Simone
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the man says as I try to chew at the ropes around my wrist. I lower my hands and look up. The van door is opening, a man standing with a pistol in his hand, aiming it into the van. He’s around fifty or sixty, a gray strip of hair around his head and a giant mole on his chin. He’s wearing a leather jacket which looks slightly ridiculous on him. “I mean it. If you try and escape, I’ll be forced to kill you. And I really don’t want to kill you. I have no desire for things to go that way. Yet, anyway. Oh, did you know I’m the one who put a hole in Rocco’s side? He’s doesn’t seem so tough anymore, does he?”
I climb onto my knees and spit across the van.
“Whoa, whoa!” the man says, laughing cruelly. “What would your mother think if she could see you now, Cecilia? What would Shotgun think if he knew his little whore was fucking his best friend? He’d be very disappointed in you, I’m sure. If there’s a heaven, he’s clambering to get back just so he can punish the two of you, you sick freaks. Now come on, get out of there. Don’t make me send my boys in.”
They think I’m Cecilia. Suddenly I get the mad urge to laugh in his face. They think I’m Cecilia! My entire life has been spent living in Cecilia’s shadow and now they think I’m her. I almost scream that I’m not Cecilia, that we couldn’t be more different. But then I see Demons riding down to Venice looking for my sister, see them throwing her into the back of a van just like they’ve done with me.
I struggle to my feet and walk from the van, my body aching all over from the bumpy ride. “That’s a good girl,” the man says, patting me on the shoulder. “I’m Gerald Hightower, by the way. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”
“I expected more!” I hiss.
Demons stand in a semi-circle around me. There are twenty or so, all looking tougher and meaner than the last, all looking as if they wouldn’t have any problem with doing some serious damage to me, or performing some seriously twisted acts. My bound hands stray to my belly. If they’ve hurt my baby, I’m going to kill them.
Gerald takes a step back, raising his hands. “We’ve got a feisty one here, gentleman.”
Behind Gerald is the Crooked Demons’ clubhouse, a devil sitting above the neon sign which flashes into the evening. It looks like a small casino, lights flashing all over the place. From what I can tell we’re twenty or so minutes from the hospital, but admittedly my counting was interrupted by every bump in the road. We could be anywhere. I don’t notice anything in the distance apart from a few scattered warehouses and some sparse forest.
“Let’s get her inside,” Gerald says, waving a hand at his goons.
Three men grab me and drag me into the clubhouse, through the bar and then into the kitchen, and finally into a storage cupboard filled with boxes of dried food. They force me into a wooden chair and tie my hand bindings to the chair legs, pinning me uncomfortably. I try and keep calm during this, telling myself I have to do whatever they ask if I don’t want my baby hurt, and yet knowing that when the real horror starts I won’t be able to keep my composure. The lone man in the forest was bad enough, but at least there was some hope there. He was alone, and he was an idiot. This is worse. I’m in more danger than I’ve ever been. I’m under no delusions about that.
Gerald enters with a camera bag in one hand and a tripod in the other. “I’m really sorry about this,” he says. “But I’m the type of man to clean my gun twice just to make sure I’ve got every single inch of it. I like to do a job well, is what I’m saying, and this job requires a bloody lip. Men.”
All my resolve to stay calm abandons me as the men step forward, fists raised. I scream and try to wriggle out of the bindings, but I’m tied firmly in place. I try to tip the chair and roll aside, to spit at them, to bite them, but all of it is useless. The first fist catches me across the jaw, the second under the chin. I clench my teeth so hard it’s like spikes are lancing into my skull. In the end, I’m helpless. They hit me for what must be a few seconds, but it feels like minutes.
By the end my lip is cut and already swelling, my face is a mass of throbbing pain, and tears sting my eyes.
“Look at me,” Gerald says. When I don’t respond, he snarls, “Look at me or they’ll do worse!”
With an effort I manage to look up. Gerald is setting up the tripod. It’s such a disjointed image, this fifty-something man with a mole on his face casually setting up a camera as I sit here bleeding. For a second, I don’t believe any of it’s happening. Then he screws the camera to the tripod and turns it on.
