Chapter 10 #2
My father took men there to kill them slowly. To rip them apart and make a bloody mess out of those who betrayed him.
I am grabbed, my guns taken, ripped up.
The most vulnerable moment will be the transit. Kat knows it. I know it.
Our eyes meet for a single second—hers flash down to her pocket as she is fixed up. The detonator. She’s insisting. I shake my head as carefully as possible. Only as a last resort.
“Pigghiamu Antonella. Purtala supra. I??a è la cchiù mpurtanti. Sarà i??a ? capu quannu non ci sugnu cchiù,” says Giuseppe.
“What did he say?” asks Kat in a whisper as we’re both taken to the door.
“Take Antonella upstairs; she is the most important because she will be in charge when I am gone,” I tell her. The hate I feel for him and the girl right now burns in my chest and chews my insides.
“So she’s—“ Kat begins, but doesn’t come far because Giuseppe hits her with a gun in the face.
“Shut up,” shouts Giuseppe. I will murder him, and if I have to blow us all up in the end.
We are pushed down the corridor, and doors are opened as we get deeper into the catacombs of the masseria.
Finally, we reach the round room, with sand on the ground, framed by old brick walls.
A muddy scent of death trails up my nose.
We are fixed onto the wall with ropes, wrists and ankles through rings in the stone, like on a St. Andrews Cross. There is not much we can do.
Light is scarce, except for the one that falls in from the corridor through the open door.
“Sorella,” says Giuseppe, and hits me in the face. I spit at him. “First, I’ll take care of this one here,” he says and walks over to Kat. “You shot my thumb,” he says. “And you will pay with your life for it.”
Kat laughs.
“Kill me, and you will be evaporated,” she says.
“Is that so?” he asks.
“It is,” she says. “You and this land will be dust and sand.”
He laughs, and in my stomach, an anger I have yet to experience, forms.
“I’d listen to her,” I say. “Her wife will stomp you in the ground and everyone who was ever involved with you.”
His cackling laughter resounds through the room, reflecting on the stones and trailing back to us from every angle.
“A woman will evaporate me?” he asks and takes a step back. “You are funny. No woman will ever beat me.”
At that moment, a shot resounds through the air, so loud it cuts through the air.
His eyes snap to me, and he stares at me for this infinite moment of horrified realisation as the resounding waves from the walls fill my ears.
Giuseppe’s eyes roll up, and his body falls to the ground with a shattering thud of utmost finality as pounds of flesh meet the stone.
I am too perplexed watching him fall to realise what has happened.
I glance up.
His men have all the guns drawn.
“You will stay down,” she says. “I am taking over, as he has intended.”
I look at…the girl.
Walking over to us in her floral dress and heels with a gun in her hand.
My gun.
I want to murder her. Crush her into pieces. So much that my body feels like it’s about to rip apart. It is screaming the words I cannot voice. Giuseppe was mine to kill. Thirty-four years.
Finally, I find my voice.
I scream in rage and try to free myself from the fixation.
The men look at each other.
“You heard him,” she says and leans down to Giuseppe, taking a ring from his finger. The family ring.
“That was for touching me,” she whispers at him.
Murderous rage consumes my chest. I need to rip her limbs off. How dare she take what was mine? How dare she take my final act? How dare she take control?
“He was dying anyway,” she says as she comes up.
He was dying anyway, I repeat in my mind. So he was sick. And she was in. They worked together to get to me. Betrayal! shouts the voice in me.
“You see that?” she asks the men around her. “You will follow my orders from now on, and anyone who doesn’t will end like him, do you understand?”
It takes a moment, but one of the men nods and lowers the gun. So does a second. And the others follow. I can’t believe my eyes.
“Good,” she says arrogantly. Her entire demeanour is so different. “You will go clean up the mess upstairs and wait for further orders. No one acts without or speaks about this without my authorisation. Now, leave.”
What an actress she is, to make Kat and me believe she was an innocent bystander. Nothing about her is innocent.
“Now, you two,” she says dangerously, and turns to Kat and me as the men leave grudgingly.
She does not speak again until they are all gone. I am sure she will kill me just like she killed Giuseppe. Cold bitch.
She tilts her head as she takes a step closer to me.
“Interesting how things can change, isn't it?” she asks gleefully.
I spit at her in disgust.
She doesn’t react.
Instead, she turns and cranes her neck to look through the door.
“Everyone’s gone,” she says, and when she turns, a huge grin appears on her face as she bites her lips with all her front teeth.
I don’t quite understand—
“How was I?” she asks Kat, and Kat grins. “I guess this was the moment?”
“Pretty convincing, yes,” says Kat, and they both laugh.
I close my eyes for a second as I understand what has happened.
I suck in my lips because I want to murder Kat right this moment for playing me.
The girl frees Kat before she turns to me.
“Give me one good reason why I should free you,” she says.
“You better not,” I say, “Because I am going to kill you!” I roar, and my voice resounds through the catacombs.
“Rose,” says Kat, but I am in no mood.
“Don’t fucking Rose me!” I shout. “You took my revenge, you planned—you, cazzo!”
“We plannend nothing,” says Kat. “I simply told her to make him trust her and delay his death, so your stupid revenge fantasies jeopardise everything and accidentally start World War III!”
“Ti odio!” I shout.
“You can hate me all you want,” says Kat, “But it was brilliant hos she did it.”
“Nothing is brilliant!” I shout. “She is his daughter, probably impregnated by that bastard and you—you!”
“I am not impregnated, fingers can’t do that,” she says coldly. “But I wouldn’t have killed him if not for touching me,” she adds, and her voice gets dangerously cold.
“Let me be very clear, I am not on your side. I wanted him to kill you. I wanted you vanished and see you dead, something he could provide. Looking back, maybe I should kill you, just like him.”
She is angry. Disgusted. I see it in her eyes. The flip that’s switched after killing someone.
“Sophie,” says Kat. She must’ve seen it, too, but Sophie does not react. Her upper lip trembles as she stares at me and draws the gun.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,” she says, holding the gun to my forehead.