Page 102 of Dark Breaker

I’ll find you soon, Rosa.

I have to.

17

Rosa

I’m not sure how long I’ve been locked away in this damned trunk, jolted around with every turn and bump in the road, but finally the vehicle seems to come to a stop.

I think I hear muted footsteps and then the trunk opens.

I’m blinded by the sudden brightness but swing my duct-taped wrists like a baseball bat through the open space above me anyway. My arms only hiss through empty air.

Then one of my captors grabs my wrists and pulls me out. He hoists me over one shoulder and heads to a two-story log cabin built next to a beach.

He circumvents the front and heads straight to the backyard, to the beach. There’s a shed there, and his companion opens the padlock. I’m deposited inside next to inflatable toys, a surfboard, and other beach-related items.

I beckon at my mouth.

“Can you take this off?” I ask. Though it comes out as “umm ooo aa ooo.”

Carlo rips the tape off my lips.

“You motherfuckers!” I tell him. “My husband is going to hunt you both down and skin you alive.” My eyes dart to the scar on his arm, a gift left by Fabio during their last encounter in the pool.

“Oh Rosa,” Carlo taunts. “You don’t know how good it is to have you under my roof once more.”

Nunzio smirks. He has a puckering pink scar on his cheek where Fabio slashed him in the pool as well. “So how are we going to do this? We flip for her? You get her the first night? I get her the second?”

“You don’t get her at all,” Carlo says, producing a handgun. He shoots Nunzio in the temple and my other ex-boyfriend collapses like a puppeteer whose strings have been cut.

I gasp in terror and worm away from him, toward the far side of the shed, knocking over the surfboard in the process.

When Carlo looks at me and smiles, I’m taken aback by how dead his eyes appear in that moment. There’s nothing in them at all. No emotion. No intelligence. Just emptiness.

“What can I say?” Carlo explains. “You make me crazy.” He shoves the pistol into the front of his pants. I hope the damn weapon goes off and blows off his cock.

No such luck.

He bends over and hauls Nunzio’s corpse across the sand and toward the beach.

His back is to me, so I decide to use the opportunity to worm out of the shed and back toward the direction of the road. Maybe I can flag someone down.

I only get five meters before I feel rough hands grabbing the tape around my ankles, and I’m dragged backward. Sand gets up my nose, and I cough violently as he throws me back into the shed.

I glance toward the beach and see the dead body lying next to the water. I shudder.

Carlo follows my gaze.

“When the tide comes in, it’ll sweep him out to sea,” Carlo explains. His tank top is no longer white, but stained with streaks of Nunzio’s blood. “You won’t have to see him ever again.”

“What do you want?” I ask, dreading the answer. “Can’t you let me go?” I feel the tears welling.

But the tears only seem to please him, so I blink them away angrily.

“So do you like me better now?” he asks. “Now that I’m on the same level as your brothers? Now that I’ve become a gangster?”

I don’t answer him.