*Caterina*
“I’ll be there soon,” Elio said hurriedly, ending the call with Leo.
An uncomfortable silence fell between us as we both stared at his phone, unsure of what to make of this.
“Alexi is dead,” I repeated blankly.
Maybe I was getting indifferent to death, or maybe I was just heartless, but I didn’t really feel anything at the mont. Normally, a person would be sad if soone they had known died but....
Alexi had helped us, and then betrayed us.
He’d been playing a dangerous ga for longer than we’d known him. Maybe this was his retribution.
Elio glanced at with a serious look. “I have to go take care of this, but you don’t have to co. From what it sounded like, it’ll be pretty... grueso. I don’t want you seeing that, so you can stay here and I’ll let you know—”
“Yeah, right,” I huffed, already having rolled off the bed and onto my feet.
I grabbed my clothes from the closet and the dresser, already shoving on my underwear and bra. I flipped my hair over my shoulder, going for a light dress so we could get out faster.
“Cat, seriously, you don’t want to see this.” Elio got to his feet, approaching grimly. “I can handle it alone—”
“Maybe.” I shrugged, giving him a stubborn look as I crossed my arms over my chest. “But I’m not letting you go alone anyway. It won’t look strange to have your significant other with you, especially since this was your property, right? I want to be there for you, and nothing you say is going to stop .”
“Cat—”
He gave a helpless look, his fingers twitching like he wanted to grab into his embrace or shove into the closet to stop from following him, but he knew I’d kick his ass if he tried that shit.
“Nope,” I said simply, turning my back on him as I shoved on my shoes, heading into the living room to grab my bag.
“Cat, I’m serious. You’ve never—I don’t want you to see sothing like this, especially since you... knew him.” Elio trailed off, his face darkening as he paused in the doorway, hands clenched into fists.
I knew how much he didn’t like Alexi, especially after Alexi had essentially stalked and then went straight to Junior to report our movents. I was grateful that he seed to be thinking of , but it wasn’t necessary, not in this case.
I wasn’t sure whether Alexi had been a traitor from the beginning or if he just decided which side could be more beneficial to him. But he’d chosen the wrong side. He had put and my loved ones in danger.
I didn’t feel an ounce of sadness or guilt for his death.
I stepped closer to Elio, gently grabbing his balled-up fists in my hands and unfolding them to intertwine with mine. “It’s okay. Thank you for thinking of , but I’ve seen death before. I can handle this. I love you and I want to be by your side, even if it ans seeing so things I’d rather not.”
He gazed into my eyes, searching for sothing, but when he didn’t find it, he sighed in defeat.
“Fine, but stay by my side at all tis, okay?” he warned , a worried glint in his eyes.
I stepped closer until I could feel his chest rising and falling between us, his breath hot as I gazed up at him. I tilted my head, giving him a sweet smile.
“Where else would I go?”
We rushed from the penthouse, and I left a ssage for my mom saying we were going out as we headed for the car. Elio probably broke a few speed limits on the way, but I didn’t say a word. I only hoped my presence was a comfort to him as he headed to the property.
I tried to prepare myself ntally for what I might see. A dead body was one thing, but from what Leo had said, it wasn’t just him being shot and left. He’d said there had been a ssage, and worse, that the scene was bad.
I had no clue what he could possibly an by that, but I steeled my nerves as best as I could. I’d never had a weak stomach, and my heart had slowly gotten stronger over the ti spent with Elio, so I wasn’t too worried about it.
I glanced at Elio, who drove with his knuckles white on the steering wheel, his jaw set and eyes blazing with fury.
I just hoped I could support Elio properly as I’d promised.
On the way, Elio called Leo back, asking him to send soone nad John, who I rembered from seeing a few tis—his lawyer. He’d been a pretty easy-going guy, though a bit pretentious at tis.
I supposed that if you find a dead body on your property, it helped to have legal representation. I didn’t know much about it, but I trusted that Elio was doing the right thing.
“Is it an expensive property?” I asked, just to fill the silence once he hung up and Elio shook his head.
“It’s remote, outside the main city. It’s more a warehouse than anything, so I’m surprised they would choose this location to leave a ssage. It’s more of their style to do things more publicly,” Elio frowned. “Their tactics are changing.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Possibly,” he answered with a grimace.
I thought I knew what the location remote was but apparently, I was wrong. The further we drove outside of the city, the longer the roads were and the less there was to see. I swore we could’ve been in another state with how endless and different the scenery looked.
