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On the way, I dial the hospital. The nurse I speak to tells me there’s no change. Sabella is stable but unconscious. The news fills me with both calm and dread. Sabella’s condition isn’t turning for the worst, but it’s not getting better either.
I put a man in charge of babysitting Enzo, making sure he doesn’t get his hands on a phone. No one alerted Toma to the turn of events. For all he knows, everything went according to plan, and I’m as good as dead. He probably thinks his father and his uncle are sleeping soundly in their beds, fucking their whores, and that I returned from Marseille to find my wife raped and killed in the house to which I banished her.
He must imagine me weak and going out of my mind, an easy target. He can’t know that Enzo’s informant spilled the beans before I shot his dick off and left him to bleed out or that Roch showed up and saved Sabella’s life. He’s not privy to the fact that Marziale is currently hiding with a bullet wound in his shoulder. No, he’s sitting comfortably at home, waiting for Marziale to take care of the dirty work.
My assumptions are confirmed when I fit my gloves and kick down Toma’s apartment door. He sits naked on the sofa with the girl from the previous time splayed out on her back next to him. Judging by the lines of coke cut on the table and the two glasses of champagne standing next to the half-empty bottle, they’re celebrating. The premature smugness vanishes from his face as he looks at the gun I’m pointing at him.
“Angelo.” He utters an uncomfortable laugh. “You’re making a habit of showing up at the most inconvenient times.”
The girl’s face is turned to the side. She stares at me with glassy eyes, but I doubt she sees anything. A pile of vomit lies next to her on the carpet, confirming the source of the sour smell in the air. Pieces of partly digested food are encrusted in her hair, and traces of bile have dried in the corner of her slack mouth.
I keep the gun trained on him. “She looks like she’s ODing.”
“Yeah, well, I told her to go slow on the candy.”
“Celebrating something?” I ask with a cold smile.
He measures me. “Just starting the weekend early. What’s up?”
I kick the coffee table out of the way, sending glasses and ashtrays flying. The bottle hits the floor with a thud and sprays a circle of champagne around the room as it spins on the tiles. Toma leans away from me, flattening himself against the backrest of the sofa. The girl doesn’t as much as blink.
I climb over the mess and kick his feet apart.
He raises his hands. “Ange—”
Pop.
The silencer dampens the sound of the shot I fire, but there’s nothing to be done about the howl that splits the sky as he slides to the edge of the sofa and slumps into a heap, cupping his groin where I shot off his nut.
Blood pisses through his fingers. Splatters cover the face of the girl who’s still lying like a naked corpse.
“You were saying?” I ask, pushing the barrel against his temple.
“It wasn’t me,” he screams through a mixture of tears and snot that runs into his mouth. “It was my father’s idea. I swear it.” He breaks out into a violent shiver. “I-I was against it. I s-swear. I told him n-not to hurt Sabella.”
The name alone on his lips does it.
Pop.
Brain matter and blood explode from the side of his head. His body falls sideways.
One more down, a few left to go.
I turn to the woman and feel her pulse.
Nothing.
Just like me. I feel nothing.
I leave the gun on the floor. I took it from one of Marziale’s dead men. His prints will be all over it. Then I step over the blood and walk to the door.
“Neighbors?” I ask my man who stands in the hallway.
He shakes his head. “They’re too scared to come out.” He tilts his head to the door. “They know who he is.” Correcting himself, he says, “Who he was.”
“Let’s go.”
“Cleanup?” he asks.
