Chapter 8 Rosalia
ROSALIA
PLAYLIST: YOU CAN RUN – ADAM JONES
Ishould have eliminated her as soon as we captured her. Kat may believe the girl is just an innocent bystander, but I know better. Sophie isn’t really Sophie. No ordinary girl could have done what she did. She is Antonella. Antonio Amato’s daughter.
Blinding rage burns within me like a spitting Etna, and although I’ve become more silent and patient over time, I still have my temperament. And that temperament erupts onto Kat.
I shout at her for taking my chance, for delivering her into Giuseppe’s hands, for taking her from me.
“Rose,” says Kat, unimpressed, and I curse at her in Sicilian, because I am beyond Rose. She lets me rant.
“Are you quite done?” she asks when I finally end my shouting of all those things that needed to be said.
“Quella bastarda di merda!” I shout. Whenever I am angry, my Sicilian nature shows most. All those years in the Americas and across Europe have done something to me, but anger is always connected to my roots.
“You’ll listen to me now,” she says. “She saw me. She knew I was there, and she did not draw Giuseppe’s attention to me. She distracted them. She is not on his side.”
“Didn’t we listen to the same audio?” I ask her, shouting into the phone, enraged. I pace between the open kitchen and the living room.
“We did,” she says, “Because it was me who infiltrated your phone to track her and listen in. And yet, I am certain she is still doing what we told her to do.”
This is not the Kat I raised. The one I raised would have never trusted anyone, and because I am as angry as I am, words slip out of my mouth.
“Marriage made you foolish,” I say harshly.
Kat’s silence on the other end is deadly, but I will not let her becoming soft jeopardise my plans.
“You might want to ask yourself when you became a killer who is so consumed with the lust for blood that she lost sight of the cause she meant to kill for,” she finally says in a voice threateningly silent and ice-cold before she hangs up.
I remain of stone as I stare at the phone in my hand. Goosebumps of the worst kind spread over my skin as coldness spreads through me. The coldness that comes with roaring anger and murderous desire to destroy.
Does she not understand? Does she not see?
I am not one to question myself; It is something the fools do, those who are too scared of the judgment on their actions.
I am not. I don’t question what I do, because I am guided by the Lord and the rage that was needed to destroy what men took.
I will not question myself, because the men wouldn’t either.
To question oneself is taught to women, to be small, to become what men desire them to be. But I am not here to be desired by a man. I am here to kill them.
And the moment I remember what I swore to myself when I watched my brother being invited to the tables, the heir, our father's precious boy, while I was left outside, meant to watch, admired by the male gaze and used for their pleasure, I know it is finally time.
Giuseppe is breathing on borrowed time since I decided I would come for him; now I am ready to sin.
The sin that follows a man into the ground: murdering la famiglia.
The sin that will start a war.
The sin that will change the order, here in Sicily and beyond. Because I will take, I will own, and I will make enemies that are going to lust for spilling my blood and paint the floor of hell with it.
I carefully place my phone on the counter, slip off my shoes, and zip open my skirt.
It slides to the ground, and I step out of it as I open my blouse and walk barefoot over the tiles to a wooden shelf.
I push some books aside and open the secret cabinet with the pin pad in it.
As I enter the number, a soft beep confirms, before the shelf jumps just an inch off the wall.
I open it, slip in and close it behind me. The cold stone stairs lead into the closed part of the catacombs running under the entire house. This part, I had restored and fitted to my needs.
I walk into my wine cellar on the left and get the bottle I kept for this very occasion: A Tasca d'Almerita Rosso del Conte from 1993, when I was sixteen. The year I gave birth to my son after being raped, the year my father made Giuseppe his heir, l’erede del sangue, and pushed me into the background as an object not worth his time and attention.
I open the bottle and pour it into a decanter. I smell it. It’s the smell of revenge. A smile curves my mouth.
I lean against the wooden table top and caress my collarbones before I grab my cross.
I turn it between my fingers as I focus on what I am about to do. There will be no way back afterwards—exactly the point. All these years I built to take one day, and now I will.
I pour a glass and taste the wine. It takes me back to 1993. All I needed. Memories may fade over the years, but revenge sweetens with each moment it isn’t carried out.
The hour finds everyone—and I waited with patience. Now, the time for execution has come.
I walk out of the glass doors carved into the old stone of the catacombs over to the heavy steel door.
It is a bunker that holds what I need: Weapons.
Munition. Explosives. Knifes. Poison. Gear.
And if needed, protection. It is a steel cage with an air supply and everything I could ever need to survive if anyone decided to come for me.
I walk in with my underwear and open blouse, caressing my hips. I slip off my blouse and open a drawer with special gear in it. I take out a Kevlar shirt and put it on underneath the blouse.
