CHAPTER THREE │ WRONG CHOICE OF WEAPONRY

SCARLETT DEL GATO

By the time Giovanni made it to the bed, I had the night lamp already pulled from the plug and held it steadily in both of my hands as my defence against him.

I was ready to smack him over the head with it if he dares come near me or touch me with those big, calloused hands of his that were most likely covered with more blood than I could imagine.

My heart hammers against my ribcage, when I saw that evil dimple of his when he smirked at me.

He chuckles when he sees my choice of weaponry—the lamp being clutched in both my hands—but I keep my hands higher, ready to attack him if need be.

If he doesn’t touch me, I won’t attack, but if he dare lays a finger on me or any part of my body, I won’t hesitate to smack him over the head with the lamp.

He steps to the side of the bed and was a few feet in front of me in a matter of seconds. It was probably those tall legs of his giving him an advantage. “Very cute.” He says when I held my hands with the lamp even higher if that was even possible. The cord of the lamp grazed my knee. “That’s really cute.”

“Stay away from me you psycho.” I hated that my voice quivered.

“Drop the lamp, sweetheart.” The tone he used and the fact that he just called me sweetheart ran chillingly over me, making me shiver from head to toe.

I swallow hard. “I said stay away from me—” Before I could finish my sentence, Giovanni snatches the lamp from my hands. I felt empty without it and all I could do was stare at him as he moved toward me like a lion stalking its prey.

I start to move backward while he stalked forward and to my utter dismay, my back hits the wall. He was so close to me that I could actually smell his cologne.

His warm breath fans my face when he spoke and my entire body erupted in another shiver. “Not so strong without your little lamp now. Are you—” This time he was the one to get cut off.

My survival instincts kicked in.

I kicked him in the crotch, my knee actually hurt from the blow. Giovanni groans, letting the lamp fall to the ground. The lamp shatters as soon as it made contact with the marble floors and glass scrunches and cracks underneath his shoes when he falls backwards, clutching his aching crotch.

His hands were holding his crotch and his eyes were screwed shut from the blow my knee inflicted. “Not so tough now, are you?” I ask, stepping over his body lying on the floor before I made a break to the door that was slightly ajar.

When I leave the room, I close the door behind me but I curse colourfully under my breath when I didn’t see a lock on the door. I wanted to lock Giovanni inside that cage of a room, but seeing that there were no locks, I had to run, and fast.

I flung around, ready to flee away from the room Giovanni was in, but when I spotted Vito leaning against the wall in the hallway, my feet decided to stop working.

The corner of his lip was curved upward—a smirk on his mouth. “That lamp you just broke in there cost more than that entire outfit of yours, if not more.”

I swallow hard, looking down at my pair of dirty jeans and white lettered shirt. The entire outfit didn’t cost me more than thirty five dollars if I recall correctly, but the fact that he cared more about a damn lamp than an innocent life…

“It’s a shame that your brother was the one who broke it when he tried to put his filthy hands on me!” I yell, clenching my shaking hands at my sides.

The door opens behind me and the hairs on my arms stood upright when I felt Giovanni’s warm breath fan the back of my neck. I didn’t bother to turn around. I know what I’d see when I'd turn around—a very, very angry and murderous looking Giovanni Castiglione.

He was breathing with so much fury and ferocity, as if he was a raging bull ready to attack me from behind.

My feet were still glued to the floor. I couldn’t conjure up enough strength or guts to move anyways. Vito’s eyes had me frozen on the spot and Giovanni’s warm breath fanning the back of my neck had me shivering, and beyond scared.

The next thing I know, Giovanni grabs me around the waist and hauls me over his shoulder as if I was a sack of potatoes—like I weighed nothing at all.

His shoulder bone pokes me in my stomach and his hair tickles the side of my neck.

I lift my head up just enough to see that Vito was on his brother’s heels. He was following us and didn’t do a single thing to stop his brother.

What if he decided that it was a bad idea to bring me here and that his brother was right all along, that I need to be killed for knowing the things I know?

Panic swelled up inside me and it threatened to eat me alive.

