Page 63 of Bratva Sacrifice

My men are kept busy canvassing the city, chasing down every morsel of information it is possible to find. They buy it from anyone they can, threaten it out of anyone who cannot be bought. They scour airports, bus and train stations, taxi dispatchers. They collect descriptions of women who have come and gone through these places who match Catalina’s descriptions, but this is all for nothing.

Nothing so far has revealed her location. She knows how to disappear, now. How to stay hidden. I told her this, too. And with each day that passes, my wrath grows. It collects upon itself until it is a seething mass that burns ice cold in my chest.

She underestimates me if she thinks I will give up so easily, if she thinks she can hide from me forever. I will burn this fucking city to the ground before I let her go. I will burn the world to ash before I allow her betrayal to go unpunished.

If Catalina thought herself too much a captive before, she will soon learn better. She will learn how generous I was with her, how good this life she has abandoned could have been. Would have been.

And she will learn, also, what it means to earn the ire of a man like me. She will learn the difference between what could have been hers, and what will be from now on. She will learn what it means to truly be a prisoner.

Chapter Thirty Two

Catalina

A rough hand slaps me awake, and the gasp that flies from my lungs hurts. I think my ribs are bruised. Maybe broken. It’s difficult to tell the difference when they ache so badly.

I don’t know how long I’ve been allowed to sleep, but I know it wasn’t long enough. A few hours, if I was lucky. It’s the first time I’ve been permitted to sleep in…I don’t really know how long. Days, maybe. It’s impossible to tell. The light is always on in this tiny room. There are no windows. The air is so stale and stagnant that all I can smell is my blood, my sweat.

I can’t feel my legs. I fell asleep kneeling, because my hands are bound tightly to a steel pole and it’s impossible to stretch out. There’s kneeling when it’s permitted, and there’s standing when it’s demanded. And nothing else.

In contrast to the sharp slap that jolted me out of sleep, the hand that strokes my face is gentle. Papa’s voice is softer still. Almost tender. “What do you need, Catalina?”

“Water,” I rasp. I know they’ll give it to me eventually. Enough to keep me alive, and little else. A thin trickle drizzled across my dry lips, which tastes like fading hope.

“Why should I give you water?” Papa asks, not for the first time. This is a kind of torture, too, and it’s so much crueler than what they’ve already inflicted with their fists. With their boots. With the slice of box cutters in indifferent, idle lines, carving cuts into my skin an inch at a time. My body is a canvas they deface in parts, in pieces. “You did not do what I asked of you, Catalina. You disobey your own papa. You show no respect.”

“Please.” It’s all I can manage. Speaking even this much hurts my bruised throat. I’ve already endured hard hands around my neck countless times, pinching off my air supply until my vision goes dark. Until my muscles jerk and spasm. Until each gasping breath I struggle to take is a torture in and of itself.

“You had one instruction, Catalina,” Papa says. “Only one thing was asked of you. And you don’t do this for us. For your famiglia.”

This is the reason they took me. To learn if I did what they asked me to the day I ran, a demand Papa reiterated that day I stole Nicky’s phone from Alexei’s desk drawer and called him. He had no interest in my safety. He only wanted to know if I had succeeded in destroying the evidence of Nicky’s crimes, the evidence which Alexei stole and continues to dangle over their heads to keep my family in line.

I guess my time ran out. Or maybe theirs has.

Days ago, when I was stronger—when I still had spirit left to break—I told Papa the truth. That by the time Alexei trusted me enough to let me wander freely, I had already learned how little he thought of me. That he killed any fondness I once had for him, that I learned only too well that my filial affection was entirely misplaced. That even if I had so much as half an idea of what, exactly, that evidence was or where to find it, I would never have done it for them.

That earned me a brutal kick in the ribs from Papa’s brother Matteo. The one I think might have broken them.

I know, now, that it would have been better to lie. To let them think I had done what they wanted just to placate them. I was so certain, then, that Alexei would find me. I thought it would be only a matter of hours. I thought I could hold out until then. Now I know better. Wherever I am—wherever they’ve taken me—I’m beyond Alexei’s reach.

I’m going to die here. At the hands of my family, because they have no further use for me. And it’s going to be soon. I don’t have the energy to scream anymore when they hit me. It’s not satisfying for them to kick someone who doesn’t even have the capacity to cry any longer. I don’t flinch when they cut me because I’m already in too much pain for more to register. My suffering has ceased to amuse.

Initially, they spoke to one another in Italian because they didn’t want me to understand what they were saying. Now they don’t care. They speak in English because it doesn’t matter if I know. I won’t live long enough for it to make a difference.

Papa’s brother Lorenzo twists the cap off a bottle of water. As he holds the bottle to my lips to allow me a few sips, he says, “I had hoped, Catalina, you would prove smarter than your brother.”

Papa makes a rough noise in his throat. This is his punishment, I guess. He has to endure his brothers’ disappointment in him. To hear his precious son disparaged and say nothing. Because in the end, it’s his fault. For not controlling Nicky better; for being stupid and greedy.

Like a sacrificial lamb, I bear the burden of Papa’s sins. The responsibility for them passes from his shoulders to mine.

Lorenzo jerks the bottle of water away. “We asked so little of you. Only spread your legs for the Russian long enough to make our problem disappear. Probably, if you were good enough, he wouldn’t even have cared.” A sneer curls his lips. “Whoring is in your blood, after all. You get this from your mamma.”

If I had the strength to spit, I’d spit in his face. And maybe I’d die a little faster.

“If you had done this,” he says, and pulls a faux regretful expression. “Maybe you wouldn’t have to die.”

It’s almost a relief to have it acknowledged. Something to look forward to. They are going to kill me, and I won’t have to wait for it. I won’t have to kneel here and slowly starve and dehydrate to death. I can almost taste it.

I’m only sorry that I won’t see Alexei again. Through the agony of bruising and soreness that afflicts my throat, I manage to say, in what feels like it must be my final act of defiance, “Alexei will kill you.” It might be weeks. Months. Years, even. But eventually, Alexei will learn what happened to me.