Page 80 of Memento Mori
I tossed a flash grenade onto the balcony, and in an instant, a blinding explosion filled the air. My men successfully entered the house, from the front and the back. As the sound of gunshots reverberated around us, we knew we had to hurry. Within minutes, this place would be crawling with cops, and we didn’t need to stick around for that.
As I hurried up the steps with my men, the sounds of screaming and cursing filled the air from a man and a woman. As I entered the bedroom, I couldn’t believe my damn eyes.
“Let me the fuck go!” Alessandro screamed while being restrained by some of my men.
His shoulder was drenched in blood, flowing freely from a deep wound, while a thin line of blood marked his face, starting from his eyebrow and running down to his cheek. He was naked, on his knees, and so was the woman we’d been looking for.
“Alessandro?”
He stopped struggling, his breath ragged.
“Tony?” his voice called out. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Aaliyah’s footsteps echoed softly as she entered the room beside me.
“Let him go,” I said, and my men dropped their hold on him. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“It should be fucking clear,” he said, his gaze fixated on the naked woman sprawled on the floor. Her body was wet, so I assumed she might have been in the shower.
“Put some goddamn clothes on,” I said, pulling Aaliyah to my side.
He hastily grabbed a pair of boxers from the bed and slipped them on.
“For God’s sake, Tony,” Aaliyah said.
“I don’t want you seeing any other man without their fucking clothes.”
She rolled her eyes, her annoyance clear. Alessandro chuckled at her reaction, before making his way back to the bed to retrieve his pants from the floor. Wincing, he slid on the sweatpants and gingerly sat on the edge of the bed.
“Let me go!” she screamed, her voice filled with anger, as she continued to struggle. “Sweetheart, tell them to let me go.”
“Sweetheart,” Aaliyah and I said simultaneously.
“What’s going on?” Alessandro asked, ignoring the woman.
“You should start answering the fucking phone,” I said. “How long have you’ve known this woman?”
He gave a shrug, glancing at her before returning his gaze to me. “We’ve been fucking for a while. Well over a year now,” he said.
“You have no fucking idea who she is, do you?” I asked.
A look of confusion washed over his face, his brows furrowing in response. “Should I? Her name is Celia. We fuck. I might hang out for a few days, but we aren’t serious.”
The woman’s piercing screams and profanity-filled curses grew increasingly louder.
“Does she know that?” I asked with my brow arched.
He shrugged nonchalantly, his shoulders rising and falling with indifference.
“Before or after you broke up with Laney?” Aaliyah asked.
In an instant, a wave of sadness washed over his eyes. “After,” he said. “What’s going on?”
Aaliyah walked over and sat on the bed beside him, her fingers intertwining with his. “This is the woman who killed Papa and Laney.”
An indescribable anger and hatred that I understood filled his eyes. We had both been deeply affected by this woman, as she had taken so much from us, leaving behind a trail of loss, and hurt. She tried to end everything.
In the distance, the wailing of sirens filled the air.
