Trapped by the Mafia

19. Now What?

One must be cunning and wicked in this world.

― Leo Tolstoy

***

Matteo's fingers touch the dressing on my eye. It's starting to stink, but as far as I can tell, the inflammation haven't spread.

"The slash was too deep to leave untreated, Bryn," Matteo says, almost gently.

"Aww, you were worried about me, despite this stone-cold exterior."

"You bet."

New tears flood my eyes. Until Matteo, I survived without being reduced to tears by a man, but this guy turns me into some quivering puddle of feels. "So, what did you give up to them?"

"What they wanted."

He paused. The pause stretched. "Yes?"

"A name," he said with a sigh. "One of Moretti lieutenants who has been moving into Sal's district like he owned the place."

"You said this guy killed your father?"

"Uh-huh." Matteo dabs the tears from my cheeks. The gentleness toward me comes as a dissonance compared to how he talks about his life. "They can't hit him without going to our uncles for approval. They won't get it."

"Why?"

"Because Uncle Frank knows it wasn't the Moretti Family."

Just before the penny drops, just before I stammer another clueless but, but, but... Matteo separates himself from the wall with a titanic effort of will. He prowls in the field of view from the grate. Too wrapped into our conversation, I miss what he's had his ear out for: the sounds of rushing footfalls.

The goons didn't miss my trick with the camera.

"You and your blind whore," Creepy screams from the upper floor, "why don't you fucking die already and save us all the trouble?"

Matteo straightens. He is braver than me, because I crawl as far away as I can from the Mafia Smurfs. They have guns and knives for goodness sake!

"You fucking coward," Matteo taunts. "Get down and fight me like a man."

Creepy--predictably--ignores this invitation. "Now I have to go downstairs all the time to check on you."

To show how these two unarmed, barefoot people, locked in a stone cell, make his life so difficult, he bangs the metal grate with a pipe.

The clamor sends white flashes through my eyes, but I look at Matteo standing upright, hands in fists, channeling intimidation in near-palpable waves. Beat up, with cracked ribs, hungry, dirty and thirsty, Matteo somehow doesn't look pathetic. It's like he generates a physical force field, a Scali field.

I won't grab my head into my arms and wail, I promise myself. I won't.

Creepy tires himself out and finishes his revolting show with urinating on us. He's too stupid to anticipate that in his agitated mood, aiming between the bars might be a touch beyond his hand-eye coordination. The result of this flawed target practice doesn't improve his mood.

Matteo yells his challenge to climb down and fight him again, but sweat trickles down his neck.

If Creepy doesn't leave us alone right fucking now, Matteo's going to collapse in the middle of this manly-man mucho-macho Olympics.

I hop to his side, hang onto him as much as I dare and add my contribution to the conversation.

"Hey you! Next time you come, bring tampons, I'm on my period." This is seriously the best thing I can come up with on a short notice and under pressure. While it still might work in high school, modern men evolved past that. I don't stand a chance to send even Creepy running for the hills with discussion of womanly problems.