Collateral

by Natasha Knight

  I’ve been inside morgues. Several times, in fact. Still, I never will get used to the smell.

  This is Rafa’s first time and he’s gagging.

  “Put your shirt over your nose and breathe through your mouth,” I tell him.

  “How the fuck do you stand it?”

  I don’t look at him as I follow the kid to the last room in the dark corridor. This building must be a hundred years old. I wonder if they’ve ever renovated. I guess the dead don’t care, but fuck, you’ve got to have a stomach of steel to be able to stand it.

  “He’s in here,” the kid says.

  I look at him. He’s barely twenty. And if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t fucking know.

  “I hid his things in door seven. I was told to destroy them.”

  “You did the right thing. Thank you,” I say, reaching for my wallet and taking out two hundred-dollar-bills. I fold them and discreetly hold them out to him.

  “It’s my duty, sir,” he says, bowing his head a little, hesitant to take the money I know he needs.

  “Take it,” I tell him.

  He does.

  “Don’t let anyone into the building until I’m finished, understood?”

  He nods and I hear his footsteps on the stairs. I wait until the door’s closed to turn to Rafa, my first-cousin, and one of the few men I trust.

  “You don’t have to be down here,” I tell him.

  “I want to see him,” he says, determined.

  “It’s going to be bad, Rafa.”

  He glances over my shoulder at the door that separates us from my brother’s body. He nods. “I’m ready.”

  I pat his shoulder and turn the doorknob, then push the door open.

  The smell is stronger in here and it makes me sick to think about it, about my brother in this place.

  My brother, the traitor.

  But still, my brother.

  My eyes narrow as I take in the figure covered with a cloth on the table. I hear Rafa gag behind me.

  It takes all I have to keep my shit together and walk toward what’s left of Antonio under there.

  Rafa follows close behind and all I can think is I’m going to have to burn this suit because I know I won’t be able to get the smell out.

  Without letting myself think about it, I look straight ahead at the wall of lockers and lift the sheet. This time Rafa’s gag tells me he’s about to puke.

  I don’t turn when he runs from the room. I’d rather be alone anyway.

  The door closes and when I look down, I see why he gagged.

  My stomach heaves but rage settles it as I look at my brother’s brutalized, headless body. Headless and handless.

  Whoever did this didn’t want him identified.

  My jaw tightens.

  Did they know it would bring me here even with the threat of arrest upon leaving Sicily?

  I push the sheet to the floor and make myself look, really look.

  Of the six bullets in his body, it was the one to the gut that killed him, and it killed him slow.

  At least his head and hands were cut off after the fact.

  If some sick fuck is keeping them as fucking trophies, I will decapitate him slowly and I won’t give him the mercy of a bullet first.

  In fact, the only reason the kid here knew to contact the Sabbioni family was the tattoo over Antonio’s heart. Our family crest.

  I walk around the table to look at it and I remember the day he’d gotten it. Every man in our family gets this particular tattoo on his sixteenth birthday. Even me and I fucking hate tattoos.

  I remember when he came home. He’d been drunk off his ass. My brother did not like needles. I’d told him he was a pussy, but I’d kept his secret.

  That night we’d gone out to the cemetery. He wanted to talk to mom. He did that a lot. And the family cemetery was about a fifteen-minute walk from the house in Palermo, so it was easy enough to do.

  I remember when we got there, Antonio stumbling the whole way, how he’d opened his shirt to show her. Well, show her tombstone.

  And as I look down at the tattoo on the man on the table, I remember that night.

  I peer closer.

  The door opens. “I’m sorry, man,” Rafa starts, interrupting me.

  I straighten, shift my gaze to his.

  He’s got his eyes turned up to the ceiling.

  “I can’t do it, Stefan,” he says.

  “It’s all right. Go wait for me outside.”

  I wait until the door’s closed before returning my attention to the tattoo, study it, and momentarily close my eyes. I guess I was hoping.

