Page 59 of Isle of Beauty

I get in behind her and settle her on my chest, careful not to create friction on her injured back. It takes only a few minutes of running my hands on her arms for her to fall into an exhausted sleep.

TWENTY-FOUR

PIERCE

MURDER MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER

“Did you get anything?” I ask Giulia who’s focused on the five screens in front of her, sifting through our own tapes and the public cameras around the docks. With her knowledge and mine, we hacked into them easily enough.

“Yeah. Look at this, right top screen. The timestamps match.” Her tone is clipped, far from the sunshine she usually displays. I haven’t seen her smile since the explosion, except when she put on a cheerful mask for Lana. For being such a close-knit family, I’d think they wouldn’t lie to each other so blatantly but everyone smiles and pretends Lana didn’t miss death by just a few seconds.

I know deep inside they’re fuming. I look at Julian next to me. His jaw is clenched, his features set in stone-cold fury. Feeling my gaze on him, he turns his head and gives me a nod of understanding. We’ll find whoever did this. My efforts had been lackluster before, reactive. I’m ready to go on the offensive.

I turn my focus back to the screen where the camera displays a person all dressed in black. Their hood covers their face and they skillfully escape the notice of our private security while they enter our building and get out less than ten minutes later. The idiot didn’t count on the public surveillance surrounding the area. When they get in their car and leave, their plate is right there for us to see.

Igor’s smile is vicious. “Let’s go hunting, shall we?”

It only takes Giulia and I an hour to get the address of the man who owns the car and another for Julian and Igor to pick him up and deposit him in the basement of Lady in White, vacated for the occasion.

“No one ever came down here that wasn’t invited,” Julian assures me. “Or who really deserved it,” he adds with a psychotic smirk.

My brother takes a step back and stands a few feet behind me, a sentinel to my impending madness. I don’t know what else to call what I’m about to do. I won’t come back from this, but I’m doing it for her.

The door to the room I stood in with Lana not so long ago, with another bad man at our mercy, opens and Pietro Moretti and my father enter in silence. The sharp tilt of their chins is their only acknowledgment. If they’re here for answers or to witness how I become the man I need to be to protect Lana, I’m not sure.

I turn back to the man who’s gagged and crying, his arms stretched above his head where they’re hooked to a chain attached to the ceiling. The chain rattles and clunks, filling the room with a morbid soundtrack.

By now, his blood must have flowed down and I bet he can’t feel his fingers. I take a sharp knife; the handle is warm in my hand. I pass a finger over the blade and blood wells at the cut. I don’t hesitate and slash it across his wrist, not deep enough to hurt but deep enough to have crimson pooling his forearm, his armpit and making a path all the way down to his legs and feet until it disappears in the drain underneath.

“You have between fifteen and thirty minutes until your body empties of half your blood. By then, your life will already be forfeited. If you want me to get you medical attention, all you have to do is tell me who hired you to blow up the Moretti warehouse.” I lie through my teeth but the man is too shocked and scared to notice. His pupils are blown and he whimpers behind the gag before nodding enthusiastically.

I remove the gag from his mouth. “Please… please.”

I slap him hard and his head whips to the side with a resounding smack. “Don’t waste your breath, or my time. If you want to be drained of blood like a pig, I have no complaints.”

“I… I don’t know who they are. They just called me, shared the mission and paid me straight away. I do this type of thing regularly, even for them.” He tilts his chin to the patriarchs who seem ready to bolt and stab the man to death.

“And you thought betraying the hand who feeds you was a good idea?” Pietro asks in a voice cold as death.

“Please, please, help me. The number who called me… It came from the UK. Take my ph-phone. I don’t know anything else.”

I tilt my head to the side, waiting.

“I swear, that’s all I know.”

“Thank you.” My kind smile fools him and he sags against the chain. I turn around and set the blade aside then clean my hands with precision, like I can get rid of the non-existent blood under my fingernails. My gaze is glassy and I don’t look up before addressing my audience of made men - and woman - who’ve probably done much worse in the past. “We need to keep digging. I have an inkling my cousin isn’t a complete stranger to the attacks on our families.”

“Hey, hey, I need a doctor. Get me down.”

I ignore the pleas of my enemy and wait at the door until everyone clears the room. Then, I put duct tape on his mouth and settle in my chair. His lifeforce slowly drains out of his body while he wiggles uselessly until the light of his eyes shut off completely. He dies like the animal he is and though I feel nauseous at becoming like my father when I swore I’d never go down that road, the elation at exacting revenge and protecting what’s mine is too sweet to ignore.

Lana is sprawled on the bed. She was able to shower on her own today and pride swells in my chest at her fast recovery.

I take the cream the doctor gave me and start to apply it on her back, barely grazing the inflamed skin. She doesn’t hiss with pain anymore but the scars are bright pink and raised, driving me mad with rage, only abated knowing the man who did it died at my hands.

I refocus my attention on Lana and massage her neck gently, where no burn wrecks her skin. Her sigh of contentment is music to my ears.

When I’m done, I sit on the bed and she comes up to sit on her knees, facing me. Her breasts are bare, the nipples stiff peaks I want to bite. Despite her ordeal, her cheeks flush with colour and liveliness.

---