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Ruined, my papers, my drawings, my treasure, my only... ruined. I gasp as the air runs out of me; my chest tightens in a suffocating wave of despair. This is what living by a thread comes down to, anything and everything can just trigger the end and suddenly I feel exhausted. My shoulders slump and my breath hitches.
How long have I been awake for? Thirty-eight hours? Forty? I lift my fingers to my nose, wanting to know what it was that ruined my drawings and when the alcoholic, cloying smell dominates my sense of smell, I close my eyes, feeling in yet another twist my chest being filled with a latent anger that drives out the exhaustion, the sadness and anything and everything else.
I turn my neck and look at Fernanda over my shoulder, a mocking smile appears on my sister's red lipstick-smeared lips. Her face isn't much better, her white skin, very different from mine, is stained by dark makeup on her face and her hair,bleached to egg yolk blonde, is a spiky mess. Fernanda clicks her tongue.
“Oops!” She mocks. “I think I spilled a little,” she says and raises the bottle in an imaginary toast.
But she didn't accidentally spill anything, she ripped my drawings off the wall and purposely soaked them so there was nothing that could be done to get them back. If I didn't know her well enough to know this, the mocking expression on her face would have told me the full story.
I look back towards our sleeping father. Was he asleep when she did it? If he had been awake, would it have mattered? I know the answer to that question: it wouldn't have made any difference.
“And it's not like you're any good anyway.” She shrugs, rambling, not caring at all about the chaos of feelings I fall into right before her drunken eyes. “Why do you draw? You are terrible! Why insisting? You will never, ever get better! Years and years and it's still the same crooked lines, scribbles... You're a joke, Gabriella, and you'll never be good at anything! Insisting only makes you look ridiculous!”
I don't bother to respond, I stopped reacting to my sister's provocations a long time ago, more precisely when I realized that it only made her crueler. Some people, I understand, are born just for that, to be cruel, and that's why I draw.
I draw because this world is too ugly for me and, in my lines, crooked or not, defective, or not, I can invent a more beautiful one. I draw because amidst an infinite number of bad things I need to at least try to see something good, and I wasn't granted the privilege of having anything that could be called that, so I create.
I draw because my sketches are the only thing that still makes me smile freely on days when even the sun is too dark. I draw because on paper, no matter its color or size, I am free. Something that I don't know outside of it.
“Won’t you say anything?” She spits out the words, irritated that I'm ignoring her provocations and, soon after, she burps loudly. “Well, if you haven't found a fool yet, you better do it, because the money you had at home is gone,” she warns, getting exactly what she wanted from me, a reaction.
I blink, still with the pile of my ruined papers in my hands and expel all the air from my lungs in a slow exhalation, before taking my eyes to the hole in the floor where I hid the money. Only now do I realize that the place that was once hidden under one of my drawings and under my old pillow is completely visible and empty.
Totally empty.
“Fernanda.” The word comes out between my teeth, and her response is a low laugh. “It was Raquel's medication money, damn it! It was money for the energy bill!” I say, now, looking at her.
“I'm sure that, where that one came from, you can get more,” she scoffs. “Especially now,” she adds, looking down my body and stopping at my bare legs.
“She's your sister too,” I murmur, unable to believe that Fernanda really did this, because no, where that money came from, I can't get anymore. “She's only eleven years old, Fernanda. Eleven years...” The last two words come out in a desperate whisper and are enough to make me give up pretending that Fernanda didn't win once again.
A single tear slides down my cheek, marking my skin with an agonizing slowness, the same way I feel the hole in my chestopen up. Raquel should return home tomorrow, and the money for shopping, the energy bill, the money for my younger sister's medicines went down the drain. Or rather, down Fernanda's throat, if the bottle in her hand is any indication.
Weeks of work, weeks of cleaning and every other job I could find, because Raquel's health is too fragile. Living here is already a constant strain on her weak lungs, and without the right food, without the medication, without the energy for her to nebulize, abandoning her in the hospital is probably a more merciful choice.
“Sucks to be her.” Is her dry response before turning around without even a drop of remorse and leaving the house, slamming the wooden panel that serves as our door.
CHAPTER 5
________
Vittorio Cataneo
In the center of the pen, I keep my gaze firmly on the black-coated stallion facing me at one end. Galard remains stationary despite my clear direction for him to circulate.
I discovered very early on that exerting control was something that kept me in check, and horses are stupidly intelligent animals, taming them is much more difficult than making a human bend. Violence brings most men to their knees, while it only makes horses more irascible.
Mastering a creature like Galard requires more, much more than being skilled with words, instruments of torture, or a weapon, and I respect him for that. There are those who say that dogs are better than humans, I would say that horses are definitely more worthy of admiration than the human race as a species.
As Galard and I wage a silent battle of wills, my mind processes the latest information I received from Tizziano. The missing shipment was in fact seized by the CIA; however, this is not the surprising part of the story, the disappearance without fanfare of more than a billion dollars in weapons was already something to be surprised at.
An operation like this, if successful, would put the names of at least half a dozen agents on Washington's agenda, and that's the only thing Americans really care about: visibility. The wasted opportunity always seemed much more worrying to me than the disappearance of the cargo itself.
A concern that proved justified after the call my underboss received. For them to come to us before we could have confirmation that the action had come from the US department is unacceptable and puts all my senses on alert.
Adam Scott thinks he can force me to collaborate with his department, the idea would be laughable if it weren't so stupid. Even if he could establish any relationship between the decoy cargo and me, or the organization I lead, which he cannot. Someone who has the audacity to offer me a negotiation should know better. There is not a man of honor on the face of the Earth who would bow to an authority other than his Don.
There is not a man breathing under my command who would bow to anything but the Sagrada. Galard snorts defiantly, and I pay him no attention, which only makes him angrier. Adam Scott will wish he had that chance.