Trousers follow. I dislike functional clothing, so I had some custom-made for me. The trousers are high-waisted and resemble elegant trousers, but they are not. They are made with Kevlar on the inside and have secret sewn-in pockets, offering maximum flexibility and protection.
I pull them up and tuck my blouse into them. I place knives, poison pills, and a chain with a carabiner in the sewn-in pockets. Take a belt and my preferred guns, the Tomcat and Beretta 92FS 9mm, and get spare munitions.
With the gun in my hand, I close my eyes. I walk through the plan I have had in my mind for thirty-four years now. I don’t need rehearsal. What I need is channelling, so I pray.
“Oh Lord,” I say. “Be with me as I carry out your plan, as I am your tool, bringing justice to what was never meant to be. You made them in your image, and it was not Eve who sinned, but Adam, who let her, knowing what the tree did. He did so to take the power. He showed the honest face of the male from the first day, and Eve, misled by him, suffered like all the women coming after her, solely because Adam lusted for power. The lust of his was the ultimate sin that the males have fallen for, for all those thousands of years. And now, it is time. The time of the matriarchy has come, and I will bring it forth in your image. Therefore, I beg you to guide me, to trust in me, as you trusted me all those years. Amen.”
Energy flows through me. I know my Lord will always be with me.
Giuseppe’s death might be an isolated event to the outsider, but his influence reaches so far that it concerns shipping routes and ports, governments and businesses worldwide.
He has investments in critical supplies and business, infrastructure, and weaponry, loans to governments, and control over the mining of rare minerals.
He has built a net that controls world order.
My takeover will trigger a series of events that will make many powerful people very nervous, because men are emotional idiots who will do what they have always done: They will aim to grab for it.
The power. And I intend them to. Thirty-four years of preparation will finally pay off as I will get my revenge—and no one will stop me.
This is bigger than a single person; this is the revolution, the liberation of women, and I will kill whoever gets in my way, and I will take that girl with me.
The liar. The betrayer. The whore who killed my flesh and blood.
I step out of the bunker, take my glass of wine and get back upstairs. Every one of my steps is silent, because I am a shadow. A shadow no one saw coming, and now, it is too late.
We, women, have been suppressed, used, and abused long enough. Our time has come. And I will be the trigger.
I close the shelf behind me, and when I turn, I see Kat leaning casually against the kitchen counter.
She knows what is going on, and I ignore her. I take my heels and put them back on. It is time to become visible. To become loud. To take.
“I won’t let you,” she says as I have my back to her, aiming to leave.
I scoff derogatorily, but walk.
She follows me, her hand on my shoulder.
“Rose.”
When I turn, I have my gun drawn, pointing it directly at the spot between her eyes.
“You will not interfere,” I say, threateningly dark.
She tilts her head slightly; she is considering me. The corner of her mouth tugs into a smirk.
“Your triumph will be worthless,” she says.
“I opened the bottle,” I say.
“I saw,” she says. “Because you are blinded. You convinced yourself it is time because you feel out of control. Because that girl didn’t do what you told her to.”
That girl, the infame, the mere thought of her disgusts me.
“That girl has no control over me,” I say, sneeringly and spitting on the ground, as if it were her face.
“And yet, she is the reason you snap right now,” Kat says. “You will not succeed.”
“I planned this for years!” I roar, my hand trembling in anger. “Longer than you live, and you dare come here! I will kill him, and I will bring that girl down for everything she has done.“
She interrupts me.
“Don’t you see? You are blinded by rage, by her.
Don’t you remember your own words? ‘Patience is what brings you far,’ ‘Never get blinded by the emotion in your chest,’ ‘Always take a step back first to think’—all said by you at some point in my education.
You are doing a disservice to yourself,” she says.
I open my mouth, but before I can issue a single word, she adds, “It will ruin everything if you kill him, because it is not the time. They will not approve you if you take over. They simply won’t.
War will come, elections will be rigged because we neither have the votes nor enough people in the planned positions on time, and you therefore jeopardise the liberation of all of us for this one, single second of satisfying revenge,” she says with an anger I have rarely seen her in.
Her words stir in me. I know we have plannend all those years to take over the men’s business, a minute plan of fighting the patriarchy.
Because they run the world, run us women, and it is time to finally be done with it.
But I do not see any of it right now. The only thing I see is killing the girl. The girl, who took everything from me.
“There is one way, and that is slowly infiltrating his organisation, and then taking over. From the inside. And the only person who could do that is her. You know it. You’re just too emotional to see.” She pushes my arm with the gun away and comes close.
“You will do it, feel it, believe you won, and then it will be gone, faster than it came. You will be empty, and you will know you made a mistake you can’t undo. And that will make you no better than the average man, the ones we go against.”
I start laughing.
“Nice try,” I say, turn and leave.
As I said, I don’t question myself.