I shoot from the cover of the table. Blood is running from Kat’s shoulder; she was hit.
Merda!I curse.
Over a dozen guns are pointed at us, men shouting in Sicilian, telling us to show our hands. I recognise some of the men; they are known on the island. I look at all of them carefully as I bring up my hands with the two guns in them. When we make it out of here, none of them will live.
Kat is reluctant.
“Do it,” I tell her. “There’s no point.”
I know she likes a good fight, but thirteen against us like this is impossible.
“Take them to the arena,” orders Giuseppe, who was lifted up by one of the men and now holds his thumb wrapped in a cloth. “This will be a show,” he adds with a cackling arrogance.
The arena.
My father took men there to kill them slowly. To rip them apart and make a bloody mess out of those who betrayed him.
I am grabbed, my guns taken, ripped up.
The most vulnerable moment will be the transit. Kat knows it. I know it.
Our eyes meet for a single second—hers flash down to herpocket as she is fixed up. The detonator. She’s insisting. I shake my head as carefully as possible. Only as a last resort.
“Pigghiamu Antonella. Purtala supra. I??a è la cchiù mpurtanti. Sarà i??a ô capu quannu non ci sugnu cchiù,” says Giuseppe.
“What did he say?” asks Kat in a whisper as we’re both taken to the door.
“Take Antonella upstairs; she is the most important because she will be in charge when I am gone,”I tell her. The hate I feel for him and the girl right now burns in my chest and chews my insides.
“So she’s—“ Kat begins, but doesn’t come far because Giuseppe hits her with a gun in the face.
“Shut up,” shouts Giuseppe. I will murder him, and if I have to blow us all up in the end.
We are pushed down the corridor, and doors are opened as we get deeper into the catacombs of the masseria. Finally, we reach the round room, with sand on the ground, framed by old brick walls. A muddy scent of death trails up my nose. We are fixed onto the wall with ropes, wrists and ankles through rings in the stone, like on a St. Andrews Cross. There is not much we can do.
Light is scarce, except for the one that falls in from the corridor through the open door.
“Sorella,” says Giuseppe, and hits me in the face. I spit at him. “First, I’ll take care of this one here,” he says and walks over to Kat. “You shot my thumb,” he says. “And you will pay with your life for it.”
Kat laughs.
“Kill me, and you will be evaporated,” she says.
“Is that so?” he asks.
“It is,” she says. “You and this land will be dust and sand.”
He laughs, and in my stomach, an anger I have yet to experience, forms.
“I’d listen to her,” I say. “Her wife will stomp you in the ground and everyone who was ever involved with you.”
His cackling laughter resounds through the room, reflecting on the stones and trailing back to us from every angle.
“A woman will evaporate me?” he asks and takes a step back. “You are funny. No woman will ever beat me.”
At that moment, a shot resounds through the air, so loud it cutsthrough the air. His eyes snap to me, and he stares at me for this infinite moment of horrified realisation as the resounding waves from the walls fill my ears. Giuseppe’s eyes roll up, and his body falls to the ground with a shattering thud of utmost finality as pounds of flesh meet the stone.
I am too perplexed watching him fall to realise what has happened.