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AMELIA
Irub my hands against the back of the dining room chair and keep my head down. Settimo, Nemma, Syrus, and I are all seated at a long table in a dining room. Our hands are zip tied behind our backs, all except for Nemma. She clutches Settimo, holding a rag to his gunshot wound to slow the bleeding.
He’s lost a lot of blood, and his skin is turning sickly pale. I did what I could on the drive here, but it wasn’t much with my hands behind my back. At least I didn’t have the bag over my head this time.
They didn’t gag us, either, and at first I found it strange, but it started to make sense after only a few minutes. Unlike Lorenzo, Settimo shows his temper. He spent the drive spewing obscenities at Valentine, only for Valentine to cackle. He’s sadistic, and I’m figuring out quickly how to deal with sadistic men.
Do not engage. Do not provoke. Valentine has left me alone since Settimo entered the picture, and I have every intention of using it to my advantage.
I pause my sawing of the zip tie on the chair when Blondie, whose name I now know is Nico, peers at me. He’s as sadistic as Valentine, if not more so. The other guy, Jeremiah, clearly isn’t into this. He paces the room, intermittently going to the window and moving the curtain to the side an inch to peek through.
He’s afraid of Lorenzo. Or maybe the Grucos in general.
I don’t blame him.
As preoccupied as I am with getting this fucking zip tie loose and coming up with a game plan, I can’t help but notice the house. It’s charming and modest. There’s a cross on the wall behind the head of the table and family photos on a fireplace mantle beneath it. We came in through the garage, but I spotted a quaint flowerbed in front of the porch of the stucco house. I thought surely we were at the wrong place. It feels like a home that would be full of love and warmth and has a homey feel I wish my childhood house would have had. It looks nothing like a place that could be the home of…
The word monsters comes to mind, and my nose pinches. I can’t think of Lorenzo as a monster. By some of the things Valentine has been saying, I almost want to. I mean, feeding people to lions and tigers? What the fuck?
But I know him. And he’s far from a monster. I’m beginning to think Settimo is too. Lorenzo was convinced Settimo wouldn’t care about how we felt about each other, but he was wrong.
“Keep looking out the window, you fucking pussy. My brothers will be here any minute,” Settimo grumbles when Jeremiah pulls back the curtain yet again.
I bite my lip and chance a look up at Lorenzo’s family. It’s still nerve wracking to be around them and even more nerve wracking to think of us as on the same team.
Nemma looks like she’s about to have a nervous breakdown, and she sobs, despite Valentine screaming at her several times to “shut up already”. I don’t know for sure why they didn’t tie her up, but I imagine it’s because they don’t want Settimo to bleed to death before Lorenzo gets the chance to see him die.
Because that’s exactly what this is. All the people Lorenzo cares about together to be executed. Valentine is convinced if he gets rid of the Grucos that their men won’t seek vengeance. Their legacy will be dismantled.
He’s delusional and Jeremiah knows it.
“I don’t like this,” Jeremiah says, peeking out the window. “Why the fuck are they taking so long?”
“Relax,” Valentine drags out the word. “They’re on their way.”
“What if they aren’t? What if Lorenzo caught wind and is bringing reinforcements?”
“That’s why we brought our own.”
He’s right. Four other men came through the front door earlier and are waiting in the living room which is to the right of the door. Lorenzo and Anthony will walk into a trap.
There’s also one man in the garage and one out back. One of the living room men muttered it to Valentine when they walked in. I’ve been listening carefully, trying to add up all the variables and calculate the odds of us getting out of here alive. They aren’t good.
“They havemore, boss. You know that.”
Valentine huffs and turns his ugly, self-righteous face toward Syrus. “The Grucos have been falling apart for years. They’re unprepared and sloppy. It’s a leadership problem.” He turns his eyes to Settimo and shakes his head. “One that keeps getting worse.”
“Fuck you,” Settimo sneers.
Nemma wails and makes a cross over her chest with her left hand. “O Gesu, perdona le nostre colpe, preservaci dal fuoco dell'inferno.”
“God dammit, I told you to shut the fuck up!”
Nemma flinches but continues in a low voice Italian I can’t understand. But I know from her tone and her closed eyes it’s a prayer. “Porta in cielo tutte le anime, specialmente le piu bisognose—”
Valentine stomps to Nemma and slams the back of his hand against her cheek. It knocks her out of the chair, and she whimpers but immediately stands back up and resumes caring for her eldest son, almost unaffected by the hit.
Valentine fumes, but he doesn’t hit her again.
