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“Mostly.” I interrupt him, not wanting to hear another word from his mouth. “I think you won’t appreciate this then. It isn’t going to be my finest work.” I pull back and with all the force in me, punch him in the face.
His nose cracks and he rears back, shocked. Nobody moves except Burley. The mole doesn’t come to Randazzo’s aid. Shutters roll down, blocking the guards on the inside of the house from rushing out. The guards in the garden are too far off to realize there’s a commotion. The two other guards in the vicinity are on the mole’s side and only look on. Already Burley’s thick hands are around the Sicilian’s neck, pressing, blocking any sound but a strained gargle that comes from his throat as blood seeps from his nose into his mouth, staining his bared teeth.
Randazzo reaches for Burley’s hands to pull him off, but the old man is no match for this giant. I stand and go to Randazzo’s side, blocking what’s happening from view on the garden’s side. We are efficient and quiet. The garden birds haven’t stopped chirping, music in his final minutes.
The mole comes out of the shadows and hands me a knife. I pinch Randazzo’s notched ear and start to slice. He buckles in his seat, but if I were him, I’d save my oxygen. Already his face is flushed an unhealthy red.
“That’s for gagging my wife,” I say as I put the ear in my side pocket. Still he struggles as I reach over and slice off his other ear. “That’s for tying her up.” With the pressure on his throat, the blood pours out at speed. His eyes are bulging, and I dip in the tip of the knife and dig one out. “That’s for looking at my wife’s pussy.”
I pocket his eye, wondering if I should bother with the other. The man is so to say dead. Still he fucking gargles, as if I care. That brown eye stares at me, bloodshot now, incredulous and petrified. Staring at me like every victim of his must have stared death in the face. Meh. They come in pairs. I dig the other eye out and pocket it. “And that’s for inking her.”
I nod to Burley and he intensifies his hold. Blood is oozing out of every hole I’ve made. I stare at the hand, the desperate grip that’s weakening. I pick out his little finger, the one with the ring bearing his insignia, the fucking mark he had tattooed on Tasha’s pure skin. With a surgeon’s precision, I cut it off, final proof for the Don.
Randazzo heaves and shudders one last time. Burley relaxes.
I stand back and look at my handiwork.
Murder.
Is.
Art.
35
MATTEO
“Where is she?” I ask the mole as I turn to him. He’s already muttering something on a walkie talkie. Old school, but I’m not on home ground. I don’t have my phone and feel like I’ve lost a limb.
We have minutes. As soon as the guards realize Randazzo is dead, the guns are going to come out blazing. Some men will do so out of loyalty, others out of fear. And then there are those who will make the most of the shift in the hierarchy.
“Follow me.” The mole nods and we rush along the side of the house. The hurricane shutters are closed over every window, in lockdown.
It’s only when we reach the end of the house that one shutter is halfway open, blocked by a piece of metal. From inside, men are calling. The guards have realized something’s up. I become aware of the incessant beep of an alarm that indicates something’s been breached.
They’re already hunting us.
“Once inside, you have three minutes before I open the shutters,” the mole says. “The cache with the bulletproof vests is in this room’s closet. Your wife is next door on your right.”
I nod. The whole business is risky. We could be stepping into a trap.
“Thank you,” the mole says, and I notice the sheen of sweat gathering by his temples. This guy is risking everything too, but he has achieved his own goal today and has avenged his sister. Randazzo died in front of his own eyes, and I bet if I’d handed him a knife, he would happily have butchered along.
I’ve trusted him this far. “See you on the other side.”
Burley is already clambering through the open window, his bulk hardly fitting through the small space. I follow suit, the only weapon on me the knife the mole handed me. Where there were voices before, everything has now gone eerily quiet. Burley opens the closet and quietly searches in the little light through blankets and old clothes. He tosses me a bulletproof vest. I signal to him that there should be more than one. I hope for three. Tasha will need one too.
Crashing sounds come from the other side of the house. Something had lured the guards in the opposite direction.
“There’re only two,” Burley mutters. He strips his jacket and pulls on a vest. “It’s too fucking small.”
“Better than nothing.” For a moment we just stare at each other in the ill-lit room. Tasha wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be here. I had some other bodyguard assigned for today. But this is it. The moment where I make the choice between my bodyguard and friend of over ten years and the woman I’ve kidnapped.
“She’ll have it,” Burley says and he doesn’t fasten the vest. “You look after Rosalia.”
“It might not come to that.”
“We walked in here knowing it was going to come to that.”
