Chapter 40
My phone is vibrating, and fucking finally, it’s Josh.
“Drop everything!” Josh screams over the phone. I stop every movement and sit down in my chair. In this little sliver of silence, I look at my monitors, thinking someone broke into my house. Or anything like that. Because the level of dread in Josh’s voice is concerning, as he is always calm.
“What is it, Josh?” I ask, barely containing my nerves.
“We arrived at Marco’s home to take him, but, shit, we have a problem.”
“What kind of problem? Is he not there?” Usually, he would be home, according to his schedule.
“No, he is here. But, M, you need to come here.” Josh’s voice is making all the hairs on my body stand on end.
“I’m on my way.” Without any preamble, I grab my keys and head out to Marco’s home. His secret home.
The home where he commits his gruesome, evil acts.
Nobody knows that this piece of shit has a private home, only we do. He is meticulous in his plans, I’ll give him that.
He fits the silent psychopath to a T. He doesn’t make himself noticeable and is quite plain.
Smart.
He is smart, but not smart enough. I have the best team in the world, and we cracked down on his routine. The asshole has a regular job as an accountant and lives in the center of Sarajevo with his family, but he lies to them about his schedule.
He tells his family that his working hours are 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. He even tells them that he sometimes has after-hours business meetings, which is entirely false.
His desire for kids, mostly young teenagers, would make the devil squeamish.
Frankly, even me. While I do kill, I would never kill a child or do something disgusting to them. That’s why I took on this job when I received the anonymous hit in the mail.
I need him gone from this planet and delivered straight to Hell.
That’s why I asked Josh and Oliver to hold him there until I arrive.
I’m driving over the speed limit because Josh’s tone suggested something bad had happened. After half an hour, I arrive at Marco’s secret home, and I push the call button. The gate opens, and undoubtedly, the door is open for me.
I park my car in front of the house, which is a typical, larger home: three stories and a plain white exterior. The rest of the estate is basic as well—a couple of trees, and from what I can tell, a backyard.
I go up to the door, and I see that it’s cracked open.
“Josh, Oliver, where are you guys?” I yell while I walk through his home. So far, it all looks normal. The inside of his home mirrors Marco, basic.
“We are upstairs. Come quickly,” Josh yells from upstairs. I go up the stairs, and I can feel the tension from here. Nobody is pacing around, and no sound is being uttered.
I hear a murmur coming from the second bedroom. Before I enter the monster’s bedroom, I smell a metallic smell.
Blood.
I open the door, and I’m hit with a sight that is straight out of a horror movie.
The beige walls, beige carpet, and fucking beige bed are all soaked with blood.
Marco’s blood.
“M.” I don’t even know who is talking because my eyes are glued to his right wall. Not only are my eyes glued to the wall, but Marco’s hands are as well. And the rest of his body is on his bed, stomach up.
The macabre sight of his destroyed body isn’t what’s upsetting me, it’s the message on the wall, written in blood.
His blood.
“Tell Lana to hum for me.” When the words leave my mouth, I don’t close it. And I don’t move my body. All the outside noise is blocked, the air feels thick, and for the first time in my life, I am terrified.
Not for me, but for Lana.
Somebody is sending a message to her.
My body is rigid, and my feet are glued to the floor. All of my abilities to react, to think, to act are gone and evaporated into the room where one of the most brutal murders took place.
“M, brother, this is serious,” I hear Oliver telling me.
No. Fucking. Shit.
“There is something else you need to see,” Josh tells me. He puts his hand on my shoulder, and I snap out of my trance.
“What?” Fuck making coherent sentences because I’m filled with rage. He gestures for me to look at Marco’s body. When I walk over to his desecrated body, I scan it for clues.
Almost everybody has a signature call-off, as I like to call them.
Something to let everybody know that they were here.
And I find it on his face.
The letter X was carved starting from above his eyebrow down to the middle part of his face.
“This can’t be happening,” I tell the men as I examine it thoroughly.
“What, M?” Josh asks me. I stand up straight and move to the wall where the message is. My last clue is the asshole’s hands. They are pinned to the wall, as if they were praying. There is only one killer I know of that does this.
My brain is working overtime as I search for what I need around Marco’s body. The man I’m thinking about also liked to leave clues in notes.
“Where the fuck is it?” I say out loud as I search. I hear Oliver asking me what I’m looking for, but I don’t respond. I lift Marco’s right arm, and there it is, a note.
Fuck, it’s really him.
I turn around to the men, and I inhale deeply before I speak again.
“We are dealing with a dangerous individual.”
“How dangerous is he?” they both ask at the same time.
“Let me put it this way: my father and his entire network were scared of him.” Their eyes pop open, and they nod slowly. They know that my father was never afraid of anyone because he was ghoulish himself, so this revelation comes as quite a shock.
“I will explain everything at my home. I’ll have our cleaners come and clean up this mess. Let’s go so I can tell you the story of the Silent Python.” I move toward the door with the note, while Josh and Oliver follow me.
“M, why are you this upset? You have never been like this,” Oliver asks me. I turn around and show him the note.
“Because I think we just found Lana’s father, and she is in danger.”