I wanted to slip from Giovanni’s grasp, but both his hands held my legs firmly in place. I couldn’t jump off of him, not even if I tried with all of my might. And even if I could have escaped Giovanni’s grasp, where would I have gone? The staircase that leads to the lower parts of the mansion was where Vito was standing just a few moments ago and if I can’t even get past his furious ogre of a brother, how am I going to get past him, or their guards?

Even though I could not escape from Giovanni’s grasp, it still didn’t stop me from banging on his back though.

Wherever he was taking me, I’m sure I could have walked instead of being carried like a damn sack of potatoes.

I punched Giovanni’s back hard, waiting for him to throw me to the floor and to let me walk by myself, but he never once let go of my legs.

My fists connected with his clothed back, but he never once flinched or winced at my pounding.

We did, however, stop in front of a door.

“Put me down you psychopath!” I spit out the last word with so much disgust, but he found it amusing.

I felt Giovanni’s chuckle against my stomach, but he still didn’t let me go.

He opens the door and pulls me over his shoulder so that he could put me down. Instead of throwing me like I thought he would for punching him against his back repeatedly, he actually set me down onto my own two feet, gently.

But his gentleness didn’t last very long.

He jerked his chin toward a single chair and started to order me to sit down.

“Sit down, sweetheart.” He orders again when I made no move to sit down, or to respect his orders.

He clearly didn’t like being told no and that made me want to piss him off more.

“Or what?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, but I still held his gaze and kept my head high.

He wasn’t going to order me around like I was one of his servants.

The corner of his lip curves upward. He actually smirked at me. “We don’t want to find out, do we?”

I shake my head, trudging toward the chair. They haven’t hurt me yet so I decided to co-operate with him before I really get hurt, or worse, die.

The room was entirely empty except for a chair and a window, but other than that, the room was fairly plain and very much empty.

It was dark out; you could see the stars in the sky and the moon illuminating its light across the room.

The room was also chilly, making me shiver in my seat.

A loud scraping noise echoes throughout the entire quiet and empty room as I dragged the chair against the expensive, no doubt, marble floors.

I finally sit down and look at Giovanni right before his brother, Vito, came strolling into the room.

He clicks the wooden door shut behind him.

He then leans against the door again but this time he takes out a cigarette from his tuxedo pocket and lights one before he places it in between his lips, taking a huge drag from out of it. He exhales the smoke and licks his lips right after.

“Couldn’t you have interrogated me in the other room where I was still busy eating cheese and drinking my water?” I ask them, lifting my eyebrows at them questioningly. “Was it really necessary to bring me all the way here?”

“Well, we would have spoken to you there but you decided to attack me with a night lamp.” Giovanni says and I see Vito chuckling in the corner of my eye.

“I was defending myself. I’m clearly not a guest in this mansion.” I argue with him. “And you looked murderous and damn scary when you entered the room. What was I supposed to do? Wait for you to kill me?”

Giovanni doesn’t find that amusing. He doesn’t even bat an eyelash. “You’re not dead because my brother here decided that it was a good idea to spare your life.” He says, stealing a quick glance at his brother before he looked at me again. “But don’t think for a second that I won’t hesitate to kill you if you try to attack me again, especially since I just wanted to talk to you, civilly.”

He really just wanted to talk to me?

“And the only reason you’re not bound to that chair is because we just want to talk to you.” Vito says. “We just want to talk to you. Not interrogate you.”

Giovanni surprises me by nodding.

I scoff. “Luckily there aren’t any lamps in here to throw you two with.” I chuckle humourlessly, not trusting their sudden generosity not to kill me. “Now, if you want to talk to me, start talking then. I have to plot a few things.”

Giovanni raises his eyebrow but doesn’t say anything about me wanting to plot a few things. He knows that I won’t be able to escape anyways. They have me outnumbered, and I was just talking about the two of them.

“Your brother betrayed me.” Giovanni says.

“You were the one who sent me to prison.” Giovanni’s words played inside my mind as that night came to me.

My brother was the one who sent Giovanni to ESP.

I swallow hard, remembering his bloodied and bruised face as if he was standing right in front of me. He looked so damn vulnerable and nothing like the brother who used to stick up for me when a boy tried his luck with me.

He didn’t look like Antonio anymore.

