Giovanni (Benedetti Brothers 4)

I go into the kitchen and start to look through the drawers there. Everyone has a catch-all drawer. I try several before I find his and inside it, a charger that will work. I plug it in and wait until I can turn it on. And I see a blinking light go on right away, telling me I have a voice message.

My heartbeat picks up because no one knows this number. Only Nan. Did I miss her call again? Did something happen to dad?

I push the message button, and it takes three tries for me to remember my password. There’s silence for a long time, so long that I almost delete the message, thinking it was a mistake. But something tells me not to. Maybe it’s that background noise because there’s something familiar about it. Something that makes every hair on my body stand on end.

“I moved daddy,” the low, mocking voice finally says. There’s a slow chuckle. “You got that one by me, I’ll admit.” Silence. No, not silence. That noise again. It’s louder this time. And I go rigid, my hand trembling so badly I almost drop the phone. Because that sound, it’s me. It’s familiar because it’s me.

It cuts out, then starts again and I know he’s moved the recording forward. Because I was still screaming in the initial part. Still fighting. Now I’m not. Now I’m whimpering. He moves it again, and the sound of leather breaking flesh makes me jump. The scream that follows makes my blood run cold.

He recorded it too. I didn’t know. Photos weren’t enough for him. I wonder if he’s replayed this over the years. Relived my suffering. My breaking.

“But Nan,” his voice says. “Poor Nan. She’d gotten old, huh? I’m sorry to say she didn’t make it, Sis.”

“What?”

No one answers. It’s just a recording.

“Now, dad’s not looking so good, is he?” I hear the sound of machine’s beeping. My father’s machines. “Crazy. I can stick a pin right into his eye, and he doesn’t even flinch.”

“Stop!”

“You have one hour to get your ass here. One hour, and you’d better be alone, or I’ll be putting more than pins in his eyes.” There’s rage in his tone. It combats the violence of his words. But when he speaks again, it’s in that laid-back, mocking tone. “You can figure out where, I suppose?” He turns up the recording. Leather on flesh. Screams. The laughter of men.

Then, abruptly, a woman comes on. It takes me a minute to realize what it is. “If you’d like to delete the message, press…”

I hang up and immediately dial Nan’s number. There’s no answer. Did I expect there to be one? But how did Alessandro get past Giovanni’s men?

Same way he got past them at my apartment, I guess.

I open the door that leads to the garage. It’s unlocked, but I guess Giovanni isn’t expecting I’ll leave, not after tonight.

God. Tonight. How can something so perfect turn into the worst night of my life?

No, not the worst. I lived those nights. This isn’t the worst.

But maybe by the time it’s over, it will be.

I don’t know if I’m expecting to find a car in the garage, but I don’t. Giovanni took it, obviously. I go back into the kitchen and through the hallway to the front door. It’s locked, and I need a key to open it. Shit! I walk to the French doors that lead out to the garden, but I can see already that he’s secured the door I shot out.

“Think. Damn it, think!” I try Nan’s number again. Again there’s no answer. I go back into the kitchen, lose ten minutes looking through every drawer for a key, finding none. I try the garage and realize I can manually open the door.

It takes me a few minutes to figure out how to do it, but then the door starts to go up. Once it’s halfway, I run underneath it and hail a taxi. Remarkably, one stops right away. I get in and give him the address of the house, the one I never wanted to go back to. Never wanted to see. But I have no choice.

The driver stops, turns back to me, then glances at the house I just stepped out of. “You sure you want to go to that neighborhood, lady? I don’t think—”

“Please go as fast as you can!”

“All right. Suit yourself. Try to help someone out…”

I block him out and try to call Nan again. She can’t be dead. He can’t have killed her. “Oh, God, Nan, answer. Please answer.”

But she doesn’t and I hang up and think about the fact that I should have grabbed a kitchen knife, looked for a gun, fuck, something. I stupidly came with nothing. No weapon. I should call Giovanni. Tell him where I’m going. Where to find Alessandro, because he’s on the wrong path. Alessandro isn’t at my apartment. Alessandro only sent him there to separate us because he knows I’ll come, and he knows Giovanni would never let me come alone. My brother has nothing to lose now. His days are numbered; they have been since he decided to double cross Giovanni. And I know he’s going to try to take Nan, my father, and me with him.