Chapter 11
SOPHIE
PLAYLIST: KEEPING ME ALIVE (ACOUSTIC) – JONATHAN ROY
Istare at the woman in front of the gun I am holding.
I don’t recognise myself right now.
I don’t even know who I am or what I am doing here.
I killed a man. And the moment I pulled the trigger, my memories came back. Everything came back. Everything they prepared me to do. Everything I should have become. I was nothing but a tool to them.
Hatred burns through me and spins out of control.
Right now, I could burn down the world with everyone in it.
It’s the same hatred that made me kill.
Kill the man who touched me against my will.
A mafia boss.
Whose organisation I took over.
Me.
The woman who killed before.
When I was eleven years old.
Because of my father.
My father, who was in the mafia.
Everything was a lie.
Everything is a lie.
My entire life is a lie.
And I don’t even know who I am.
There is no going back.
I killed someone.
Everything I worked so hard for studying, and now I have become one of the people I studied.
What have I done?
“You studied criminology to make this world a better place,” says Kat. “That’s the reason.”
Kat. The woman who abducted and tortured me, yet she saved me from Rosalia.
I somehow trust her the most. If I were to profile myself, I’d say it’s a severe case of capture bonding.
And while I have all the knowledge, I can’t do anything about it.
Because knowing and acting are two entirely different things.
“And how do you know that?” I ask without removing my eyes from Rosalia.
“I found the application for the NCA,” says Kat. It takes me a moment to process her words, but when I do, I turn on her, gun drawn.
“Who the fuck are you, that you have fucking access to private documents sent to the UK’s national crime agency?” I ask.
Kat smirks.
“I have access to the largest and most dangerous predatory software in the world,” she says. “My lovely wife developed it, and I am ridding the world of assholes. Assholes that are hiding in plain sight and high places.”
“A woman who tortures me is riding the world of assholes,” I repeat. “The hypocrisy is appalling.”
“There’s nuance,” she says. “The question is if your will to do good is stronger than the will to kill her,” says Kat and points with her head at Rosalia.
Rosalia.
I turn back to her.
My free hand clenches into a fist, my nails digging painfully into my palm.
“She is the reason for all that happened to me,” I say. “My life is a mess because of her.“
“No,” says Kat. “Your life is a mess because of your father; this is just the aftermath.”
My gun-hand trembles in anger.
“Giuseppe would have gotten to you anyway,” Kat says. “He meant you to take over; this must’ve been planned a long while ago. He would have gotten to you and raped you until you would be pregnant with his heir.”
“What a consolation,” I say harshly. Hearing this sounds so absurd. Everything is so absurd. I have no idea what I am doing here. I have nowhere to go because hell will follow me everywhere. I did things I cannot outrun. I want my life back, my normal life with my anxiety and the boringness of it.
A tear rolls down my cheek as my heart aches for the life I had. How could everything become so messed up within the matter of a week?
I wipe the tear away.
“What shall I do?” I ask Kat and look at her. The question slips over my lips before I can think. It is absurd that I even ask her; she is part of the mess, and I hate myself for it.
“You lower that gun,” she says, “And then we make a plan. Because Giuseppe’s death will cause a reaction you can’t imagine. One you can stop.”
“Before, you said World War III,” I say.
“Yes. Giuseppe is not a local idiot who runs some drugs and launders money. He is the head of an untouchable criminal empire that holds the power over governments, rare minerals and the most human needs.”
I swallow as I understand the extent of it.
“And I am running that now,” I say. It was not a question, but a statement. One that scares the hell out of me.
“Technically, yes. But you will be challenged, and how you react will determine if you are accepted.”
“But I don’t want to—“
“You will be dead if you don’t do it, Kiddo,” says Rosalia in an arrogant tone.
Kiddo.
I am not a kid.
My eyes snap back to her.
“And what’s with her?” I say. “She looks like she will murder me the moment I release her.”
“Because I will!” roars Rosalia. “I don’t trust you, you betrayed me, you took from me, you and your father—“
“She will not kill you, I’ll make sure of that,” says Kat. “She has a bit of a temperament.”