Suddenly a thought occurred to me: he got the money from them. He worked for the Castiglione brothers. That’s how he could’ve taken care of me. He was getting money from them. He really was a part of the Mafia, like they said.

“Your brother was the one who sent me to ESP.” Giovanni says.

“What a peaceful year it was.” I mutter, swallowing the bile that rose in my throat. “And he didn’t send you there. You did.” I continue, fisting my hands in my lap. “You did illegal things. You sold drugs. You had guns. You.”

Vito pulls the cigarette away from his mouth, looking at his brother when he balled his hands into tight fists. It seemed like Vito was worried for a second there and I won’t lie, my heart started to beat faster against my ribcage.

“You are aware that Antonio’s part of the Mafia, right?” He asks through clenched teeth.

“You mean ‘was’.” I correct him, biting my lip to keep it from trembling. “It’s past tense.”

My heart constructed inside my chest. I didn’t want to believe that Antonio was part of the Mafia, but the signs were there. It was difficult to ignore something that was so clear right in front of your face.

I shrug then. “I won’t know.” I tell them, looking at Vito when he placed the death stick between his lips again. “He never talked to me about it. I didn’t know he was part of the Mafia, but,” I pause, fingering a piece of thread coming from my pants, “I had some suspicions about it.”

Suspicions I got right now.

“What kind of suspicions?” Vito asks, exhaling the smoke. It drifted around the room and the smell alone nauseated me. I wanted nothing more than to throw him along with his death right stick out of that single window.

I shrug again, pulling my lips tightly together. If they want answers, they were going to have to beg for it.

They think that they have everyone wrapped around their fingers, but not me. I don’t ask how high when they say jump.

I was afraid of them, yes, and I was definitely threading on dangerous grounds by not answering Vito’s question, but they made it clear that they were just going to talk to me. I also want to see if Vito could control his psychopath of a brother.

“Answer him.” Giovanni urges.

I decided to change the subject a little.

It was my time to ask them to jump.

“Vito said something about you being hurt after you killed my brother. He was more than just your second in command, right?” I fling my leg over my knee, letting it jump up and down. “You didn’t want to kill him, right?”

I hit a nerve when Giovanni stiffened on the spot, as if the question completely caught him off guard. He probably didn’t expect me to have listened to the conversation they had in my room earlier, when he thought that I was asleep.

Giovanni avoids eye contact with me. His arms were hanging at his sides, but to avoid my intense gaze further, he looks at his hands that were slightly shaking.

I smile. “You were friends with my brother, right?”

“Shut up.” He says, his voice was barely above a whisper.

“Whatever my brother was to you,” I tell him, getting up from the chair to come face to face, or in this case, face to chest with him seeing that he was a tall, “I hope you feel the regret of killing him for the rest of your life, sweetheart.”

I tap his shoulder while damn well knowing that I was playing with fire. Hell, I was not just playing with it, I was walking in it for touching him the way I did.

I was touching the devil’s shoulder to antagonise him.

He doesn’t shrug me off, which completely surprised me but he does look at me through his eyelashes. He was glaring angrily at me, and Vito, on the other hand, stopped smoking to look at his brother to see what was going to happen.

“You could’ve spared Antonio’s life.” I tap Giovanni’s shoulder again, seeing the little patience he had left leave his entire body in a matter of seconds.

He was starting to tense up, or he was preparing himself to focus on not hitting me. Either way, I had the upper hand here and I loved seeing him so powerless.

“You could’ve talked to him about why he betrayed you—”

“I said shut up!” He yells, silencing me immediately.

His gaze was so intense, I felt myself becoming smaller underneath his gaze, as if he was a bear and I an innocent little ant going to be trampled by the big bear.

“Your brother meant nothing to me.”

I read his face when he said that.

There was something about his expression that didn’t quite sit right with me. He was hurt talking about Antonio. His face was pained. His lip was trembling. I could’ve imagined it, but his expression didn’t lie, and the expression on his face told me what I wanted to know. He was hurt.

I don’t tap his shoulder this time. I was in the depths of hell right now when I lifted my hand to play with a strand of his onyx-coloured hair between my fingers. I know I was busy taunting him and I know I had a death wish, but it felt so nice to see the people who I feared all this time show some emotion.

