PROLOGUE
PLAYLIST: MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT – ELLEY DUHÉ
Berlin, Germany, 12 years ago
“Did you really believe I would not notice?” I ask the man kneeling at my feet in a puddle of his own blood.
“Please, Rosaslia, I didn’t—“ begs the man with his bloodshot eyes, sweat running down his temples, infame!
“You didn’t what? Didn’t mean to besmear them with your filth? Children! They were children! You are a liar, schifu. Taking them. Taking my money,” I say in a derogatory tone. “I know everything,everything.And you will pay with your blood for it.”
My neck pulsates dangerously.
“He made me,” the man pleads. “Giuseppe, it was on his orders! You know he cannot be denied.”
“It does not move a hair on me on whose orders it was,” I say. “It was your dirty cazzo inside of them. Your hands that touched what was mine. Your soul that betrayed my trust. Now, tell me where it is.”
“Why would I? You’ll kill me anyway.”
“Yes,” I say with a voice as dark as it is dangerous. “But I can do it fast with a bullet in your head or slowly, by ripping the skin of your body, piece by piece, by piece.”
The man’sface falls.
“Endless pain. For days that will feel like years,” I add. “Where is it?”
“It’s gone,” he says. “I used it for the shipment.”
“I don’t believe a single word out of your filthy mouth,” I say and press the gun into his forehead. “Try again.”
“It’s the truth. I swear on the life of my daughter.”
“Your daughter means nothing to you,” I say and spit in his face. “You fucked girls younger than her, why not touch her?”
I see his eyes flicker into a detached stare.
“Exactly,” he says, and I cannot listen to the man any longer.
I take a pair of pliers from the bag, grasp his tied hand, and crush his fingers with it. He screams. Not enough.
“I am going to cut off your penis,” I say as I open his trousers and fumble out the disgusting thing.
“Nooooo!” he shouts and tries to plead with me, but I know no mercy. In all my thirty-seven years on this planet, I have never shown it, and I will never do. Mercy is for the fools, because a tainted soul will never learn.
Rapists will stay rapists. Abusers will stay abusers. And thieves will stay thieves. There is no mercy for those who take what was never theirs. His screams of pain rip through the room as the pliers close around his penis.
“I hope you will rot in hell,” I whisper darkly.
He screams more and more, and at some point, I just can’t listen to his pathetic whining anymore. So I take my gun and pull the trigger. First, to shoot his groin. Just for the fun of it, and then in his chest, exactly where his heart is.
I don’t care about the money. What I care about is this—the view of his dead body. He was a dead man the moment he opened his zipper to prove to Giuseppe his worth by taking the girls.
“Good work,” I say as I turn to the young woman watching my every move. I have been training her for years now. It was she who finally tracked him down, because her skills to track anyone down go way beyond the abilities I will ever have.
“It took too long,” she says.
“Patience is what brings you far, hun. You, of all people, should know.”
“I do,” she says coldly as she removes the bullets from the man's chest. I never leave traces, because I am a shadow. And so is Kat.