It was like a desert outside, nothing but flat cliffs and grassless rocks as far as the eye could see and I frowned, wondering why the fuck Antonio and his goons even made it all the way out of there for this one property.
There were dozens of properties they could’ve chosen from in the city, closer and more habitable. So why this one?
I wondered if I was linked to Antonio in so way, or maybe a forr base or safe house that Elio had just so happened to get his hands on.
I glanced at Elio from the corner of my eye.
Or maybe he had already known of its connections to Antonio and decided to purchase it anyway. The reason was up in the air, and I wasn’t going to ask. We had more important things to worry about right now.
The road was bumpy, and I grabbed onto my seatbelt, wincing as the car rumbled, shaking back and forth across the rocky terrain until the warehouse was right before us, large and imposing. It was nothing more than a stone and tal building in the middle of sand and rocks.
For a mont, I wondered what the purpose of such a building even was. Elio stepped out, and I took a deep breath to calm myself before following him inside. There were a dozen cars already lined up outside, including at least four police cars.
I grabbed Elio’s hand as we entered through the door, the only one actually human-sized and not a big steel garage-looking one.
The mont we entered, both Elio and I tensed up.
The first thing I noticed was the sll—horrid, acrid, and incredibly pungent. It was overpowering, like we’d stepped into a sewage plant. It was almost sickly sweet in a way that had shivers running down my back.
I’d never slled anything so disgusting in my life, and though half of my body wanted to run, I forced myself to keep in line with Elio’s steps, heading further inside. But as we rounded the corner, my stomach dropped to the floor.
Leo was right.
It wasn’t pretty at all.
Several cops were in the room, searching everything from top to bottom, and there was Leo, standing in front being asked questions with a very unpleasant look on his face. I didn’t bla him because he was standing inches away from what I could only describe as a mutilated corpse.
I swallowed, my hand over my mouth and nose as we approached. There was blood everywhere, all over the floor and trails sared from everywhere.
He was face-down with bloody hands outstretched across the floor, and I winced as I saw the handprints sared in blood like he’d tried to drag himself across the floor.
He must have been trying to get away, I thought.
It hadn’t worked, apparently because Alexi was truly and wholly dead. Beyond pale, he was whiter than a ghost, and flies had already accumulated around the body.
The worst part was his legs. They were just a gory ss of red and the white of his bones sticking through like he’d been beaten over and over with a sledgehamr or sothing else incredibly heavy. They were nothing but shattered and mutilated gore.
No wonder he had to crawl.
The only part of Alexi that remained untouched was his face. Staring endlessly into the distance, it was clear they had preserved it on purpose. But it was startlingly clear that it wasn’t the brutal bludgeoning of his legs that had killed him, but rather the gunshot right in his chest.
I stared emptily down at his body, a sense of distance between and my body that I couldn’t quite explain like I was watching all of this from afar. Deep in my chest, there was only one thing that continued to anchor there—pity.
I stared down at the bloody ss of a man I once had known, had talked to and gotten to know, a little. His life was now ended, nothing more than a footnote in a war between Antonio and us.
He’d been a ssage—an afterthought—and I doubted he had anyone who truly cared about him. There was no one left to mourn him, to bury him.
How many similar n had died by Antonio’s hand? How many had he slaughtered just to make a point?
I glanced away from the body, grasping firmly onto Elio’s arm as I stared at a fixed point on the wall. A few cops surrounded us as we approached, and I stayed quiet, just a pillar as Elio and I held onto each other.
Despite my shaken courage, Elio was unfazed. He answered their questions boldly, holding back on the mafia parts. John, the lawyer, stood next to him and just smirked, not saying a word, and I doubted Elio had even needed him there.
“From our investigation so far, he was crippled sowhere else and then shot, probably hitting a lung before he was left here to die. He bled out from his injuries,” the cop told us with a wince.
I could only imagine the pain he must’ve been in, the struggle as he had crawled to find help, to save his own life. But in the end, he died there for nothing.
Elio held my hand tightly as the cops took down our nas and information and then closed off the area as they promised to take the body for the case. Elio nodded, not waiting another second before all four of us left.
The entrance and the bright air lood just outside, a relief from the stench of death that hung around us. I paused right before leaving. I shut my eyes, taking a deep breath as I exited the building, leaving Alexi behind us.
Leo and John said their goodbyes, having more things to do, but Elio and I were free to go.
We got into the car, and as soon as we did, I glanced at Elio with a firm look, my burning questions needing to be answered now.
“Was that a property linked to Antonio?”
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