My Tragic Mafia Life | ✔️

12

Josephine froze, and then laughed and laughed until her throat burned. She had to wrap her hands around her mouth to avoid doubling over. Was it mania? Perhaps, but it felt more like a dream. A nightmare.

That was the problem. Josephine felt everything dark and dangerous while Camillo and Dante and their goons were a world away to the situation basking in their trifles. She couldn't believe them. Not what she had heard or their empty reaction's to talk of casual murder.

Josephine was going insane, and it wrecked her. She should have left already.

Down below, Camillo's  eyes slid over to Dante, dark and foreign. "Even if I wanted to help, I wouldn't know where to begin." The words were steady and clear, but abrupt. "Hugo's death was no fault of mine. Nor my family's."

A fair-skin boy gritted his teeth. "How can you say that when his body was found wrangled with the Russo ensigma?"

Camillo said, "It could have been fabricated. Why the bloody hell would I go and kill the son of my sworn enemy when I'm abdicating for peace?"

"Because you're a wicked bastard." Beatriz breathed. "Don't try to act like this excuses any past actions you've done."

"You're not wrong. But it could've be caused by a rat of your own." Beatriz paled at his eyes, his gaze dark and demonic slithering all over her. "Even pretty Beatriz over here could have done it."

"Lies," Dante said, not hiding his rage. Or his grief. "Lies and stupid stories and false words. What proof do you have?"

"What proof do you have that makes you so sure that my family killed your brother?" Camillo said mildy.

"We found your marking gutted onto his chest."

But it was Valentina who answered. "It doesn't take a genius to carve up one of those. Anyone could have done it. My brother had no involvement."

Josephine noticed the word 'brother' doted on some form of intimacy between the two. As if that could've been true, not with their bizarre facial features, neither holding any form of similarities between the two.  She preened on.

That answer wasn't enough for Dante. He had a temper, and a patience. "Then someone else did. Who?"

Good. But that made two of them. "Why didn't I think of that?"  Camillo said, lifting his chin and rolling his eyes. "Let me check my killing calendar. Oh wait, I don't have one of those. And I didn't kill him, so—"

"Camillo, this city is not owned by Russo blood alone," Dante said, his breathing uneven. The restraint that Josephine saw on Dante's face to keep himself from ripping out Camillo's eyes made her blood run cold. "I have an army of murders following my distressed mother's every command. Now considering it was your family who just declared war, perhaps now's not the time for your sarcasm."

Camillo smiled. "Say that again, Valencio. I couldn't hear you the first time."

There was a part of Josephine that heaved with each word, her skin turning clammy while filming the drama.

Dante growled at him. Camillo, brushing down the panes of his chemise as he swayed in the chilly auburn-air, just offered a crooked grin in return.

It had been an hour since Josephine had stumbled onto them. Her shirt had wrinkled, her face pruned, and the ode of night snapping away veiling them all with it's dark calamity.

Josephine stayed hidden in the balcony, not daring to make another sound. Another step. Sometimes, Josephine thought herself forgetting how to breathe. She didn't want to imagine more death ahead of familiar faces. More talk of murder.

She thought about how many students she had met beforehand. She thought about how many that she knew had held the same fate of these students. She couldn't name one. She thought about all the times she dismissed them as weeping little brats.

Josephine felt her vision go red.

That she'd be so stupid, so dumb to not know any of this.

The school was hers. The ruling was her. All of it was hers.

But she had not known. The tracks that veered each group—careful in hiding their traces and clinging onto family ordeals.

Ordeals she should have known. That was never known.

The school was a playground, but each students down below had taken their chance in exposing their secret in the open air. There was no way they could have known that Josephine could track them, see them in their little battle. But this situation was could have been a trap—it was likely a trap.

A trap to goad Josephine, which she had already been caged inside.

Josephine paused at the top branches intertwined with the tree and balcony overlooking where the two groups had cleaved, scanning the ground. Camillo Russo facing the north. Dante Valencio facing the south. With others following trace.

Josephine weighed her options, watching the den unfold. There was little, not too much of what she could do. Her gaze glossed over towards the students.

Neither side had said anything.

The female of the twins dipped her gaze to Beatriz. An all-too-familiar smile tittering around her cheeks. Her brother guarded his sister against her own defiance.

"I wish I was the one who killed him." She marveled at Beatriz, much to no avail from her brother's side. She chirped towards Dante. "Sad to see you're still alive."

A muscle flickered in Dante's jaw. "Say that again and you'll find yourself choking on your own blood when I rip out your tongue and feed it to your brother,"

Beatriz, sharp-eyed in the corner,  said nothing in silent agreement.

The threat bellowed between the two. The twin brother snarled towards his sister, "Lucia."

The female snarled right back.

After her stance of solitude, Isla stood forwards "Enough," She said, her gaze flickering between each face of scorn. Even those on her side. "We all have our bad blood with our relatives, but are we here to be allies of our families or of each other?"

Camillo's mockful, hateful gleam morphed into something quiet. Something respectful. "I offer peace."

Dante didn't flinch. "Do you admit the fault was from your family?"

Josephine's stomach bellowed. This discussion was going nowhere.

Things are heating up.

What do you think? Who do you think killed Hugo, Dante's brother?

Do you think Camillo is lying? Do you think Dante is lying?

Who seems more likely to be the culprit?

Things are starting to boil, and soon, it'll explode.

-Mel

Vote. Comment. Enjoy.