daniella
Her hand slipped between the mattress and the boxspring. Searched around, blade of her hand bumping against the hard edge of what she was looking for. Pulled it out, looked at the black screen. Saw her nails curled around its edge, winced at her need for a manicure. The last few days had been murder on her hands. She smiled and laughed at her vain thought. Swiped the screen to life, sat her butt down on the bed.
The colorful icons beckoned her, begged her to use them, reach out to someone, check her social media. Call someone. Daniella, you have to call someone. Who would she call? The only one she could really think of was her mother. She just needed information.
Hey Mom, how’s it going? You haven’t...you know, uh, by any chance, um, heard from Rocco at all?
Rocco? Rocco’s dead honey.
Well, Mom, you might wanna hold onto your hat. Guess what? He’s not. He’s alive. Alive and he’s fucking fantastic. Mom, I’m in love.
No, honey. No Daniella, I mean he’s dead now...what do you think those sirens are for?
Shit, fuck, shit. She lowered her face to the phone, felt its screen touch her forehead. She just wanted information. Just wanted to know what was going on. What was the word on the street, player?
“Oh Rocco,” she groaned.
Shook the malaise off, got her act together then, sat up straight. Opened a browser and went to the NBC Chicago affiliate’s website. A headline read, Shootout In Printer’s Row Leaves One Dead.
“Oh no,” she gasped, rose without realizing. She read the story. Two dumb paragraphs, not much more information than what was in the headline. She mounted the stairs, went up to a bedroom, her feet moving on their own. A shooting on the street left one man dead this morning. Police are investigating. Call yourself a news site? No, oh no, no. Rocco, Rocco.
She parted the curtain, looked out over the snowy rooftops. She could hear more sirens now. Undulating wails, one voice beckoning another, one siren becoming two, two becoming three… She saw the flash of lights on the low gray sky as some unseen emergency vehicle raced behind the row of houses across the street from her.
The phone jumped in her hand, buzzed angrily, vibrating in her grip. She jumped like she’d been electrocuted. Yelped audibly, both her feet coming right up off the floor before the phone slipped out of her hand and she juggled it, bouncing it from hand to hand, lower and lower to the floor until she finally knocked it to the ground and it cartwheeled across the empty room until it hit the bare metal bed frame. She stumbled after it on her hands and knees. Gripped it and held it so she could read the screen. Unknown Number. It buzzed again and the sizzle it put up through her arms was threatening, yet somehow wonderful. This could be something, this could be news. It could be Rocco. Of course, it could be her killer too. Heard her voice and then the next thing she’d have the door kicked down and...
Fuck it. She touched the green circle with the white image of a phone receiver, pressed it to her ear.
She didn’t say anything, afraid for someone to hear her voice. She listened. Heard breathing, heard muffled scrapes against the microphone. She listened more intently. Could tell someone was also listening intently. She screamed in her head, Say something, asshole! She opened her mouth to speak then heard a weak tinny and distant voice. So different to the baritone boom it was usually delivered with. Daniella?
“Rocco? Rocco?” she yelled. He sounded lost. Like a little kid in those woods.
Then he was suddenly strong, shouting, “Daniella!”
“Rocco,” she yelled and her eyes welled up with tears.
“Daniella, get out!”
“You’re okay, Rocco...God, Rocco, you’re alive!”
“Daniella, get out of the house, now!”
“What?” she said, his words suddenly coming into jarring sharp focus. “What did you say?”
“Listen to me, Daniella. Take the phone—which you should not have answered—and walk out of the house... Don’t stop. If you’re naked, I don’t care. Walk right out of the house and don’t look back, keep walking...” he coughed then, a ragged wet sound aimed away from the phone
“Rocco, are you okay? Wait...are you okay?”
“Go to...” he coughed again. She heard him spit. “Don’t say where, but go to where we came out of the subway...don’t say it...you remember?” He coughed again.
“Rocco, please tell me you’re okay...please, Rocco, are you okay?”
“Right as fucking rain, baby. You remember? You remember when we came outta the tunnel?”
“I remember,” she cried. He was lying, he was fucking lying. He wasn’t okay. “Rocco, please...”
“Are you leaving right now? ...Are you walking?” he wheezed.
“What? ...No, please, Rocco... Where are you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, his voice distant like the phone was held far from his mouth.
Her feet were moving now. She pressed the phone to her head so hard it hurt and she didn’t realize it until she started working her mouth around to relieve a sudden tension. She forced her hand to relax, paused at the top of the stairs, her movement stilling so she could hear if he was still there.
“Rocco?” she said loudly into the phone. “Rocco? ...”
An icy dread shot through her. Her heart stopped, her breath was clutched.
A sound in the house.
Downstairs, near the kitchen. The sound of glass breaking, a shard falling to the floor and cracking to smaller pieces.
