Chaos erupted in blasts of fire around me.
Brando’s body seemed to fly across the room, hitting Cesare with enough force that both men flew off the bed, colliding on the floor with an explosion that shook windows and floorboards.
Other masked men invaded the small cabin, their forcefields alone strong enough to collapse its meager frame in on itself.
By feeling alone, I knew it was Uncle Tito, Luca, Rocco, Dario, and Romeo. Other men stood outside of the door, voices calling to one another—Guido and Vincenzo and Donato—the strange whistling still dancing through the air.
Lev. He enjoyed whistling while he worked.
The two men on the floor grunted with effort, two wild animals set upon each other to claim territory.
The smell of blood grew thicker in the air, hot and metallic, warmed by the fire. The inside of the cabin was filled with brumous light, mimicking the twilight outside and making it even dimmer.
I wasn’t sure if my head undulated from adrenaline or from the drunken fire feeding off the lethal energy around us. It was almost a tangible thing, thickening the air with the smell of something worse than anger and stronger than retribution.
Still strapped to the frame, I couldn’t do anything but fight against the textile handcuffs in vain. When some of the men started to gather around me, I started to grapple harder, for some reason uncomfortable not seeing their faces.
Uncle Tito—I knew it was him because of his smaller frame, and the scent of medicine clung to him like cologne—put a hand up to stop them.
“Take off your masks!” he ordered in Italian.
The men did, each one flinging them toward the fire; some making it, some not.
Another masked man walked in but didn’t bother to remove his mask. He looked toward the bed, then to the figure on the floor, and with a noise like crushing a can, used his boot to crush the inert form’s windpipe.
The wheezing and gurgling stopped at once; someone had pity on the suffering bug.
No, no, that wasn’t right. He was a man.A human being.
A distressed noise came from my mouth that I’d never heard before—or had I? I realized, with a start, that my soul still hovered above, just waiting, and my mind had gone almost blank. I could hear the noises around me, but the sounds were not entirely sensical, and coming at me as if I were underwater.
The men seemed to swim, arms and legs as graceful as shark fins in water, as they moved in the dense air.
Uncle Tito sat gingerly on the bed, keeping his hands up, in a sign of surrender. He said something to me, his mouth moving, and after a minute or two, the words finally made sense.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I know who you are.”
He took out a knife, then paused—seeing me wince—for a moment, before he sliced through the ties that bound me, my arms falling as though made of a gelatinous substance.
Uncle Tito’s cold hands made rounds, a balm to the aches, aloe to the burns. His mouth moved without a sound, remembering all of the ailments he would have to treat me for later.
His eyes glanced at my thighs, slick with the attempts of the monster, and without even thinking, I hid myself under the dress, like a child clinging to an invisible security blanket.
Uncle Tito looked up at Luca, who stared down at me, a look I couldn’t decipher on his face.
Brando and the monster were up off the floor, and without a sound, the monster turned to the side and sliced Brando with his own knife.
Brando let him go, and before he could stop him, he came straight for me, eyes wild and teeth ravenous, possessed with one thought—kill.
Climbing Luca as if he were a tree to get away from the monster, I found safety in his sheltering branches. He held me in his arms, tucking me against his chest.
He shushed me in a soothing voice, so at odds with the other noises erupting around us. His heart beat in a calm rhythm, as though he had two hearts, and this one hid the fierce pounding of the other.
Peeking out from my safe place, I saw that Brando hadn’t let the monster get far. He’d snatched the hair on his head and yanked him back, his throat exposed and vulnerable, bobbing to the beat of his constant swallowing. Or he was attempting to. At that angle, it seemed his windpipe might burst through the skin, killing him on the spot.
Regardless, a smug smile stayed on the monster’s face, one not even death could steal from him. Though he didn’t succeed in killing me, he knew to a certain extent that capturing me had killed a part of Brando—my husband—allowing the other man, the one more beast than man, to slip in even further.
Vincenzo had removed his mask, eyeing the monster with contempt. “It is good to see you where you belong. On death row.”
