Page 3 of Irish Brute

“Eliza?” I ask, because that’s I called my cousin when we were children—when we wanted elegant names, English names, names like the heroines in all the books we loved.

“Gia!” She’s sobbing, crying so hard she’s choking. “I tried to text you.”

“I was in a meeting.”

“I emailed.”

“I couldn’t answer,” I say. My hand is shaking, and a high-pitched hum fills my head. “What’s wrong?”

Before she can answer, I hear a heavy pounding, like someone dropping elephants from a balcony. “I made a mistake,” Eliza moans.

“Where are you?”

Instead of answering, she shouts, her voice thick with tears and desperation. “Leave me alone,stronzo!”

Bile paints my throat, because there’s only one place in the world Eliza can be. One place she’ssupposedto be, anyway. And it’s a place I swore I’d never see again. “Eliza, where are you?” I repeat.

“I’m home now,” she says, the words coming out too fast. “I shouldn’t have done it. I know. But I’ve loved Peter forever. He’s a civilian. Antonio can’t hurt him.”

Eliza’s husband can hurt anyone he wants. Don Antonio is the head of the Russo crime family.

In a sane world, I’d tell Eliza to hang up and dial 911. I’d call them myself; I know her address by heart. I’d tell the cops to hurry, to get there before something terrible happens.

But Eliza’s world isn’t sane. If the cops get there at all, they’ll be too late. And chances are, the dispatcher will get disconnected. The call will get dropped. The records will be lost.

Because that’s the type of power Antonio Russo has in Philadelphia.

Eliza is babbling, confessing her affair to me while she shouts defiance at her husband. “Please, Giovanna,” she says. “You have to come get me. You have to take me somewhere safe.”

Before I can answer, there’s a noise like a bomb exploding, followed by Eliza’s shriek. It takes me a moment to figure out Antonio shot the lock off the door between them.

“Please,” Eliza starts to plead. “Antonio… My love…”

She yelps and my ear is filled with a heavy thud. Her begging turns echoey, and I realize she’s dropped her phone.

Antonio snarls, “Porca giuda!” I’d know that voice anywhere, a corpse scraped over a gravel road. There’s a thud and another cry, and I’m pretty sure he punched her, or maybe landed a kick.

Eliza babbles, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was a mistake. An accident. I promise I’ll never see him again. Peter is dead to me, Antonio, I promise.”

The entire time she’s talking, he’s growling insults in English and Italian, calling her a cunt, a whore, telling her she’s not worth fucking.

“Oh my God,” Eliza gasps. “What are you doing? You don’t have to— No! Antonio, no! You can’t?—”

“You’re my bitch. I can do whatever I want to.”

“Please, Antonio. Please, please, please…”

“You think you’re too good for my cock?”

“No, baby. Never.” She says the words, but they’re distant, vague, a hopeless, helpless prayer.

“You put another man’s prick up there?”

“Ave, o Maria, piena di grazia,” Eliza breathes her Hail Mary.

“How’s it feel to have something hard inside you,puttana?Your limp-dick asshole didn’t give you this, did he?”

He’s raping her. All I can do is listen as Eliza prays, her tone desperate. “Il frutto del tuo seno, Gesu.”