Chapter 10
ROSALIA
PLAYLIST: WRATH – SOUNDRIDEMUSIC
Ihave come to kill, and whoever dares to step in my way will be dead. I have always followed what felt right to me, and I know it has to be done now.
I drove my car through the gate, threw the grenades, and now, I am eradicating every single one of them.
Five of them are already dead on the floor.
I stroll through the masseria, the one I haven’t set foot in since my sixteenth birthday.
Bang—I shoot the next of his men without even looking. What moves here dies.
I know I am leaving behind a trail of blood, and it feels exhilarating. I waited decades for these days, and it feels exactly as I pictured it. The sweetness of revenge purrs in my chest.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
I reload.
My shots are always precise, at the very spot between the eyes whenever possible.
I walk through the masseria, door by door. I know the plan and could walk through it blind, and I would not miss a door.
“Unni si, fratello bastardo?” I shout as I walk into the south wing. It brings me pleasure to hunt him. And whatever the consequences may be tomorrow, I do not care at all.
I hear screaming. Muffled, but so loud it rips through the entire corridor. Coming from underneath.
It might be the girl. And a trap, I will not be so foolish.
And that is exactly what he might expect.
He is hiding where she is, because he knows I want to kill her just as much as I desire to kill him.
I make my way to the basement floor. Once servants’ quarters, it became the epicentre of the family business.
“Nesci fora, nesci fora, unni si!” I call into the corridor, provoking him. Come out, come out wherever you are. I want him angry. Anger makes people reckless, and I also want to see the rage as he understands he has lost.
A bullet flies past my head.
They have revealed themselves.
I wait.
More screaming.
I reload my magazines.
“You are the most stubborn and stupidest woman I have ever met,” I hear behind me, as I spin around, both guns drawn.
Kat. I roll my eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I say coldly.
“Do you believe I let you do this alone?”
I scoff.
“Fourth door on the right,” I say, “They shoot fast.”
“I heard that,” she says and lifts the semi-automatic rifle she brought. She has always been a sucker for force. If I weren’t angry with her, I would chuckle.
“You wanna warn them?” she asks. “Otherwise, I’ll evaporate that wood.”
“Do it,” I say. “But he’s mine.”
“He sure is,” she says. “Just here as reinforcement. You wouldn’t have made it out of here. I killed eighteen up there.”
“Do it,” I say without caring about what she just said. I might thank her later. After I have killed my brother and that girl.
She shoots down the door, and the cartridge cases fall onto the ground with the sweet melody of destruction.
The doors wood splinters and finally rips apart.
The corridor falls silent after the last resounding noise vanishes. Anticipation builds in me. There are moves and countermoves. I know my brother is a man always prepared, and I am no fool to storm into the room; I might get blasted away.
My body tenses.
Kat turns and shoots before I even see what is coming from behind; she has a sense of what is happening around her, as I have never seen in anyone. She and her rifle perforate the two men coming.
“Well, that’s fun,” she says.
She has done her own thing for many years now, and it's been a while since I was with her in a shootout, so I have forgotten how hilarious she can be. Even though I am angry with her, I cannot suppress the chuckle leaving my throat.
Bullets fly towards us from the door.
We dive back behind the corner.
“Cover me,” I tell her.
“I have a concussion grenade,” says Kat.
“No,” I say. “I want him to be fully conscious.”
“Well, let’s go then.”
Kat shoots as we both move towards the door.
I get one lurk inside, before a flame erupts from the door. I dive out of the way at the last possible moment, because I expected something to happen.
I land on the ground and see one of his men through the flames. I aim and make a single-precision shot. He falls to the ground as I get back up. My shoulder hurts slightly; I am not twenty anymore, and I feel it.
The flames stop, and hell breaks loose.
A rain of bullets flies at us, and I am hit on the arm and chest. It hurts painfully, but the Kevlar does what it’s supposed to do, stopping the bullets.
Kat shoots, and we both press against the wall next to the door. A moment of silence, where we are both standing there with our chests heaving up and down.
Kat brings her finger to her mouth and then taps her ear, telling me to be silent so she can hear what is going on in the room.
I hold my breath.
She signals me two with her fingers and that she’ll go in on three.
I nod.
She closes her eyes for one second, and I wait. I have learned to trust her methods. She is a killer from the first water, even before my training, and now that killer focuses.
