I never looked away, not when I was taking a life. Deserved or not, the man got my attention at that moment.
“How could you . . . I need a hospital.” He looked at the men in the room.
No one moved.
Then he screamed it again, “I need a hospital.”
Not even his father loved him enough to tell him he would live, that he would be okay. The men at his side stepped back and away.
As Dimitri crumpled to the floor, tears and wails of agony escaped him. He didn’t hold on to his pride in death; he begged and pleaded instead. I searched everyone’s eyes, and not one held an ounce of emotion. This was the bratva I would inherit.
I stood from my chair, laid the gun back on the table, and crossed the room to my uncle. I knelt before him and grabbed his hand. He repeated over and over again that I was nothing as he took his last breaths.
But he held my hand, his fingers clutching mine like he was scared and needed the comfort. He pulled it close to his bleeding chest as he disappeared from the world.
Did he take my soul down to hell with him when he left? I wasn’t sure.
3
Katie
The crimson color of blood washes away easily. Cold water rinses it from clothing, erasing the stain enough that you’d never know it had been there. And yet, it never really disappears from your memory, not when a whole life bleeds out.
Not when you sit watching to make sure every ounce needed to cause death leaves the body.
Pint after pint of Dimitri’s blood ran into the wood flooring. Ivan and I sat there in silence after he waved off the men.
“He was a good boy only some days, Katalina. Most days, he was evil. I will not mourn his death.” He clapped his hands as if we’d wasted enough time on him. Then he grabbed his cellphone and started texting away.
“Did you mourn my mother’s death?” My heart dropped, thinking of how she may have died: in her own blood, alone, without a soul to tell her she mattered. Had I felt like her all this time? Did I matter to anyone really anymore, or was I climbing through all this hell for nothing, for control of something I didn’t even know I could handle?
“Oh, very much.” He squinted off into the distance as if thinking about it, and for a few moments I had hope. “She would have led the bratva to rule the city if she’d taken the last step needed.”
My blood ran colder at his words, my heart hardened, and my skin crawled. She’d been another tool to him, like I’d been a tool of Mario’s for so long.
He shrugged at me like he knew why I was furious but didn’t feel any remorse. “Way of the world, Katalina. I was born into all this. I mourned what I knew. I knew she would be powerful; I knew her potential, and that’s all I can give. She knew that about me, huh? I wasn’t a father to her like your father was to you.”
“Nobody could be a father like him.”
“Maybe.” He nodded and scratched his head. “But I was proud of her. She believed in herself, unlike Dimitri. He wasn’t brave, not intelligent either. He made all the wrong connections at all the wrong times. The Armanelli family had nothing to worry about once my son was in power. They knew they would rule this city forever with the way he did deals.” The man cringed at a memory and then shifted in his oak rocking chair.
He spoke with clarity in his eyes, and his voice was strong, without hesitation.
Without a sign of dementia.
The slow spread of his smile had me walking toward him to study him more closely. I bent forward, hands on my hips, and squinted. “Is it early onset or did you stage it all?”
“Ah, sharp like your mother.” He rubbed a hand over the white whiskers on his face. “Once you pass your prime, you have to see how your kingdom will rule without you. I staged a few bouts of memory loss to sway them, sure. The onset is there, though. I just needed to speed it up. I wanted your mother to show me she could fight for her bratva. Yet her heart beat for her family first, for a brother that was no more than a—” He spat at the ground next to Dimitri.
I looked over my shoulder at Dimitri’s cold body, at the blood pooling on Ivan’s wood floors. “Do you have a cleanup crew?”
“They’re on their way, and their blood is your blood now, not the Italians’ like you thought.” He chuckled at the twist he’d put on the Armanelli’s oath. “You’ll learn quickly how well they will listen to you. They’ve all been waiting for you, for someone who could take on Dimitri. Your mother couldn’t. She couldn’t kill him. She hoped he wouldn’t be able to kill her either. Coward.”
“I don’t want to know any more, Ivan. What’s done is done.” All the emotions rattled around in my bones, and something angry ran wild in me. The ground seemed to wobble beneath me as I aimed for my chair.
“You will know. She was your mother. She was found beaten, assaulted, naked, and alone.”
I fisted my hand, pursed my lips to stop the ball of fury that built in my throat.