Page 57 of Primo DeLuca

The friend released a choking gasp, when I moved my fingers around inside the man, and shoved them in deeper. With most of my hand wiggling around the inside of his stomach region, his eyes started to roll to the back of his head and his shouts grew intense enough to knock dust from the ceiling and walls.

His muscles clenched so tight from his straining cries, the force pushed against my blood slicked fingers and made some squirt from the opening.

“My God,” I think I heard his friend mutter, his eyes floating saucers in his head. The dim lighting in the room made the scene much more ominous and intensified the senses, adding to the wet, fleshy sounds bouncing off the walls and the pungent smell that packed a punch of a different kind.

I wasn’t going to stop my search until I found what I was looking for or heard what I was waiting to hear.

“Who do you work for?” I questioned, not looking at the one sucking in air like his lungs had collapsed, but the friend who was sweating despite the chill that coveted this space. The man shook his head.

“I promise you. I don’t know. But, our friend Broady, he…”

He paused to breathe or keep down his lunch, I didn’t know and didn’t care. He gave up a name and was preparing to spill his guts without my help.

“You already killed Broady when he tried to use the woman to set you up at the safe house. He was the one who put us on to this job. I think he may have had contact with the one you're looking for.”

So the ones who took Nevah hostage at the safe house belonged to this endangered group. These were the unaccounted for ones that Brizio had mentioned.

The unmerciful cursing and yelling the man was doing continued as did my fingers pushing aside and raking across internal organs.

“That’s not good enough,” I told the friend. “Somebody knows something more.”

With his lips looking like two overripe plums, my loud mouthed tribute attempted to spit out a few choking words.

“It was your family…who…who hired us to kill you,” he said coughing and blowing out rapid breaths in an attempt to lessen the pain shooting through him.

“Did someone tell you to say it was a DeLuca? Can you name the DeLuca who hired you?”

With my middle finger wrapped around his small intestine now, I pulled, slowly allowing him to see his own bowels being extracted.

His yells hit a decibel I didn’t know existed. The pain, the sight, the smell that started to fill the room had him screaming now and unwilling to move. When I had about a foot of his gut stretched out into the air, I continued to pull.

“Damn.”

“Holy fuck.”

Umberto and Lenni, uttered. They were closer now, a few feet behind my back. Their blood thirsty nature had them unwilling to miss a thing even as they coughed from the thick stench permeating the space.

“Sorry, father Romigi,” Lenni said when Romigi tossed an authoritative glance in his direction, I presume for using holy and fuck in the same breath.

Romigi knew better than to discipline me for cursing. I told him cursing was one of the few ways I exercised my demons.

By the time I stopped pulling, about a foot and a half of the man’s intestines were stretched out. I looped them over the first metal hook on the medieval coat rack between his legs to ensure he kept an eye on his personal property.

I didn’t hear a sound from the other prisoners who likely assumed they were getting a sneak peek of their fates.

The unstuffed man sipped air in rapid pants. Sweat dripped from him like water while Romigi recited words from the book of Revelation, his tone smooth like he was soothing one of his troubled flock. Although he had the bible open for effect, he never stopped studying the men.

“He will wipe away every tear from your eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Romigi’s words were calm and purposeful like he belonged on a commercial to promote meditation. I guess he thought his spiritual words soothed men in times of torture. I didn’t have the heart to tell him, he wasn’t doing shit but scaring more hell into the damned ones he preached to when they were confronted by death.

I focused my attention on the one in front of me, snapping my fingers to get his attention off his protruding intestines, if only for a few seconds.

“De-de-escription…” was all the man could get out before his blood dripping guts drew his attention.

“Please,” rushed out his mouth.

“Were you told to say it was a DeLuca that hired you? Can you positively say, without a doubt that it was a DeLuca that hired you?”

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