“I should kill you for what you did.” I tell him, softly, so he was the only one to hear me. “I should kill you for killing my brother.”

“Why don’t you kill me then?” He asks, his words were soft as well to match my own.

His smile was challenging.

He was daring me.

“Here’s a gun for you, too.” He knits his eyebrows in concentration while he fished the gun from out of the back of his pants. He lets it rest in his palm, just daring me to take it from him. “Come on, take the gun, sweetheart. Take it.”

I swallow hard, looking at the gun he had in the palm of his hand.

“Giovanni, don’t—”

Giovanni shakes his head at Vito and I see him back down in the corner of my eye. Vito was on guard now, just waiting to see what I was going to do with the gun. Giovanni, on the other hand wanted me to take the gun from his palm. He wanted to see if I had the guts to actually do what I wanted to do: kill him.

He wanted me to threaten him with it.

It’s like he needed me to do something.

But I wasn’t going to do a damn thing.

I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of having a quick death while my brother suffered before he… before he died by the hands of Giovanni.

I stand on my tip toes when I inch close to Giovanni’s face. I look at him directly in his eyes. “I am nothing like you.” I tell him. “And besides,” I pause, shaking my head at him, “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of having a quick death while my brother suffered. You deserve to feel this regret, Giovanni. You deserve to feel like this for the rest of your life.”

I stand firmly on the ground again, feeling my feet being planted against the marble floors. “That is always the worst part than instant death: the regret of doing something you didn’t really want to do, but you did it anyway and now the regret is eating you alive.” I smile at him despite feeling the tears starting to roll down my cheeks. “I don’t have to do a thing to you because the regret is already eating you alive. I could see it when I asked you if you were friends with him. Your face was pained. Your lip even trembled, poor baby…”

Giovanni whirls around and kicks the door as hard as he could. I thought it would splinter underneath the force of the kick, but the door surprised me by staying intact. It didn’t even splinter or bend after the kick Giovanni inflicted.

Giovanni hisses out in pain after the kick and starts to pace around the room to forget about his aching knee. ‘Run it off’, they say, if only it were that easy.

I definitely hit a nerve.

“You should’ve let your brother pull the trigger, Vito.” I tell him over my shoulder before looking at Giovanni again. “Because I think he’s starting to regret the decision of you deciding to keep me alive and bringing me here.”

Giovanni huffs, propping the gun back where it belongs, in the waistband of his pants. “Leave her here,” Giovanni says, “if she decides to jump out of the window, let her. The fall would be enough to kill her if she decides to jump.”

He leaves the room right after he plucked the door open, leaving me and Vito alone in this empty and suddenly dark room.

The smoke smell of Vito’s cigarette still lingered in the air, filling my nostrils with each inhale. The smell was enough to make my stomach clench and knot.

“Why didn’t you let him pull the trigger?”

Vito’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. Either he didn’t hear me well, or he chose to play dumb so he could avoid my question.

I ask him again. “Why didn’t you let him pull the trigger?”

He shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling.

It’s like he’s thinking of a reply before actually voicing it.

I decide to urge him on. “You owe me an answer!”

“I don’t owe you anything!” He yells back.

“It’s either you tell me or I keep asking. Choose, Vito.”

He looks at me and all I see is regret written in his eyes and across his face. “I didn’t let him shoot you because you’re just a girl. You are harmless.” He finally says, raking his fingers through his hair. “You are a harmless girl who didn’t deserve to be pulled into this world of danger.”

With that, he turns and leaves too.

That’s when I broke down.

Tears were streaming down my cheeks and the tear drops fell to the floor.

I never stopped crying, not even when my stomach started to hurt from all the gasping.

It was only then when I realised that the reason I wanted Giovanni to get angry is that I wanted him to kill me. I wanted to die when I tapped his shoulder. I wanted to die when I pulled a strand of his hair between my fingers. I wanted to die when I looked down at the gun in the palm of his hand.

I didn’t want to use the gun on him.

I wanted to use the gun on me.

Even if it was just for a brief second.

In that one brief second, I wanted to die because Giovanni took everything from me. He took my brother from me—the only family I had left. He took the only person who ever took care of me away from me.