunt. “On.” Grunt.
“Let me try.” Steph glides over from the bed, looking refreshed in yesterday’s button-down dress, like we didn’t get kidnapped together. Benny’s dried cum is still on my thighs. My matted curls shoot every way but the right direction, and the bowel of an asshole is slow cooking on my breath.
I’m tired. I need food, I want my freedom, and I miss my husband.
“The door won’t budge,” Stephanie says, out of breath like she hadn’t seen me fighting for my life to open it. “We can try to break it.”
“Not with all those goons roaming the yard.” There are at least ten with guns. My chest caves in with an exhale. “What if this is it?”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m scared, Steph.”
I’m trying my best to stay positive, but I’m freaking the fuck out. What if I never see Vince again, or Benny? I never got to say goodbye. I’m finally happy, and that happiness is being taken from me. Life is a heartless bitch with no edges.
Stephanie crosses her arms. “Do I need to smack some sense into you?”
“Bitch, I said I’m scared. Smack me and see what happens.” I wish she would.
Her grin widens. “There’s my sis. We’re getting out of here. Sally is coming. He doesn’t play about you and is probably racking up felonies as we speak.”
It’s a miracle the ozone layer is still intact. Knowing Benny, he’s likely burned down at least two buildings and shot eighteen people. It shouldn’t turn me on, but I’ve always loved a man who protects the person he loves. My husband goes to the extreme, but he leads with action.
I hug my best friend. “I love you,” I say, squeezing her tighter.
“We don’t give up, even when we’re scared. Get those nerves out so we can fight. Mine are gone after taking a long shit while you were sleeping.”
“Steph,” I cackle.
“You know how my stomach gets in times of duress,” she says. “So what’s the plan?”
“Why do I have to make the plan?”
“You’re the logical one and a lot more patient. If I had my gun, I would’ve shot everyone in this bitch twice. I’m almost offended that nobody’s tied us up. Do they think we’re not dangerous?”
“They’re about to find out.” My eyes drift over the rolling lawn. “We don’t have weapons, but we can set up traps for when our kidnapper reveals himself.”
Steph follows me to the nightstand. “How do you know he will?”
I rip the metal table lamp out of the socket. “Because all arrogant pricks need the last word.”
“Well I know who didn’t kidnap us. Nary a washcloth was in that bathroom.”
We eye each other and say, “Mhm.”
“Today is a good day for me to catch my first body.” Steph touches her toes in a long stretch. “The tarot lady said I’m not dying until I’m ninety-four, anyway.”
I keep my mouth shut not to say anything about the fifteen-dollar reading she gets on Reisterstown Road. We need every assurance that we’re getting out of here alive.
“Help me fill the tub,” I say.
I suck in a ragged breath, pressing my palms into my eyes. Hunger from the lack of an adequate meal slides through the headache, pissing me off all over again.
The bedroom door creaks open.
“Steph,” I whisper from my position behind the bathroom door. She’d pulled two bobby pins from her wig to pick the room lock.
I shrink at the heavy footsteps that don’t match my best friend’s.
Shit.
The bathroom has no closet to squeeze into, nor a shower curtain for the tub.
There’s nowhere to hide.
The air in my lungs evaporates as black boots layered in dust breach the bathroom’s threshold.
“You,” I say through a shudder.
His head tilts as his gray-green eyes move down my chest. “I would’ve thought you figured it out by now. You had a feeling it was me, yes?”
I gulp and walk back at his advance until my butt hits the closed toilet lid. “I had my suspicions. It had to be someone privy to Benny’s business. You had access to the warehouses and shipments. You’ve been staring me in the face this whole time.”
Luiggi squats in front of me, his crooked nose only a strike away.
“You are very smart. Do you like this place?” He motions toward the stone bathroom decorated in soft nudes.
“I helped my business partner keep the purchase a secret, or so I thought until you pulled my work emails that no one thinks I use. Clever girl you are.”
I shift away from his touch. “Why are you doing this?” My voice shakes from the nerves suffocating my chest. Luiggi never shows his emotions. Right now, he looks purely evil.
“Ah, you want a motive,” he says, his voice flat. “I’m taking what’s mine. It was only a matter of time before someone knocked Salvatore from his throne. He thinks he’s untouchable, that no one will challenge him for power. That’s what I want, Bianca. Power.”
“He loves you like I brother,” I plead.
Luiggi sucks his teeth. “He only cares about himself and what others can do for him. At least he did before you came along.” A crooked smile tilts the scar across his brow. He strokes my cheek, turning my face sideways. “I almost talked him out of selling you.”
“Benny?”
“He refused to expand the business. With him out of the way, we can.”
My stomach churns. “You and Tino?” I jump at his laugh. It’s cold and calculated, like him.
“What’s left of Tino’s body is downstairs. The evidence of his murder leads back to Salvatore.”
“I don’t understand why you w—“
I gasp at the hand around my neck. “You think you’re some fucking savior?” He drags me to my feet. I wince at his grip tightening around my throat and claw at his forearm. “Don’t insult my intelligence with your games.” He squeezes harder. “Your charm won’t work on me the way it did on Scemo.”