She opens her eyes, and I can see the switch in her eyes. She nods, and then we go.
She jumps in, it takes her one shot, and a man is on the floor, and then we both point our guns at my brother.
I haven’t seen him in a very long time. His best years are behind him; he got fat and looks quite sick.
My eyes fall onto the girl strapped to a table, her dress pushed up. My eyes narrow.
I didn’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. I know he is a rapist bastard who took his own daughter many times, but after what I overheard of their conversation, I believed him to treat Sophie differently.
“Mia carissima sollerra,” he says in his superior glee of a voice. But I am not his dearest sister. I am his death.
“What did you do to her?” asks Kat.
“Her?” he asks. “What do you think I did?”
“Stop the bullshit, or I’ll perforate you,” says Kat with a dangerous growl.
“I am certain you will not,” he says, almost cheerfully, and laughs. A laugh I haven’t heard in many years, and it triggers me. It triggers the memories and the anger.
“And why do you think that is?” I ask him.
“Because of this,” he says and holds up a small cylinder with a button on top. “Let us say it is life insurance. I will blow us all up. The entire house, you, everything.”
Kat and my eyes meet for a nanosecond.
Merda, I curse in my mind.
“How dare you?” he says arrogantly. “How dare you attack me, you foolish woman?”
Now, it is my time to chuckle.
“I am not attacking you,” I say. “I am bringing death, and I am taking over.”
“You are not taking over,” he says, and his rich laughter rolls over me. “Because she is.” And he points at the girl.
I cannot believe what I just heard. Her. So she knew. She was meant to take over. And she played us the entire time. Murderous rage burns through me.
“Why strap her to the table then?” asks Kat.
“Well,” he says and looks me dead in the eye in his pride. “An heir is needed.”
Kat shifts very, very carefully further to the side. She has a plan, and I know I have to distract him.
“You fucked her?!” I shout exaggeratedly to make him focus his attention on me.
His dead eyes flicker in amusement. And I don’t know what happens, maybe it was Kat’s words that made her a human being to me, but seeing her in the same position I have once been in—a heavy sinking feeling stirs in my stomach. One, I cannot allow.
A downward grin of pride appears on his face.
At that moment, Kat shoots. I hear it, see it.
A precision shot that rips off his thumb that was hovering about the button for the detonator.
He screams. Blood is spraying. She lounges for him, grabs his arm, takes the detonator and within a second, he is on the ground, in her lock.
It is not easy to wrestle down a man of his size, but she knows her stuff.
Damn, this woman.
Kat turns her head and grins at me.
“Well, that was fun,” she says.
I lower my gun and walk over to her.
“Who’s laughing now, bastardo?” I say, and kick him in the face.
There are cable ties on the table next to the girl, and I give Kat some, so she can fix him up.
“Now, you,” I say to the girl. “You thought you could play me. But I told you I’d come for you.”
She just lies there, her eyes empty.
She opens her mouth and whispers something.
I lean in to hear.
“I know where he buried him,” she whispers. “Your son.”
My body freezes. The body I have never found.
“Tell me where,” I whisper back, in shock, completely forgetting the world around me.
“Where it all began,” she says weakly, and no more words come. I want to grab her, shake her.
I cut the cable ties on her legs, walk around and remove the first cable tie from the girl’s wrist, waiting to see if she does anything, but she just lies there, like drugged.
Maybe she is. Maybe she is hallucinating.
I have seen girls like her before; it’s when they have been broken so far that it takes their soul.
I know the feeling. Because I was her when I was sixteen.
Suddenly, a very bad feeling crawls up on me.
I turn to the door, but it is too late.
Kat shoots and dives into the cover of the desk, but we both know there are too many. My knife falls down as I pull both guns. Who am I not trying?
I shoot from the cover of the table. Blood is running from Kat’s shoulder; she was hit.
Merda! I curse.
Over a dozen guns are pointed at us, men shouting in Sicilian, telling us to show our hands. I recognise some of the men; they are known on the island. I look at all of them carefully as I bring up my hands with the two guns in them. When we make it out of here, none of them will live.
Kat is reluctant.
“Do it,” I tell her. “There’s no point.”
I know she likes a good fight, but thirteen against us like this is impossible.
“Take them to the arena,” orders Giuseppe, who was lifted up by one of the men and now holds his thumb wrapped in a cloth. “This will be a show,” he adds with a cackling arrogance.
The arena.