Chapter 31 #2
His endless eyes widen past the point of an abyss, sucking me in. “Weaknesses get you killed .”
Weaknesses…
Weaknesses get you…
It takes me just a moment to grasp it, to piece together the disturbing truth behind those words. Accept why he’s placed them in the same sentence as my mother. It requires understanding the demon in front of me to come to terms with what he’s telling me.
My legs straighten until I'm standing, gaping down at him.
As he tells me we’re the only two left.
As he tells me he’s stolen my entire family from me.
“You… didn’t.”
“She proved she couldn’t be trusted.”
“ No .”
“I hope you still think it was worth it.”
His lips keep on moving, but I can’t hear or see him. All I perceive is the pounding in my ears and the fury of my heart in my chest. The gruesome deaths I envision waging on his body to replace this numbness that is spreading through me like a disease.
I'm blind, the weight in my palm gone as I lose hold of the blade.
No.
Grab it.
This is what he wants.
But I'm frozen, only conscious enough to smell this decaying building, remembering it in its imposing prime. The whir of the air conditioning seeping through the vents. The residue of fogged tobacco and lead. Rotting asbestos. The faintness of blood and death.
Suddenly, I am no longer the predator.
I'm the blind doe, frozen in headlights.
And as severely as my mind rations, begging to stay, the body rules the heart. Like a coward, I stagger out of the building, unable to see until I'm free of the overly bright walls, the bars that caged me for months. I can hardly fathom how, even for a second, I had the courage to go inside.
Let alone face Vito Marin.
As vision returns to me, I see my mother at every stage of my life. It doesn’t matter if we had already said goodbye. It doesn’t matter that there was no longer room for her in my heart. She was there once—when I was a girl, too young for them to expect anything from me.
Mamma .
Calloused hands cradle my face. “Sophie.”
“Let… go … of… me .”
The words loose like gunshots, striking at anything near.
The hands release me.
The bourbon burns as it drifts down my gullet.
As I eagerly drain the last drops from the crystal decanter, likely a cursed heirloom, the room spins, the air feels hot, and the liquor has numbed my senses enough not to care.
Xavier could easily break down the door if he wanted, yet he only knocked once. When I didn’t respond, he didn’t try again.
Weaknesses get you killed .
Losing myself in the blaze within the hearth, my life swirls amid the flames.
Sophia, the daughter. Mamma . The wife. The sister. The guilty. Mamma. Thomas.
Weaknesses get you killed.
The flames become the people I have left, consumed by a deathly inferno, and I'm raging, unable to be smothered. My skin is wet to the touch, sleek with sweat.
More liquor. More will end this.
More will make me forget her. Mamma.
Him. Thomas .
My wrist tremors as I pour the golden liquid into a glass, spilling it onto the mahogany.
Heavy footsteps carve the same agonizing path through the crack under the door.
His weakness… is me.
Weaknesses get you killed.
My eyes reopen, almost reluctant to part.
Everything is heavy. Cold .
Even the ground.
The shrill whine of an alarm and my vision returns, my gaze settling on the ceiling.
Brick. White painted brick.
My chest sinks enough to meld itself into the cement.
“ No ,” I breathe.
Beside me, chained to the wall, Thomas stares past me, a horrified expression distorting his beautifully gaunt face. No .
I was just home. Xavier was there.
I wasn’t… I was free.
The metal cell bars of the enclosure creak, and I physically flinch, just strong enough to turn my face toward the sound. Tears scale the sides of my face into my matted hair.
I hear what fear sounds like falling from my lips—pure, petrified terror as I recognize the faces of my captors.
“A dream,” I tell myself quickly. “It’s a dream.”
“Get off her!” Thomas screams.
I'm closing my eyes, begging for this to end. To wake up.
All that pleading crumbles to nothing as they mount me, and I find myself wide-eyed, ensnared in the gaze of a soldier who despises me. I’m gasping, losing sight of everything but this prison.
Maybe I’ve been here all this time…
Maybe I’ve woken from a dream. Just a dream…
Maybe I never left this cell. Xavier never came.
Thomas’s wails make this worse—so much worse.
I’m recoiling from wandering hands, shaking my head.
No. No .
Pushing, I feel something cold and hard, and it’s strapped to the man’s leg. My cries go unheard while vile hands force my face down into the concrete.
There are others.
They’re everywhere, willing voyeurs to my pain.
My fingers surround the gun at his thigh, ripping the thin strap that secures it to him. I’m vibrating, my entire body. My teeth grind enough to feel pain as I, with a glance at Thomas, helpless in chains, guide the muzzle of the gun to a stomach and pull the trigger.
Blood projects, painting my clothes, but I'm pushing to my feet.
Screaming.
Wailing as if possessed.
Shooting.
Just shooting.
Die .
Fucking die .
It doesn’t matter if I have their eyes when I do it. I target their backs, their knees, their disgusting faces. I feel around for the blade on the ground, using that too. I steal the smiles from their revolting mouths. Steal the breath from their lungs—breath they never deserved.
Some fight me off. My hands disarm them, absorbing their strikes. The cutting blade ends up in their neck, and I twist it for pure enjoyment, to watch the blood build like a river and overflow. Die .
One of them, near the door, speaks.
“ Sophie .”
The moving shadow deflects my blows, slamming me into the pure white wall.
