Chapter 12
ROSALIA
PLAYLIST: PLAY WITH FIRE SAM TINNESZ, YACHT MONEY
Iwatch her chest heave up and down against the wall, blood on the side of her face alongside a blue-ish swelling, a bruise on her throat where I hit her, and the marks on her wrists from before.
I must say, I am impressed by how she handled me; it was an exciting distraction, and it was definitely not the first time she had fought with someone, and will most certainly not be the last. The fire is spitting from her eyes, and I await her attack.
But nothing happens. She just stares at me. Challengingly. Daring me to lash out.
I know a brat when I see one, and I have absolutely no interest in them.
I require extreme obedience. There is nothing done without my order, not even a blink, and none of my orders are questioned.
That girl could never—not that I want her to.
She might be a human I have to deal with for now, but it doesn’t change the fact that I haven’t forgotten what she has done.
What I desire to do is break her. And so I will, because I always get what I desire. I will take her soul and deliver it to the devil myself, in pieces, crushed and humiliated.
Although…I cannot say with confidence that the latter isn’t something she would actually enjoy.
From what just happened, I am quite certain she has some sort of kink regarding humiliation, and who am I not to find out?
It might make it infinitely more fun. If I can’t kill her right now, I might make the path to it at least enjoyable.
She pushes herself off the wall and turns to Kat with one derogatory glance at me.
“We’re done here,” she says and adds in a sardonic tone, “So much about keeping her in check.”
Kat laughs. She likes that girl, I can see it, and I despise her for it.
The girl walks away to the room we found her in.
“You know,” says Kat to me. “She would be the perfect fit for you.”
“A fit? For me?” I ask incredulously.
“You heard me,” she says cheerfully. “She’s the first one to disobey you that lives.”
“She lives, because she will be useful! Until then, I will use my time to break her. A way that will satisfy my desire to kill her even more.”
“Uh-huh,” Kat says. “Tell yourself that, but I was a witness to your little bickering.”
“You call that bickering?” I ask.
“You should see Lilian when she’s mad,” Kat says and pulls up her shirt. There’s a rose scar, relatively fresh. “She stabbed me with a knife because I ruffled her feathers in public.”
“What a lovely wife,” I say, not totally aversed. “I can see why she did it. I feel that desire myself here and there.”
“Those who dish out should be sure they’re able to take it,” says Kat in her ignorant cheerfulness. “I made her sit on a glass fist for a day afterwards, gagged and blindfolded, she had to ride herself for hours.”
I have to laugh because I am a sucker for painful punishments.
“Now,” Kat says, “Let’s get a move on, before hell breaks loose.”
“It will anyway,” I say. “They won’t accept a woman as their leader. Let alone a little doll like her.”
“I don’t know,” Kat says. “They seemed to.”
“I’ll bet my entire fortune that there is mayhem upstairs. That girl can’t handle them.”
“I can hear you,” the girl shouts from the room, “And if you don’t stop calling me a girl, we can resume what we started. I can also handle myself quite well.”
Kat laughs, and I roll my eyes.
“I am just saying,” I say with a raised voice so she definitely hears everything, “Someone in the ranks will think it was his legacy to inherit, and the Commissione will come after her with every force they have.”
“What commissione?” she asks, and sticks her head out of the door.
“See,” I say to Kat.
“You can prep her,” says Kat.
“Or I can take it, because he is family.”
“She killed him, and they know it. Word travels fast,” she says.
“I’ll kill her then,” I say coldly.
“You won’t,” says Kat. “Not on my watch.”
“You'd better leave then and go back to your wife,” I snap at her.
“You’ll have to deal with me for the moment,” she says, “At least until we know your reckless stupidity didn’t collapse world order.” My nostrils flare as I breathe out.
“Do you mean the Cosa Nostra Comissione?” asks the girl from over in the room.
“Yes,” I say and walk over where she is. “How did you find that out?”
She is sitting on the desk she was tied to, her legs crossed, a pile of notebooks, files, and documents around her, one open in her hand.
“They prepared it,” she says and waves a journal at me.
“Years ago. With the Commissione. Everything. My father was to take over. Giuseppe was sick; it must have progressed. He said the timeline moved up. It’s all documented here: How to bring it to the commission, how to deal with the men, how the structure is—not for me, but for and by my father.
It was all planned, and regarding me, I have the men who heard it is to be me. ”
She is so naive that it hurts.
She is a girl. Sitting there like a teenager on a bed with their favourite magazine, in a floral dress, like a child who has no idea of the brutality of life. Especially not the brutality of family structures.
My head wanders to the side as I read what she reads, because she holds it vertically.
January 2014 – June 2014, I read. At that moment, she lowers the book and looks at me with a drawn-up eyebrow.
