Her Greed (Her Sins #1)

Prologue

PLAYLIST: MOUNT EVEREST – LAbrINTH

Palermo, Sicily

“You will not fucking touch me ever again,” I whisper darkly as my hands close around his throat, with my knee pressing into his groin.

You fucking bastard. On my fucking birthday.

He can’t fight me anymore with a pole stuck in his shoulder, me on him as drunk as he is.

My hands close even harder around his throat.

His face swells slightly, turning a bluish-red.

Just a little bit more.

His eyes roll back, and his body becomes limp.

But I don’t stop.

This time, it’ll be final.

I need this.

The revenge.

For all he has done.

I wait.

Our old grandfather clock is ticking relentlessly behind me.

Second, by second, by second.

And I know, it is done.

Finally, I let go.

I get up, take one last look at my mother on the floor, her eyes empty as his. Murdered by the husband, killed by the pretend family father, who is nothing but a fucking monster.

I pack a bag with the most essential stuff, grab all the cash I can find, take his drugs so I can sell them for my way into freedom, and then get to the basement.

I take whatever alcohol and chemicals labeled with “Caution, flammable,” we have, spill them over the floor, my parents' dead bodies, and the furniture, before I open the door, light a match, and flick it inside without one glance back.

Shall the hell burn him and never set his soul free.

The more distance I get between me and the house I grew up in, the more I realize what happened.

I stray through the streets of Palermo, not knowing what to do. I am a nobody. The child of a drug lord and a raped mother. One that was never wanted and should never exist.

I need to get out of here. Out of this country.

The problem is, I don’t even have a passport.

I sink to the ground in the darkness of a lonely alleyway, and only then do I realize how lost and lonely I am, and most of all, what I have done.

“Si pirdi?” I hear a woman ask if I am lost. I speak only a little Sicilian; we mostly spoke English at home because my mother is from the States.

Well, was.

Dead now.

“No, grazzi,” I say without looking up—I don’t want her to see how young I am. I am lost, but not in the way that woman expects. No one can ever know what I did tonight and who I am, otherwise I’ll vanish faster than I can say the word lost.

“You’re not from here,” says the woman in English. It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

“Iu sugnu,” I say, telling her I am from here. I was born here, but I don’t belong.

“Comu ti chiami?” she asks, and her hand finds my forearm. I don’t want to be touched, so I flinch and jump up. God damnit, why can’t you the fuck leave me alone?

My eyes wander up, just enough to see half of her face, otherwise hidden in the darkness and shadowed by a black hat. She is a beautiful lady, classy, with narrow eyes, dark hair, and a golden cross necklace dangling on her neck. Two other women are with her, lingering in the back.

My gut doesn’t like it, and my eyes widen. I need to get away.

“Are you in trouble?” she asks me.

“No,” I say and bring more distance between us.

Her eyes linger on me.

“Here,” she says, and walks up to me. I want to run. She grasps my hand and places a red, pearl bracelet in it. “In case you ever are.”

I stare at her.

“Who are you?” I asks.

“A nobody,” she says. “Coming to equalize what was never meant to be.”

A shudder runs over my arms.

I stare at her before my eyes wander to the bracelet in my hand.

I have heard it before.

To equalize what was never meant to be.

She is a myth.

A well-told one here in Sicily.

My father once told me about her.

I stare at the pearls. It’s hard to tell what it is in the darkness, but there is something engraved on the pearls.

I look up.

But she is gone.

Vanished into the many alleyways of Palermo.

And so do I, slipping on the bracelet.

Queens, New York

January 10, 2011

“I know a guy,” says the girl I met in the building I live in, somewhere in Queens.

It’s a room in the basement, cheap, paid cash, and no one knows anyone here; everyone’s a nobody, and no questions are asked.

I don’t even know her name. She’s on drugs, I can tell from the way she moves and speaks. I know how it looks, because I have seen my father use every fucking day.

“He pays well,” she says, “He just wants you to hang out with him. Here’s the number you can call. He can help you get legit papers, too.”

“I don’t know,” I say hesitantly. “I don’t want to go to a random guy's house.”

I don’t like men. I hate them. All of them.

Maybe I don’t know much about life at the age of fourteen, but growing up in a drug house and a rapist father taught me one thing: Men are the most disgusting there is on this planet.

But I need money.

And papers.

There is nothing I have to lose.

“Okay,” I say, taking the number. “Have you been?” I ask her.

“Sure. Got three hundred bucks every time.”

“Did he get you papers, too?”

“No, but for that girl and her fam from the third floor left, the blonde one with the seven sisters. That guy has friends in high places.”

“How old is he?” I ask.

“I dunno. Looks like a dinosaur. Grey hair an all. Maybe fifty?”

My gut clenches.

But times are desperate, because I have no more money.

I got reasonably good at stealing, got cash, a laptop, some clothes, and jewelry I could sell.

I need papers and some money, I tell myself.

Also, he can’t be any worse than my father or the disgusting piece of shit I let fuck me so I could get to the States with a freight ship. Not to forget the man I had to stab when the ship arrived in the Port of Baltimore.

I thought I’d die that day.

There is no hell worse than the one I already lived through. What else could be there?

So I call the number.

Manhattan

September 15, 2010

I can’t move my body.

Why can’t I fucking move?

My senses don’t belong to me.

I can’t see properly.

Where am I?

It’s the nightmare again.

Or reality.

I don’t know at this point.

There are people.

Voices.

Men.

Touch.

Someone gabs me.

I have to move.

I have to.

I need to get away.

Far, far away from him.

But I can’t.

More touch.

Pain.

