Hid in the brush around the barn, holding the gun from underneath the seat, picked them off one by one—if I only knew.
It was too late for me to go for the gun by the time Brother One had reached the truck, knocking on the window. He had already alerted the other three. Another one was standing guard by the door.
He made a motion for me to roll it down.
I did, only a crack. “Where is my cousin?”
He smiled at me, a smoky breath coming from his mouth. It smelled like smoke. “Where is my cousin?” He mocked my accent, smiling after. “She’s entertaining us.”
“It is time for her to come home,” I said. “Her mamma sent me to get her.”
His laughter barreled out. “That girl snuck out to meet Rattler.” He went to open my door, but it was locked. “Open the door, Italy. Your cousin’s not coming out until you do. And don’t even think about going for that piece of justice underneath the seat. Bear kept them in all his vehicles. Once bitten twice shy.”
My hand was curled around the handle to the door. My eyes kept flickering from Brother One to the barn door.
“You’re thinking too much, Italy. Open the door. Or Atta Girl doesn’t come out.”
“She’s not coming out anyway. I’m going in.”
“Yeah,” he almost sang. “You can give her a break, from the, uh, entertaining.” His smile spread slowly, and then he winked at me.
I flung the door open so fast and hard, it hit him, pushing him back a step or two. He was not expecting it. I took the opportunity to turn, reach underneath the seat, going for the gun. My fingers were frozen, hardly able to bend, so numb, I was not sure if the pain came from frantically searching for the gun, or something else.
It was something else.
Brother One had me by the hair, yanking me backward. My boots dragged the ground as he hauled me toward the barn. I refused to fight, to give him what he wanted, and when I opened my mouth, the threat came out smooth, calm. “I will kill you for this. Just wait and see.”
“What’s that, Italy?” He pretended to put his ear closer, as if he had not heard me. The top had a chunk of cartilage missing. “Say it again, but this time in English.”
Had I spoken Italian? I was not sure. My panic could have been coming out in not the usual ways. It was the same as the anger and hurt I would feel when my sister would always get her way even when she was not right. I had found that my system took in situations that caused me stress and translated them into ways that did not always make sense, such as the laughter when the situation was not funny.
I cleared my throat, my scalp on fire from his grip. “I will kill you for this. I vow it.”
“Ohhh, you vow it, little girl? What are you going to do? Make me bad pasta?” He laughed at himself, the sociopath.
“Perhaps,” I said, and he should have recognized the venom in my voice. He and his brothers were snakes after all. “Or I will blow your cocks off—single shots.”
He laughed, wheezed with it. Coughed up something sickly from his lungs and spat it out. “I’m so glad you joined us, Italy. You’re a barrel of laughs, except for those tits and that ass.” He whistled. “A man must take those seriously. You’re a smoke show.”
“Fuck you,” I spat out, making a rude Italian hand gesture with it.
Everything I said, he found amusing, so the both of us became quiet as we moved closer to the door. He dragged me inside of it, flung me to a floor covered in straw, and took the position next to his brother at the door.
Two walls blocking my exit.
Was my cousin even here?
“Atta?” Her name left my mouth in a breathless push. My eyes frantically searched for her, and when they found her, I got to my feet, rushing toward her.
A hand snaked around my waist and pulled me back.
“Sistine, am I right?” His warm breath washed over my ear, and I shivered from disgust. “Atta’s cousin from Italy. A fiery Latin beauty, with all that silky dark hair, and a temper that would keep a man warm in bed in the dead of winter.”
He was the opposite of his brother. His voice was firm, and there was no taunting edge to it. I was not sure which was worse. The brother with the quips or the one who was acting as if he was doing nothing wrong.
My mouth refused to speak to him. All I could do was stare at Atta. She stared back with a tear in her eye. The one that had dropped was frozen to her face, along with blood. Her other eye was swollen shut, and her lip was split. It ran with blood, but it was freezing before it even reached her chin.
“Sistine,” she barely got out.
