Page 94 of One Filthy Kiss

It takes several beats for me to understand what I’m looking at.

The misshapen face is barely recognizable as my sister. One eye is purple-black, the surrounding flesh so pulpy the eye is little more than a slit. Her mouth is swollen; blood trickles down her chin from the corner of her lips and more blood is smeared across her forehead. Bianca is unconscious, bound toa seat by ropes around her chest, and head tilted backwards for the benefit of the fucking animal recording the grisly scene.

As I watch the footage, two men step in front of the camera. One slices through the ropes around her chest, while the other catches my sister as she slumps forward. He hoists her onto his shoulder like a sack of grain and carries her towards a heavy metal door.

I don’t recognize the room. From the artificial light and grubby walls, I’d guess that it’s a basement, or underground room of some kind. There are no discerning features on the walls. No windows. No furniture other than the seat in the middle of the room.

The man carrying my sister keeps his face hidden, but I hear the grunt of a released breath as he shoulders her dead weight. They’re both wearing dark suits that stretch across their broad shoulders and thickset frames.

The second guy lingers in front of the camera. Deliberately. This is a game to him.

But while he’s making me wait for the big reveal, I hear a familiar voice, making my gut twist. I don’t catch what’s being said, but I don’t need to.

Mario is behind this fucking charade, proving that I shouldn’t have stopped at busting up his hands.

As thug-number-two turns around to face the camera, he raises his hand and slides something sinister over his knuckles. I get a glimpse of metal. It explains why my sister’s face is mashed.

But like a horror movie approaching the gore-fest finale, the worst is yet to come.

With hisface still concealed, he raises his right hand and snaps off a latex glove to reveal stubby fingers covered in heavy gold rings. The camera pans upward as he licks his index finger suggestively, his fat tongue scraping upwards from palm to fingertip. When he has finished, he starts on the second finger, then the third, grouping them together to ram the point home.

I drag my attention away from the provocative gesture and focus on the parts of his face that I can see. The thick black hair with the prominent widow’s peak, the bushy brows behind which dark sunken eyes shelter, the flat nose that must’ve been broken so many times it no longer heals correctly. But it’s the tattoo on the guy’s cheek that reveals his identity.

The hammer and sickle with a snake curling upwards.

He’s bratva.

The bastardo has sold my sister out to the bratva.

A tic starts above my left eye while the camera keeps recording, and I tap out a code to Bruno on the tabletop between us. Beating up my sister is only part of the statement he wants to make; there’s more to come, and I inhale every last drop of it, storing it up for payback time.

Sure enough, the bratva pakhan’s wide chest fills up the screen as they trade places. When the room comes back into view, the thug is gone, and Mario is smiling at me, ostentatiously adjusting the camera angle with his busted hand.

“Giovanni.” The pleasantness in his tone is as fake as the fixed smile revealing a gemstone stuck in one of his top front teeth. “I would’ve rather done this face to face, but my wife claimedthat you were out of the country. E la vita. This will have to do.”

“The bratva, Mario? That’s an all-time low even for you, isn’t it?”

It’s taking every ounce of willpower to even talk to the man without smashing the device to smithereens. I’m taking small comfort from planning how many pieces his face will be in when I get hold of him.

The guttural voice of the pakhan now holding the camera mumbles something to Mario, who tips his head back and roars with laughter. All fake. Mario d’Angelo doesn’t understand humor.

“Seems you’re collecting enemies, my friend.”

“Make no mistake, Mario. We are not friends.”

His face darkens. Not a pleasant look, and not for the first time, I pity my sister having to share a bed with this man. It wouldn’t be so bad if Mario counteracted his perverted tendencies and feral behavior by being a good father and the kind of husband who treats his wife like a princess outside of the bedroom. But he does neither.

“If you wanted to start a war, you only had to say.” He watches me closely.

“Bianca is my sister. Our families had an agreement, a contract that you break each time your fist connects with her face.”

He raises his hands in mock surrender. “I have no idea what agreement you’re talking about.” Pause. “Unless you mean the one that you ripped to shreds when you had my knuckles broken.” He studies his busted hand. “What did you think I would do, huh? Get down on my knees and apologize?”

“It would be the decent thing to do, owning your mistakes.” I shrug. “Do the bratva understand that you’ll renege on whatever little arrangement you have going on here when it suits you? Or are you paving that bridge with the same drug money that you use to buy your women?”

He and the pakhan exchange more words that remain just out of earshot.

No matter. I get the gist of the conversation, and it isn’t the kind of banter you’d find at a beachside bar in Sicily. Or anywhere else for that matter.