Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dante
‘ W ait.’ Salvatore’s grip tightened on my upper arm. ‘They’re not far enough yet. I want them together.’
‘I just need this started,’ I replied through gritted teeth, as I clenched and unclenched my empty hand. ‘I want this done. I want her back where she belongs.’
‘I know—do you think I don’t?’ he answered me, without moving his gaze from his baby sister. ‘Remain calm. Think more than you act and notice everything. Men fear and respect the man who thinks before he speaks.’
I took what he was saying and exhaled slowly, as I attempted to follow his guidance.
Trying a different angle and peering around the large group of rocks we were concealed behind, I counted in my head. As I tried to regain some small feeling of control, Giovanna was practically being dragged the final third of the pier that remained. Blood had dried around her mouth, and I swore to myself that when this was over, I was going to return fleetingly to my English roots and would personally disembowel the two men holding her, just because they had hands on my woman, my wife, my life.
Surely, we were only looking at seconds more before Salvatore gave the signal for the beginning of the end.
The car Marco and I had been picked up in had travelled the few minutes to the cove that Don Ricolleti had found out Airiti’s boat had been aiming for. The Don, as well as the man who’d been introduced as Lorenzo’s papa, had joined the two of us, Salvatore, his and Giovanna’s brother Romeo, and a few of their most trusted soldiers. I’d been too focussed on the boat mooring and the subsequent gunfire that followed to watch as Lorenzo had been embraced, then bound and gagged and removed by other members of the Ricolleti family. I had, however, seen a blacked-out vehicle take him away to be placed somewhere secure. The embrace had been real enough, but whether Lorenzo could ever be trusted within their family, his blood family, would remain to be seen. I was grateful he was now their problem and not ours.
We’d exchanged a few words with Don Ricolleti, and I understood that he felt his family also had a vested interest in the situation that was fast unravelling in front of our eyes. For the first time in over a century, the De Lucas and the Ricolletis joined forces.
Positioned above the cove, many more of the Sicilian Don’s men were lying in wait, in case one of the fucking traitorous arseholes managed to evade what we had waiting for them. My men, who had followed Giovanna by boat from Malta, had just moored at the very end of the pier, and it was going to be down to them to get the ball rolling once, of course, Salvatore gave permission to start.
Come on, fucking give the signal. Inwardly, I was cursing Salvatore for waiting, even when I knew he was doing what needed to be done. But I was being controlled by my emotions, when I’d never really been convinced Salvatore was anything other than dead inside.
A few more seconds passed and I heard Giovanna cry out in pain as she stumbled and appeared to twist her ankle.
‘Fuck!’
‘Control yourself, Giordano,’ Salvatore snapped.
Behind her, I heard her mama laugh, a strange, manic sort of laugh. Instinctively, I moved, as my head demanded that my body moved to help her.
‘Steady, Brother.’ Romeo grabbed at my forearm to steady me and the gun that I was holding, pointing in their direction.
‘That woman, your mama is fucked in the head,’ I whispered.
‘This gun, the one I’m holding,’ Salvatore’s voice sounded mechanical, ‘will be the one to wipe her off the face of the earth,’ Salvatore replied. Then, as if he’d thought about just what he’d said, he directed his next question to his half-brother, ‘Today, I will make you an orphan. Will you ever forgive me?’
‘If you don’t take her, Jnr… I will,’ Romeo answered, and with that, Valentina Ariti, late De Luca’s fate was sealed.
The tension around us in those few seconds was palpable, but I refused to believe that anyone here had more to lose than me. To have been torn apart so long ago, to live without her for all the years in between, and then just as we’d found each other once again, to have that ripped away so violently, was more than I was convinced any sane man could cope with. My body was on high alert. My heart was pumping furiously, in anger and with the pain of watching Giovanna out there alone, when I’d promised her she would never be alone ever again. As my guilt increased, my blood pressure escalated as it frantically sent the liquid speeding around my body.
I had tunnel vision, with Giovanna central.
‘At last,’ Salvatore voiced, as Giovanna, Ricco and Valentina met at the end of the quay.
‘My brothers, let’s do this,’ Salvatore instructed.
‘It’s a GO!’ I shouted.
‘Boss.’ I heard the confirmation in my earpiece and observed as seconds later, Ariti’s boat was blown out of the water. Instantly, a fireball released, carrying heat and smoke spiralling high up into the air, and then pieces of the wreckage began to rain down all around us.
We were moving as one, into the acrid smelling fumes.
With my eyes fixed only on her, I covered the distance between us. Holding my gun out in front of me I shot one of Ricco’s men, an obnoxious wanker I hated from back in Malta and he crumpled to the floor like a used towel. One by one the bastards dropped, without me firing again. Adrenalin was pumping around our systems, but it appeared we all had our eye in today.