Something in me.

Again.

And again.

And again.

A hand around my throat.

I can’t breathe.

Something spreads my jaw.

I close my eyes.

I can’t.

Something is hammering in my mouth and throat.

I choke and gag.

But I am not allowed to.

Pain.

There is no more air.

And everything becomes blissfully blank.

“Here, drink,” he tells me as I become conscious. I can’t open my eyes; everything hurts. Pain is everywhere. I drink from a straw that’s shoved in my mouth.

And everything goes blank again.

Manhattan

December 12, 2011

I open my eyes.

I don’t know where I am.

His voice.

My mind is fuzzy.

There is nothing but pain.

I feel something wet underneath me.

Something is leaking out of me, and when I look down—

Horror, endless horror, spreads through me.

Endless pain surges through my body.

This is real.

This is the reality.

I am pregnant.

And I have no idea how I got here.

I try to think, try to remember what happened.

But I can’t focus.

The pain comes in waves.

I can’t breathe properly.

I scream.

And scream again.

In me that need to push.

He tells me to push.

And so I do.

I can’t.

My mind separates itself from my body.

There is no me anymore.

A baby slips out of me.

Crying baby.

I don’t know what to do.

I just can’t.

I can’t look at it.

It has a thing attached to it, a thing that’s still in me.

He’s doing something to it.

I can’t see properly.

I don’t hear the crying anymore.

Everything is so far away.

I feel like dying.

Maybe I can just die here.

I have to push again, and more stuff comes out of me.

He’s walking away.

With my baby.

I want to know where he’s taking it.

But no words come from my mouth.

I am so tired.

I should just close my eyes.

This must be a nightmare.

There is air. Cold air. I become aware of my surroundings. I am freezing.

I open my eyes.

It is night.

Endless pain in my chest.

I am lying between two houses behind a dumpster.

My fingers dig into frozen ground.

My body is in pain.

I bang my head against the brick wall behind me.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

Warm fluid runs down my back.

I look down.

I’m dressed in a short dress, nothing else.

Blood is leaking from a wound in my chest.

My belly. It is still swollen.

I had a baby.

Its cries haunt my mind.

I don’t feel the coldness anymore.

I am so disgusted.

I am a monster.

He is a monster.

I get up.

Weak.

My legs are shaking.

Bare feet.

My chest hurts so much.

I can’t really breathe.

But I walk.

Like a robot.

My feet carry me.

I see a fire station.

I make it till there.

Before everything becomes blank.

People are fussing over me when I wake.

“Conscious,” says someone.

I look up.

EMTs.

No.

They can’t take me.

I still don’t have papers.

Papers.

Papers, I repeat in my mind. And suddenly everything comes back.

I called the number and went to that guy's apartment.

That guy.

Jared Sutton.

He promised papers if I do what he says.

Jared Sutton.

I see his face crystal clear in my mind.

Silence in me.

I get up.

“Please, Miss, you need to rest and calm down,” says one of the EMTs.

No. I don’t need to calm down.

I need to get away.

And I run.

As fast as I can until I collapse in some park, hidden behind bushes.

I am freezing so badly that my fingers are white, turning blue.

I don’t care.

I could die here.

I should die here.

My life is such a mess, it is not worth living.

My eyes rest on my blue hands.

I lie down on the cold ground and look at the sky, illuminated by the light framing the park, with only the brightest stars visible.

I cannot end a thought.

The pain in my chest is killing me.

I stretch my arm, almost as if I can grab the stars above me.

My bracelet slides down my arm.

The bracelet I have been wearing since the night in Palermo.

The bracelet that somehow meant peace to me.

In case you are ever in trouble.

I take it off with trembling hands.

The mysterious woman who came to equalize.

I will never forget her words. Never.

I could die here.

Or I could make the man who did all this to me pay.

Images run through my mind, images of murder.

Murdering Jared Sutton and every single person who was involved with him. Just like I murdered my father.

My body gets up.

I search through dumpsters for clothes and finally find some at a church, in bags. I take the first best thing.

I find I am still in New York, in Manhattan.

A man walks towards me. I deliberately stumble into him and steal his phone from his coat pocket.

Blood leaks from my chest into my clothes.

I disappear around the corner into another block and hide between two houses.

It writes Blackberry on it.

I look at the date. It’s December 12, 2011.

I have no idea where the past year went.

How is it December?

My mind is in chaos.

I type in the number engraved on the bracelet.

The number does not exist.

Only then do I realize I might need the country code.

I type 0039 before the number. It’s the only one I know.

It rings.

“Yes,” answers a woman.

“You once gave me a bracelet in the streets of Palermo,” I say. She might not even remember it. This is all stupid. “In case I ever was in trouble.”

“Are you?” asks the woman.

“I kind of am,” I say. “I am in need of equalizing.”

A moment's pause on the other end.

“Where are you?”

“In New York City. I was—a man—he—they—“ I stop as my chest clenches. I have to roll my shoulder to remove the sensation.

“I will send you a location to the phone you are calling me with. Get there. Wait for a Signura Vittare.”

Vittare.

I have heard that name before, in my father’s stories. So I was right. It is her.

“You are Rosalia Vittare,” I say. Every Sicilian has heard of her. And everyone knows to be scared of her, because she comes to take.

“I am,” she says.

And I know, I will get my revenge.

Whatever I have to do to get it, I will.

Because the only thing that is keeping me breathing is the knowledge that one day, I will murder Jared Sutton just the way I murdered my father.

I want to see the light fading from their eyes.

Want to watch them realize they are about to die.

Every. Single. One. Of. Them.