She held the phone to her face again, her eyes wide and glued down the stairs. “Rocco? Someone’s in the house, Rocco. I hear them,” she whispered.
“Get out, Daniella, run...”
“I can’t...I’m upstairs...they’re downstairs...”
“Hide,” he said, his voice racked with tension, but lowered in a rough whisper. She heard a boot crunch glass on tile. Her hands went to her pockets, but she didn’t have any. She left the call open but slipped the phone into her shirt pocket. A flannel shirt and black panties were all she wore. Her feet were bare.
A panic rose within her, rumbling from the distance—a terrifying rumble—growing louder, getting closer. Her legs started to shake and her bladder wanted to let loose again. Where was her gun? Where did she leave it? ...The kitchen? She’d put it in the sink when she wiped the counter down…
Of all the gifts her lover could have brought her he never thought to buy her a fucking holster?
16
Turpentine
daniella
Legs and hands trembling, she was frozen at the top of the stairs. Her skin humped with gooseflesh. She heard a creaking door open. Heard two voices talking. Then a third. Her mouth fell open and she wanted to cry. She was going to die today. In five minutes she would be dead. These were her last breaths. Visions of her and Rocco, in love, looking in his eyes, walking with his hand holding hers, were all swiped away like cobwebs. It was all so fragile. All of it.
She crept backwards, eyes glued down the end of the stairs that traveled straight down, polished and gleaming maple, curled to the left and pointed towards the kitchen. The voices were clearer and they echoed around the squared cathedral ceiling above her. The voices made no sense at first. Hushed whispers, men trying to be quiet, whispers over whispers, none of the words coming clear. She took another step back. A pattern emerged in their speech and the meaning began to reveal itself. Words slowly became concepts in her terrified mind. They weren’t English. They weren’t speaking English. But she comprehended...
Another step back. Italian. The hushed sounds were in Italian. She made out words. Bitch, dead, kill, then a laugh, then, you go downstairs, you go upstairs. She couldn’t breathe. They were going to find her and they were going to kill her.
Another step back, she was under the arch of the bedroom. It made sense now. They weren’t Nero’s men. They weren’t soldiers she recognized. The tight jeans with colored stitching, frosted hair and pointy shoes. European. They spoke Italian. What did it mean?
Who in Italy hated her so much?
She stepped back once more, her bare foot had sweated in fear and it made a squeak on the hardwood. There was nowhere to hide. The house was empty. There was no furniture. There was no lower roof if she wanted to climb out the window. She turned and walked forward, fear loosening its grip, and a desire to stay alive forging her movements now. She made it to the window. Looked down. Twenty, thirty feet to the ground. She could drop out this window. She’d break something, sprain something, but she would probably live...unless she hit her head. Then what? Roll under a shrub. Cuddle up and stay warm, try and...they’d still find her, laying broken on the walkway...
Footsteps mounted the stairs. She waited too long, there was no way she would be out the window before whoever was on the stairs was on her. This was the first room when you reached the top. She whisked a glance back. Saw a rising shadow curling up the wall from the stairs, looking tall and menacing, lit from below by the kitchen lights. It carried a gun, held out at its hip. She tip-toed, her breath held in her lungs, seized there, tap-tap across the floor and into the closet. It was empty. Nothing to hide behind. No hanging overcoat and boots to slip on and pretend she was just a bunch of old disused clothing. It was stark and white and bare, one lone wire hanger on the rod. She worked herself into its corner, turned her head into the wall like if she couldn’t see him he wouldn’t see her. She trembled. Her neck ached with tension. The footsteps were in the hall and there was no hesitation in them. It was too easy. The steps came in the room, echoing around the empty space, nothing to absorb it, only flat surfaces reflecting it. Her knees were knocking. Her ankle cracked. The steps made their way to the closet. The door yanked open, she saw light on the bare corner ahead of her, then fingers wove through her hair in an instant and she was yanked back, her head snapping. She screamed.
She was dazed and as he yanked one more time, her grip gave way and he pulled her to the room. But she’d brought that wire hanger with her and she snapped it across his face with all her might. It cracked like a whip on his cheek and she saw him, face to face, his eyes wide in astounding shock, his cheek blazing red.
She snatched her arm back with the wire, set to whip him harder, set to whip his head right off his shoulders, but she was punched from the side. Another man charging up the stairs and she hadn’t seen him coming at all. Her head exploded and she went dim and fell to her knees, then scattered herself on the floor, felt someone remove her deadly wire weapon out of her hands. He kicked her in the belly. She watched up at them, dazed, coughing. One on the left was a dead-eyed dummy with slicked back hair, scrawny, with a tight purple v-neck shirt. The other one had frosted spiked hair and fingerless gloves. His shirt had sequins. His welted cheek rose like he had been branded and his blood ran down his neck.