As the storm turned, suddenly the smoke from the destroyed boat was blowing straight towards us on the strength of the wind, and my vision of Giovanna was becoming more blurred by the second. I could see a struggle and her, then she was obscured from view.
‘Can you see her?’ Salvatore shouted from my far right.
‘NO!’ I bellowed back.
‘Approach with caution.’ I heard Salvatore in my earpiece as he instructed all of us to virtually come to a crawl.
Except I wasn’t listening to his instruction.
I was listening instead to the pain inside my heart.
‘GIOVANNA!’ I did the one thing I identified I shouldn’t have done. That was to show the bastards that would also have heard me, how much she meant to me. But she denoted everything I was, everything I could ever be, and without her I was nothing. She needed to know she wasn’t alone, that we were here fighting for her, that she was loved. The ‘Ndrangheta code with which I’d been brought up with could go fuck itself on a long, serrated knife, up the arse, for all I cared.
She was it for me and I’d never even really told her.
I left Marco and the others behind as I ran blindly into the still billowing smoke.
As the toes of my shoes hit something solid, I understood that I too was standing on the very edge of the quay and forced myself to stand still and concentrate.
‘You like the rain, don’t you?’ I heard Ricco speak.
‘I…’ Giovanna replied cautiously.
‘What sort of slut are you?’ Ricco questioned.
Water was beginning to collect in my eyes, as they tried hard to clear the fumes engulfing me where I stood. I pulled the silk square from my top pocket and wiped them, before covering my nose and mouth to stop myself from blowing my cover by coughing. The only good thing was, if I couldn’t see him clearly, I was convinced he could have no idea I was this close.
‘You killed your men,’ Giovanna observed, sounding baffled.
He shot them.
‘I watched you touch yourself in the rain, Gi. You writhed with ecstasy… as the storm rolled over Bovalino beach,’ the dirty bastard informed her.
‘What, Ricco? Why would you be watching my daughter?’ Valentina questioned, quickly followed by a loud, resounding slap of skin on skin and, as she cried out, I established that he’d just backhanded her, to get her silence.
‘You watched me?’ Giovanna asked.
The prick could only be referring to the night of the last storm we had been caught up in and the pleasure we’d taken from each other, all those years before.
‘Your grandfather would be ashamed of you.’ I knew how much that comment would have hurt her.
Keep talking fucker. Because the longer you talk, the easier it will be to pinpoint precisely where you’re standing. Inside my head I ran over Salvatore’s words. ‘ Remain calm. Think more than you act and notice everything. Men fear and respect the man who thinks before he speaks.’ And a strange sense of peace washed over me. Willing the smoke to clear just enough, I widened my stance, took my gun in both hands, and raised my aim.
‘We can go together to church and on the day of our marriage we can beg God to forgive your depravity,’ he stated, as the smoke became less dense, and I made out what looked like the damned awful shoes he always wore, and then once again he moved from the position. The sound of his shoes was loud on the wood he was walking over, but I couldn’t place him enough to train my gun at him, for fear of hurting her.
‘I’m not marrying you! I’ll go nowhere with you.’ Suddenly, she too cried out, and I rolled my lips over my teeth to remain quiet.
‘You can help me; we can help each other,’ he insisted.
‘What are you saying… we are to be married?’ Valentina asked, clearly questioning Ricco and his motives, which had clearly now moved focus from her to my wife.
‘NO!’ Giovanna shouted back at him.
He grunted, followed by two deep sounding thuds, letting me know he used those fucking shoes on her somewhere. When Giovanna released a blood curdling scream, which ended with her crying in pain, without thinking further, I was moving. The smoke I’d been using as cover, cleared enough for me to find the three of them still alive, and surrounded by the bodies of their dead bodyguards.
‘Drop your weapons!’ I shouted and watched as Giovanna caught sight of me. She was laid out on the quay, curled up in a foetal position, clutching her blood-soaked hands tightly to her. Holding my gaze, she smiled a soft, small smile of acceptance. One that told me she knew I was there for her, and everything was going to be alright.
Just before Valentina raised her gun towards her daughter.
‘NO!’ I shouted.
‘You can’t have him…. HE. DOESN’T. WANT. YOU.’ Valentina bent down and grabbed a hold of Giovanna’s long hair, pulling her sharply up, positioning Giovanna’s forehead in front of the gun she was holding.
I could feel Salvatore and my men closing in around us.
‘Tell them to stay away, Giordano,’ Ricco demanded, also sensing the same. When I hesitated, he continued, ‘If you want your wife to live, tell them.’
I shook my head slowly.
‘You won’t get off this fucking beach. You owe too much to many people. You’re going nowhere, like all the traitorous scum that’s crossed our families before you.’
