Page 124 of Taunt Me (Dark Odyssey 2)

I blamed myself before.

I worse blame myself now.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Gabe

My father can bea real bastard when it comes down to business.

He can be a prick a lot of the times too. But it’s times like these, times when the shit comes to surface when I rely on his wisdom.

One thing he always tells me over and over again is be grateful for small mercies during fucked up times.

It’s a code he’s lived by as the boss of the Giordano family, and how he stayed boss in a big family like ours, even surpassing his older brother.

I’m listening to his wisdom now and grateful as fuck that Christian was able to contact Jo, a hacker we hired some time ago. He hacked the fuck out of the systems records the Antonellas kept for the mine and was able to get a map.

The map was messaged to me on my phone and I did the best I could by saving it because I knew I wouldn’t be able to access it again once I stepped in the mine and the signal went.

That is exactly what happened.

That and gaining the knowledge of the areas where there were no surveillance so Tobias wouldn’t have been able to see me.

The use of the map and the little I had got me this far…

I look around the area and I’m in the mouth of the cave. The section that’s completely abandoned. Not been used for decades by the looks of things. I know though this can’t be where the Antonellas do business.

It looks like no one’s been down here in years. There’s the faint trace of daylight coming from the cracks in the roof, but I also have a flashlight I shine over the path before me.

There’s dust, rusty equipment, broken equipment, abandoned digging sections and random shit everywhere. The tunnel I’m on looks like it goes on for miles and seems to be the area mining work was carried out when the workers were mining coal.

Where I need to get to is a little way up.

That’s what the map suggested. Tobias said there was a bomb in a room, and there’s no rooms down here. There are however rooms above this section and fucking hell I’m aware of the time.

I’m aware and it’s taken me twenty minutes already to get to this part. I have forty minutes to get to the bomb or get to Charlotte, or do whatever the fuck it is I’m supposed to do.

What I’m raging about is I don’t fucking know if what I’m doing is wrong or right. I don’t know if where I’m going is right and I won’t make the mistake of slowing down to try and figure out what that motherfucker is up to.

I look at the map as I near the section I’ve been aiming for. There’s a fork that splits off and it looks like I’m on the right path when I see an actual paved path ahead of me that goes down another tunnel, except this part looks like people have been down here. It absolutely fucking does.

I step on the pavement while looking on the map. There’s supposed to be another level section below me of two levels down and I can get to that by following this path.

I see there’s an underground river that must flow out to the main one I passed getting here.

Two minutes into walking and I see I’m right about the place looking like people have been here. There’s footprints in the dust and the air about me feels different. I always think when people have been around a place the air is different.

Here on Antonella land the air is definitely different because it smells of shit.

Fresh death.

I can always tell the difference between the ones who’ve been dead for a while and the newly deceased. It’s the blood I think. It amplifies the smell on the most recent to pass.

So, looks like either Tobias or one of his equally deranged family members have definitely been up to the usual shit down here, and some poor bastard or a group of them have been unfortunate enough to suffer their wrath.

How they mainly work is you just disappear. You just fucking disappear and then the cops may find a head, or hand somewhere.

That’s it. Just something to identify the dead and that only happens when Barabbas Antonella gives the all clear that he’s ready to give the notification to the world that the person is dead.

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