Page 29 of Revenge on the Mafia

I was debating if I should bring in a fucking bulldozer and crush the damn house to the ground when she walked back into the frame. This time, she rushed into the room and opened all the windows like a lunatic before rushing out again.

“For fuck's sake,” I groaned. It would be my fucking luck that she couldn’t stand my scent. She walked through the house cleaning up random shit for five hundred and fifty seconds, giving me time to take my doubts into the pits of hell. Pacing across the room, I observed her in the living room where she was fluffing the same pillow again and again. She didn’t even seem to realize she was flattening that one pillow twenty-four different times.

Is it possible to deep clean your scent?

When she headed back into the office, she carried a bottle in her hand. I glared at my screen as she moved around, clearly distressed. It was some kind of fragrance. I knew that when she sprayed it all over the room like bug spray.

“Putos cigarrillos.”

If I hadn’t been attuned to every action of hers, I wouldn’t have picked it up. The words were fucking gunshots in my eardrum. I dropped into the chair. My chest tightened with the burden of knowledge.

Fucking cigarettes.

My father had been a heavy smoker, and on that day, he’d gone to the effort of smoking right into Juan’s face. I rarely smoked. Unlike Enzo. But I’d smoked this morning, three in a row. I didn’t even know why. It didn’t even matter anymore. I had redefined her life.

My phone rang. I disconnected it without a glance. The images of that day rolled in my mind. It was stored in my memory. Both my favorite and dreaded images embedded themselves into my head. They slithered into my nightmares, and on bad days, they seized my vision even when my eyes were wide open.

Juan. His gaze fading from trust to betrayal. My fingers giving way. That had been the only time I had missed a shot, but it didn’t matter because that was the only time I shouldn’t have missed. I should have turned the gun around and put a hole in my father’s fucking head. When he’d drawn her initials on his table over and over again, I’d known that was his last wish. Even in that, I had failed him.

I watched her in a daze. Moving around. Snooping. She flipped the one piece of sheet music I’d left on my table face down. Every time I caught her switching off the music or flipping her headphones on, it was an arrow to my heart. She had loved to play. Juan used to say it was better than any of his favorite birds chirping. The man hadn’t been exaggerating.

“Joder!”

She was yanking at the drawer in my desk, trying to get it to open. I’d locked it. She wouldn’t see the picture of her with her father that had been on his desk.

“¡Joder! ¡Joder! ¡Joder!”

For a second, I wondered what it would be like to fuck her when she was furious. To swallow that passionate Spanish into my mouth as she rode me. Then I crushed that thought right down. The only thing I should have focused on was putting an end to this. Absentmindedly, I ran my hand over the knife in my pocket. I’d found the perfect one for her. One she could handle; if she put the right type of pressure into it, she could sink it deep into my skin. This was always how it was meant to end for me. At least it was in her hands and not in some asshole who wanted our territory.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ANNA

My pulse pounded. Being in his house, his office, was an adrenaline rush. It felt like riding a never-ending rollercoaster. Except there was no relief at the end when you stumbled out and touched the ground with shaky feet. Only more questions awaited me, hitting me at random intervals, until I could succumb to my knees under the weight of them.

I stared at the drawer. It was obviously locked. Why I kept on trying was a mystery. I had to know what he’d stashed away in that drawer. Maybe it was the beginning of the reveal of all his dirty secrets? I wanted to lock him in a room, barrage him with all my questions, and come out with answers and a dead body. Only I wasn’t so sure I’d make it out in one piece. My words in my diary the night before made so much sense. Es una partida. Él es el maestro. Y yo soy su presa. It's a game. He's the master. I am his prey.

How did he still remember Papá? That had been the first question in my mind when I opened my eyes. The Mafia must kill a lot. Like once a month at least? It couldn’t be less than that. That’s at least one hundred and thirty-two murders in the eleven years since Papá’s. But he remembered Papá’s out of all of them? I wanted to know why, as much as I didn’t. Because deep within me, another doubt magnified. One that had bloomed eleven years ago and grew larger like a cancerous tumor as each day passed. Was Papá not a good man?

I stepped away. Wrapped my hands around my cold midriff. The thump thump of my heartbeat raced. I would not go down that path. I couldn’t. In my mind, Papá was larger-than-life, even if I couldn’t remember him anymore. Some days I yearned so much to know how he had been before the day he died that it was a tangible ache. I’d known him. Loved him. But my memory was a concrete roadblock cutting me off from him. If I could just shove it away. Dare to drive over it to clear the haze. I wanted nothing more than that. A desire that stood so close to me that I felt I only had to stretch far enough to be able to touch it. But other times… I feared knowing the past. I was terrified I wouldn’t like it. No normal person got a knife in their throat on a mid-Monday morning. Three men had walked into his home and killed him. Was he really a thief? The constant battle inside me was exhausting.

Giving up, I grabbed hold of the duster and set to work. But my mind was far from it, and my work showed it.

If only he’d just had his damn dinner. I wouldn’t need to be in this house then. The memory of his words from the night before soured my stomach.

You are no coward, Anna Vales.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my bed, fully dressed, with the faint smell of teak and cedar clinging to me. I had no memory of getting into bed. If Magda or Isidora had found me and dragged me to my room, they would have mentioned it in the morning. Which only left… no. It was clear. I was losing my shit.

“Joder, this can’t be happening.”

Who wasn’t losing his mind was Niccolò Martello. He was more trouble than ease. Seriously, Anna! You’re such an idiot.

Luck was clearly on his side because he’d known all along who I was. The idea was absurd. But I was pretty sure I was his current entertainment. The asshole was so confident I wouldn’t be able to do it that he was comfortable keeping me under his roof.

But you didn’t kill him when you had the opportunity.

That was because he called me out as a coward for trying to take the easy route.