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“Let’s go.”

He stops me before I can move away from him. “You’ll need this.” He takes off his Saint Michael’s pendant and hangs it around my neck, tucking it into my tank top. “Can’t hurt, right?”

After what happened to my man when I took it off last time, I’m never leaving this thing at home again.

35

Siena

The heavy door creaks as we enter, and Franco pries open his eyes, lifting his head. He’s hanging from the wall by shackles, his body slack, his wrists bleeding where the metal cuts into his skin. His jeans are torn and stained, and it smells like urine and tarnished copper in the windowless cell.

When he sees us, he laughs, a dark evil sound, his gaze boring into me. “Look who it is,” he croaks out. “The newest addition to the Demonio harem of whores. Fucking stupid bitch.”

Compared to this room, Franco’s last room was cozy, even homey. This room is a torture chamber, much closer in size to the one I stayed in. There’s a sink on one side of the door and a long metal table on the other with a box full of rusty tools on the ground.

The concrete floor is flat by the door but slopes up toward the back wall covered in shackle rings and heavy, rusted out chains. Large drains line the center of the room where the slope ends.

Franco is attached to that wall, not just with shackles at the ankles and wrists but by a heavy metal ring wrapped around his neck that allows his head to do little more than droop slightly. Dried blood and fresh blood stain his bare chest, filling in rivulets left by dirt and sweat, and darkening his jeans. The stitches across his chest from where I shot him are inflamed and red.

I wait to feel something, anything. Sadness, shock, empathy, anger. But I feel nothing. I’m numb.

Tension emanates from Matti, and I briefly press my side into his, so he knows I’m okay.

Stepping forward, I tilt my head, looking Franco up and down, my voice calm.

“Franco, you are misreading the situation. The only bitch in this room is shackled to the wall. But call me a bitch if you want. Just know that this bitch is going to hurt you very fucking badly.”

Franco’s lip twitches into a sneer, his brown eyes coal black and beady. “You don’t have the fucking balls.”

“Having balls doesn’t seem to have served you very well, has it? All I see when I look at you is a string of shitty decisions that show you to be the spineless little shit that you are. And, not to state the obvious, but your so-called balls have gotten you shackled to a wall about to be tortured relentlessly… by a woman. Your baby sister, no less.”

Franco scoffs as I squat down by the box of tools next to the door, looking for what I want.

The box is full of rusty, blood-encrusted knives, pliers, saws in various sizes, and other tools clearly used for torment and death. I don’t relish the idea of touching one of these rusty tools, and oddly, this is a greater concern for me in thismoment than what I plan to do with it.

I find what I want and pull it out by its handle, a medium-sized saw with a serrated blade and a handle with the least amount of blood. Grinning at Franco, I stand, weighing the saw in my hand, gripping its handle with first one hand, then the other.

Franco glowers at me, his eyes on the saw. “What the fuck do you think you’re going to do with that?”

“I’ve been thinking about Emily,” I say, ignoring his question as I move steadily closer to him. “Quite a lot, actually. In fact, I can’t stop thinking about her. What did she experience in those moments before she died? Did she realize what was happening? Do you think, Franco, that she knew that her own fucking brother did this to her?”

Without warning, I slash his jean clad leg with the saw. The broken teeth rip jaggedly through the denim and into his leg, tearing the skin along with the fabric.

It’s exhilarating.

Terrible, freeing, and exhilarating.

Adrenaline courses through my system as an avalanche of memories cascade over me.

Emily laughing with me under the covers when we were kids.

Emily screaming at me for ruining her favorite sweater.

Emily holding me tight the night before her wedding.

Emily in every iteration: joyful, furious, heartbroken, vengeful, giddy.

Every version of her I’ve ever loved rises within me, fusing with my wrath. My grief over losing her is no longer weighing me down. It rockets me forward, guiding my every movement.

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