Page 42 of Unforgiving Queen

“I don’t know if I should be proud or worried,” Phoenix finally signed.

“Proud,” Raven answered at the same time Isla said, “Worried.”

I inhaled a shaky breath before exhaling slowly. “There’s no way we can carry him in one piece and not look suspicious,” I reasoned.

“So what?” Isla’s voice was high-pitched. “Do we chop him up with a steak knife?”

“Umm, I think we’ll need a bigger knife than that,” Raven muttered, leading the rest of us to gag.

I rolled my shoulders back, swallowing the excess saliva that warned I was about to puke.

“How big?” I asked.

“Reina, you can’t be serious,” Athena whisper-screeched. “Are we supposed to do it in our sink?”

I swallowed, but my voice shook when I said, “Don’t be silly. We’d never fit his body into our kitchen sink.”

“No, no, no,” Isla whimpered, tugging on her hair. “We only have one bathroom. Anything but our bathtub.”

“We’ll get it renovated,” Phoenix signed. “I’ll use my studio rental money and we’ll renovate the bathroom.”

“So much for bubble baths,” Athena grumbled. “I guess until then, we’ll just take showers.”

“Okay, so we have the first part figured out,” Raven announced matter-of-factly. “We’ll cut him up.”

“We should send his balls to his family,” Phoenix added with a serious expression on her face. “So they know to stop fucking with us.”

“Maybe just his dick,” I muttered, feeling tired. Maybe we’d reached a breaking point with the Leone men. It was a good thing there were no more Leone sons roaming this earth or we’d be doomed.

“I’m in,” Raven announced. “I’ll deliver it to their door. Disguised as FedEx.”

“I don’t even want to know why you have a FedEx uniform,” Isla grumbled.

“Forget personal delivery,” Phoenix stated.

“I agree with Phoenix,” Athena chimed in. “We’ll just have to package his dick well so it doesn’t bleed through the box. Probably need to pack it in ice too, so it doesn’t start to stink. Then we ship it from the rural outpost of a post office so there’s no surveillance. No technology to be hacked into.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. Athena either watched too muchCSIor she was a serial killer in her previous life. More than likely, she was doing research for her own book.

“Where are we going to bury the body parts?” Isla asked.

Everyone’s eyes darted to me, like I was some kind of expert. My eyes lowered to my hands, still stained with Leone’s blood. My innocence was gone, although I started to wonder if it was ever there in the first place.

My pulse quickened and I squeezed my eyes shut, taking deep breaths. In and out. In and out. It wasn’t the time for a panic attack. I had to get my shit together. I had to become tougher. Stronger.

With a final shuddering exhale, my eyes lifted to find my friends and sister studying me.

I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. Isla was right. We needed a place to stash the body away. It definitely couldn’t stay here.

“The catacombs,” I said on a shaky exhale, the idea coming out of nowhere.

“It’s hardly time for sightseeing,” Athena croaked.

“It’s where we should put the body parts,” I clarified, signing at the same time. It was a grotesque picture with my bloody hands. “Tons of bodies there. What’s a few more body parts?” I could practically see their wheels turning as they came to the realization that it was actually a good idea. The tunnels stretched for two hundred miles. It would be easy enough, right? “We scatter the parts in the tunnels that are closed to the public. The tunnels that nobody has access to.”

“I’ve visited the catacombs,” Athena chimed in. “Only two miles of underground tunnels are open to visitors… out of two hundred. The skulls are unmarked, unnamed. Anonymous.”

“Perfect,” we whispered at the same time.