Page 13 of Taken By the Enforcer

My chest loosens a notch I didn’t know had cinched tighter. “That’s her,” I say, certainty like a lock clicking. “She cut the dress. Bagged what remained. Shed the skin.”

“Camera outside the thrift is down,” Marcello adds, annoyed. “Rafe’s cross-checking neighboring cams.”

“Taxi ranks,” Faustino says thoughtfully. “She wouldn’t walk far in new shoes. She’d want out fast before anyone saw and recognized her.”

“Or she stole a scooter,” I say, and can’t help the flash of a smile because Paolina on a stolen Vespa wearing a baseball cap and defiance is a picture that shouldn’t make me hard but does. “If she did, I’ll buy her three more.”

Faustino’s phone, quiet until now, buzzes once against the bar. He listens, grunts, and hangs up. “Two of ours at the port say a nun bought two bottles of water from La Sirena then walked toward the bus terminus.”

I laugh low. “The bartender saw her too.”

“Everyone sees nuns,” Marcello says. “No one looks.”

“She doesn’t have a passport,” Faustino points out. “If she heads for the airport, we'll catch her in the lobby. If she heads forStazione Centrale, she disappears on a bus to Palermo or Messina.”

“She won’t go far,” I say, and feel it in my bones like weather. “Not yet. She’ll want distance before decisions. Pick a cheap room with a lock first. Buy a toothbrush. Take a shower so hot she tries to scald the feel of me off her skin and fails. She’ll sit on a thin mattress with her hands on her knees and breathe until she stops shaking. Then she’ll sleep like a child who ran until she fell.”

“Like a woman who ran from wolves and found a cave,” Marcello says, eyes gone not soft but knowing. He’s hunted more than I have. He respects prey that survives.

“I am not her wolf,” I say. “I am the only safe place she’ll ever have.”

Faustino nods once. “Then we bring her home.”

Not to the compound but to my private sanctuary. The island waits, glittering under a sky so blue it hurts. A villa with a courtyard where bougainvillea climbs and a bedroom terrace set with a low bed draped in gauze the breeze can lift. A helipad hums at the far edge, boats shoulder the dock, the sea changes color with the hour. I built that place to be unreachable. Now I imagine her walking those halls barefoot, hair loose down her back, hand on her belly when she thinks no one watches. I imagine worship conducted properly—on my knees, on silk, with patience and teeth.

The desk phone trills, a shrill note that has no place in a room like this. Marcello picks it up, says nothing, listens, then slides the handset to loudspeaker.

Rafe’s voice comes through tinned and pleased. “Got your girl’s cap on camera crossing intoVia Pacini,” he announces. “Face half turned, but the timestamp is eight minutes after the thrift. She cut through the market, bought a cheap canvas duffel, and disappeared intoVicolo degli Angeli—most cameras blind there. But she emerges three minutes later in trainers, not pumps. Baseball cap, sunglasses, black tee, denim. Dress is gone. She heads south. Loses herself in theViale della Libertàflow.”

“Bus terminus?” Faustino asks.

“Negative. She stops atHotel Mirto. Three-star, cash friendly. No bags when she arrives—just the grocerysack. Ten minutes later, a maid exits with a black garbage bag knotted tight and tosses it in the alley dumpster. Want me to pull it?”

“I already am,” I say, and look at my brother. “Who’s closest?”

“Leone,” Marcello answers immediately. “He and Bruno are two blocks off. They’ll knock on the side door and ask for the manager like gentlemen.”

“Have them go as ghosts,” I counter. “No conversations. We don’t spook her. Pull the dumpster bag, verify what’s inside, tag the room number from the maid’s cart schedule, set a camera on the corridor, then fall back and wait. She sleeps; we watch. She leaves; we follow. No one touches her but me.”

Faustino’s mouth curves. “Capito.”

Marcello relays. Rafe hums like a kid at Christmas. “Copy.”

“Good,” I say.

“You’re assuming she comes quietly,” Marcello says, but he doesn’t mean quietly as much as he means willingly.

“I’m assuming she comes,” I answer, and feel the calm that only arrives when a plan and a desire click. “I took her virginity; now I take responsibility. She’ll hate the wordmarriageuntil I teach her a different definition. She’ll hate the wordpossessionuntil she understands it meansprotectionwhen it comes from me. And she’ll learnloveisn’t a weakness when a man like me kneels to it.”

Faustino pours the drink he knew I’d need after all.This time I take it, not for the burn, but for our ritual. We drink to beginnings and endings in rooms like these. Tonight is both.

The door opens without a knock—again—and Leone slides in, efficient, breath barely raised. He sets a black garbage bag on the floor. “From theMirtoalley,” he reports. “Housekeeping chart says they serviced Room 214. The maid's name is Giovanna. Twenty-four minutes between her going in and coming out.”

I slit the tie. Layers of fabric spill like a corpse made of lace. A bodice with pearl buttons ripped from its seams. Skirt cut in angry, clean strips. A satin shoe with the heel broken and blood on the strap where it blistered skin.

My body goes silent.

Marcello watches me. “That’s your proof she’s still bleeding,” he says, unsentimental. “Not from you. From the day.”