Page 87 of Runaway in the Mafia
He was out of breath when he was done. For a second, he actually thought he was going to get away with it. I thought he was going to get away with it.
Vitale only said one word.
“Ahana.” His words shredded through the room like a knife on silk.
I went cold. No one moved. I didn’t move. Couldn’t if I wanted to. Then everything moved like he’d pressed fast forward on an invisible remote. He throttled over to me and yanked me by my wrist. The glass in my hand tipped and crashed to the floor. We’d barely come to a halt before his uncles, when a sharp pain cut through my palm. I looked down and gasped. He’d cut me. He’d taken a knife and made a cut right across my palm. Blood pooled out. Tears stung my eyes as I looked at him in confusion. His gaze was an explosion of emotion. He clutched my palm and shoved it under Endrigo’s nose. “What colour is it?” he asked, his tone deadly.
My gaze skidded from his to his uncle’s.What is this?
Endrigo looked as confused as I felt.
Vitale got into his face and punctuated each word like he’d taken a fist to his chest. “What. Colour. Is. It?” My veins buzzed at the venom in his voice. It hit me down to my bones.Please don’t answer.
Endrigo swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Red.”
“Yeah? Remember that.” Then, in one swift move, he swiped his knife from left to right. Underneath it, Endrigo’s throat split wide.
Someone was screaming. I couldn’t figure out who. I was drowning. Underwater. The world above was far from reality. Endrigo clutched at his gaping throat, gasping, choking, and falling over himself before dropping to the ground like a brick. Vitale dragged me along and dropped to his haunches next to him, pulling me down with him. He yanked me closer, and I fell half over the dying man, my palm right next to his throat.
“You’re right,” Vitale said, his voice deadly. “There’s a difference. She’s alive and you’re not.”
I shouldn’t have put him in a bad mood.
All because I hadn’t allowed him to take me raw.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AHANA
Icouldn’t fathom the insanity driving this man. It wasn’t a mask he hid behind. He carried it openly. Smugly. Marched out with it in broad daylight. Wore it like a badge of honour on his sleeve. But more than that, I couldn’t grasp my reaction to it.
A room full of women screaming, blood on a dead man and silence from the made men. I stumbled out of it, heaving for my next breath and half ran and half crawled to my room, where I crashed next to the toilet and threw up the contents of a wretched day.
My shoulders heaved. Painful gasps rocked me as I tried to throw up the darkness edging along my stomach walls.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I tried to pull myself up, gave up, collapsed again, and heaved.
Only one thing ran in my mind like a twisted, broken record.Who is more fucked up?Him for his actions or me for my reactions?
My hands were clammy and skidded along the rim of the toilet. When I fell back to my ass, I found a pounding headache had joined the misery. I wanted to crash to the floor. To sink. To hide. To never be found. But gentle hands caught me and pulled me up. They guided me to the sink, and a cold washcloth met my face. I met Divya’s sympathetic reflection, and my lips wobbled.
“I know,” she whispered. “It’s fucked up.”
She meant what he had done. Not my reaction. How could she have known that?
She took my toothbrush and squeezed some paste on to it. She held me upright until I brushed my teeth. My fingers were a cocktail of nerves. My teeth chattered. The taste in my mouth was salty, and I realised tears were falling from my eyes.When had I started doing that?
“Your hand needs attention.” She grimaced, and I followed her eyeline to my open palm. Right, that too.
I shook my head as a half sob I couldn’t get myself to choke down spilled out. I didn’t deserve self-care when a man was dead, and all I could think of was—I shook my head violently, banishing my thoughts.
“Why don’t you get changed?” she suggested.
I stared at the yellow dress. It had been all sunshine, now it was stained with crimson. It would never be clean again. Just like my dark soul. I nodded silently.
“Come here.” She guided me to the toilet seat. “Sit down and I’ll find you something.”
