Chapter Twenty-Seven The Video

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN THE VIDEO

Sometime later, a door opened and closed behind me, and the sound of heavy footsteps punctuated the silence. A bald, stern-looking man with a thick black moustache stalked across the room. I remembered him from that day at the restaurant – Calvino.

He seated himself in Felice’s vacant armchair, contorting his angular features until they looked like prosthetics, and stared right through me.

‘I saw you at The Eatery a few weeks ago,’ I said, hoping that kindling a conversation might offer a way out of whatever he was planning to do to me. ‘You killed the bee.’

His smirk curled into a grimace. ‘And I’m still paying for it.’ His voice was rasping and deep, and it occurred to me – however absurdly – that he might make a good radio announcer. If killing people didn’t work out, that is.

‘What are you going to do to me?’

‘Much the same.’ His expression darkened, and he moved his stare back to the door behind me just as it swung open.

A boy of around twelve came to stand behind Calvino, resting his hand across his shoulder like some creepy family portrait set-up. The boy was obviously his son. They shared pointy chins that jutted out below thin, pale lips, and hooked noses that dominated their faces. Their eyes were dark with heavy lids, and, like all of the Falcones, they shared an olive complexion.

Calvino gestured at the boy, and in response he whipped out a phone – my phone – from his pocket.

‘Hey!’ I yelled, startling myself. They both turned to me, identical looks of surprise making their faces seem impossibly long. ‘That’s my phone, you little shit. Give it back.’

‘No,’ the boy hissed.

‘CJ,’ his father cautioned him. ‘I said no talking to her.’

CJ frowned. ‘Tell me when you want me to start recording,’ he said to his father, clicking into the camera feature on my phone and making the flash on the back of it light up.

Of course. They were going to send the video to Jack from my own phone. Calvino stood and rolled up his black shirt-sleeves until the end of a tattoo peeked out on his right bicep. Instinctively, I pushed back against the couch and brought my legs higher in front of my huddled frame.

‘Should I start now?’ CJ was hopping from foot to foot.

‘Yeah.’ Calvino whipped a knife out of his pocket and flicked the blade open. I recognized it as a Falcone switchblade – it was identical to Nic’s.

‘Should he be witnessing this?’ I gestured at his son as he moved towards me. ‘He’s just a kid.’

Calvino raised his thick eyebrows – they matched his caterpillar moustache perfectly. ‘He is a Falcone.’

He retained his shocked expression for five full seconds, as if to indicate that great offence had been taken at my question. I used the time to grapple against the couch; I brought my legs up until they blocked the rest of my torso, and tried to push myself over the top as the knife-wielding madman and his son moved towards me.

‘Do you want to introduce it?’ his son asked.

Calvino seemed surprised by CJ’s apparent ingenuity. ‘Good idea.’

A wide grin spread across the boy’s acne-fied face.

I pushed against the couch with my bound feet as Calvino zeroed in on me, casually, like he knew no matter how hard I tried, he would get the better of me. He stowed the blade and grabbed on to my arm. I sailed back towards the middle of the couch with one stiff yank. Then he shuffled in beside me so we were both under the phone’s lens. He dropped to his haunches and pulled me by the collar of my T-shirt so CJ could zoom in.

The pungent smell of aftershave rolled over me. I noticed, with horror and an irrepressible sliver of intrigue, that a thick white scar rippled along where Calvino’s hairline might have been once upon a time. As he tilted closer towards me, it glowed beneath the lights, making the top of his head look like a lid.

‘Jack Gracewell’ – like steel claws shredding a bass drum, every syllable scraped at his throat – ‘I hope this video finds you gravely unwell.’

CJ gave him a thumbs-up from behind the phone. I tried to inch away from his father’s shiny head, but he squeezed the back of my neck until he broke the skin with his fingernails, and I let out a yelp of pain.

