Page 97 of Cavaliere

I start to climb the stairs as slowly as possible, hoping that the creepy phone sex guy that no one has ever seen but only hears will miraculously leave his apartment and help me.

It doesn’t happen.

We reached my old front door faster than I would have liked. The bad memories will always outweigh the bad in this place. Every time I see this front door, an impending sense of dread wraps me up like a blanket. Only right now that blanket is trying to suffocate me.

“Don’t fucking move. I will shoot you.” Thanks. I got that by the fucking gun pressed into me the whole way up. I roll my eyes before I can stop myself. He has a limp from where I stabbed him in the leg as he steps around me, scaring me when he starts kicking the door in.

After five hard kicks, that’s all it takes. The door flies open, banging against the apartment wall.

“This is your chance,” a little voice in the back of my head says. Without hesitating any longer, I make a break for it by taking the stairs down three steps at a time.

“Son of a bitch!” I hear him yell behind me. “Get back here, you stupid bitch.”

My ankle gives out on the landing, rolling and bending at an angle it isn’t meant to ever bend in. I cry out as I feel it snap; the sharp, almost unbearable pain shoots up my leg. Tears are running down my face before I can stop them.

My abductor reaches me, yanking me back by my arm. Hard. Another pop echoes throughout the corridor. My focus on him is quickly fading. White spots look like little pieces of confetti as they litter my vision from the blinding pain that is running through me right now. My arm feels like it’s just dangling, like the only thing keeping it semi-attached to my body is the skin that surrounds it.

I’m dragged back up the flight of stairs and down the hallway. If I make it through this, a small part of me wants to come back and kill every single person that lives in this building for not even poking a head out to see what’s going on.

Once inside, he tries to slam the front door shut, but the broken lock leaves it cracked.

Unfortunately, the place looks just like I left it, minus my shitty furniture. I close my eyes in defeat. More tears squeeze through the cracks and pour down my face, mixing with the blood that’s trickling out of the corner of my mouth. The salty metallic taste splits my heart in two. Matteo is never going to get to taste me again in that way, and it kills me.

“Now,” he sneers as he limps over to me, “let’s finish what we started, shall we?” He draws his good leg back, landing a kick so hard to my ribs that I slide a few feet back on the floor. The air is stolen from my lungs as the wind is knocked out of me.

I’m gasping for breath as I slap my hand on the hard floor, trying to pull myself away from him.

“I’m sorry, my knight,” I say so softly that I can barely hear it.

An eerie calm feeling washes over me. Knowing you’re about to die is such a weird feeling. You’re sad. Sad about all of the things you know you’re going to miss out on and the regrets you have from things you never did or said. You’re mad. Mad as fuck that the fight is being taken from you. You’re happy. Happy because you know you gave every single fucking ounce of everything you had to this shitshow we call life. And even with all of those emotions, you’re somehow at peace because you know the pain and suffering are coming to an end.

“I should kill you the way you tried to kill me,” he says as he limps toward me. “Stab you right in the fucking stomach. I spent a month not being able to get out of bed because of you. You’re going to pay for that too.”

“Don’t do this.” I gasp out; each breath I take feels like I’m being stabbed.

His dead laugh rings out through the apartment as he throws his head back and laughs manically. “You’re begging isn’t going to work on me, stupid bitch. As much as I want to draw this out, I won’t. Want to know why?” He pauses to stare down at me, his dead eyes looking at me, but I can tell they aren’t really seeing me. He’s too far gone. “Because I can’t wait to see the look on Matteo’s face when I send him a picture of his girl with her fucking face blown off.” He pulls a gun out of the waistband of his jeans and points it right at me.

I’m looking right down the barrel of a gun when shouting irrupts in the room, making him whip around.

This is the distraction I need. I just need to drag myself to my bedroom and lock myself in. I just need to get away from him.

My heart stops when he frantically turns his attention back toward me and aims his gun where, if he shot it, a bullet would hit me right between the eyes.

The last thing I think as I squeeze my eyes shut and a shot rings out is that I never got to tell Matteo I love him.

Chapter

Fifty-Four

MATTEO

As soon as I pull out of the parking lot of DD’s, I put on “Whatever” by Godsmack and blast it. I want this song stuck in my head when I kill this pathetic piece of shit. The is only thirty seconds in when Gio interrupts it by calling.

Hitting the answer button on the steering wheel, I say, “Tell me you found him.”

“We haven’t found him physically,” Gio says, making my foot press down on the gas in anger as I floor it. Aldo, Alessio, and Enzo get thrown back in their seats, but none of them say anything. “But we found his car.”

“Where?”