22. Milan
MILAN
The agent had stopped crying by the fourth time my electric vehicle wires sparked through her bones.
She had four bullets inside of her, one for each of her kneecaps, one through each palm.
I had cut her hair and used it as her gag, soaked ropes in acid and allowed them to corrode her wrists and ankles, but it was ultimately the electricity that had forced her to spill all of the information that she knew about Cesare Fera and where my wife was.
“I’m curious,” Francesco said, perching himself against the shell of an old, bright red Ferrari Lorenzo had bought from a police junkyard and had been fixing to win back his girl. “Who gave you the drugs to roofie Sicily? It’s not regular shit, it’s like…medical. Adriano tested the water.”
I cracked my neck to either side to relieve an ounce of tension as I sat on the floor opposite the bound and gagged agent. It did not release me. My body was in a state of limbo between feeling too much and nothing at all, and I could do nothing but exist through it.
Sicily had put these emotions inside of me, but I could not control them without her. They forced me to snatch the only untouched knife in the garage from the workbench and press the sharp tip to my palm.
I breathed when the pain replaced the hot, confusing, burning feeling in my heart.
My pupils dragged from my palm to the agent as she tried to reply to Francesco, but she choked on the hair instead, gagging as the strands coiled down her throat.
It was a satisfying sight, but I required to know the answer, so I lurched forward and snatched the hair from her bloody lips, gesturing for her to talk with my knife.
“The man, the—the brother.” She was stumbling over words, choking on the vomit she’d continuously spewed, spluttering on the blood leaking from the corners of her lips.
“Cesare?” I growled.
She let out a groaning noise from deep in her throat. It was too loud, too unnecessary, and I pressed the tip of the knife into the pad of my finger this time, humming when a droplet of blood beaded there.
“Yes,” she whimpered, her eyes rolling back momentarily. “H-he stole.”
Francesco sighed, running a hand over his jaw. “You know, now I think about it…”
My head jerked up.
“Ah, I don’t know, but there was this insane masked crazy stalker in Chicago who was targeting young guys when I was like eighteen.
But the interesting thing about it was that Bella Casacella’s, or we now know her as Bella Fera, house was reported by the neighbors as some kind of hotspot for this killer, but he never hurt her or her mom, just killed the dad. We never caught him.”
My brows ached from how hard they frowned. “Killed her father?”
He nodded slowly, and I knew that he was implying that my brother was this killer, and if that was true, Cesare was far more dangerous than I’d ever anticipated. He wore a mask of sanity to disguise his violent behavior, and that was the scariest kind of predator.
How could this have occurred? Cesare had always been polite, well-mannered, and he was a lawyer, someone who did the correct thing by the law.
What had happened to Cesare Fera?
There were too many emotions that came with this kind of betrayal, and I did not wish to process them, nor did I know how, but it was required for me to control this sudden surge.
I lunged for the agent, drawing the knife high and then down deep into her gut.
The sound of tearing, breaking, and slicing soothed something within me, and I breathed.
I did it again, twisting it against bone and through muscle, and again and again.
A voice sounded somewhere distant; my voice in memory.
“What have you done?”
This memory existed within my hands, and my muscles and bones moved with the ghost of a boy who had torn his mother to pieces, remembering how he had done it, copying.
“She took Stefano away, Milan. She hates me, Siena hates me, she took—"
My lip snarled, and I brought the knife to her chest. I struck the limp body, ripping downwards, scoring her insides with the same pain that my mother had brought upon Siena.
“She is dead. She is dead. She is dead.” I struck once for each sentence I had once breathed.
“Who—Who is dead, Milano?”
“You killed her!” I sobbed. “You killed Siena!”
“Milan, fucking hell!”
I dropped the knife as wide, safe, real arms came around my still aching ribcage, and the scent of a bright, overly fragranced cologne ripped me back into the now, the now that was no better than the past.
Francesco was here, holding me over the agent’s body.
She was now unrecognizable.
Good.
She had drugged my wife. Allowed her to be taken from me. My angel who had simply wanted to buy a school.
“God, you freaked me the hell out.” Francesco exhaled.
I sighed the tension out of my body, shrugging out of his grip. “Why? You have seen worse in your life as Capo; I am certain of that.”
“You’re the freakiest looking guy I’ve ever met.” Francesco gestured to my blood-soaked body.
“That is rude. I am in peak physical condition.” I lifted my uncomfortably wet shirt to display the muscle that I had been complimented on many times by my wife. “You should be attracted to me.”