  The night at the cemetery, I’d had to laugh when I’d seen the tattoo because it was wrong. The numerals on the clock, the IX for nine, the artist had reversed them. He’d tattooed XI on Antonio’s chest. A small detail no one noticed, but a detail nonetheless. And I’m looking at that same detail now.

  I straighten. Bow my head. Turn away from the brutalized body.

  He didn’t deserve this. No matter what, he didn’t deserve this.

  I look up at the doors of the lockers, storage for bodies, I guess, and locate number seven. Walking around the table, I go to it, open it. Inside, I find a trash bag and I lift it out and that, too, makes my blood boil.

  Someone wanted his things destroyed. Would they have buried him in an unmarked grave if they hadn’t been interrupted?

  I walk to the desk and dump the contents of the bag out. Inside are a pair of bloody jeans, a black T-shirt, underwear. The blood has dried to a crust. His shoes too, good shoes, Italian leather—Antonio only wore the best—are splattered with blood.

  I pick up the shoes, turn them over and recognize the name of the designer etched into the barely scuffed soles. They’re brand new and from his favorite designer with a single shop here in Rome. I wonder if he’d just bought them.

  But the fact that he was in Italy at all baffles me. What was he doing back here? Didn’t he know the danger? What had happened? Had someone recognized him?

  It wouldn’t be anyone from my family. They knew I wanted him alive. I’d told them I wanted to do the killing myself. It was only right.

  I still wonder if I could have done it, but I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.

  Putting the shoes back into the bag, I pick up the T-shirt, touch the bullet holes in it. The crusty blood. I shove it back into the bag.

  I pick up the jeans and check the pockets, not expecting to find anything. If he had a wallet, they’d have destroyed it. Leave no way to identify him if they went to the trouble of sawing off his head and hands.

  My stomach turns again, and I remind myself that it happened after he was dead. It’s a small blessing.

  The first pocket turns up empty and I expect the same from the second but am surprised that it isn’t when I slide my hand inside.

  I pull out a thick gold chain. A man’s chain. The clasp broken.

  I hold it high and watch the heavy pendant swing. It’s coated with dried blood. I guess he’d broken it off his killer’s neck before he’d died. Maybe as he’d gone down. The bullets were at close range. Someone he knew?

  I take the pendant in my hand and with my fingernail, scratch away the crust.

  My eyes narrow because I recognize the symbol. It’s one I’ll never forget. Because it belongs to a man I know.

  An untouchable man.

  I fist my hand around it. My nails dig into my palms, but I don’t feel pain. There’s no room for pain when rage takes hold. When vengeance is all I see. The heat of hate all I feel.

  And I make my vow.

  I walk out the door and up the stairs. I know what my men see when they look at me. A man made of stone.

  But I am not that.

  I missed my brother these last few years. I’ll mourn him now.

  And as much as I know I should walk away, walk away like I wasn’t ever here, I won’t leave him behind.

  “Bring him home.”

  2
/>   Gabriela

  Rome, Italy

  Past

  * * *

  The house is brimming with my father’s friends. It’s almost overflowing.

  The vast gardens are illuminated with beautiful, soft candlelight, the round tables covered in white cloth. Arrangements of roses in every hideous shade of pink decorate each one, their scent thick in the hot night.

  His favorite. Not mine.

  I wanted black callas. They’re more fitting for a family like ours.

  I’m standing on the veranda swallowing champagne from a crystal flute. I’ve had too much already, I feel it, but I have hours to go.

  The soprano sings her solo. I watch her from my place in this corner and her song sends shivers along my spine.

  Pain.

  So much pain.

  I chose this piece purposefully. My father won’t be happy when he realizes I slipped it into the compilation, but I’ll pay that price tomorrow.

  A waiter passes and I halt him, down the remainder of my glass before taking another, daring him to say a word. To tell me no.

  He won’t. He wouldn’t dare.

