I look at him. He’s barely twenty. And if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t fucking know.
“I hid his things in door seven. I was told to destroy them.”
“You did the right thing. Thank you,” I say, reaching for my wallet and taking out two hundred-dollar-bills. I fold them and discreetly hold them out to him.
“It’s my duty, sir,” he says, bowing his head a little, hesitant to take the money I know he needs.
“Take it,” I tell him.
He does.
“Don’t let anyone into the building until I’m finished, understood?”
He nods and I hear his footsteps on the stairs. I wait until the door’s closed to turn to Rafa, my first-cousin, and one of the few men I trust.
“You don’t have to be down here,” I tell him.
“I want to see him,” he says, determined.
“It’s going to be bad, Rafa.”
He glances over my shoulder at the door that separates us from my brother’s body. He nods. “I’m ready.”
I pat his shoulder and turn the doorknob, then push the door open.
The smell is stronger in here and it makes me sick to think about it, about my brother in this place.
My brother, the traitor.
But still, my brother.
My eyes narrow as I take in the figure covered with a cloth on the table. I hear Rafa gag behind me.
It takes all I have to keep my shit together and walk toward what’s left of Antonio under there.
Rafa follows close behind and all I can think is I’m going to have to burn this suit because I know I won’t be able to get the smell out.
Without letting myself think about it, I look straight ahead at the wall of lockers and lift the sheet. This time Rafa’s gag tells me he’s about to puke.
I don’t turn when he runs from the room. I’d rather be alone anyway.
The door closes and when I look down, I see why he gagged.
My stomach heaves but rage settles it as I look at my brother’s brutalized, headless body. Headless and handless.
Whoever did this didn’t want him identified.
My jaw tightens.
Did they know it would bring me here even with the threat of arrest upon leaving Sicily?
I push the sheet to the floor and make myself look, really look.
Of the six bullets in his body, it was the one to the gut that killed him, and it killed him slow.
At least his head and hands were cut off after the fact.
If some sick fuck is keeping them as fucking trophies, I will decapitate him slowly and I won’t give him the mercy of a bullet first.
In fact, the only reason the kid here knew to contact the Sabbioni family was the tattoo over Antonio’s heart. Our family crest.
I walk around the table to look at it and I remember the day he’d gotten it. Every man in our family gets this particular tattoo on his sixteenth birthday. Even me and I fucking hate tattoos.
I remember when he came home. He’d been drunk off his ass. My brother did not like needles. I’d told him he was a pussy, but I’d kept his secret.
That night we’d gone out to the cemetery. He wanted to talk to mom. He did that a lot. And the family cemetery was about a fifteen-minute walk from the house in Palermo, so it was easy enough to do.
I remember when we got there, Antonio stumbling the whole way, how he’d opened his shirt to show her. Well, show her tombstone.
And as I look down at the tattoo on the man on the table, I remember that night.
I peer closer.
The door opens. “I’m sorry, man,” Rafa starts, interrupting me.
I straighten, shift my gaze to his.
He’s got his eyes turned up to the ceiling.
“I can’t do it, Stefan,” he says.
“It’s all right. Go wait for me outside.”
I wait until the door’s closed before returning my attention to the tattoo, study it, and momentarily close my eyes. I guess I was hoping.
The night at the cemetery, I’d had to laugh when I’d seen the tattoo because it was wrong. The numerals on the clock, the IX for nine, the artist had reversed them. He’d tattooed XI on Antonio’s chest. A small detail no one noticed, but a detail nonetheless. And I’m looking at that same detail now.
I straighten. Bow my head. Turn away from the brutalized body.
He didn’t deserve this. No matter what, he didn’t deserve this.
I look up at the doors of the lockers, storage for bodies, I guess, and locate number seven. Walking around the table, I go to it, open it. Inside, I find a trash bag and I lift it out and that, too, makes my blood boil.
Someone wanted his things destroyed. Would they have buried him in an unmarked grave if they hadn’t been interrupted?
I walk to the desk and dump the contents of the bag out. Inside are a pair of bloody jeans, a black T-shirt, underwear. The blood has dried to a crust. His shoes too, good shoes, Italian leather—Antonio only wore the best—are splattered with blood.
I pick up the shoes, turn them over and recognize the name of the designer etched into the barely scuffed soles. They’re brand new and from his favorite designer with a single shop here in Rome. I wonder if he’d just bought them.
But the fact that he was in Italy at all baffles me. What was he doing back here? Didn’t he know the danger? What had happened? Had someone recognized him?
It wouldn’t be anyone from my family. They knew I wanted him alive. I’d told them I wanted to do the killing myself. It was only right.
I still wonder if I could have done it, but I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.
Putting the shoes back into the bag, I pick up the T-shirt, touch the bullet holes in it. The crusty blood. I shove it back into the bag.
I pick up the jeans and check the pockets, not expecting to find anything. If he had a wallet, they’d have destroyed it. Leave no way to identify him if they went to the trouble of sawing off his head and hands.
My stomach turns again, and I remind myself that it happened after he was dead. It’s a small blessing.
The first pocket turns up empty and I expect the same from the second but am surprised that it isn’t when I slide my hand inside.
I pull out a thick gold chain. A man’s chain. The clasp broken.
I hold it high and watch the heavy pendant swing. It’s coated with dried blood. I guess he’d broken it off his killer’s neck before he’d died. Maybe as he’d gone down. The bullets were at close range. Someone he knew?
I take the pendant in my hand and with my fingernail, scratch away the crust.
My eyes narrow because I recognize the symbol. It’s one I’ll never forget. Because it belongs to a man I know.
An untouchable man.
I fist my hand around it. My nails dig into my palms, but I don’t feel pain. There’s no room for pain when rage takes hold. When vengeance is all I see. The heat of hate all I feel.
And I make my vow.
I walk out the door and up the stairs. I know what my men see when they look at me. A man made of stone.
But I am not that.
I missed my brother these last few years. I’ll mourn him now.
And as much as I know I should walk away, walk away like I wasn’t ever here, I won’t leave him behind.
“Bring him home.”
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