ROSALIA
PLAYLIST: YOU CAN RUN – ADAM JONES
Ishould have eliminated her as soon as we captured her. Kat may believe the girl is just an innocent bystander, but I know better. Sophie isn’t really Sophie. No ordinary girl could have done what she did. She is Antonella. Antonio Amato’s daughter.
Blinding rage burns within me like a spitting Etna, and although I’ve become more silent and patient over time, I still have my temperament. And that temperament erupts onto Kat.
I shout at her for taking my chance, for delivering her into Giuseppe’s hands, for taking her from me.
“Rose,” says Kat, unimpressed, and I curse at her in Sicilian, because I am beyond Rose. She lets me rant.
“Are you quite done?” she asks when I finally end my shouting of all those things that needed to be said.
“Quella bastarda di merda!” I shout. Whenever I am angry, my Sicilian nature shows most. All those years in the Americas and across Europe have done something to me, but anger is always connected to my roots.
“You’ll listen to me now,” she says. “She saw me. She knew I was there, and she did not draw Giuseppe’s attention to me. She distracted them. She is not on his side.”
“Didn’t we listen to the same audio?” I ask her, shouting into the phone, enraged. I pace between the open kitchen and the living room.
“We did,” she says, “Because it was me who infiltrated your phone to track her and listen in. And yet, I am certain she is still doing what we told her to do.”
This is not the Kat I raised. The one I raised would have never trusted anyone, and because I am as angry as I am, words slip out of my mouth.
“Marriage made you foolish,” I say harshly.
Kat’s silence on the other end is deadly, but I will not let her becoming soft jeopardise my plans.
“You might want to ask yourself when you became a killer who is so consumed with the lust for blood that she lost sight of the cause she meant to kill for,” she finally says in a voice threateningly silent and ice-cold before she hangs up.
I remain of stone as I stare at the phone in my hand. Goosebumps of the worst kind spread over my skin as coldness spreads through me. The coldness that comes with roaring anger and murderous desire to destroy.
Does she not understand? Does she not see?
I am not one to question myself; It is something the fools do, those who are too scared of the judgment on their actions. I am not. I don’t question what I do, because I am guided by the Lord and the rage that was needed to destroy what men took. I will not question myself, because the men wouldn’t either.
To question oneself is taught to women, to be small, to become what men desire them to be. But I am not here to be desired by a man. I am here to kill them.
And the moment I remember what I swore to myself when I watched my brother being invited to the tables, the heir, our father's precious boy, while I was left outside, meant to watch, admired by the male gaze and used for their pleasure, I know it is finally time.
Giuseppe is breathing on borrowed time since I decided I would come for him; now I am ready to sin.
The sin that follows a man into the ground: murdering la famiglia.
The sin that will start a war.
The sin that will change the order, here in Sicily and beyond. Because I will take, I will own, and I will make enemies that are going to lust for spilling my blood and paint the floor of hell with it.
I carefully place my phone on the counter, slip off my shoes, and zip open my skirt. It slides to the ground, and I step out of it as I open my blouse and walk barefoot over the tiles to a wooden shelf. I push some books aside and open the secret cabinet with the pin pad in it. As I enter the number, a soft beep confirms, before the shelf jumps just an inch off the wall.
I open it, slip in and close it behind me. The cold stone stairs lead into the closed part of the catacombs running under the entire house. This part, I had restored and fitted to my needs.
I walk into my wine cellar on the left and get the bottle I kept for this very occasion: A Tasca d'Almerita Rosso del Conte from 1993, when I was sixteen. The year I gave birth to my son after being raped, the year my father made Giuseppe his heir, l’erede del sangue, and pushed me into the background as an object not worth his time and attention.
I open the bottle and pour it into a decanter. I smell it. It’s the smell of revenge. A smile curves my mouth.
I lean against the wooden table top and caress my collarbones before I grab my cross.
I turn it between my fingers as I focus on what I am about to do. There will be no way back afterwards—exactly the point. All these years I built to take one day, and now I will.