  I’m Gabriela Marchese, Gabriel Marchese’s daughter. And it’s my party. Tonight is my birthday. Sweet Sixteen.

  Not a single person would dare tell me no.

  The waiter clears his throat. I think he actually blushes.

  I turn back to the soprano and he hurries away.

  The heat of the night feels good. Rome in the height of summer. I do love it here. I love this house much more than the almost clinically modern one in New York. I wish he’d let me stay here.

  I hear my father’s laughter and turn away from the sound. Slipping deeper into the shadows, I watch him pass in his white tuxedo, looking as handsome as ever, his slightly graying hair the only betrayal of his age.

  A woman wearing a horrible fuchsia dress is hanging off his arm. Tonight’s piece of ass, I guess. I bet she thinks she’ll be the one.

  If she only knew how unlucky she’d be if she were.

  I think about my mother, how elegant she was, and wonder how he can do it. How he can be with women like this. Sluts and gold-diggers who will drop to their knees to worship at his feet at the snap of his fingers.

  No, the real question isn’t that. It’s how did my mother ever fall for him. He’s never hidden his true colors.

  As if sensing me there, he turns his head and spots me. He eyes my glass.

  “It’s cider,” I lie. “Don’t worry.”

  The woman glances at me unpleasantly.

  He lets her go to stalk toward me, takes the flute, sniffs it.

  “Why do you lie, darling?” he asks.

  A different waiter appears as if on cue and my father, without taking his eyes off me, sets the almost empty flute on his tray. He leans in and to anyone looking at us, it looks like he’s kissing my cheek, my doting father, but he’s not.

  “I won’t have you embarrass me, Gabriela.”

  “It’s just a glass of champagne. I’m celebrating my birthday after all.”

  He stands back and looks at me, studies my face, then my dress. “You look so much like her, you know that?” he asks, and if I were a fool, I’d think he seemed almost rueful. Almost sorrowful.

  But he’s neither of those things and I’m not a fool.

  My father is a powerful, untouchable man. One not capable of human emotions.

  “I don’t remember how she looked. You know that.” I feel my eyes fill up at the words, at how true they’re becoming.

  How can you forget someone who once meant so much to you? How can a face be erased? Memories vanish?

  Fuck.

  I won’t cry. I will not.

  I steel my spine and swallow my tears, letting them sit like rocks inside my belly to join the others, adding to the mountain there. I force myself to remember who I’m talking to and I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands until I draw blood.

  At least he has the decency to look down for the briefest of moments. “I miss her too,” he says.

  Lie.

  Liar.

  This is where I get it from. The thing I inherited from him. I’m a liar too.

  I glance over his shoulder. “Clearly.”

  He straightens, angry. I don’t know why I provoke him.

  He snaps his fingers and the same waiter appears. My father turns to him. “Get my daughter a drink,” he says to him before shifting his gaze back to me. “Apple juice.”

  I hate him.

  I hate this man.

  He grins at my embarrassment and leans in close again. “Tonight is important. If you’re going to be ugly, you can go to your room. But know that you will be punished tomorrow.”

  “Won’t I already?” I ask, taking the glass the waiter returns with.

  He straightens to his full height. Gabriel Marchese. The most powerful man on two continents. A ruthless one with a reputation that precedes him.

  He grins. “I don’t enjoy punishing you, Gabriela. You know that.”

  “I have the scars to prove otherwise, daddy.”

  His eyes narrow and my heart is racing because I know I should shut up. I should thank him for the juice and for the party I didn’t ask for and kiss his cheek and shut the fuck up.

  At that moment, we’re interrupted by two men. I know the older one, Abe McKinney, a business associate of my father’s. I know immediately the younger one is his son. He looks just like his father and even though he’s only in his early twenties, my guess is he’ll lose his hair before he hits thirty.

  “There you are, Gabriel,” Mr. McKinney says with his slight Irish accent.

  My father smiles and they shake hands. I remember the time he’d wanted this man dead.

