Page 38 of Arranged Marriage By the Bratva

Hearing his scampering feet, I get a better glimpse of him as he moves from behind the kitchen island. He’s no match for Nikk whether it be as a shooter or as a fighter.

“Give up, Matteo. Come out. We’re going to get to you,” I warn him, hearing him heave as he scoots from behind the island. Nikk lunges to grab part of his shirt but misses by an inch, grabbing at the air instead. From behind, I step out from the marble bench, pointing my gun at him from the back. Nikk blocks off the other end. He has nowhere to go at this point.

Like a wild animal, he crouches, his mouth open, deciding his options. “You should listen to my wife. You have nowhere to run, and even if you do, I’m going to catch you.

Sweat pours off Matteo as he starts to laugh hysterically. He stands up, gun in hand.

“Go on,” he goads, globules of spit coming out of his mouth. “Do it. Kill me,” he taunts, but Nikk shakes his head.

“No. That would be too easy, my friend. I have something special for you.” And in the blink of an eye, the rest of Nikk’s men come to join us in the kitchen.

Matteo’s shoulder’s slump, his chest heaving from running and sweat trickling down his brow as the sun rises in the kitchen. It’s a brand-new day, and as I look at him in his disheveled state, it’s vomit inducing, and the man I once looked up to is nothing but a shell of his former self.

“You are a disgrace to the Mancini clan. We gave you everything! You were one of us,” I tell him evenly, alarmed at my own composure.

Matteo hangs his head as I quickly lunge forward, snatching the gun out of his hand.

“Elena, you might want to leave for this next part. I don’t think you’re going to want to watch this,” Nikk says, his mouth breaking into a generous smile.

Tilting my head at him, I hear them speak in Russian as one of them jogs to the outside, while Yegor ties up Matteo in one of the dining chairs, placing him close to the window, near the sunlight.

“No, why wouldn’t I want to watch?”

“You’ll see.” He winks, but it can’t be that bad. I’ve seen my father break a man’s arm. Can’t be worse than that, can it?

But when the men arrive back with two steel buckets and the sound of screaming rats inside them, my eyes open wide like saucers.

Puzzled, I don’t know what they’re going to do. I come to recognize Nikk’s cruelty is beyond my imagination as Matteo wriggles in horror.

“No! Please just kill me. Don’t do this.”

Nikk’s hollow laugh rings out as he grabs both sides of Matteo’s face. “No. You’re going to suffer, and after what you did to my wife, you deserve all the pain I’m about to bless you with. Death is your keeper now. Besides, a rat for a rat seems about right to me. What do you think, boys?”

They snicker, nodding their heads in agreement.

Matteo yelps as two of the men hold the bucket with gloves on, against his bare stomach, lighting a blowtorch against the bottom of the steel pail. I can see the depraved excitement in Nikk’s eyes as the bucket grows hotter.

Clapping a hand over my mouth, I understand how it’s going to end. The rats will have nowhere to run, instead they’ll burrow into Matteo’s stomach as a way to escape being burned to death.

Matteo’s bloodcurdling screams ring out through the house, and my heart pounds, telling me I shouldn’t be watching this, but my feet have other ideas, staying rooted to the spot.

They are going to tear him to shreds. Then Nikk is probably going to shoot him in the head.

Eventually, when I can get my feet to move, I head to the next room, but I hear the high-pitched screams from Matteo as they send him to his grave in the worst possible way. True to his word, Nikk kept his promise.

A couple of hours later, there’s no sound from the other room. Matteo has to be dead. And one by one, all the remaining guards and staff from the house come to gather around me in the lounge room, pledging they’re allegiance to me as the Donna of the Mancini famiglia.

“This is an example of what happens when you defy me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, we understand,” they all recite in unison, and today as the sun rises over the rugged hills of Sicily and with Nikk standing beside me, we are victorious. No more dirty rats in our camp.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Nikk

Silence fills the space of the sprawling Sicilian estate mansion with a round driveway for guests. From the outside it looks like a holiday home fit for the rich and famous, but only hours before the silence chaos reigned.

Matteo died, and his body has been taken away. The floor has been scrubbed clean with no evidence of a man being tortured remaining. That’s how I operate. I don’t leave scraps. Elena and I sit in the old study surrounded by bookcases, and classic Italian furniture.

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