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 onlyuntouched knife in the garage from the workbench and press the sharp tip to my palm.
Ibreathedwhen 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 BellaFera,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 alawyer,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.
