Page 80 of The Italian Reckoning
I gag through my tears and try to shift away, but to no avail.
His blade slides lower to my underwear.
“But I don’t need the third. Once I’m finished with you, you’re going to be a masterpiece, Sarah. I’m going to split you apart and display you up on the bridge hanging from your own intestines for the world to see. And then I’m going to get on a plane and leave all of this behind. It’s getting much too stressful.”
If I wasn’t already scared out of my mind, his words would get me there. It doesn’t matter what he plans to do. He could sayanything and it would still be terrifying. No one knows where I am. No one will ever know.
My underwear is cut free and Bobby breathes in deeply, groaning softly as his eyes wander over my naked body.
“Are you ready?” he asks gleefully, cradling my face with one hand. “I’m going to make you famous.”
The scalpel plunges into the soft flesh of my abdomen and a scream of agony rips from my throat as Bobby’s laughter grows maniacal.
I’m going to die here.
35
ROCKY
Desperation hangs over me like a cloud. There’s an entire fucking city out there and Sarah could be anywhere, if she’s even still alive.
I know next to nothing about this bastard killer and all the power I have at my fingertips as a Mafia heir is getting me nowhere. The city stretches out at my feet as I stand on the roof of Sarah’s apartment building. Each twinkling light taunts me with the possibility that she could be there, or she could be lost in the darkness in between.
Across the street, an elderly couple dance arm in arm on their balcony to music that drifts over briefly with a gust of wind. The way they look deep into each other’s eyes as they shuffle back and forth makes my heart ache, but I can’t look away.
Why didn’t I do something sooner? Why wasn’t I more insistent on protecting her? Why didn’t I stand up to my father sooner?
So many questions flood my mind with noise I can’t control. Each breath is tight against the pressure in my chest threatening to suffocate me. My stomach churns constantly and there’s a tremble in my leg that won’t go away. My body’s trying to expelthe nervous energy, but it’s not enough. I’ll never know peace again.
A soft chirrup rises from the wall where Iris sits with her gigantic fluffy tail wrapped around her paws. I found her up here when combing through Sarah’s apartment for clues grew overwhelming and I desperately needed air. My attempts to catch her and bring her back inside to safety failed spectacularly, but she came to sit next to me when I gave up and she hasn’t moved since. She refuses to let me touch her, though.
Heavy footsteps rise from the door behind me and Cormac appears a second later with two beers in one hand dangling by their plastic connector. “Hey.”
“Any news?” I have no patience for pleasantries.
Cormac shakes his head. “After we found your bike a few miles from here burnt to a crisp, I had my people scout the city’s traffic cams, but the result is as you can expect.”
“He drove her there and then hurt her, right?” The words taste like acid.
Cormac nods, stopping next to me. He snaps one of the beers out of plastic and offers it to me. “Evelyn’s been studying the note, but it’s fucking generic.”
A single crisp white paper note was attached to the burnt out shell of my bike with five simple words.
Sarah is where she belongs.
“He doesn’t get points for creativity,” I mutter. The couple across the street sway and dance deeper into their apartment, and when I can no longer see them, I accept the beer from Cormac. Not that I drink it. I just fiddle with the ring pull and stare out across the city. “Domenico has his picture running through every database we have access to. What are the chances we get a hit?”
“Pretty high,” Cormac says with a grunt as he eases down next to me. “We have a lot of eyes in a lot of places.”
“What use is that, though?” I glance sideways at him. “I wasn’t able to get any decent information on him. I wasn’t able to help her, or Belle. Or any of the other people he hurt. And now he has her and I’m just fucking sitting on a fucking roof hoping some computer somewhere will ping his face because I have no clue where to look!” My voice rises with each word. “How is it possible that we are the most powerful people in this fucking city and one single cunt from Montana can saunter in here and take my…”
My girl.
Mine.
The word catches in my throat like a hiccup and a surge of emotion swells in my chest. It feels like I’m about to crack open and all my grief will pour out and flood the streets below.
“Believe it or not, I know how you feel.” Cormac cracks open his beer with one hand. “There was a time when Evelyn was taken from me and I felt like someone had ripped out this essential part of me that I didn’t know was there until it was gone.”
