I pulled the guts and organs out of his body.
Cut his flesh piece by piece.
The soldiers dragged me back to my cell. I wanted to run, scream, escape from there, but I couldn’t. Not because I knew they would kill me, or because I was afraid they’d hurt Aunt Lizzie. No. I couldn’t because my body had shut down.
I was collapsing. My mind unraveling, just as it had twelve years ago.
When my body fell to the cell floor, I let the cold seep into my bloodied skin and clenched my fists. My mind tried to tear me away from reality, but I fought it. For my sake, for those I loved, for Camillo…
Something hard pinned me to the present. Cold, pressing against the palm of my left hand. I sat up and spread my fingers, finding the ring again. The peridot, crusted in blood. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the concrete. The restaurant, Camillo, the beach, his promises, his arms.
He’ll come. I know he will.
At that moment, the door burst open and I saw, horrified, the panicked face of Cissio Accorinti, a gun gripped in his hand. “COME ON,PUTTANA! MOVE!”
There was no sign of his soldiers, and I noticed blood staining his cream-colored blazer near the shoulder.
He forced me to my feet, his free hand tangled in my hair, and hauled me out of there. With hurried, stumbling steps, he shoved me through an area I hadn’t seen before, and it didn’t take us long to find a staircase that wound downward.
“LET’S GO,PUTTANA!” He yelled desperately, and at that moment, the echo of gunfire rang out behind us.
With a shove, Accorinti sent me tumbling down the steps and I crashed at the bottom, next to some sort of iron gate. He landed beside me with a leap and punched a code into a console.
The door swung open and, to my astonishment, gave way to the sun and the sea.
I squinted and raised a hand, trying to adjust my eyes to the sudden brightness. But I didn’t have much time. He grabbed me by the hair again, dragging me out into the light.
He led us down a narrow path, my stomach turned to lead as I watched the waves crash below against sharp rocks.
We were skirting the edge of a cliff.
“You’re going to pay for what Vicari has done,puttana! Just you wait and see!” The skull-faced man shrieked as we finally climbed to the top of the cliff and moved away from the edge of the precipice. I could sense the fear behind his hysteria, and my heart raced.
It was him. The gunshots.It was Camillo.
The moment that thought formed, Accorinti forced me to kneel in the middle of that cliff, with my back to him and the sea, and facing a firing line taking shape before our eyes.
They were men. Dozens of them. Well-armed, ready to fire, in front of several parked SUVs. I spotted an old man among them, a silver cane in his hands and a grim expression on his face.
“Don’t make any mistakes, Don Accorinti.” The old man’s voice was extremely hoarse, cutting through the sounds of the sea like the scraping of metal.
I felt the tip of a pistol against the back of my neck. “If I fall, Don Zaccaria, your friend will fall too!” Accorinti shouted.
It was then that I saw him emerge in a hurry from behind the crowd. Taller than all the other men. His wolf-like gaze sunk into deep dark circles, the color of jade contrasting with the dark skin of his face, and a Beretta in his hands.
Relief made me tremble, and my face contorted as a sob escaped me.
“Let her go, Accorinti.” Camillo growled. “If you want to live, let her go.”
But Cissio Accorinti didn’t let me go. He pressed the pistol harder and harder against the back of my head, and with every movement he made, I groaned, fearing he would shoot.
“Wrong, Don Vicari. I’m the one who makes the rules.” I gasped for air, fighting the urge to run from there into the arms of the man in front of me.
“If you hurt her, you’ll die,” Camillo warned. “You’re cornered. Give up.”
“You lost, Don Vicari. You lost.”
Men shouted.