  I shift my gaze from son to father.

  “And Gabriela,” Mr. McKinney says, looking me over, making my skin crawl. He reaches into his pocket to take out a cream-colored envelope with my name etched in gold lettering on the front. “Happy birthday, beautiful,” he says, handing it to me.

  I take the envelope, force a smile. “Thank you, Mr. McKinney.”

  “Gabriela,” my father says, his voice almost tender as he shifts one hand to my lower back. I cringe. “This is Charles McKinney. Abe’s son.”

  My smile is so fake, you’d have to be an idiot not to see through it. But Charles might be that idiot.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” he says, reaching for my unoffered hand and kissing the knuckles.

  Not enough alcohol in the world to numb that creepy feeling away.

  I swallow the contents of my glass then remember it’s apple juice.

  My father’s gaze hardens when I meet it.

  “Excuse me,” I say, stepping out of his grasp. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”

  Charles steps aside and I walk hurriedly away, back into the house, past the soldier standing by the grand staircase and up toward my suite of rooms on the second floor, almost running by the time I reach the doors, wishing I could lock them, but I can’t because the lock is on the outside.

  I open both doors and walk inside, closing them behind me and leaning against them to catch my breath.

  It takes me one moment to realize something is off.

  The room is dark, the only light filtering from the party outside. The balcony doors are closed but I still hear the sound of five-hundred of my father’s closest friends getting drunk on his dime. Well, my mother’s dime, really.

  But it’s not that that’s off. There’s a smell that doesn’t belong here.

  A look around tells me I’m alone. But the bedroom door, it’s open. I know I’d closed it when I’d left.

  I walk toward it. I don’t make a sound.

  No one should be up here. The soldier wouldn’t have let anyone up.

  I push the door wider and step inside. The smell, it’s stronger in here and it’s making me nauseous.

  The room is too dark for me to see and I’m about to flip the light switch when a figure
moves. Standing with his back to the windows, the light creates a sort of halo around him and he has the advantage. I can’t see his face, but he can see mine in that same light.

  I swallow, try to speak. “You’re not supposed to be here,” I finally manage, sensing something dangerous. And I remember for all the friends my father has bought, the number of his enemies is double that.

  “No, I’m not,” the man says, his voice a deep, sure timbre that ices my spine.

  He takes a step forward and I take one back, my hand closing over the doorknob behind me.

  Danger.

  It ripples off him.

  “What’s that smell?” I ask before I can stop myself.

  “Morgue,” he answers, his voice low and hard.

  He walks toward me, no hesitance in his step, and before I can move, he’s standing just a few inches from me.

  The smell clings to him and it’s making me sick. When I cringe back, he leans toward me and I open my mouth to scream just as something clicks.

  For a moment, I think it’s a gun.

  But then the room is bathed in soft, golden light. He’d just reached to switch on the lamp on the table beside me.

  I exhale but my relief is short-lived.

  The man is taller than my father. He’s more than a foot taller than me and I’m wearing four-inch heels.

  His disheveled hair is dark, eyes hazel and I think he’s drunk. He must be. Only a drunk man would enter Gabriel Marchese’s daughter’s bedroom.

  Or one with a death wish.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer me but studies my face instead. His eyes narrow as he takes me in, his gaze lowering to the swell of my breasts lifted and pushed together by this ridiculous gown. It, like the roses, is pink. A soft, champagne pink. A color I don’t detest.

  “I came with a gift,” he says.

  He tucks his hand into his pocket and for a moment, I wonder if he’s going to pull out a knife or a gun. If he’s going to kill me after all. Because I know this man is not my father’s friend. Not even a business associate. And for the first time in my life, I think about the protection I’ve always lived under. The protection that often felt more stifling than anything else.

  “It’s your birthday, isn’t it?” he asks, cocking his head to the side, setting one hand on the door above my head. He’s leaning so close that I can feel the heat coming off his body.