I roll my eyes.
“What the hell do you want from me?” I ask, still shouting.
The older woman, whose name I still don’t know, stares at mewith narrow eyes before she walks over to a folder on a desk and pulls a photo from it.
“This is you, is it not?” she asks, holding up a photo of me as a girl, at least it looks like me. I don’t trust these people an inch after what they pulled with the fake video of Luisa.
I must be around ten or eleven in that picture. I am holding a gun standing above and a dead man on the ground, a young man.
I stare at the picture, and while it is me, it’s not me. I have no recollection of it. Or it is fake. To make me do things.
“It looks like me,” I say. “But after you deep-faked that thing with Luisa, who am I to trust you?” I ask rhetorically.
The woman scoffs derogatorily, and I watch her other hand closing into a fist. She is emotionally loaded. It must have been someone important to her.
“Rose,” says Kat warningly, she must have seen it too.
“And this here,” says the woman named Rose, “This is you, too.”
She holds up a second picture. The only one I have, the one with Lolita. It was the holiday my father gave her to me.
“It is,” I say.
“This is also Giuseppe’s Masseria here in Sicily—“ says that Rose.
“We are in Sicily?” I ask, horrified. “How did I get here?”
“I got you here,” says Kat.
“Not relevant,” says Rose harshly.
“It is the place where he resides. A fortress no one sets foot in. But you will.”
“I will?” I repeat, because I must have misheard.
“Yes, you will. You will gain Giuseppe’s trust because you are Antonio’s daughter. You will be his little puppet.”
So that’s why they dressed me like a little puppet. The plaything for the puppeteer.
“I am Ian’s daughter,” I say. It’s the only thing I can say at this point.
“Who lived a double life. Or you are a liar,” says Rose. “You will infiltrate Giuseppe’s organisation.”
“His organisation,” I repeat.
“Are you brain-dead or just stupid?” asks Rose in an arrogant tone of annoyance. “Or why do you need to repeat everything?”
And I snap.
“Excuse me for not being able to follow your wild train of thoughts that assume I will infiltrate some Sicilian guy’s organisation after you took me against my will!”
“You will,” she says. “You will tell him Rosalia Vittare is after you, and you need protection for what your father did for him,” she says, unimpressed by my shouting and tone.
“I am not going to lie to a bloody mafia boss or whoever he is!” I shout, stretching my arms in a way every Italian would be proud of.
“You are not lying,” she says. “Because you will be dead if you don’t do what I tell you to.”
“I will be dead anyway! If he ever finds out, I will be killed within an instant!”
