Page 111 of I Would Beg For You

Victor turns to me. “Ready?”

I nod, and we start down the stairs to the basement.

Strangely, the space has corridors. Marco calls for a slice of the crew to follow the trails. I hear them on his comms stating the doorway leads to the house next door, revealing a similar network.

Merda! How did we not know this?

Pesci comes down—the upper levels here have all been dealt with. There’s a lookout on both doors.

I’m shaking my head at this botched-up prep plan, and when I catch a glimpse of steel out the corner of my eye, I freeze. Is that a steel vault door?

I wave my hand at Pesci, already turning in the other direction. I hear Marco directing him to the house next door via the web of connected basement hallways. Victor falls into step next to me, and we’re in the anteroom the vault door opens onto.

It’s so nondescript a space, I want to laugh. Except half the window opens onto the street, light from the lamps falling inside just enough to highlight a trail of dried blood on the concrete floor.

My stomach heaves. No! This can’t be Naomi’s… If that porca puttana did anything to hurt her, if he kil— I can’t even think of this as my breath stops then starts to wheeze out of me.

Suddenly, I’m on the vault door, throwing myself onto the three-lever handle to turn it so I can open the damn thing, so I can go in and see Naomi, so I can…

Victor is there giving me a hand, and the door opens with a clunk and groan. Inside, it’s dark, and a rank smell, of musty damp and acrid vomited bile, whiffs out to our nostrils. There’s a heavy reek of salty, still-not-dry blood on the coattails.

I almost retch, but then I’m thinking Naomi could be inside this shit hole, this hell hole, and I’m rushing in, my sole slipping on a patch of blood inside the doorway. My eyes aren’t acclimating to the darkness, until Victor shines the beam of a torch inside. It’s empty, a cot with tattered blankets in a corner, but then the light catches on something. A hint of pale, shimmery fabric. I can’t make out the shape from here, but…

The beam illuminates a prone form on the cold concrete of the floor. It’s a woman, her body barely covered by the scrap of satin on her. It’s a nightdress, like the one Naomi was wearing when she was taken.

It’s Naomi! She’s here!

I rush to her, my feet slipping again on a trail of blood that leads right to her. My heart is squeezing in my chest. All this blood, this vile smell, it can’t come from her, can it? It can’t be hers. She can’t be… No, she has to be…

I fall onto my knees next to her. She’s tucked in on herself, almost in a fetal position, her arms wrapped around her stomach as if protecting it. The light catches her exposed back, and I gasp at the sight of the many reddish bruises it reveals. Someone was hitting her between the shoulder blades and in the small of her back. She curled in on herself to protect her vital organs, it seems like.

I’m almost afraid to touch her, because I’m scared to find she isn’t alive. She’s not moving, and her legs feel cold—I can feel the cold radiating to me, like someone who’s been left out at the mercy of spiteful elements.

When a soft moan breaks the thrall I’m in, I dare hitch in a breath.

“Naomi?” I call out. “Gattina? Please, say something.”

Gently, gingerly, I push the hair from her face, try to get her to ease her hold on her midsection. It seems like she tries to fight me, but she hardly has any strength left.

Still, she’s alive. Only just, but I’ll take it. That she makes it, it’s all I’m asking for.

It’s not easy, but I manage to pull her to me—she still won’t let go of her arms over her belly. One arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders, I cradle her to me and stand up. She cries out, though the sound is barely audible, when her battered back presses into my arm.

“It’s alright, baby,” I croon to her as I step out of the vault. “I’ve got you.”

Victor’s eyes grow wide when I emerge. Then he’s nodding at her.

“Blood’s dry,” he says. “Not hers.”

I glance down. Indeed, the satin is stiff with the dried blood. That amount came from a big wound, one that wouldn’t have stopped itself like a small, surface cut. She would’ve been dead by now from that kind of blood loss.

I throw another glance at the trail on the floor. So, it’s someone else? A prisoner, or did she get the drop on one of her captors?

Cradling her to me, I start toward the stairs taking us to the first floor. Marco’s here, on the phone. His concerned gaze stops me in my tracks. He cuts the call and nods at Naomi.

“That was Antonio. Don Vitale’s come to him with more intel. Turns out there was a funeral today, late in the afternoon. Jasir Berisha buried his eighteen-year-old son. Word has it the kid died during an operation overseen by his father, a bullet fired by awomanhe was holding hostage.”

By the emphasis on ‘woman,’ I know that’s not the word that was used in these hush-hush reports. And I have a fair idea who she is—my wife. She didn’t cower, and she fought, probably trying to escape. That’s my girl. Her fighting spirit is still there.

---