Portia
Don Vito marches us out to the cars at gunpoint, the night’s cool air doing nothing to chase away the tremor still rocking me.
“Two cars,” one of the guards barks, shoving Maurizio, Adagio, and Jayla toward a black sedan idling near the gate. “You three, that one.”
“Rafael and the girl come with me,” Vito says. “The rest of you, follow behind.”
They force Rafael and me into the back of a second car, guards flanking us on either side, wrists bound tight enough to cut off circulation.
Vito settles into the front passenger seat, twisting around to watch us with those empty leather eyeholes, silent now, savoring whatever satisfaction he’s drawing from our fear.
The car pulls out onto the dark coastal road, headlights cutting through the night ahead of us, the B&B disappearing behind us far too quickly.
I work my wrists against the rope binding them, twisting slowly, careful not to draw attention while the guard beside me stares out the window instead of watching me closely enough. My small hands and stubborn joints finally pay off, the rope loosening just enough for me to slip one wrist free.
Rafael’s eyes find mine across the seat, and an understanding passes between us, one neither of us needs words to communicate.
Vito hasn’t stopped talking since we pulled away, recounting details of my birth father’s cowardice with a relish that makes my stomach churn. I force myself to breathe evenly, keeping my expression blank, letting him believe I’m broken.
“Your mother screamed the loudest,” he says conversationally. “The poor woman was caught by surprise.”
I refuse to respond, focusing on the rope loosening around my wrist.
The guard beside me shifts, checking a message on his phone. The last loop of rope gives way, my wrist finally free.
I wait for the opportune moment to make a move.
The guard on my left is still too distracted by his phone when I use my free hand to wrench his gun from its holster.
My fingers close around the grip before he fully registers what’s happening. I pull the trigger at the back of the head in front of me—the henchman that’s driving our vehicle—and the bang is deafening.
The car violently jerks, swerving hard across the narrow road, tires screeching against asphalt as we spin out of control.
The guard beside me grapples for his weapon back, but as the car spins and we veer out of control, it’s already too late.
The car slams into the guardrail with a force that throws me hard against the door, pain exploding through my shoulder as metal crumples around us. Glass rains down, tiny cuts stinging across my cheek and forearm, though I barely register the pain over the roar of blood in my ears.
Rafael’s used the opportunity I’ve created.
He throws himself at the guard, looping his bound arms around the guy’s neck. They wrestle in the back seat of the car ’til he’s snapped the guard’s neck and then pulled his hands free of the rope.
Then he kicks the backdoor open and yells, “Portia, now!”
I scramble across the car floor to make it out the ajar door. It’s not until I stumble to my feet that I realize how mangled the car really is.
It’s a twisted hunk of metal smoking from the engine, the windows shattered and the wheels still rotating. But we’re not the only survivors of the crash.
Don Vito emerges from the wreckage.
Blood streaks down from under the mask and one arm hangs uselessly at his side, though he still manages to stand, swaying but defiant despite the destruction surrounding him.
“You think this changes anything?” he wheezes. “You’ll never win, Rafael. There will always be another Bellucci. Another Il Diavolo. You can’t kill what I built—”
He collapses, crumpling to his knees on the asphalt.
Rafael crosses the distance between them in three strides, grabbing the mask and tearing it free from Don Vito’s face.
“You’ll be exactly like me eventually,” the Don rasps, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. “You already are. I made sure of that a long time ago.”
“You made a soldier.” Rafael crouches, gun in hand. The same gun I’d stolen from the guard. “I made myself into a man you never accounted for. The curse ends with you. Right here.”
He raises the stolen gun and fires point blank.
The sound echoes across the empty coastal road, and then everything goes still, the only movement the distant crash of waves against rocks below us.
He admires his former boss and mentor’s dead body, then turns and walks to the cliff’s edge. He hurls the devil mask out into the dark water below. It disappears under the waves within the next second.
Headlights appear behind us. My body tenses when I recognize the car pulling up, until I see Maurizio behind the wheel. Adagio’s in the passenger seat, and Jayla’s safely in the back.
“You’re alive.” Jayla gasps. She scrambles out, yanking me into a fierce hug the second I’m within reach. “We heard the shots. We thought—”
“We’re okay, Jay. I’m okay.”
Maurizio surveys the wreckage, grim satisfaction crossing his features. “Get in. We need to move before anyone else shows up.”
“What happened to you three?” I ask.
“Our driver got overconfident,” Adagio says. “Jayla distracted him. Asked him some question about his mother, of all things. Bought Maurizio enough time to break his neck before he registered what was happening.”
“You broke his neck,” I repeat.
“He got off easy. The other guard didn’t put up much of a fight after that. Adagio handled him.”
“I handled him extremely well, for the record,” Adagio adds, a slight grin to his mouth.
Jayla shakes her head, exhausted laughter bubbling up despite the horror of the night. “You’re both insane. I nearly had a heart attack.”
Adagio helps clear the last guard’s body from the road while Rafael and I climb into the back of their car.
I glance back once as we pull away, watching Vito’s body grow smaller in the distance, the coastal road empty and dark behind us.
It’s over.
I don’t know yet what that actually means, or what comes next for any of us, or even how I’m supposed to reconcile what I learned about Dad.
Vito’s dead, and with him, the immediate threat hanging over our heads for the past weeks. But grief doesn’t announce itself politely, nor does it wait for a convenient moment. It’s already gnawing away inside me, tangled up with relief in a way I don’t fully understand.
Rafael cups his hand over mine, and we sit in silence as we drive off, exhausted but committed as always.
For the first time in months, the immediate threat is gone, and we’ve officially survived. We’ve made it out of this war alive and well.
A sense of calm washes over me.
Tomorrow will bring its own reckoning. Tonight, I let myself have this instead.