Frosted-Hair, mad as hell, bent and gripped her hair and he dragged her by it. She screamed again but she could barely hear her own voice over the ringing in her ears from being clocked. She clutched at his hand and his wrist to alleviate the pain from being dragged by her hair. Her bare legs kicked and thrashed but the flannel of her shirt made it easy for him to drag her. Purple-Shirt kicked the side of her thighs as she was pulled to the top of the stairs.
Unceremoniously, she was sent tumbling down the steps, banging and hoofing all the way to the bottom. She rolled, tucking her head and covering her face with her arms. She banged her shins and the pain set bright white electrical jolts to her brain. She cracked her ribs, her spine, her hip, then she was face down on the tile floor of the main floor. Someone else, standing and waiting at the bottom, grabbed her roughly by her upper arm and he hoisted her to her feet. She spit in his face. Didn’t even see him, just rose on her wobbly legs and she horked. Tried to run when he reeled, but her legs were viciously kicked out from under her and she fell to the floor. Her bloody hair clung to her face and her chest heaved and chugged like she’d been making love with Rocco. She cried. She was lifted again, couldn’t see, her hair in her face. She was shoved to the counter, bent back over it, the marble edge digging into her lower back, right at the crest of her buttocks. A man pressed his weight against her. She felt his belt buckle grind her tummy, his bulge pressing her, could smell his cigarette breath blasting around her face. All of them were worked up like jackals, all of them excited, all of them had hearts that were racing, like feral animals anticipating the kill. Her hair was ripped from her face and she was staring at the one with the welt on his cheek.
He laughed, and she heard the other two join in. She looked to her right, saw them casually arranged around her, relaxing now they’d beat the fight out of her. They were wanting to see where this fun would lead. Purple-Shirt had tucked his pistol into the front of his skinny jeans and the other one, a tall beefy dark-haired killer that looked like Rocco-lite, lazily held a machine pistol at his side.
Frosted-Hair was sniffing her now, making his friends laugh. He sniffed her collar, sniffed through her hair, stopping to giggle, then sniff some more; sniffing transforming to pig noises, snorting and snuffling up to her ear.
“What?”
he said slyly, fishing a hand in his pocket, bumping it around, feeling it rubbing against her thigh.
He brought the flame closer, said,
“Fotta...fotta...”
“Fotta tua madre,” she said, then watched his face contort in a rising intense rage.
He snarled, roared,
This dumb fuck. The whole time he messed with his lighter she had inched her hand along the counter, into the sink, and now she had the revolver in her grip. She pushed him back. “I said, fuck your mother,” she growled and she pulled the trigger twice.
She hadn’t fired guns before, and definitely never ever wanted to harm a living thing. Didn’t now, either. She held the gun at her waist, her elbow bent, the pistol blindly aimed in his direction. Two shots she fired, and immediately she wished she hadn’t. They were both hits. His clothes shook and his flesh quivered with the frightening impact. His mean face twisted into a howl.
The first thought she had, looking into his shocked face, was Please, don’t die, please, don’t die, I’m so sorr
y. She wasn’t a killer.
Frosted-Hair stood stunned as blood spritzed to the floor and his white shirt went black-red with a rapid rising flux. He stood dumbly and she snatched his gun out of his hand. She turned and it was like it was in slow motion; it wasn’t fluid, wasn’t quick, she held two guns and she turned, but moving her feet around in a circle, her body stiff as a board, her face drawn in horror at the realization that she had just shot a human being. Tears came. She blinked, saw she was alone. Her head creakily swiveled on her rigid neck and saw the other two scrambling for cover, firing at her over their shoulders but hitting the ceiling. Plaster fluttered to the floor. They scrambled deeper into the kitchen, towards the table and where the passageway led to the garage.
Frosted-Hair leaned back on the counter and his hands felt around his stomach. He was leaking bad. Blood flowing over his fingers and down his jeans. Then the cupboards exploded and she screamed again. Chunks of maple, splinters of cabinetry spearing off. Glass shattered off a display door, the oven display went black as it was pelted with lead. Knobs scattered and pinged, the counter chipped. She clutched Frosted-Hair and pulled him down to the floor with her. It was the one with the machine pistol, letting loose, filling up this beautiful space she’d shared with her Rocco with the sounds of tearing fabric and the devastation of bullets.
The destruction stopped. She heard a dry click of his gun. He was out of ammo. The other one fired single shots in her direction. Rocco-Lite reloaded his machine pistol, she could hear him thunk a clip into it, pull back a slide or something. A smoke detector began its overhead chime now, and she could smell a high acrid smoke from his gun.
“No, no, no,” she cried, plugging her ears, a gun in each hand but too frightened to pop up and start firing back. Frosted-Hair sat dumbly next to her, his back to the cupboards, his legs splayed out before him, sitting in a spreading pool of blood.
Broken (Dying For Diamonds Book 1) Page 13