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“Please!”
“This faith of yours that you can move me is almost beautiful to see,” he comments, tilting his head to the side. “Choose one.”
“What?” I whisper with a sore throat, blinking, trying not to understand the meaning of his words, but the hand of one of the henchmen rising with a gun in hand, pointed at where my father, Fernanda and Raquel are, is a clearer explanation than any word would be. “No! No! No!” He is unfazed by my agony, the expression of boredom on his face remains impassive, while I find a million different ways to beg. “Please, me! Choose me! Kill me! Please kill me!” Silence. A sea of silence. “Please...” The last word comes out in an exhausted whisper.
“Do you want to be selfless? Do you want to give your life for theirs?”
“Yes.” I nod in agreement like crazy. “Please! Yes!” I confirm, desperate.
“So greedy of you.” The answer is nothing I could have expected, but I don't dare interrupt the course of his thoughts, because even the shadow of a smile that took over his lips gives me chills. “You want to bargain with me, by offering me something that already belongs to me.” The disdain in his tone is so obvious that any hope I threatened to feel drains from my pores. “Do you understand how this sounds so insolent when it is said out loud?” I shake my head from side to side in a frantic rhythm, my stomach punching the doors of my throat, completely crazy.
“All I want is to exchange my life for theirs, that's all I ask.”
“And who gave you this right? Who gave you the right to ask for something? Do you know who has the right to beg me for something?” I cry no. “Someone I'm willing to please. Do I look willing to please you, Gabriella?”
“No.”
“Do you deserve to be pleased, Gabriella?” I don’t answer. I can't. I can't. But the man won't allow me to ignore him, his voice is like steel when he demands it.
“Answer me!” A negative shake of the head is the only possible response when a loud sob erupts from my throat.
“Words, Gabriella. Say it loud and clear what every miserable soul in this room besides yours already knows.”
“No, I don't deserve it” I confess out loud the certainty that, until today, I had only revealed to myself in the silence of my own head.
“What do you deserve, Gabriella?”
“To die.”
“Exactly!” he agrees before letting silence sweeps through the small house long enough to make me stop sobbing. He brings his face closer to mine, his nose almost touching my skin as he asks:
“And do you know why you're not going to die?” I start to respond by just shaking my head, but the look from the man in front of me is the only reprimand I need to say the word out loud.
“No.”
“Because you didn't earn that right.” I look at him without understanding. “Your life is mine to do with as I please, and from now on, your job is to make it worth something, so that you don't end up in debt when I take it. For now, you are worth less than the ground you walk on, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Next time you beg for something, Gabriella, make it worth it.”
CHAPTER 13
________
Vittorio Cataneo
Only someone who has nothing to lose is capable of sleeping during a flight to an unknown destination, right after their life has been taken as payment for a debt.
Sitting behind one of the tables on the private jet, I watch theragazza[41] sleeping in the plane's seat as if she were lying in the best bed that ever existed, despite the cold that makes her body shiver. Considering where she's lived for the past seven years, that's not a far-fetched idea.
“Interesting acquisition.” Sitting across the hall, Cesare comments when he notices where my eyes are. “I thought horses were the only pets you were willing to tolerate. Why isn't she in a box in the plane's hold?”
Why?I echo the question in my mind but decide to ignore both his and its echo.
“I heard Adam Scott took a leave of absence, and the La Santa investigation was dropped. The CIA must be disappointed.” I change the subject.
“Terrible circumstances” he announces as if he were not responsible for them. “The wife was in a regrettable accident and the two children, unfortunately, were in the car. The man lost hisentire family at once. Sad.” My gaze finds the face very similar to mine when I turn my neck. I narrow my eyes.
