Page 22 of Betrayal of the Mafia Rebel
"She was my father's youngest sister." I stare at the rusted metal table leg. "She wasn't involved in the business. She hated the violence. She spent most of her time in the gardens at thecompound, reading books and pretending she lived somewhere else."
I swallow hard. The memory of wet earth and crushed mint pushes through the dampness of the tunnel.
"I was six years old." I rub my palms against my denim-clad thighs. "Maria used to sneak me down to the wrought-iron gates at the edge of the property. We'd sit in the grass and watch the cars drive past on the main road, and she'd whisper the names of all the places she wanted to take me. Paris. Rome. A little beach town in Mexico where no one wore suits and no one carried guns."
Fabio remains motionless. His eyes are fixed on me. The stillness is a hush around us.
"She fell in love with a civilian." I laugh, but the sound comes out brittle and broken. "An art teacher. Someone disconnected from our world. She knew my father would never allow it. She knew the uncles would kill the man just for looking at her. So, she made a plan."
The space heater clicks, the heating element glowing bright orange.
"She packed a single bag." I look up at my own duffel bag sitting near the door. The visual parallel is a physical weight on my chest. "She left the compound in the middle of the night. She disabled the security cameras on the east wing. She paid off a guard she had known since childhood. She did everything you're supposed to do."
Fabio's hands curl into fists at his sides.
"She came into my room before she left." I close my eyes. Maria's face flashes vividly behind my eyelids. Soft brown eyes. Smudged mascara that I didn't have a word for yet. A trembling smile I only understood years later. "She kissed my forehead. She promised me a postcard from a beach in Mexico. She told me to be brave."
I open my eyes. Fabio is standing in the same spot. He hasn't blinked. He is absorbing the story with the solemn reverence of a man receiving a confession.
"She made it three miles." The words taste like ash. "Three miles."
My hands grip the edge of the cot. The rough fabric digs into my palms.
"My father found out about the bribed guard ten minutes after she cleared the gates. They deployed the retrieval teams. They caught her at a gas station on the edge of the city. She was waiting for the art teacher to pick her up."
I stop talking. The silence is deafening.
"What did they do?" Fabio's voice is low. It carries a terrifying edge.
"They didn't bring her back to the compound." I force the words out through a tight throat. "They executed her in the parking lot of that gas station. Then they tracked down the art teacher and burned his apartment building to the ground with him inside."
Fabio's jaw ticks. The muscles in his arms bunch under his shirt.
"They brought back her necklace." A tear escapes my right eye. I swipe it away furiously. Crying is a weakness. "My father threw it on the dining room table the next morning during breakfast. He didn't say a word. He just left it there next to the coffee pot. A silver locket covered in dried blood."
The memory is so sharp it cuts me. The smell of bacon and eggs mixed with the metallic tang of blood. The terrifying silence of the family sitting around the long mahogany table. No one asked where Maria was. No one cried. No one mourned.
"That's the lesson." I stand up from the cot. I can't sit still anymore. The nervous energy demands motion. I pace the short distance between the bed and the stone wall. "That is what itmeans to be a Bellanti woman. You don't leave. If you run, you're a shadow before they even put you in the ground. They erased her, burned her photos, never spoke her name again. They treated her like a disease they had successfully eradicated."
I stop pacing and face him. My chest heaves. Every guard I built up over the years is gone. I'm standing in front of the enemy with nothing left to hide behind.
"Defecting wasn't just a tactical decision for me." My voice cracks. "It was a suicide mission. I packed my bag the way she did. I disabled the same cameras on the east wing. I walked out of those gates knowing I was walking toward my own execution. I came to the Costa family because I knew you were the only ones who could outpace my father's reach."
Fabio moves.
He crosses the room in three strides, and the heat coming off him reaches me a half-second before he stops.
He stops inches from me. He doesn't touch me. He doesn't wrap his arms around me or try to pull me into his chest. He reads the boundary in the set of my shoulders and keeps his hands where I can see them.
"Catalina." His voice is a deep, resonant command.
I keep my eyes trained on the heavy chain at his throat. I can't look at his face. If I look at his eyes, the rest of my composure will shatter. I'll break apart in this damp tunnel and never piece myself back together.
He drops slowly to one knee on the cold stone, low enough that I have to glance down to find his eyes. The position is impossible to avoid. He fills the angle of my vision until I have nowhere else to look.
My eyes lift. They meet his.
There is no pity in his eyes. Pity is useless. Pity doesn't stop bullets. What I see in his eyes is something far more dangerous. It's pure violence, coiled tight behind a control that hasn'tsnapped yet. It's a rage so profound it alters the temperature in the room.