“You call that a temperament?” I ask. “She’s a full-blown sociopath with questionable motives.”
“Ti vaju a ammazzari,” Rosalia curses at me.
“Nobody is going to kill anyone here,” says Kat. “Sophie, you don’t know Rosealia, but I have known her a long time, and what she does—“
“Don’t,” growls Rosalia. “Don’t you dare tell her. She will not understand.” But Kat ignores her.
“She is taking from men what they have taken—in the shadows, to gain influence and slowly change the world order. It is time for a world where women rule. A world without wars and violence. ”
I look at Kat, and I have to laugh. This is the most absurd thing I have ever heard.
“You are crazy people,” I say. “Do you listen to yourself? Do you see yourself? You tell yourself that you do all that shit for a good cause, but in the end, you are no better than them! You torture, and abduct, and kill, and do God knows what!”
“See,” says Rosalia, “I told you she’s not getting the point.”
“You can’t rid a system built on violence without it,” says Kat to me, ignoring Rosalia. “You want to work as a profiler, you know the executive branch of a government needs force. Only what we do is take on those who hide within those structures, who would never see a judge.”
“But you are theirs?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“So you make the rules of who is bad and who is not? What force to use and what is the punishment?”
“Yes,” says Kat, and I scoff.
“You really don’t see it,” I say and gesture with the gun between them. “There is a reason power is split. And you—you are some crazy power-hungry people with a God-complex.”
“Rosalia takes over from men, who are rapists and abusers and traffickers and all sorts of other horrid things. She takes over so no one else can take it, someone who would do it without caring. I myself am more of a killer that doesn’t care what happens after, but Rosalia does.”
“Because she fucking cares,” I say sardonically. This is like a comedy gone wrong.
“It is your chance to do some good,” says Kat.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I say. “I’d rather be on the other side of the system.”
“There will be no other side for you after this,” says Kat. “That ring on your finger made you a part of this side, one with no way back.”
“You made me do it,” I say coldly. “You manipulated me into doing it, so I don’t have a way back, just like you manipulated me into believing Luisa was being shot and raped.”
“You didn’t have to do it,” says Kat. “You killed, because you wanted to kill. I bet when you profile yourself, you’d see the anger issues, see the desperate need to bring justice, no matter what.”
And if I were completely honest, I’d acknowledge she was right. But what kind of person would that make me? Acknowledging that somewhere in my depth, the kill felt actually fucking good?
I need time to think. Make a plan. Vanish.
But I can’t. There will be men upstairs waiting for me to act. There will be people challenging me. I killed a mafia boss. I have read about the mobs and mafia structures in theory, and I have landed in a hell I was never meant to. Or maybe I was meant to, because of my father.
I always thought he was a decent man. But he was a rapist asshole, and that betrayal is the worst. And with one tiny, tiny part of me, I can understand Rosalia. Because if my father were still alive, I would have killed him, too.
“Make her behave,” I say, lower the gun, and turn to walk to the door. “If she so much as tries to kill me, I will kill her.”
Kat chuckles.
“Is that a yes?” asks Kat.
“A yes to what?”
“A yes to working together.”
“Do I have a choice?” I ask sardonically. “No. So you two, crazy as you are, are the better option. I would rather have a sociopath with a temperament and a, I’m pretty sure in your case, psychopath with a cause, around me than an angry mob that will kill me and everyone I know for existing.”
“I will not work with that,” says Rosalia like a reluctant toddler, disgust spilling from her.
Kat removes Rosalia’s restraints.
“You will work together,” Kat says to her.
I doubt that any of those words reach Rosalia. She is cackling mad at me, and sure enough, Rosalia acts as I expected.
“You don’t tell me what to do,” hisses Rosalia to Kat in a harsh tone. “She took my flesh, she took the kill from me, she is the debt, she is a liar, and she is a bitch I will not have anywhere near me.”
“Rose, for fucks sake, stop it and shut up,” says Kat, but it’s too late. Before anyone can stop me, I turn and punch Rosalia full on in the face. A crack cuts through the air, and I know her nose is broken. I hit her so forcefully that she stumbles to the side.
Martial arts classes were good for something at last.