I swing my knee up to collide with his balls.
The bastard’s grin widens.
“I like it rough,” he sneers.
Stephanie jumps onto his back. “How ’bout this, bitch?” She stuffs her panties into his mouth.
“Aargh!”
Her legs lock around Luiggi’s body, trapping his arms as her hands form a rear-naked choke. He spins left, then right, to shake her off.
Vince taught me that when fighting a larger opponent in tight quarters to close the distance to neutralize their reach. The double jab I follow with a cross and an elbow explodes across Luiggi’s face. He swings wildly at a slower pace, with Steph raining elbows to the back of his head.
“Die, you dickhead!” She squeezes his neck with both hands.
He chokes on her underwear still lodged in his mouth and loses his footing with the hook I send to his body.
“Now!” I shout.
Luiggi fights against my shoves to his chest. Steph pulls him back while I push to get his strong ass into the tub. I kick his knee out. He wails around cotton soaked in gray goo before white foam spills from his mouth.
That’s new.
Steph jumps off him, pushing his shaking body into the water. I turn on the table lamp I plugged into an outlet above the sink and lift it over my head.
“Girl, what the fuck?!” Stephanie screams at Luiggi’s hand on the back of her head. She struggles to lean forward and unclips her wig from his fist before I toss the lamp into the water.
We step back as Luiggi’s body convulses. His skin blisters and blackens, emitting a nasty odor.
Steph’s lips screw at the smoke wafting from her hair floating across the water. “I liked that wig.”
“What the hell was in your panties?” I ask.
“Some of that grit porridge,” she says, out of breath, a hand pressed to her exposed wig cap. “I wanted to make it extra juicy for you to get the jump. They really tried to poison us.”
Ain’t that some shit?
“Wasn’t that Sally’s head guy?” She peeks at his lifeless body.
I nod. “His third-in-command. He has a partner, but I don’t know who it is.”
Steph wipes the sweat from her brow. “Well, whoever it is can join him in hell. Come on. Super Mario Dickhead left the bedroom door open.”
“Where were you when he came in?”
“Under the bed,” she says without shame.
An explosion rattles the side of the house.
Stephanie and I dive to the floor. We crawl toward the balcony as gunfire cracks through the air in sharp bursts.
“Damn, they’re active,” she says at the cemetery of dead men across the yard. Bodies are everywhere, with limbs blown off. “Told you he was coming.”
Benny and Andrea are in black tactical gear and bulletproof vests, sending people to the afterlife with their assault rifles. Drones fly ahead of them to fire at anyone who isn’t marked as friendly. A few hover low to surround their team and an older man tearing into people with a cleaver.
Tears fall.
He’s here.
I scramble to my feet and scream at the drone flying up to our balcony door.
“Hi, my love,” Benny’s voice says through the recording. “Come down front. I’ll see you soon.”
This man.
“In case I don’t tell you later, your husband loves you,” Stephanie says.
I smile. “I know. Let’s go home.”
We rush out of the bedroom door, look left, then right, before sprinting toward the steps. I cover my mouth to conceal a scream at a guard’s lifeless body at the base of the staircase.
“Ew, his throat is missing,” I whisper.
Screams pierce the background. Another bomb goes off outside with more gunfire.
I frown.
Should we stay upstairs?
Stephanie side-eyes me.
The way your man is throwing grenades, there might not be an upstairs.
I tip my chin to move ahead and freeze at the rapid approach of hard footsteps.
Snort.
Hades barrels around the corner with his tail wagging.
“My baby!” I crouch down to hug his bulletproof vest. Isn’t he cute?
Ares ambles over and drops a hand next to my foot.
I shriek, cringing away from the random limb. These dogs are covered in blood, likely having the time of their lives chewing on people. “Steph?”
She lifts a hand as she vomits into a plant in the corner. Ares walks next to her to eat the contents of her stomach from the dirt. “Nasty.” Retch. “Ass.” Retch. “Dogs.” She gags.
“How are you a nurse?” I tease.
She raises a middle finger, folding over to puke again.
Hades nudges me to move.
“Take me to Daddy,” I say.
The living room would win a decorating award if it weren’t for the Jackson Pollock spatter of blood, guts, and intestines across the once ivory space.
“Did you do this?” Hades wags his tail and lifts his chin.
The dogs are going to therapy with Benny.
They take off through a shattered glass door and head for the pool in the backyard.
“I need a vacation from my vacation.” Stephanie dry heaves.
“Join the club,” I mumble.
We sidestep more bodies, guts, and glass. Benny is halfway across the yard, cutting the distance with his stride.
Muscles flared.
A glower baring his teeth.
Blood everywhere.
We’ll both need long showers tonight, but he never looked finer and more menacing.
Stephanie lifts a tired hand. “I’ll go start the car.”
I don’t get the chance to cross the threshold. My head snaps back from a hand gripping my hair.
A gun clicks.
“Niece.”