‘As you can see, we have your beloved niece, Miss Persephone Gracewell.’ He patted my hair in one long sliding motion. I tried to jerk my head away again, but he grabbed my jaw and pulled me back so that it unhinged itself with a small pop . I closed my eyes and tried not to scream as I set it back into its socket in one agonizing click.

‘As you are aware,’ he continued to the camera, swatting my flailing hands down in a painful blow, ‘we were not happy with our conversation earlier and feel your hesitance should result in escalation on our side.’

Escalation? The word rang in my head like a car alarm.

Calvino grabbed my hair and twined his fingers in it, pulling roughly. I threw my arms against his chest, pummelling it as hard as I could, but he angled away from me so I was punching at the air.

‘Please!’ I screamed.

He kept twisting his fingers through my hair, yanking so hard it felt like he was trying to rip my scalp off.

‘You have until midnight to come alone and unarmed to the abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Old Hegewisch, where we will talk about the terms of your business activity and the girl’s release.’

So they were misleading him twofold: once about his own fate and once about mine. ‘You lying assholes,’ I spat.

Calvino flung his hand across my face. The blow stung the tears out of my eyes. Bucking wildly, I hit him in the shoulder; he recoiled and cursed under his breath. Seizing the moment his distraction allowed me, I rolled off the couch and struggled to my feet, hopping towards the door.

Calvino lurched forwards and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me back to him and that godforsaken couch. I covered my face with my bound hands as he loomed over me, breathing raggedly through his nose. He bent down until I could feel his breath across my hair, ruffling it away from my forehead as he forced my hands from my face.

He slammed the heel of his hand against my nose, and my upper teeth imprinted on the inside of my lips. The taste of salt and rust oozed away from my gums, mixing with the stream of blood coming from my nose. I wheezed as it trickled out over my lips and down my chin.

‘Stop,’ I begged. I started to claw up over the couch, but Calvino yanked me back again. My head landed against his chest with a thud and he held it there.

‘If you don’t show up, Jack,’ he resumed his psycho video voice-over, ‘we’ll kill her. And then we will come for you with every man we have until you are hanging from the ceiling of your restaurant.’ He pushed me away and I fell back against the couch, aching and trembling.

CJ scurried up until there was less than a foot between the lens and me, and I could make out every pus-filled zit on his greasy face.

‘You see what you make me do, Gracewell?’ Calvino paused as if he was expecting Jack to respond. My crying filled the silence. I hadn’t even realized I was sobbing until I heard myself. He gestured to CJ to turn it off.

‘Nailed it!’ his son chimed. ‘It’s good.’ Like he had just gotten an A on a test instead of a video documenting the abuse of a defenceless seventeen-year-old girl.

I spat a pool of blood on to Calvino’s silk shirt. ‘You’re a monster!’

He raised his hand at me and I flinched away from it. ‘Watch your tongue,’ he cautioned. ‘Or I’ll take it from your mouth.’ Then he stood up and laid a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘Bring the video to Felice and send it through. He’ll be leaving soon to set up for Gracewell’s arrival. I’ll follow later with the girl.’

‘Can I go too?’ CJ asked excitedly.

‘Next time.’

Nice to know this kind of thing was a regular occurrence in the Falcone family.

The boy disappeared, leaving me alone with my torturer. I fell back into a seated position and pulled my limbs into my body.

‘Nothing’s broken,’ Calvino informed me in a way that implied I was being overdramatic. He sauntered back to the chair and relaxed into it with a deep sigh.

I wanted to shout profanities at him, but my energy was dying with each breath. I knew I had to escape – if not for me, then for my mother, and my best friend, and my father. And even Jack. Deep down I was still hoping for something that would explain this, something that would make it less horrific than it seemed.

Calvino was watching me, his gaze unblinking. I flicked my attention around the room. I could jump through the window, but I would probably break my leg on landing. And then there were all those bees to think about. Even if I could somehow get the ties off, I’d have to run through the fields at the back or take a chance going through the front of the house. I didn’t know how many people were here or how big the place was. The door was behind me. If I was lucky, maybe Calvino would get bored and fall asleep. It was dark out now.

