by Tabatha Kiss
“A Zappia woman must never betray her life maiden,” Gio says, his voice stiff and rehearsed as if he were reading out of a sacred text.
“Shut up.”
“To do so is punishable by death—”
“I said, shut up.”
Gio leans down and rests the blade against my cheek. “I would be more respectful right now, if I were you, Sofia.” He drags the knife’s side over my skin and I feel her warm blood stain my face as he rises to his feet. “Get up.”
“No.”
Rosalie, forgive me.
“Stand up, Sofia.”
“No.”
I pull her closer. It’s always been me and Rosalie, ever since our parents died. She’s all I have left… She’s all I have…
Gio grabs my arm and forces me off the floor with one quick jerk. Rosalie slides from my grip and settles on the floor beneath me. I cringe at the sound and the blood. Oh, god… There’s so much blood…
“Sofia—”
I lay my red-soaked hands on his chest and shove him away, leaving a bright smear on his perfect, white shirt. “Let go of me—!”
He takes me again, digging his fingertips into my skin. “One more outburst like that and it’ll be his blood on your hands.”
Lucian.
“Where is he? What did you do to him?”
“He’s safe,” he answers through his teeth. “Whether he stays that way is up to you.”
“Do what you want to me but please don’t hurt my son…” I beg.
Gio shakes his head. “I’m not going to hurt him, Sofia. I will raise him as mine, I can promise you that. But you? No, you will suffer for what you’ve done.”
“Just kill me now. Get it over with.”
“Why would I do that when you deserve a fate far worse than death? I have something better in mind for you.” He lays the blade on my cheek again. “First, I’m going to cut out your tongue so you will never speak your own name again.”
I cringe away but he holds me against him, forcing me to look into his black eyes.
“Then,” he continues, “I’ll pluck out your eyes to cast you into darkness. I’ll throw acid on your pretty face so no one will ever recognize you again. I will destroy you in every way I can think of and then…” He smiles. “I’ll sell you to the underground where you’ll live out the remainder of your days with the rest of the ugly, diseased whores.”
“Gio, please—”
He presses the blade against my eyelid and I shut my mouth, shaken to the core.
“Lucian will grow up,” he says, “and someday, he will ask me about his mother. Do you know what I’ll tell him?” He waits, enjoying the silence as I tremble in his grasp. “I’ll tell him that you abandoned him. I’ll tell him that you never loved him or wanted him.”
“No…”
“For that, he will despise you and then he will forget you ever existed… just as I will. I think that will suffice, Sofia. I think that is what you deserve.”
“I want to see him.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Let me see my son.”
“He’s my son now.”
“Luka won’t let you get away with this,” I warn. “When he finds out, he’ll come back for us.”
Gio’s eye twitches as I say his name but his lips curl. “No, he won’t.”
“Yes, he will. He cares about Lucian—”
“Luka Lutrova won’t come back here again because he’s dead, Sofia.”
I let the tears fall and his face goes blurry in my vision. “No, he’s not…”
“I had him killed this afternoon.”
“No…” I shake my head, refusing to believe it. My sister’s blood is still warm on my hands. I can’t bear the thought of losing Luka, too.
“Did you like it, Sofia?” he asks. “Did you like him being inside of you? More than me?”
I bite my tongue in disgust.
His smile fades and he lays a hand on my cheek, drawing a slow, gentle line down my face with his thumbnail. “Would you believe me if I said I loved you?”
“No,” I answer, giving in to my anger.
“Say you’ll love me,” he whispers. “Say you will and I’ll love you back. I’ll spare you.”
“You’re not capable of love, Gio.”
“You might be right about that,” he nods, “but I am very capable of joy and I’m really going to enjoy this.” He lays his hand on my neck. “Get on your knees, Sofia.”
“No.”
He wraps his fingers around my throat. “I said, get on your knees.” He shoves me backward until my head hits the wall. I flinch as the pain rattles my spine. “You might not have taken your wedding vows seriously, Sofia, but you are still my wife and you will do as I tell you. Get on your—”
I kick up my knee, firing it forward with all the strength I have left. It connects with his groin and he doubles forward as I reach for the knife in his hand.
Gio lets the blade fall to the floor and he wraps his second hand around my neck. He fights through his pain to embrace his rage and squeezes my throat even harder as I struggle to breathe.
“G—io—” I cough, scratching at his hands but he doesn’t let up.
He leans over, guiding me down to kneel, and I can’t do a thing to fight him. My vision blurs. My lungs ache for just one burst of air.
My knee touches something firm on the floor. The edge digs into my skin through my skirt. I can just barely feel it but my senses twitch with possible salvation.
I let my arms fall and I reach down to grip the blade in my shaking fingers.
“You will submit to me, Sofia,” he growls, letting go of me with one hand to reach for his zipper.
I fill my lungs with whatever air I can gasp and curl my hand around the knife’s handle.
“Fuck you…” I wheeze, stabbing upward with my wrist, aiming for any piece of skin I can find.
