Her Wrath (Her Sins #3)

Prologue

PLAYLIST: MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT – ELLEY DUHé

“Did you really believe I would not notice?” I ask the man kneeling at my feet in a puddle of his own blood.

“Please, Rosaslia, I didn’t—“ begs the man with his bloodshot eyes, sweat running down his temples, infame!

“You didn’t what? Didn’t mean to besmear them with your filth? Children! They were children! You are a liar, schifu. Taking them. Taking my money,” I say in a derogatory tone. “I know everything, everything. And you will pay with your blood for it.”

My neck pulsates dangerously.

“He made me,” the man pleads. “Giuseppe, it was on his orders! You know he cannot be denied.”

“It does not move a hair on me on whose orders it was,” I say. “It was your dirty cazzo inside of them. Your hands that touched what was mine. Your soul that betrayed my trust. Now, tell me where it is.”

“Why would I? You’ll kill me anyway.”

“Yes,” I say with a voice as dark as it is dangerous. “But I can do it fast with a bullet in your head or slowly, by ripping the skin of your body, piece by piece, by piece.”

The man’s face falls.

“Endless pain. For days that will feel like years,” I add. “Where is it?”

“It’s gone,” he says. “I used it for the shipment.”

“I don’t believe a single word out of your filthy mouth,” I say and press the gun into his forehead. “Try again.”

“It’s the truth. I swear on the life of my daughter.”

“Your daughter means nothing to you,” I say and spit in his face. “You fucked girls younger than her, why not touch her?”

I see his eyes flicker into a detached stare.

“Exactly,” he says, and I cannot listen to the man any longer.

I take a pair of pliers from the bag, grasp his tied hand, and crush his fingers with it. He screams. Not enough.

“I am going to cut off your penis,” I say as I open his trousers and fumble out the disgusting thing.

“Nooooo!” he shouts and tries to plead with me, but I know no mercy. In all my thirty-seven years on this planet, I have never shown it, and I will never do. Mercy is for the fools, because a tainted soul will never learn.

Rapists will stay rapists. Abusers will stay abusers. And thieves will stay thieves. There is no mercy for those who take what was never theirs. His screams of pain rip through the room as the pliers close around his penis.

“I hope you will rot in hell,” I whisper darkly.

He screams more and more, and at some point, I just can’t listen to his pathetic whining anymore. So I take my gun and pull the trigger. First, to shoot his groin. Just for the fun of it, and then in his chest, exactly where his heart is.

I don’t care about the money. What I care about is this—the view of his dead body. He was a dead man the moment he opened his zipper to prove to Giuseppe his worth by taking the girls.

“Good work,” I say as I turn to the young woman watching my every move. I have been training her for years now. It was she who finally tracked him down, because her skills to track anyone down go way beyond the abilities I will ever have.

“It took too long,” she says.

“Patience is what brings you far, hun. You, of all people, should know.”

“I do,” she says coldly as she removes the bullets from the man's chest. I never leave traces, because I am a shadow. And so is Kat.

“Do you need anything from him?” she asks.

“The money. Otherwise, make it beautiful for the victims.”

“I will,” she says, photographs him, and prepares everything to burn down the house. “I would have bathed him in acid.”

“You can do whatever you want with your prey; this was mine. Be done here in ten.”

I walk outside the house because I know Kat will do whatever is needed to my utmost satisfaction and take my golden cross necklace from my suit trousers.

I slide the chain through my fingers and rub it three times before I put it back around my neck.

I am a firm believer in God, the Lord, as He made me who I am.

I became what He needed, what the world made by men needed.

Why else would I have been born on All Saints Day with the gift of equalising distinct as mine?

I stare into the dullness of Berlin. I watch a group of young men sitting on the entrance steps leading to one of the multi-komplex houses, smoking pot.

Personally, I find Germans in general are very strange people, unemotional and nosy, no class, no style, no charisma—just like the city I am in. I do not wish to stay here any longer.

“Here,” Kat says, handing me a transparent bag. “His phone, DNA samples, photos, and the bullet.”

“Was there anything useful on it?”

“Nothing so far. I made a copy and will check it thoroughly when we are back. We should leave.”

We should. So I walk in my heels, sliding my hat on. We get into the car that is waiting for us.

“I need you to find the money,” I tell Kat. Not because I care much about the money itself, but because the money is a trail. A trail that leads ot the misdeeds of men.

“I have been wondering about that,” she says. “He was rather intent on his daughter, wasn’t he. What if he didn’t touch her, but gave her the money?”

“She’s twelve.”

“So what? I murdered my father when I was that age,” says Kat with a snort, and I consider her for a moment.

“Very well, find her. Track her, but keep your distance. She is too young if we’re wrong.”

“Rose,” says Kat, looking up from her laptop as she sits on the floor in the kitchen of my apartment in Manhattan, and I can see there is something wrong.

“What is it?” I ask, goosebumps spreading over my skin.

Kat bites her lip.

“What?” I repeat my question, more pressing.

“You need to see it yourself,” she says, and turns the laptop.

I get up, walk over to the open kitchen, squat, and stare at the screen. A photo on it—

My body freezes. My insides clench as I realise what it shows.

“I found it on his phone,” Kat says.

I want to curse, but there are no words as my breath flattens as the sensation of pain consumes my chest like a void.

“She killed him,” I whisper. “She killed my son.”

“Rose,” says Kat, her hand on my forearm, but I am not there. Images flash through my mind as I finally know how it happened. How he was taken from me.

Murderous rage burns through me.

And I know a single thing: I am going to murder this girl for everything she has taken from me. It’ll be slow, it’ll be painful, and I will not stop until I see the life fading from her eyes.

“Find her,” I say as I get up and turn, ice-cold rage consuming my heart. “And bring her. Whatever it takes.”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” says Kat on her return as she leans backwards against the rickety old stone railing leading down into the sure death. But she has always been one to walk on the thin line between life and death—something I quite enjoy.

“I can’t find a single trace leading to her,” she says, and stares into the bright blue sky of the Sicilian summer before we depart for the States. I am going to introduce her to an old friend of mine who will teach her further in close combat.

“And the wife? Her mother?”

“Nothing either. Both vanished. There is not a single trace since they left Berlin. No facials, no names, nothing.”

I am quite certain what it means. Antonio took my money and made his wife and daughter disappear with it because he knew what his daughter had done.

Anger resurfaces within me, and I regret murdering him quite fast. I should have indeed used Kat’s preferred interrogation and murder technique, which means a very slow and painful death.

But I also know that I will get my revenge. I always do.

“Here,” says Kat, and hands me a photo of Antonio’s daughter smiling broadly into the camera while she holds a small stuffed sloth in her arms. I see her face, and all I feel is the desire to crush her, kill her, make her pay for what she took from me.

“It’s the only thing I could find on her.”

I brush my thumb over the photo.

“It’s Guiseppe’s Masseria,” I say. I’d recognise his estate anywhere.

“It is,” Kat says. “Which is why I brought it to you.”

“Thank you,” I say. “So Antonio did indeed act on Giuseppe’s orders.”

“Looks like it.”

“I bet the money, the daughter and wife are there,” I say.

And I know I have to let it be for now, because I cannot touch Guiseppe. I will, one day, but that day will be a very costly one—one, I intend to delay as much as possible. When it comes, I’ll kill them all and take what was mine. His empire. And her life. Because I came to equalise.