My thoughts were still whirling when he stood again. He re-rolled his sleeves.

‘What are you doing?’ I tried to hop off the couch, but the binds on my legs tripped me.

‘I wasn’t finished,’ Calvino replied as I landed against the floor and tried to slither away from him, using my butt and my legs like a caterpillar. ‘I just needed a rest.’

He rounded on me. I scooted furiously until my head banged against one of the walls. He brought his foot back like he was going to kick a ball, but I rolled over at the last second.

I pulled myself across the floor with my hands. He kicked me again, and this time it landed on my right side. I heard a faint crack as the wind left my lungs. Twinkling stars began to cloud my vision as I clawed at the rough wooden floors. There was a laboured grunt from somewhere above and I crumpled as another blow hurtled into me.

Waves of nausea rocked back and forth inside me. I pulled my knees into my chest and cradled myself into a foetal position as shrieks of uncontrollable pain ripped through my body. Calvino began circling my frame. This time, instead of kicking me, he flipped me over with his shoe so that I landed under the force of my own body. He started to press against my back with his heel.

‘Stop,’ I wheezed. I tried to claw across the wood, but he stamped down harder, and then I heard the flick of his switchblade from somewhere above me.

‘Please,’ I panted, but to whom, I didn’t know. I was on my own, and I had to do something before it was too late.

He rolled me over again, until I lay flat out under the glaring ceiling lights, squinting as his angular face came back into focus.

He brandished the blade, running his thumb along the edge. Slowly I pushed myself on to my side and pulled my legs back behind me, bending them a little at the knees. This was my last hope. I prayed he wouldn’t move before I could swing them forwards again, and he didn’t; he was too busy staring amorously at the blade as it glinted above me.

It was my only chance: I pushed against the floor with my bound hands and swung the lower half of my body forwards with as much force as I could muster, using my elbow and my hips to propel myself. My legs swooped in a semicircle, and by the time Calvino noticed what I was trying to do, they were already knocking his legs out from under him.

In what felt like slow motion, he careened backwards, tumbling from his tremendous height. The blade landed with a ping beside my shoulder. His head hit the wall behind him with a deafening thump. He crumpled and slid towards the floor a couple of feet away from me, and then, apart from one brief twitch in his leg, he lay perfectly still.

I crunched into an upright position, biting hard on my bottom lip to stop the screams of agony building inside me. I grabbed the knife and got to work on my leg binds, sawing through them as quickly as possible, and glancing at Calvino every few seconds to make sure he wasn’t about to lunge at me and choke me out. His eyes were shut, but his chest was still rising and falling, so I knew I was short on time. The ties around my ankles came away.

I curled my hand around the knife and tried to cut backwards into the binds on my hands, but I couldn’t find the right angle and each attempt was useless. But I had come too far to fail now, with tied wrists or not. I held the knife between my hands and rocked back and forth until I could push up on to my feet.

When I stood up, the pain in my chest tore through me like a flame. I doubled over, clutching the knife inside my fist. Using the wall as my anchor, I slid forwards against it, one baby step and then another, forcing my screams into breathless sobs. The door was close enough to touch. Behind me, Calvino’s breathing was growing steadier.

Slowly, I started to slump against the wall. I held my ribs tight against my bound hands, but the strength was petering out of my body. I was shuddering with pain, and suddenly escape seemed impossible. He was going to catch me.

I couldn’t lift my head, and I couldn’t see the door any more. But I was close enough to feel the surge of air that rippled inside when it swung open in front of me. With every last ounce of strength, I forced my chin away from my chest and fixed my gaze forwards.

‘Sophie?’

I opened my mouth to yell, but the words came out in breathless puffs. ‘You. Asshole.’