“And yet you knew precisely where to find this,” he beckons at the pendant.
I can feel the hot blood from my neck pooling on the collar of my dress shirt.
Giovanni’s eyes drift to my collar and his nose wrinkles in disgust. He glances at one of the guards. “Get him out of here, Antonio, before he bleeds all over the fucking floor. You know what we do with thieves.”
The man named Antonio grins toothily. “We shoot them in the head and dump their bodies in the harbor.”
I’m hauled from the mansion and thrown into the trunk of one of the vehicles. They lock me inside.
I hear muffled talking. I recognize Giovanni’s voice, and Antonio’s, but have no idea what they’re saying.
Finally the vehicle is on the move.
I can’t tell how long we drive for. Half an hour. Maybe an hour.
The vehicle comes to a halt. When the trunk pops open, I kick the air randomly but miss my captors.
Strong hands grab hold of my ankles and I’m hauled from the compartment. My upper body crashes into pavement and I flinch as pain shoots across my lower back.
I’m dragged across a concrete sidewalk and the harsh surface scrapes my arms and neck. I’m hauled onto sand next, and the grit gets into my cuts and nicks, lighting the wounds on fire. All I can think is that I’m about to die, and that I’m never going to see Angela again.
Angela.
She’ll never know what happened to me. She’ll think I left her. Abandoned her.
My two captors stop dragging me, then kick me over and over with their heavy boots. I curl my body into a ball, trying to protect my most vulnerable organs.
Thankfully the assault ends quickly. My hands are tied together in front and I’m shoved to my feet.
I finally have a chance to get my bearings. We’re at a moonlit beach somewhere well away from the city. There’s a dock, where boats are moored.
I’m brought to a speedboat and forced to sit down. The boat roars to life, and one of the men drives it out to sea while the other—Antonio—guards me.
Beneath the moonlight I study the boat deck. I discern four plates, similar to those found at gyms—the forty-five pound variants. A rope lies coiled beside them.
Antonio follows my gaze and taunts: “Giovanni wanted a special death for you. You mess with his daughter? You don’t get the luxury of a bullet to the head. You’re going overboard still alive.”
When the shore is well behind us the driver cuts the engine and the speedboat comes to a halt.
“I almost feel bad doing this,” the driver says. “He’s just a kid. Can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen.”
Antonio shrugs. “He became a man when he crossed the boss.”
“True enough,” the driver replies. “Better him than us.”
The driver stands to train his pistol trained on me. Meanwhile Antonio threads the rope through the four plates and then ties the opposite ends to my ankles. He hauls the four weights to the edge of the boat.
“Any last words?” Antonio taunts.
When I don’t answer, he shrugs and tosses the heavy weights overboard.
The piled rope next to him quickly unravels, drawn down by the plates, which descend like an anchor.
A moment before the rope runs out, I leap up and snatch the gun from Antonio’s holster with my bound hands. I shoot quickly, almost blindly, and get lucky, hitting him in the chest, but then the rope becomes taut and pulls me right into him: we plunge over the gunwale together. I hear gunshots from the other man but the bullets miss.
Frigid darkness envelops me and the handgun is ripped from my grip.
I still feel Antonio in front of me. I’m not sure the gunshot wound I gave him is a killing blow, so I slide my tied hands across his body and squeeze him between my arms and my hips, pulling him down into the black depths with me. If I’m going to die, so is he.