Seconds passed, and everything around us began to move in slow motion, like watching a car crash from inside the vehicle. Every single piece of my army training came into play. Immediately, I was closing the rest of the distance between me and Giovanna, moving my gun between the pair of them that had my wife. Instinct took over and I saw in my peripheral as Ricco’s eye twitched as he looked down his sight as he prepared to take me out. But I refused to move my weapon away from Valentina.
‘Valentina,’ I called, to get her attention.
When she wordlessly declined to turn, I made the decision to end her. It would be a decision that could ultimately cost me my life, but I knew that Salvatore would react quickly enough to save Giovanna, and I made my peace with that. So, I pulled the trigger. It took one very neat bullet straight through the bitch’s temple to send her over the edge of the quay, into the water and to the hell she deserved.
With Giovanna relatively safe, I moved my attention to the son of a fucking bitch standing next to my wife.
‘So, what do you say, Giordano. Her or you?’ he asked smirking.
‘I say neither.’
As I squeezed the trigger, I was certain I heard gunfire from various directions and knew that very soon he’d be riddled. But, before that, I felt pain burst inside my left shoulder and was aware that his bullet had found me. The force of the entry sent me momentarily backwards, and I dropped my gun to the wood below my feet. Making sure I had all his attention, I righted myself and stood up straight. With my eyes still focussed on Ricco, I spread my arms wide, and I waited for him to try again.
‘Send me to God!’ I demanded.
I think I felt the heat first, before I understood something had been fired into his chest, just below his neck. His clothing caught alight quickly, fanned by the strong winds around us. He screamed louder, suddenly clutching at his face, as the flames licked higher. His fucking shoes noisily moved over the wood as though he was dancing an Irish jig. He may have only been feet from the water, but it was too far to save him.
Somewhere close by, I heard the deep voice of Salvatore. ‘The fucking shoes—it was you!’ I had no idea what he was on about. ‘Kill him. Make him stop. For all the Calabrian women and children who heard that before they lost their lives… MAKE. IT. STOP.’
Bullets once again came pouring in, taking his legs out from underneath him, and he fell to the floor, writhing in agony and still clutching at his face.
My interest in his agonising death waned, and I looked down to my wife. There in her hands was what looked like a flare gun, and I understood just what had happened.
‘Giovanna, you’re okay… you’re okay,’ I whispered, as I bent down to her and removed the weapon from her hands, before throwing it into the sea beside us. I took in that her hands were a mess, and most of her fingers looked as though the bastard had broken them by stamping down hard. ‘You’ll be okay, amore mio.’ I knew, given the strength of character she’d just shown, that ultimately, one day, she would play the piano once again.
‘Dante, you came for me,’ she cried, as she reached for me. Before sobbing, ‘I’ve killed him. I’m a monster, I’ve killed him.’ Hysteria began to taint her tone.
‘No, love, it wasn’t you…’ I looked around me and found what I was searching for. Without so much as even glancing behind me, I released bullet after bullet until Ricco gargled his last breath and finally shut the fuck up. ‘I killed him.’
Ignoring the pain in my shoulder, and the men now around us, I hoisted my wife up and into my arms and began to walk us away. Tears streamed down her face as I walked us off the pier and onto the debris covered sand.
‘Gi.’ Salvatore stopped in front of us. He touched her hair gently and placed a kiss on the top of his sister’s head. Then he looked up to find me. ‘Where are you taking her?’
‘We’re going home. Home to Calabria. Home to a life we promised each other such a long time ago.’
Relief spread over his normally hardened features.
‘Promise me you will look after your wife, Dante.’
‘I give you my promise, Don De Luca… and I now ask one of you. My Italian heritage feels it has had retribution for what they have done to my wife. But my English roots are demanding something more, for what he has done to your mama, and our families. I want him, and his men staked out on the rocks, cut them open and let the birds eat them. They are not to be buried; they won’t receive the last sacraments. Let the sea gradually claim them to the deep.’
‘Ricolleti?’ I heard Salvatore question, as he looked over his shoulder waiting for an answer.
‘It will give me great pleasure to comply with your wishes, Dante Giordano.’
I nodded my response to their words, the ones that finally showed Salvatore’s acceptance and Ricolleti’s agreement, then I carried on walking away. The storm had quietened, the winds had dropped, and the sky was beginning to lighten, as was the pain inside my heart. Light drops of rain began to fall, as the world began to cleanse itself.
‘You came back for me,’ she whispered into my chest, in disbelief.
‘I thought I was going to lose you, Giovanna,’ I admitted. ‘And it would have ended me.’
‘Never, Dante. I’m yours, remember?’
‘I watched you fall—and it was too fucking much.’
‘And you caught me, like you always said you would. Now, kiss me like the it’s the first time.’
I found her eyes with my own, before bending down and grazing my lips gently over hers and whispered.
‘You are mine, amore mio.’
‘Body and soul.’