Blood runs from her nostrils as she bends down and coughs. Satisfaction burns through me. Oh, how I have wanted to do that.
“That’s for calling me a bitch and all the things you put me through,” I say darkly.
“You little—“ she begins and swears something in Sicilian afterwards. I don’t care. She should be happy to still breathe.
“Your problem,” I say to Kat and walk away. Out of the room. To somewhere where I can think.
But I don’t come very far before I am grabbed by the neck with nails digging into my skin and thrown forcefully into the corridor wall next to me. I hit my head on the rough sandstone, and warm fluid runs down the side of my face.
“You don’t touch me and get to walk away,” Rosalia says.
Anger burns through me, and my skin feels like it’s on fire from it. I am going to murder her.
I have trained for this.
And I flip into a different self.
She wants to grab me, but I am faster. I take a step forward, grab her arm and pull her to my side, and now it’s her crashing into the wall. I spin around and bring her arm to her back, holding her in a lock between the wall and me.
She gasps from the pain.
“I am so going to murder you,” I whisper. I don’t even recognise myself; there is all this anger, all the rage.
She steps onto my foot with her heel, and I scream in pain and let go of her.
She pushes me back, and I slam backwards into the opposite wall.
I have her forearm pressing against my throat, and the tip of a knife biting into my skin where the carotid is.
The scent of her heavy perfume rolls over me as she presses me backwards against the wall.
I hear Kat shout something, but I don’t care.
Her chest heaves up and down heavily, just like mine.
A grin appears on my face because I haven’t fought with anyone for months, and I have actually forgotten how much fun it is.
“You are what the dogs leave on the streets,” she says with disgust in her voice.
I chuckle darkly and spit at her, full in the face. The look I get could murder me alone.
“You have Sicilian fire, undoubtedly,” she says as she takes the hand with the knife to wipe off the spit—exactly what I counted on.
I box her in the sternum; she gasps and stumbles back. I grab the wrist from the arm with the knife and press. I have force in my grip because I lift three times a week. Heavy. She is slim, and while not untrained, she is a lightweight compared to me.
She tries to remove my hand by digging her nails into my skin, but I don’t care about scratches. I feel like high from what I am doing. There is no anxiety, no fear, no nothing, except this feeling of invincibility.
The knife falls from her grip as she grunts from the pain, and I kick it away without breaking eye contact with her.
I like to see the pain in her eyes. And it’s because I do, that I don’t see her hand coming, that hits flat into my throat.
I cough and stumble back from the pain it causes; I let go of her.
It’s one of the spots the body is most vulnerable.
She pushes me back, and I’m hitting the wall behind me—hard. She presses me into it with her body, her hand closing around my throat, her knee between my legs.
We are both panting, our chests heaving up and down against each other. She is so close I can see every single one of her lines and pores.
It’s the first time I take her fully in. Those dark eyes I am looking into. The eyes that are almost black. Fiercely burning me with anger.
Somehow, my eyes wander down, just for the briefest of seconds.
She has these high, prominent cheekbones that many would kill for, and these full lips, red, slightly smeared and besmirched by the blood that has run from her nose and now dries on her skin. Lips that are slightly parted.
I gasp in because a tingling sensation rushed through me, reaching my core. And it scares the shit out of me.
My eyes shoot back up.
She looks at me, tilts her head, and wanders with her lips over to my ear without touching my skin. A shudder runs down my spine.
“You filthy little whore,” she whispers in my ear as I close my eyes, and my head falls slightly back. “I’ll destroy you slowly in ways that will make you beg me to kill you.”
I gasp in, but there is not much air as she closes her hand around my throat.
My core burns as never before.
“You were saying?” she asks me, but I don’t have words. Or air. Her hips press into mine, and I roll mine against her without consciously knowing it.
I don’t know what is happening to me.
A shot is fired, she pushes herself off me, and I snap back into myself.
I glance around. Kat. “Are you fucking done now?” she asks her gun pointed up into the air.
I look at Rosalia.
She stands there, gazing at me with slightly pursed lips and the hint of a smirk on her face.
“Well,” she says, dangerously arrogant, “It will be my pleasure breaking you.”