Chapter 10: Susanna

Mauro squints with his right eye, and when his eyes focus on Zefiro, he grins, teeth bloodied. His body shakes with violent fits of laughter as he fights against the binds around his hands and legs. “You always were a blood thirsty bastard, hiding behind that pretty face of yours.” Mauro looks around, as if searching for an escape. “But you never fooled me.” He refocuses on Zefiro and says something roughly in Italian that sounds like gibberish, but I stow the words away for later. “C'è un demonio dentro di te.”

Zefiro cocks the gun. “I had you looked into.” A hand slips into the pocket of his pants and he retrieves pictures, tossing them in the air and Mauro watches with an expression akin to dread as they rain down on him. “Every twitch. Every transaction. I could forgive going against my orders—”

“Your orders?!” Mauro spits with venom. “You lost your place as boss the moment you walked out on us for your stupid whore—”

Zefiro’s bulky guard slams his fist into Mauro’s nose and I w