The blade pierces his upper thigh and Gio shrieks in pain. He stumbles backward, releasing his hold on me. I give him a hard shove, sending him tripping over Rosalie’s legs all the way down to the floor.
“Sofia!!”
I ignore the sound of his shrilling voice.
I throw the door open and the wood clashes against the wall behind me.
I bolt out into the hallway, blinded by a soft blanket of blood and tears covering my eyelids.
My heart aches, my body bleeds, and my soul screams but I keep running.
Run, Sofia.
Just run.
Chapter 16
Luka
I park the car a kilometer away from the estate.
Yuri refuses to budge from the backseat but I don’t expect him to either. He’s made his choice and there’s not enough time to try and change his mind. At least he’s not actively trying to stop me.
Fox and I move through the woods, stepping softly on leaves and twigs until the front gate comes into view beneath the late evening sunset.
“There’s a wall,” I say. “It surrounds the entire estate on all sides.”
“How tall?”
“Too tall.”
“Then, I guess we’re going through the gate.”
I nod. “There’s usually a half-dozen of them on the front lawn.”
Fox blinks. “Just the lawn?”
I pause. “Is this a problem?”
He shakes his head and keeps moving.
We stop once we can go no further without getting spotted and Fox bends down to his knees with his rifle case.
“How good is your hand-to-hand?” he asks me.
“Better than most. How good is your shot?”
“The best.”
I breathe a quiet laugh. The American pretty boy is cocky; can’t say I’m surprised.
Fox assembles his rifle back together as I look on, watching his hands work with quick, expert precision.
“I’ll get through the gate,” I say. “You watch my back and move up when it’s clear.”
“Okay.”
>
I shake the nerves from my hands. Roughing up idiots in chairs is one thing. I can’t say that opportunities to infiltrate private estates come up often in my life as a mafia bodyguard. I’m usually on the other side of this, keeping people out that shouldn’t be in.
But Sofia is in there. With my son. Nothing else matters more than that.
I look down at Fox. If he’s nervous at all, he’s not showing it. If he feels anything at all, I can’t tell.
“You’ve done this before,” I note.
He glances up at me as he reaches for his masked stuffed into his bag. “Yeah.”
“A lot?”
“A few.”
“Did they end well?”
“Sometimes.”
I narrow my eyes at him as he slides the mask over his head. “What’s that for?”
“I can’t be recognized.”
“You do a lot of jobs in Italy, comrade?”
“A few.”
I sigh. Now I know what it feels like to be Yuri trying to talk to me most of the time. “Please don’t shoot me.”
“I’ll try.”
He throws the rifle strap over his shoulder and stands up, his eyes scanning the trees for the best place to go. Without a word, he reaches up and hops to grab a low-hanging branch. He easily pulls himself up and climbs to a better position like a damn monkey.
“You’ve done this before…” I say again.
“You never had a tree house?” he asks from his branch.
I shrug and walk off towards the gate, taking big breaths to kill the last of my nerves.
As I approach the gate, I add a strut to my step, slightly dragging my toes to make a little bit of noise.
A guard stands on the other side and spins around as I draw near, his finger wrapped tight around the trigger of his assault rifle.
“Oy!” I shout. “Let me in.”
He raises his brow at my convincing, drunken eyes. “No.”
“Pul-lease?” I slur and lean against the gate. “I was just here. You recognize me, yes? I left my keys.”
He reaches for the radio on his belt.
“Wait—” I hold up a hand. “Please, don’t bother Gio. I’ll just be in and out. I promise. No harm done.”
“Sorry,” he says. “The place is on lockdown tonight. I can’t let you in.”
I pause. “Lockdown? Why?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he keeps moving towards his radio and I grit my teeth.
I reach through the bars and grab his hand, yanking him towards me and slamming his face into them. “Why?” I ask again.
He tries to jerk away but I pull him right back in. “I don’t know,” he says through the pain. “He just said to clear out. No one’s allowed inside. Something about his stupid wife.”
“What about her?” My eyes flick in both directions around his head, sensing movement closing in. I can’t exactly say slamming this guy against the gate is stealthy.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
A body collapses behind him and we both look over his shoulder to see a guard lying on the pavement a few yards away, face down in seeping, red puddle.
I grin. “Let me in or the next bullet is for you.”
“Fuck off, commie.”
A second body falls behind him and he deflates without looking.
“Pretty please?” I say through my teeth.
He raises his free hand and slips his fingers into his breast pocket for his key card. “Okay… okay…”
I let him reach to the right and he swipes the card on a terminal behind the gate but I keep a firm grip on his other arm between the bars.
The gate turns on and starts to roll open, collapsing horizontally into the wall and panic fills his eyes.
He tries to pull his arm free but I don’t let go. The gate leads us over, slowly inching closer to crushing his arm.
“Come on, man,” he whines. “I did what you asked—”
“But you were very rude.”
He tugs for his arm over and over again, his eyes flicking back and forth from me to the gate. “Let go.”
“Are you sorry?”
“Yes!”
“Say it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For calling you a commie.”
I smirk. “Oh, I don’t care about that.”
