“You’ll never find them.”
Caputo cocks the gun, but I grab his arm before he can pull the trigger.
“Ferro’s gonna want to question him if they’re not here.”
Caputo gives me a look that’s full of snakes and suspicion, but I’m not wrong and he knows it.
Rafaelle just laughs again.“Might as well shoot me now.I’m never gonna talk.”
Caputo stands and hauls him to his feet.The wound on his stomach must’ve opened because the bandage is quickly turning from white to black.“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
Thudding footsteps come down the stairs.
“The house is clear,” a man says.“Are the Codellis down here?”
“Just Santi,” one of the others with us informs them.
“Fuck,” the man says.“They’re not up there either.How the fuck did they leave the house without us seeing?”
Rafalle laughs again, the sound echoing and bouncing off the walls.“It’s because you’re incompetent.”
Caputo punches him in the stomach, making more blood erupt through the bandage.“Where are they?”
Rafaelle is trying to catch his breath.He can’t laugh now, but he’s shaking his head.“Too far for you to reach.”
I resist the urge to tell Caputo it’s a good thing I stopped him from shooting the man.Faint police sirens are coming from somewhere.
“We gotta go,” the man who came down the stairs says.“We can’t question him here.”
“Grab his other arm,” Caputo instructs me and together we drag Rafaelle up the stairs.I’d expected him to put up more of a fight, but it seems my stab wound wasn’t all that innocent after all.That’s the thing about gut wounds.They kill slowly.But they kill all the same.
Good.Maybe now Ferro and the rest will stop suspecting me of trying to betray them.
Of course, it’d be better if Rafaelle was dead.Because under torture, who knows what he’ll say.I really need to stop trying to save these people.They’re all already dead anyway.The sooner Gianna accepts that, the better.
We’re out of the house and across the lawn, packing into the cars before the first sirens reach the house.
“What the fuck went wrong at the police station?”Caputo asks the man driving the car me, him and Rafaelle are in as we speed down the road, headlights off.
“Seems someone from the house called them,” the guy says.“And there was some confusion regarding how much force to use to stop them from coming.”
Caputo curses and leans back in his seat.“Ferro’s not gonna like that.”
“But at least we got this bastard, right?”the guy in the driver’s seat says.“That’s gotta count for something.
They both sound more worried than I expected them to be.But it proves my point that Ferro doesn’t handle failure and incompetence in his men well.Rafaelle has passed out beside me.His face is ghostly white in the moonlight.He could very well be dead before we reach Ferro’s mansion.
Then I’ll see with my own eyes how Ferro handles failure.And I’m not looking forward to it.
Chapter14
GIANNA
After Matteo left,I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even pace.He didn’t pack any alcohol for me in the bags of food he brought and the low-grade headache that’s been banging at my forehead got a lot worse once I realized how much I’m actually craving a drink.
The books he so helpfully brought to help me pass the time are all crap too.Not that I could concentrate on reading them if they were good either.All of them are old, leather-bound editions, covered in dust and with writing so small and cramped I had to squint to try and read them.
In the end, when the death spiral of my anxiety got so fast I was having trouble breathing, I did start reading one.Wuthering Heightsby Emily Bronte.I vaguely remember watching the black and white movie based on it a long time ago.I know that the love story in it is very dark and haunting.Maybe it’ll give me some ideas on how to navigate my current situation.
