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When I stepped behind the woman, I realized it was the child molester. He was still alive, but given the amount of blood leaking from the wound, that would not be the case for much longer.
There was something liberating about watching a person one hated abysmally as he slowly and stertorously forfeited his life. Dying an agonizing death that could no longer be averted.
Just like that, I was thrown back to when I had huddled over the dying members of the Scuderi family and I had enjoyed every moment of it. It hadn't brought Rina back, but it gave me the satisfaction necessary to eventually come to terms with it.
In the first minutes after her death, it had been unthinkable. It had taken Emilio and Natale to snatch my wife's body from my arms and another man to even get me away from the place.
Emilio had taken care of the formalities as much as he could. The day after her funeral, I had bought that shitty villa, had handed over my post as boss to my younger brother, and had spent a year and a half hunting down the Scuderis so that no one who was somehow to blame for Rina's death would be alive.
The woman Rina had saved was now living with her two children somewhere near Florence, leading a life far from the mafia. I sent her enough money every year that she didn't have to worry about anything.
I felt the exact moment when the man died at our feet. I didn't have to look to notice it. The brief shift in the energy around us was all it took to be sure.
"That was one of three," I muttered. "We should track down the other two. The gunshot must have spooked them."
As I stepped over the corpse, I noticed it had not been a perfect shot. An average hunter would shoot with the intention of killing, but he would make also sure that it was over as quickly and painlessly as possible.
For the most part, our hunters were holding a gun for the first time unless they were professionally involved and showed up here with a sniper rifle.
Now and then, it even happened that an old acquaintance from the local police called and asked me for a favor. As a retired ex-policeman, he apparently missed the adrenaline of a hunt for a criminal and I didn't say no, because it brought me certain advantages with the authorities.
The group behind me didn't start moving until I had put some distance between us. Fiero was good at encouraging and connecting with these people. The business would probably go much worse if I managed everything. Hardly anyone wanted anything to do with a grouchy guy who was part of the mafia and organized not-so-legal manhunts.
Some distance away, I heard a branch crack, concentrated for a moment, and then heard the heavy breathing of someone suffering anxiety and had probably hurt himself.
With a hand signal, I pointed out my discovery to Fiero. He instructed his three protégés, and, before I knew it, they were on the move and running in the direction of the guy who had chosen the worst possible hiding place.
A brief scuffle broke out, but silence suddenly fell – after an incident that could best be described as baseball bat meets skull.
Impressed, I approached, looked at the unconscious guy, and nodded. "You'll have to finish him off. Currently, he's more of an ICU case in a long-term coma."
"At least then he would suffer forever," the only woman in the group replied, spitting at the guy on the ground.
I puckered my mouth. "It's unlikely he'll feel much of anything if he's brain dead."
"Give me that," she said to one of the men, took the pistol from him, and fired a well-aimed shot that burst the head of the hunted man like an overripe melon. She handed back the gun and walked away. "Now he has no brains," she muttered.
Fiero and I exchanged a quick glance before we started moving again. That went much better than with our last hunters.
8
Amedea
As soon as I opened my eyes, I remembered last night. It must have been about two or three in the morning when I was suddenly jolted out of sleep.
At first, I hadn't realized why because the house had been quiet, and there had been no apparent reason to wake up with a pounding heart. But then I remembered the spontaneous visit of my father and had climbed out of bed to search the entire room. Afterward, I also made a tour downstairs and ensured that all the security cameras that Vincenzo had mentioned were running.
I had just been on my way back to bed when the silence of the night was broken by a gunshot. Some distance away and from the mountains, but I was still surprised. This wasn't the time of day when hunters were usually out, was it?
Was that what had woken me? With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I lay back in bed and listened to the silence until a second shot rang out shortly after. I must have fallen asleep again when nothing extraordinary followed.
Nevertheless, when I woke up, it apparently still occupied my mind enough to go purposefully downstairs to the kitchen after I had showered and dressed. To my surprise, I found Vincenzo, who seemed in a relatively good mood for once.
The steep crease on his forehead seemed smoothed out, and he didn't look like he was about to stare you to death.
"Is there active hunting around here?" I asked, not bothering with a greeting.
Wordlessly, Vincenzo put a coffee in front of me.