I snap my head back up.
“Don’t you have things to do?” she asks me, and I have to breathe in and out very slowly to not end her right now.
“The things on my to-do list annoyingly include you,” I snap at her.
“Do it over there then,” she says, pointing at an armchair in front of which one of the dead men lies.
The audacity she has is unprecedented, and since I am no one to be ordered around, I do what I do: I walk around the desk, grab the chair, move it as close to her as possible, and sit down—legs spread confidently, one arm resting on the armrest, the other loosely with my hand on my inner thigh.
I stare at her provocatively as she looks at me over her shoulder. She scoffs, pursing her lips as the hint of a smirk appears on her face.
She leans forward, a black thing in her hand that looks like a square ball made from knotted leather strings. She holds the hand in my direction, leans slightly back, and it drops from her hand.
That thing is not a ball at all. It is a heavy paperweight, and it lands exactly on my foot.
“Cazzo!” I curse at her and jump up.
“Oopsie,” she says, “Was that your foot? Better keep your distance next time.”
Kat snorts from where she leans against the door frame, visibly amused. I have my mouth half open, my hand in front of it as I question all my life choices. Something that never happened before, and I ask the Lord what I have done to receive this.
The pain in my foot vanishes, and I take a deep breath.
“You know what,” I say. “I am not doing this. I’ll just let the commission kill you.” With that, I walk. I come to the door, where Kat stops me, takes me by the shoulders, and turns me back to her.
“Remember your mission. That woman,” Kat says, emphasising the word woman, “Is your way to reach it. Be nice.”
“I am not a nice person; you should be aware of that fact by now.”
“I am, reason I am still here, try your best.”
“I am a really nice person,” says the girl from over at the desk, as she swings her legs down and jumps off it.
“People like me, because I lighten their day. And you,” she walks up to me, so close that I feel disturbed in my personal space, “Are one hell of a grumpy, angry, prejudiced, judging, mean-tempered person I ever had the unfortunate luck of meeting.”
My nostrils flare. That girl is becoming a stone in my shoe, and I have to do something about it. I grasp her jaw and lick over her face, just like a dog would. The metallic taste of blood on my tongue. I quite enjoy it.
“Eww!” she shouts, jumping backwards.
“Who’s too close now?” I ask her smugly, because it ticked her exactly where I thought it would.
She shakes herself and rolls back her shoulders, wildly wiping off my saliva.
Kat leans in from behind and whispers in my ear, chuckling.
“This will be so much fun indeed.”
I close my eyes for a second because I know there will be more than one annoying stone in my shoe very soon.
“Now, to the more pressing matters,” I say to navigate the topic elsewhere. “How do you intend to convince the commission you’re valid?”
“Well, it’s all in here,” she says and holds up the book she was reading. “They prepared it. Scripted it. Already talked it through. I’ll let the commission know. It was all set. Giuseppe was sick. And he said it in front of all the men, that I am to take over.”
“You’re foolish,” I say. “Foolish to think everything will be easy. It will get you killed, and hell will break loose.”
“Don’t radiate your negativity onto me,” she says. “I believe in positive thoughts. If I believe good things will happen, they will.”
“Foolish and naive,” I say.
“Well, I made it out of your little dungeon and was saved from being raped and managed to have you not at my throat every other second.”
I don’t know if I want to scream or laugh.
“I can’t,” I say, and aim to leave. “I can’t deal with someone like that.”
“You are a bitter woman,” she says. “I don’t want to deal with you either.”
My hands clench into fists and begin to tremble.
“Breathe,” says Kat. “Remember the mission.”
“Cazzo la mizzioni!” I shout, step out of the door, and draw back immediately.
“Gun!” I shout, pull Kat with me, and aim to get the gun from one of the dead men on the floor, but before I have it, the girl fires a shot, and a man falls to the ground.
He’s not dead.
“Did you come alone, or is there anyone else who wants to test how far they can go?” asks the girl as she takes the gun from him in a very different tone.
“No one follows the orders of a girl,” he says in broken English.
“Huh,” she says. “You better should have, now you're dead.”
And she shoots him again, in the head, turns and looks at Kat and me.
I stare at her because what I just witnessed doesn’t remind me of the girl from the catacombs anymore. She does not seem to care about it at all.
“That should be a statement,” she says, almost cheerfully.
“I think I liked the scared and pleading version of her more,” I say to Kat.
“I definitely don’t,” says Kat. “This version is so much more fun.”
“This version has killed already,” says the girl coldly. “So what’s the point. This version has studied the criminal mind and knows that an attack is the only way out when backed against a wall. And this girl also knows that she has to rely on herself because you two are operating on crazy.”