If I was being honest, the French scared the crap out of me. I didn’t feel like getting my wings plucked by a sadistic psycho. Sitting next to him gave me the creeps. He reminded me of an undertaker who smelled like formaldehyde on public transportation. From time to time, I wondered if this was how sitting next to Jason Vorhees or Freddy Krueger on a bus would’ve felt like.
The one bright spot was that we were heading to an Italian hideout. Perhaps the French would leave once we arrived, and then I could escape.
A shrill voice in my mind kept pointing out the obvious: He wasn’t leaving me alone, not unless death took him back to hell. This had become personal to him. He was out to prove something.
Fucking Nemours!The man was like a cockroach after nuclear war. He refused to die. Somehow, inadvertently, he had involved this French vermin, and through his failed ventures, had involved me. Though I knew this was past Nemours. Once the French who backed him realized that the Fausti family backed me, it upped the ante some.
Not only was I important to such a high-power family—why?—but Lothario was the head. It was time to test those waters and put that family to shame, like no one ever had before. I had somehow become a lesson, an example. It made total sense why Brando didn’t want his family involved before I had discovered them, other than the reasons he had stated before. The Fausti’s love and protection turned me into a priceless thing to be stolen.
Brando.I knew something was wrong. Terribly wrong, that he hadn’t found me yet.For some reason Lothario came to mind, but I dismissed it when another voice popped up then. It was the unreasonable voice, the wild one, the one that was determined to live and get back to our husband. She flipped the shrill, irritating voice off and told her to shut the fuck up. We were going to handle our business.
Without me noticing why, another argument struck up. We were moving again, in a small vehicle, and the voices almost boomed, rattling around in my mind like boulders. From what I could gather, we were turned around once more.
One of the Italians seemed to be defending this decision. Something about twenty minutes—we were only twenty minutes from the new location?
This wasn’t sitting well with the French. He had reached his proverbial limit, and I was all too aware of the dangerous vibe bouncing from his body to mine.
I had a good mind to warn the Italians, but then thought, why should I? All three of them had taken me. Though ninety percent of my attention went to the French, because he felt more immediate, I couldn’t forget that the two Italians were dangerous too. Just more subdued about it.
The French told Curly he had to take a piss. I waited for a reaction, for one of the Italians to remind him we were only twenty minutes from our destination. Neither did.
How could they not realize he had never asked them to pull over before? He had something up his sleeve. I assumed it was a gun.
The French instructed me to stay in the car with Curly. Another sign that something was up. The French had never left me alone with one of the stooges. I had a feeling we were still in the South, but where, I wasn’t too sure—perhaps another mountain village somewhere? Flowers spread like a vibrant carpet over rolling hills, the sky azure, serene, dotted with white clouds that moved at their own languorous speed.
Even if I wanted to run, there was nowhere for me to runto. No forest to cower in, no homes to hide in, no place at all to conceal me. I had a feeling the French asked to stop here knowing this.
Larry and Assassin Moe moved toward a lone olive tree. Not much to shield them, but I doubted they cared much for cover. Curly stared straight ahead while he sung opera tunes in an attempt at a soprano voice. Not too shabby. I wondered why he didn’t attempt to make something of his life instead of killing people for a living.
A gunshot blasted in the distance.
Both of us sat in stunned silence for a moment. I had felt it coming. The French had been itching to release his evil on the world. Still, it took me by surprise. Judging by the look on Curly’s face, hehadn’tseen it coming. Shock quickly turned into outrage. He held a gun out of the window, shooting at the French as he pressed the pedal to the metal.
Velocity shot me back into the seat, and on a swerve, I went down. Perfect timing. The French started to shoot at the car, the back windshield shattering into a million diamond shards, all raining down on my head and around me.
Curly was silent, as stoic as a madman accustomed to shootouts could be. He seemed to be concentrating on the road; the breaths he took whistled out of his nostrils. After a few minutes of steady driving, I forced myself to sit up. I had to close my eyes for a moment. Count to ten. The entire world spun around in a dizzying carousel.
Something hot and metallic drifted in the air—gore and blood. Curly had been shot. His right ear hung off the side of his head. The French was a sharp marksman. An even scarier thought. He probably had assumed that he’d take the second Italian out, and if not, he’d kill me before anyone else could have me.
How long could Curly drive this way? Anger seemed to be the only reason he was coherent, his eyes intent on some unknown destination.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. It had been only two days of silence, but it was long enough to feel like I had lost my voice. I had been carrying on conversations inside of my head, with the people I wanted to be with the most. Including myself. I had been throwing around escape attempts with the unstable voice inside of my brain.
Curly’s misfortune could somehow become my lucky day. If he’d just pass out, or I could just snatch the gun from the passenger side… He had thrown it as soon as the French started shooting at him in an attempt to get better control of the car.
Since blood loss and a missing ear were not doing him in, the gun seemed my only chance. I bit my lip, eyeing it with a desire so bad that I could almost feel the hot metal in my hands.
Once I had it, could I shoot him? I had never shot someone before. Though abducted, I was not in immediate danger. If he was charging me in some wild attempt to kill me, or if I had one when he and his cohorts first abducted me, yes, I could. But to kill him in cold blood?
“Fuckadee fuck,” I whispered to myself. It wasn’t the time to think of moral repercussions when who-knew-what awaited me in fifteen or so minutes.
Tell me what I’d do,Brando’s voice came to mind.
“Kill the fucking bastard,” I said to myself. “But I’m not you!” I argued back.
I scooted up a tad, hands itching to snatch the gun. If he didn’t fight me for it, I wouldn’t shoot him, I reasoned. And if he did, I would take off running and only shoot if I had no alternative.
There, moral dilemma solved.
