Natalia’s face is hard with determination, but once the last body drops she gasps, releasing the air in her lungs and holding the now empty gun out to me with shaking hands. We stand silently, all of us half-naked, covered in blood splatter and staring in shock at the bodies piled in and around the doorway.
I hear gunshots outside and then a car screech away and fury builds in me that anyone made it out of this alive. The thought is infuriating. Several more gunshots echo through the night loudly. One outside and seconds later, two more in the hallway just outside this room. Then Sisco comes back in with his grin still in place. He looks untamed and exhilarated.
“Three got in a car and got away, but if I chase them now, I should catch up to them,” he says breathlessly.
A man in the mound moves, and Sisco’s grin widens. He grabs a knife from the open safe before straddling the man and slamming the knife into his back over and over. It’s bloody and over the top, but that’s Sisco for you. He thrives on blood and death. The man’s back is a mess of torn flesh and gore and he’s clearly dead, but still Sisco continues. Natalia clings to me, seeing the monster within Sisco for the first time.
I wonder, idly, if she regrets her decision to stay now.
Blood splatters his features and drips down his chest and arms as he continues on with the slaughter. He’s eyeing the bodies, searching for someone else to kill, his arms raised, knife gripped tightly…
“Sisco!” Eva screams from somewhere in the house, and he stops and looks up at me, a crazed look in his eyes. “Sisco, where are you?” she sobs.
Blood drenches his hands and chest, and his face is dripping with it. We all know she’ll be terrified if she sees him like this. She’s used to blood and death, but she doesn’t know that her oldest brother is a psychopath.
“I’ve got this,” Natalia says softly, treading carefully across the room until she reaches the doorway. “Stay where you are, Eva,” she calls up the stairs.
“I’m scared,” Eva sobs from upstairs. “Dominic…mom is coming.”
“Do not let her come down here, Eva!” I warn. “Fuck,” I say through clenched teeth.
“I want to come down,” Eva whines.
“No, stay there!” Natalia says urgently. “You both need to stay up there.”
I’m trying to think quickly, my brain running in all directions. If either of them see the bodies down here it will destroy them. Our mother will never recover from it. She barely recovered from seeing our fathers mutilated body on the doorstep. And Eva? My sweet, innocent little sister…she’s already seen too much blood and death for one lifetime.
“Remember when you told me about the special place where you hide sometimes?” Natalia continues.
“Yes.”
“Go there now, take your mom. I’ll come and get you both as soon as it’s safe.”
Eva is silent as she considers this, and I stare in amazement at Natalia. My sister has never let anyone get close to her, yet now I’m finding that they’re sharing secrets. When I look at Joey he’s grinning, his blood-splattered face looking like the cat that not only ate the canary, but its entire family too.
“Eva, did you hear me?” Natalia prompts, her tone sterner, demanding obedience. “Take your mom and go hide until I come and get you.”
“Are you all okay?” She’s crying softly and my heart aches that I’ve brought this into her home, again.
“Yes, of course. We’re all fine. Now go hide, please.”
“I’m going. Don’t be long,” Eva says, and then I hear her little feet running away. “Come on, mom,” I hear her whisper.
Natalia turns and looks at us all, her gaze straying to the mass of bodies by her feet. She’s standing there in my blood-soaked shirt, her hair a tumble of knots and waves around her shoulders, blood spattering her face, and her eyes wide as she takes in the destruction surrounding us, and all I can think about is taking her over my father’s desk.
This woman has got me so twisted up I can barely think straight.
“Is this what it’s like?” she asks us. “All the time?”
Joey heads toward her for damage control, but she holds a hand up in warning and he stops in his tracks. My heart is thumping in my chest so hard it hurts, and I realize I’m more terrified that she’ll tell me that she won’t stay than I was of armed men charging in our house to kill us.
“Not all the time,” Sisco says with a shrug, like a fucking idiot.
Natalia is the mafia princess of Frank Costello, yet despite who her father was and the life she grew up in, she’s been sheltered from almost all of it. Not to mention that no one would ever be stupid enough to take on Frank.
“Dom,” Joey warns, and there’s a desperate sort of pleading in his tone. He wants me to fix this, and I know that I have to because the only other way out of this situation will be Natalia chained up in our basement as my brother’s sex slave for the rest of her life.
They meant it when they said they wouldn’t give her up.