He frowns. “Then, what’s your fucking problem—aghhh!”
His bones crack, bent and crushed between the wall and the bars. He squeals in agony and stumbles to his knees as it grinds even more of his hand.
I lean over him. “Now, what was that you called Sofia?”
He closes his mouth, staring daggers up at me and I shrug my shoulders before reaching for the gun in my belt.
“Never mind.”
I pull the trigger and put him out of his misery.
My ears twitch as pounding feet race down the driveway towards me. I lunge into the grass, dodging their eyes to hide behind a large tree near the wall. They shout back and forth in Italian as the bodies come into view and I hear a few more gentle thwips of bullets popping flesh before they topple to the ground beside their friends.
I peek over at them and a shiver runs down my spine. Fox Fitzpatrick might not have been acting cocky at all when he said he was the best. He didn’t shoot the guards just anywhere to put them down — he shot them through the eyes. Each one of them, right through their pupils like a goddamn bullseye.
The name Snake Eyes makes a whole lot more sense now.
I move towards the house, keeping to the shadows as three more guards come into the light from the back garden. I wait for some to race out of the house as well but the front door stays closed. There’s no way this much commotion hasn’t reached the inside yet, meaning there might not be guards in there at all. Good for us. Not so good for Sofia.
Gio wanted them to be alone.
I push forward and force all horrific mental images that pop up to the back of my mind.
The guards pause in the drive out of Fox’s line of sight, seemingly more intelligent than the others. I slink in behind them, hoping to catch them all by surprise, but my foot crashes into a fallen tree branch obscured behind a bush.
They spin around, each of them reaching for their guns, and I only have a split second to do anything about it.
I charge at them, throwing out my arms to knock two of them down at once. The third man takes a swing at me, one that I easily dodge before firing off a bullet into his ribs. As he falls to the ground, I turn back around to the others and get knocked in the jaw by the butt of a rifle.
I cringe, nearly falling over, but I use the momentum to swing a kick against one of them. He drops his gun and I punch him so hard in the nose my knuckles pop.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the last man standing with his gun pointed at my head.
A bullet strikes his face, passing just an inch away from my own ear, and he slumps to my feet in an unmoving heap.
I jump around to find Fox standing at the end of the driveway, still aiming his rifle in my direction.
I exhale a slow breath and I count my fucking blessings.
Fox joins me by the front door and we don’t say a word to each other as we enter the front hall.
It’s quiet. Almost dead. It’s nothing at all like the constantly moving household I left just a few hours before.
I keep my eyes and ears open, determined not to be caught off-guard by whatever the hell might be happening here. We pause at every corner, sneaking a peek before moving on through the dark corridors.
We move down the hall together and my memory guides me through the shadowed wings. Even in darkness the furnishings of this place seem fit for a goddamn bonfire.
We round the corner towards Gio’s study and I come to a grinding halt as a petite force collides with me.
Sofia.
She screams in my arms and shoves me back, her limbs flailing wildly in a blind panic t
o get away from me. I open my mouth to speak but I fall into silence when I see the blood.
She’s covered with it from head-to-toe. It drips from her face and her hands. The scent of it stings my nose.
“Sofia!” I grab her wrists to keep her from thrashing. “Sofia, stop! It’s me! It’s me!”
She slows down, her wide eyes squinting in the dark at me before she exhales a thick breath. “Luka…”
I pull her closer, cupping her face to make sure she sees me. “Yes, it’s me.”
Her knees give out from under her but I wrap my arms around her to hold her up. “Luka…” She reaches for my face. “You’re alive?”
“I’m here. I’m alive.”
“You came back...”
I shake my head. “I never left you, Sofia.”
She collapses against my chest, squeezing my jacket in her weak grasp and I look over at Fox as she shakes like a lost animal in my arms. His eyes show shock through his mask, no doubt mirroring my own expression. I glance at my hands, staring at my fingers now coated in red.
What the hell happened here?
Someone stumbles out into the hallway down the corridor and I watch as he limps in our direction.
Gio sees my face and he stops cold.
I look him up and down, seeing splotches of blood staining his clothes and Sofia squeezes me even tighter at the very sight of him.
“He knows,” she whispers at me. “He knows everything.”
Gio spins around to take off in the other direction and I give Fox a quick nod.
Fox raises his rifle and takes aim at Gio’s head.
“Wait!” Sofia shouts and grabs Fox’s arm. “Don’t shoot him.”
I look down at her swollen eyes and my heart clenches. She should want this bastard dead more than anybody. “Sofia, he deserves this.”
“He took Lucian,” she says. “I don’t know where but he does.”
Fox adjusts his aim and fires.
The bullet clips Gio’s right calf, sending him spinning down to the carpet before he reaches the far corner. He screams and struggles to pull himself up but the pain sends him back down to the floor.
I follow him with a wide stride, taking Sofia’s hand in mine, driven by a pure, aching vengeance.
Gio claws at the floor to distance himself from me but I’m on him in seconds, digging my heel into his leg and he cries out in agony.