Page 105 of Twisted Obsession

Trying a different angle and peering around the large group of rocks we were concealed behind, I counted in my head. As I tried to regain some small feeling of control, Giovanna was practically being dragged the final third of the pier that remained. Blood had dried around her mouth, and I swore to myself that when this was over, I was going to return fleetingly to my English roots and would personally disembowel the two men holding her, just because they had hands on my woman, my wife, my life.

Surely, we were only looking at seconds more before Salvatore gave the signal for the beginning of the end.

The car Marco and I had been picked up in had travelled the few minutes to the cove that Don Ricolleti had found out Airiti’s boat had been aiming for. The Don, as well as the man who’d been introduced as Lorenzo’s papa, had joined the two of us, Salvatore, his and Giovanna’s brother Romeo, and a few of their most trusted soldiers. I’d been too focussed on the boat mooring and the subsequent gunfire that followed to watch as Lorenzo had been embraced, then bound and gagged and removed by other members of the Ricolleti family. I had, however, seen a blacked-out vehicle take him away to be placed somewhere secure. The embrace had been real enough, but whether Lorenzo could ever be trusted within their family, his blood family, would remain to be seen. I was grateful he was now their problem and not ours.

We’d exchanged a few words with Don Ricolleti, and I understood that he felt his family also had a vested interest in the situation that was fast unravelling in front of our eyes. For the first time in over a century, the De Lucas and the Ricolletis joined forces.

Positioned above the cove, many more of the Sicilian Don’s men were lying in wait, in case one of the fucking traitorous arseholes managed to evade what we had waiting for them. My men, who had followed Giovanna by boat from Malta, had just moored at the very end of the pier, and it was going to be down to them to get the ball rolling once, of course, Salvatore gave permission to start.

Come on, fucking give the signal.Inwardly, I was cursing Salvatore for waiting, even when I knew he was doing what needed to be done. But I was being controlled by my emotions, when I’d never really been convinced Salvatore was anything other than dead inside.

A few more seconds passed and I heard Giovanna cry out in pain as she stumbled and appeared to twist her ankle.

‘Fuck!’

‘Control yourself, Giordano,’ Salvatore snapped.

Behind her, I heard her mama laugh, a strange, manic sort of laugh. Instinctively, I moved, as my head demanded that my body moved to help her.

‘Steady, Brother.’ Romeo grabbed at my forearm to steady me and the gun that I was holding, pointing in their direction.

‘That woman, your mama is fucked in the head,’ I whispered.

‘This gun, the one I’m holding,’ Salvatore’s voice sounded mechanical, ‘will be the one to wipe her off the face of the earth,’ Salvatore replied. Then, as if he’d thought about just what he’d said, he directed his next question to his half-brother, ‘Today, I will make you an orphan. Will you ever forgive me?’

‘If you don’t take her, Jnr… I will,’ Romeo answered, and with that, Valentina Ariti, late De Luca’s fate was sealed.

The tension around us in those few seconds was palpable, but I refused to believe that anyone here had more to lose than me. To have been torn apart so long ago, to live without her for all the years in between, and then just as we’d found each other once again, to have that ripped away so violently, was more than I was convinced any sane man could cope with. My body was on high alert. My heart was pumping furiously, in anger and with the pain of watching Giovanna out there alone, when I’d promised her she would never be alone ever again. As my guilt increased, my blood pressure escalated as it frantically sent the liquid speeding around my body.

I had tunnel vision, with Giovanna central.

‘At last,’ Salvatore voiced, as Giovanna, Ricco and Valentina met at the end of the quay.

‘My brothers, let’s do this,’ Salvatore instructed.

‘It’s a GO!’ I shouted.

‘Boss.’ I heard the confirmation in my earpiece and observed as seconds later, Ariti’s boat was blown out of the water. Instantly, a fireball released, carrying heat and smoke spiralling high up into the air, and then pieces of the wreckage began to rain down all around us.

We were moving as one, into the acrid smelling fumes.

With my eyes fixed only on her, I covered the distance between us. Holding my gun out in front of me I shot one of Ricco’s men, an obnoxious wanker I hated from back in Malta and he crumpled to the floor like a used towel. One by one the bastards dropped, without me firing again. Adrenalin was pumping around our systems, but it appeared we all had our eye in today.

As the storm turned, suddenly the smoke from the destroyed boat was blowing straight towards us on the strength of the wind, and my vision of Giovanna was becoming more blurred by the second. I could see a struggle and her, then she was obscured from view.

‘Can you see her?’ Salvatore shouted from my far right.

‘NO!’ I bellowed back.

‘Approach with caution.’ I heard Salvatore in my earpiece as he instructed all of us to virtually come to a crawl.

Except I wasn’t listening to his instruction.

I was listening instead to the pain inside my heart.

‘GIOVANNA!’ I did the one thing I identified I shouldn’t have done. That was to show the bastards that would also have heard me, how much she meant to me. But she denoted everything I was, everything I could ever be, and without her I was nothing. She needed to know she wasn’t alone, that we were here fighting for her, that she was loved. The ‘Ndrangheta code with which I’d been brought up with could go fuck itself on a long, serrated knife, up the arse, for all I cared.

She was it for me and I’d never even really told her.

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