Repaying the Mafia’s Dept

ISABELLA My head… Jesus my head feels like it’s going to explode and my whole body is on fire.

That nausea has only escalated and I feel so much worse than I did earlier.

My eyes open slowly one at a time and I find myself staring up at a white ceiling with swirling patterns that look like tiny whirlpools spiraling into the sky.

As I blink and try to process where I am I remember what happened to me and a flush of ice, races down my body.

Oh my God, oh my God. I remember exactly what happened.

The terror moves me but as I try to get up restraints hold me in place. I shuffle and realize I’m lying on a hospital type bed. My wrists are bound and so are my feet. Both tied down like I’m stuck in a horror film. Frantically I try to free myself but I know it’s to no avail. There’s no point. The person who tied me down wouldn’t exactly make it possible for me to escape. Not again.

The door swings open and in comes the man I fear the most.

My father.

I still when I see him. I go completely still, so still that my heart slows in beat and I worry that it will stop in my chest from the sight of him.

That look of death still lurks in his eyes, lingering there as a reminder of who he is.

“Isabella… I never knew we would come to this. Not you and me. Definitely not you and me. The child I took such care of,” he states.

I want to argue and tell him that his version of care is not the human way. I doubt that animals treat their young the way he treated me. I hold my tongue though. I know him. He hasn’t tied me up to prevent me from escaping. That’s not why. Whips is more his style or something with immediate pain.

I don’t know what this is. It’s something else. Something I can’t guess because I’ve never seen him do this before. If it’s one thing I know about my father it’s that the extent of his evil heart has no bounds. No limit.

“You are the worse kind of traitor. I know everything you did. Everything you did with the enemy.

Thank God for my alliances.”

“God… you thank God? How can you even talk about God?” I argue. The words fall from my lips uncontrollably.

He answers with a laugh. A cruel laugh that echoes across the room.

“I suppose you’re right. That was a slip of the tongue I guess. In any event some higher power had to have been on my side, guiding the way to the one person who could have overthrown everything I worked so hard for. You.”

“What are you going to do to me?” I want to cut to the chase. I want to cut the bull shit speech. I know what I did and I would do it all over again if I had to.

“We’ll come to that. I’m not finished talking to you yet. Think of it as my last act in this life as your father. The scolding before the punishment.”

“I’d rather you just punish me. I don’t want to hear what you have to say. You’re evil,” I throw back finding my voice. For years I existed as this spineless shell of a person who did what she was told. I was a thing he thought he could treat like nothing. Having the weeks of freedom fueled me with the power to speak up.

“I am evil. Of course I am, but you will hear me. I’m so furious with you. While I had men looking everywhere for you, you were busy helping the enemy in a plot to destroy me. They kidnapped you and instead of finding a way to contact me to save you, you saw your route to escape me. You saw a chance to be free of me and then you helped them plan to destroy me.”

“You talk like you haven’t destroyed me,” I reply. “You killed my mother and you killed Eric. You killed anyone who ever got close to me or tried to help me. You thought it was a good idea for me to marry Dmitri.”

“Such insolence. There is no reasoning here. I do not care what you feel. I’m disgusted with you.

Truly and utterly disgusted with you. how dare you question my actions. I do what I do for reasons.

Dmitri will lead this group and will see to it that my plans are fulfilled and my mission achieved.”

“You speak so highly of your mission, why don’t you do it yourself? Why the hell are you retiring?”

“Because I’m dying.” He throws back stunning me to silence. “I’m dying. That will be the only reason why I won’t be doing it myself.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I want to know. He stares back at me and I think back to when I was a child. I used to be terrified that something would happen to him. Now I’m being told it is and I feel nothing but curiosity to know what it is that will take him from this world.

“Brain tumors,” he says tapping the side of his head. “I look good now but in eight months I doubt I’ll look anything close to this. I wanted to sort everything out while I still had the capacity.”

I stare back at him with nothing to say.

I feel nothing. No compassion whatsoever. Not even the natural familial sympathy a person would be compelled to feel because he’s my father.

“You very nearly ruined me, Isabella. It’s almost poetic, my own creation turned against me like Frankenstein’s monster.”Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“That’s what you think I am?” I counter thrashing against the restraints. “I’m not the monster here.

You are.”

“To me the monsters are anyone who support the Syndicate. That is what you have done. Whether the Syndicate exists as one man or many it is a threat because of the power. It’s too much. I welcomed the union I took with others to eradicate them and at the time I believed I’d have Ricardo Balesteri on my right hand. I believed I’d have control. But it didn’t happen that way. At least now I know what they’re up to and believe me I plan to fight back. I’ll deal with you first though.”

“I’m not marrying Dmitri,” I balk.

“Marriage? Oh no it’s gone past that I’m afraid. You are no longer worthy to be part of my life for what little remains of it, nor my group. The only thing you will be good for is the example I’m going to make out of you. You will receive the same punishment your mother got. You are exactly like that whore and history has repeated itself.”

“You’re… going to kill me,” I breathe, barely able to get the words out.

“Conspiring with the enemy, sleeping with the enemy, and like your mother carrying the enemies child.”

My mouth drops open and shock slams through my body making my head feel lighter than it already was.

“What? What did you say?”

“You’re pregnant. We had you checked out to make sure you didn’t have any trackers on you and that’s what we discovered. And the way I hear it Tristan D’Agostino did not force himself on you.

You gave yourself willingly to a man who was planning to kill your father. I will not allow such an abomination. Like your mother you will die.”

“That’s why you killed her?” Now I’m more taken aback by that than my own situation.

“I loved that woman more than anything. More than life. She was the most important thing in the world to me and you were the result of that love. Then she betrayed me. Alfonse Belmond was the man who informed me of her betrayal. She was having an affair with James Mazzone Sr. a syndicate member. She got pregnant. So I killed her and I killed him too.”

My heart squeezes as everything falls into place. I have answers now for everything, all of it. All that happened in the past.

“Like her, I will kill you,” he adds. “We’ll head back to Rhode Island and at noon tomorrow I will invite the senior Shadow members to watch me cut the child out of you. I will kill my own daughter as a symbol of my loyalty to our cause, then Dmitri will burn what’s left of you whether you’re alive or dead when I’m finished with you. We will show that disobedience will not be tolerated in the Circle of Shadows. You will not get away with this.”

The tears fall down my cheeks making my vision blur. The drumming in my heart takes over my thoughts and fears.

He looks me over and walks away and as the door closes darkness overwhelms me inside and out. I’m dead.

I’m going to die here.

I’m pregnant and my father’s going to kill me.

Tristan… He’ll never know.

I’m sure by now he must know I’m gone and he won’t think I escaped. Not with Nick watching the place. Nick was shot. He’ll find him and I’m certain the first thing he’ll think is that my father got to me.

He’ll know the plan is off. It only worked with the element of surprise and I was their leverage.

They don’t have that now and I have nothing.

He wouldn’t come just for me.

No one will.