“What?”
“Are you attracted to me? Do you find my body attractive?”
Francesco jolted backward as though I had struck him with the knife. “What the fuck is happening right now?”
“I am sure Sicily does not find me ugly.” I frowned, that thought sticking in my mind. “Do you think she—”
“I never said you were ugly!” He screwed up his nose. “I just meant, covered in blood, with your face all pissed off and shit, you’re scary as hell. Whether or not I’m attracted to you is—”
“Excuse me?”
Our heads turned instantly to find Adriano with printed gray and white papers in his hands, his brow furrowed. When neither of us spoke, his eyes flickered to the blood and body parts scattered around the garage. “What the hell happened here? I said don’t kill her, for fuck’s sake.”
“Sorry,” Francesco said like a child being scolded.
“I apologize, Adrian.” I followed.
Adriano sighed, still frowning at Francesco as he splayed printed photographs along the table.
“Cesare’s taken her to a heavily guarded house in Philadelphia, probably theirs…
We also have another problem.” Adriano was skilled with technology and had found camera footage of Cesare’s large black car entering Philadelphia.
I looked down to the table as he tapped another frame that distinctly showed a head of blonde curls in the passenger seat of another car entering the private black gates.
My eyes blinked, trying to work out if that was my wife or not, but then came to the realization that this could not be—judging by the timestamp— and the only person who looked this closely to her was…
Adriano pressed his weight into his palms, leaning over the workbench, shaking his head. “That’s Fiorella fucking Bianchi.”
“What in the shitting shit?” Francesco practically yelled, and though I did not appreciate his language, his sentiment was entirely correct. “Why would she be hanging out with them?”
I felt my wife’s betrayal deep inside, perhaps more deeply than Cesare’s because it was hers. As the uncomfortable sensation sat in my chest, it hit me why Fiorella would have felt the need to betray me, not Sicily.
I cleared my throat before I announced, “I arranged her marriage to one of the Gioffre twins.”
“What?” Both Adrian and Francesco exclaimed simultaneously.
“She was having sex with them. It was a logical decision to protect her, one that I promised Sicily I would amend anyway, so it does not matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Adriano seethed, slamming his palm onto the table. “She probably helped kidnap your wife!”
“I am becoming aware of this, Adriano!” I shouted, shoving my palm into his chest when he stood tall and marched toward me. “She is my wife!”
“Okay, guys,” Francesco said, drawing his words out as he pulled us apart by the shoulders. “Can we focus and go get our missus please? Stop with this bullshit. You love each other really. Don’t kill the bromance because you’re feeling sad.”
The pain in my body was burning, evidently enough for me to place my hands on my truest brother.
The aches and tremors in my limbs were not caused by a physical ailment, simply the absence of my wife and the thought of her terror.
It forced me to do things I would not ordinarily condone of myself.
I needed to return her home, and fighting Adriano would not achieve that.
I opened my arms.
Adriano frowned. “You want me to…”
“Embrace me to rectify the issue, yes.”
His frown remained, but he stepped closer until his arms were firmly planted around my body. He was stiff at first but soon relaxed with a sigh into my shoulder. It was pleasant. I would suggest we did it again soon.
“How do we get Sicily back? You saw all the guards and the fence outside their house,” he mumbled, still holding onto me.
It was then that I felt his overwhelming emotions too. He loved Sicily, not as much as I did, but close enough. Her absence was disruptive to him too.
Cesare and Brenno had guarded their family well, so well that it would be impossible for us to get anywhere near Philadelphia, let alone near the house.
Our faces would be the first they would look for, and it would be entirely counterproductive to burst into Philadelphia and attempt to rescue her despite the temptation to do so.
The thought of leaving my wife there caused a pain worse than the one I had inflicted upon the agent, but it was necessary to be methodical.
I let Adriano go and stepped toward the table.
I took the camera footage photographs into my hands, studying them for answers that were not there.
“We cannot go there, but others can.” I thrust them back onto the desk.
“Send Otto and Oratio Gioffre. One has a stolen bride, and one wants to be an enforcer. They are capable and their faces are unknown.”
“Are you sure they’re the best idea?” Adriano frowned.
I turned to leave, though I did not desire to return home to a house that had no Sicily.
It was far from home without her. “They will not follow the rules, but I do not care. If they hurt someone and my wife returns alive and well, they will be commended. I no longer care who becomes ruined to get her back, not even if that is Fiorella Bianchi or Cesare Fera. They will all die if it means I get Sicily back.”