The monster spit at him in response.
Guido came in next, mask off, shaking his head. The two men eyed each other, less heat between them.
Guido felt more than Vincenzo did.
Vincenzo saw a worthless human being, not worthy of the breath in his lungs, which made him able to complete his job without hesitation.
Guido was the brother who saw the potential and shook his head at the loss of what could have been. He’d lost a cousin before, Thomas, to senseless violence. Guido and Thomas were as thick as brothers, and Thomas’s death had changed him.
Vincenzo and Guido were both lethal, though, and could kill without the slightest hesitation, but viewed the world through entirely different lenses.
Funny,I thought abstractly,how two people could be so alike yet so different.
Guido turned to me, eyes narrowing, and I felt the heat surge up inside of him, melting the cold that clung to him from outside. “You deserve to die,” he spoke in Italian, voice full of venom, turning back to the monster. “This woman did not deserve this. She is a good woman. The same as your mamma was.”
Luca placed a kiss on my forehead, and a growl erupted from the monster’s throat that made me flinch. He fought against Brando, but it was futile.
Brando was consumed with rage, and the longer he held it inside, the thicker it became.
When he spoke, I thought the air would crackle with electricity, the walls shake from rolls of thunder.
“Leave us,” he said in Italian, his voice so low it seemed like everyone would strain to hear him.
None of us had.
All of the men except for Luca and Uncle Tito left the cabin. Rocco, Dario, and Romeo hesitated by the door but left as soon as Luca nodded to them to do as Brando had ordered.
I got the feeling Brando had told Uncle Tito to stay close. It was hard to tell how much of me Brando had seen, but I was sure he’d seen enough.
Lev moved past the brothers as they moved out. He stared at me before he nodded once, as if to say,you’ll be okay,then turned around and shut us in the dimness of the cabin.
Brando fixed Uncle Tito with a look. He in turn looked at me. Luca stared at his son.
Uncle Tito sighed, lifted his hands in aI don’t know yetgesture, and let them fall, as though the weight of the world was upon his shoulders.
Brando had asked Uncle Tito a silent question he couldn’t answer.
Neither could I.
Before the monster had put pressure on my carotid, he hadn’t raped me, but there had been a second…
No, it all happened so fast, but Brando had stepped in the door just in time…I thought. Or demanded to believe.
The answers Brando sought were not coming as he wanted. He shoved the monster toward us, toward the door, and I held on to Luca even tighter.
“Do not worry, my daughter,” he said in Italian, his voice firm but soothing. “You are in my arms.”
Brando stopped when he was to the basin, the tainted water catching his eye.
I blinked at him, realizing how deep the knife had cut his side. He was dressed all in black, so there was no proof that he’d been hurt, except for the blood continually falling to the floor, and the flesh peeking through the fabric.
I opened my mouth to say something, to cry out for Uncle Tito to go to him, but the words refused to dislodge from my mind and flow freely out of my mouth.
“Your wife,” the monster said with a sneer on his face. His teeth were stained with blood. “She is quite beautiful when she bathes. Her breasts are.” He made a deep pleasurable noise. “She does not even need the water to be slippery.”
I knew exactly what his game was. This was his last chance to dishonor Brando by pushing him further into a mad rage, one that would make him go berserk and kill him on the spot.
If Brando killed him in this cabin, in secret, none of his men, the ones kept alive, would see it. How could they tell the world what Brando had done then? Perhaps it was Luca who ended it, Uncle Tito, or one of his brothers or his cousins.