All I can smell is blood and bleach and death.
I drive my knee into him, twist his arm, and slam my foot down on the back of his leg. He pushes me off balance with a shove to my legs, but also catches me before my skull cracks against the pavement.
Hands are suddenly enfolding my head.
“Cara mia,” he breathes. “Baby, please.”
My body succumbs to weakness, shutting down completely until all that resonates is the thunderous pounding of my pulse, mingling with the anguished screams of men. Amidst all this chaos, a voice of reason desperately whispers against my face, trembling with fear.
“Sophie, wake up .”
My eyes reopen slow—and then all at once.
Xavier .
His jaw tightens as he shuts his eyes, experiencing a fleeting rush of relief that soon vanishes. When they snap open, that moment of solace is long gone, replaced by a paralyzing dread that freezes in his gaze as he stares past me.
That’s when I see it .
White brick walls, crumbling from years of battering.
Bars. Only some of them are still erect.
The screaming hasn’t ceased.
Xavier’s hand slides out from under me as I shift on the cement, my palms pressing into warm, wet blood. Pools of it covering cold cement and I realize what I’ve done.
There are bodies everywhere .
Some are clearly dead. Some are very much alive.
As I hear Xavier’s bellow echoing for help, his frantic plea to keep them alive at all costs sends a chill racing down my spine.
I’m paralyzed, every sore muscle refusing to move, while Bo’s gentle touch on my head feels strangely out of place in the horror unfolding around us.
He rushes past me, intent on reaching one of Xavier’s guards from his personal detail who lies crumpled on the ground, blood oozing from a jagged stab wound in his shoulder.
Vomit expels from me like the blood from these soldiers.
Monster .
It’s all I can think of. The blood on my hands, barely any of it mine.
My eyes scan the room for the most important corpse, but the gaze I wished would be frozen forever is staring directly at me.
My father remains exactly where I left him, not a limb stirred, as if he had accepted the death I was waging against everything around me.
Yet, a smile lingers on his dark, twisted lips.
Pride . It’s pride.
I'm vomiting again, scrambling to my feet, hearing Xavier roar my name as I lunge through the doors into the night.
Just a few steps outside, I’m halted by a gun lodged to my forehead. I freeze, confronted by one of my bleeding victims.
Another gun is instantly cocked behind me, followed by a frigid voice, a bottomless rasp that promises death. “Pull that trigger, Sergio… and I will kill everyone you have ever loved.”
Not an ounce of remorse. Hesitation .
Xavier Marcello means every word.
“She has to pay for what she did!”
Kill me, Sergio. I'm sure my eyes are begging for it.
The made man hesitates, torn between my resolve and the only person who will never let me die.
Sergio doesn’t make the decision fast enough. Xavier fires a shot right into his chest and then into his skull to ensure he stays down.
All I can do is watch it happen. This devastation I’ve just reaped on the lives of everyone I love.
With two bullets, Xavier forsakes his own men.
The guards and soldiers and capos and ranked men watch in horror as their comrade collapses lifelessly into the cold dirt, while their Boss—their leader —proves who his loyalty truly lies with—someone who doesn’t deserve it.
Everything changes in the span of a single moment.
Chaos .
Men abandoning their posts, fleeing for the streets to save themselves. Men charging through the lawn for revenge.
And I keep hearing my father’s words.
Weaknesses get you killed.
He was right.
Xavier is tackled to the ground. They snatch my legs next, pulling us from one another. Driven by the primal instinct to survive, my arms compel me to respond and fight them off. Every bullet Xavier fires into the men who dominate us sends a tremor through my body.
Just survive.
Just save him .
My fist cuts sharply into one of their throats.
I toss my legs around him, spinning until he’s pinned beneath me.
It’s then that hands capture my arms, lifting me off of him and through the lawn.
Dante . I'm frozen seeing his face, determined to get me out of the battle.
He crosses the terrace, dragging me along, tossing me into the house, and slams the door shut with a firm “ Hide .”
Tears scale my face. The fact that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was trapped in hell and just wanted to escape, is something that no one will ever understand but me. Xavier may never even know why I ruined our lives. In one moment, we lost everything. There’s no coming back from this.
Xavier must know it.
It’s why he fired a bullet into his soldier instead of me.
Struggling to breathe, I somehow manage to stand, hearing someone run into the house behind me. With only enough time to gasp, Xavier has seized my hand, drenched in the blood of his men and some of his own.
In the front room, he lets me go and shoots for the potted plant. Digging into the soil, he pulls out a bag and retrieves a set of keys from the wall. “Get out of here. Go to Dante’s. Get Mimi out of the house. They’ll hit there first. I’ll meet you?—”
No . “I’m not leaving?—”
His reply snaps with a whip’s intensity. “I’m not asking.”
Xavier flings the front door open, but instead of guiding me into the night, his arm extends forward, his gun aimed beyond the porch. His spine stiffens, a warning sign that something sinister lurks just beyond my sight.
He takes a step back. And then another.
“Strata.”
The moment the name slips coldly from Xavier’s lips, my eyes scour the room in search of a weapon, propelled purely by instinct. A lamp. One of his mother’s garden stakes. Then my gaze stills on the man blocking the exit—and the world nearly gives out from under me.
No.
It can’t be.
“ Isaac .”