“We’re going to record a message,” he says, fiddling with the camera. “Just framing the shot,” he mutters. “Okay, Cecilia. Obviously, you and Rocco have grown very close over these past few months. Fucking your fiancée’s best friend . . . and they want equality.” The men standing either side of me, the ones with my blood on their fists, laugh gruffly. “You must know by now how to make Rocco go soft for you. So I want you to beg him to surrender. This war is ours. Tell him to come to go to the third floor of the casino on 129 East Fremont Street, alone and unarmed, and leave with our men there. Once he’s done that, we’ll let you go. If he isn’t there within thirteen hours, we kill you. Okay, ready? Go.”
I struggle through the message, begging Rocco to save me, not having to fake my fear. Perhaps a different woman would refuse to record the message, growl defiantly and clamp her mouth shut. I can imagine Cecilia refusing to record a message like this. Maybe I could, too, if it wasn’t for the baby inside of me. But I can’t stop thinking about the life in my belly. I know that Rocco would want me to do what these men are asking to protect it.
When I get to the part about the address, I falter. “I . . . I can’t remember it.” Tears slide down my cheeks, stinging when they slide over my cuts. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember.”
Gerald sighs, pressing a button on the camera. He repeats the address. “Go from please help me,” he says, and the sick bastard smiles as though he’s directing a movie. “Okay, action.”
I get through the rest of the video, crying uncontrollably by the end of it. I’m in a lose-lose situation. Either Rocco goes to the casino and Gerald’s men kill him, or he doesn’t and the baby and I are killed instead. Once the recording is done Gerald slowly and casually packs away the tripod.
“I wonder if he really loves you,” Gerald says. “I guess we’ll find out. I just need to transfer the video to my laptop, and then back to my phone.” He lurches across the room, causing me to flinch back. But I can’t move. He leans down so close to me I can see each individual hair on his mole. “I took a video production course a few years ago,” he says. “You see, Cecilia, your Rocco is really a stupid man. I don’t hold it against him that he never finished school, but what has he done since then apart from slam his president’s woman? But still, look at you.” He strokes the back of his hand down my face. I shiver and cry, but I can’t do anything. I want to slap him across the face, to spit in his eye, but all it takes is one hard thump to the stomach and my life is changed forever. “If he doesn’t do as we say, we’ll have some fun with you before we put you in the ground.
The men around me grunt in anticipation, the same way they might grunt before tucking into a steak.
Everybody leaves me then, closing the door and locking me in the room. As soon as I hear the click of the lock, I twist around and search for a possible exit. It’s painful to twist like this with my hands pinned between my legs but I try anyway. The room is windowless and the only door is the one in front of me, the locked door. I look around for a knife, for something to cut the ropes, a weapon, anything. But there’s nothing. And even if there was, my hands are at too awkward an angle to grip anything.
I slump down, breathing slowly, telling myself that all of this will work out. Rocco will find a way. He has to find a way.
I know that’s a lie, though. I can’t believe it. All this time I’ve been scared that Rocco will die and I’ll be in the same position as Cecilia, but now something worse might happen instead. Either my baby and I will die, or my baby’s father will die. I don’t want to sit here weeping—weeping doesn’t solve anything—but I can’t stop. The presence of danger is like being repeatedly slapped across the face.
About an hour later, Gerald walks into the room. “Your boyfriend isn’t answering his phone,” he says, glaring at me as though it’s my fault. “I’ve sent him the video, along with his big dumb fuck of a friend Beast, and that scarred fuck. So even if the bastard doesn’t answer his phone, the deal is the same. You’ve got . . .” He pulls up the sleeve of his leather and checks his watch. “. . . eleven and a half hours before you die. Sit tight.”
“Wait!” I yell as he starts to close the door.
“What?” he snaps.
“I need to go to the toilet.”
This isn’t true. But if I can get out of these bindings, maybe I can run into the street and just keep sprinting until—
Gerald leaps across the room and backhands me across the jaw, a fresh wave of pain working its way through my face. “Then piss in your slut pants.” He marches from the room.
One of his men locks the door and I’m left to spit blood onto the floor and try and get my bearings. My ears are ringing, my head feeling like it’s been crushed in a vice.
I don’t know how much time passes. I know it’s hours, but not how many. Five, six, seven . . . All I know is that after a long time of sitting here and wondering what my fate is going to be, of waiting for the door to open and the cruel men to come in with guns and twisted desire, smoke starts to sift through under the door. The smoke comes quicker and quicker, rising into the air, filling the room.
And then I hear the crackling of fire.