Red

C H A P T E R T W E L V E

Condensation grew on the tiles from the hotness of my shower. I shampooed my hair with extra caution, just in case I set the bomb off.

It was exhausting, living in my own mind.

Living with this thing in my head.

I dropped down to the floor and cried.

It was the first time that I had cried since he put the explosive device in my head and it was pathetic, I sobbed under the running water. Masking my tears by the shower nozzle.

I wasn’t allowed to do this, to feel emotion. To be human. I wasn’t allowed to cry, to feel scared, lost and alone. My father would call me weak and I would be nothing more than a disappointment to him, to them all.

“Get the fuck over it Gabriella. Crying isn’t going to solve anything.” I banged my palm into my chest to instead feel pain.

I was living with a bomb in my neck, it sounded insane. I was terrified of making any moves, I couldn’t go visit the safe house in case tracked my location. I couldn’t call my father or brothers in case it could hear my conversations and I was too frightened to get a doctor to examine me in case he set it off.

I was dying.

Ace was killing me, winning already and we hadn’t even started the battle yet.

I pulled myself together, somehow and wrapped a bath towel around my body. After pouring myself a glass of wine I set down in front of my computer and typed ‘bomb disposal’ and ‘bomb removal’ into my search engine.

After finding nothing comforting I opened my burner phone and text my father.

Ace did something to me. I have a bomb in the back of my neck. I need help, don’t call. Not safe.

I was instructed to destroy my phone anytime I contacted them. The message didn’t get replied to, so I poured myself another wine and touched the scar on my neck.

I imagined what it looked like so clearly. Dark in colour, big and neat. It felt raised from my skin quite a lot.

The door shook in its frame and I got up to open it. The family doctor Flávio stood out in the apartment hallway and I beckoned him inside, looking left and right at the empty corridor to make sure he wasn’t followed.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Lay down, I’ll scan the back of your neck and see what we find. We’ll go from there.” I trusted him, he had sewn up many of our bullet holes, tended to many of our wounds. But this, I felt was a little out of his league.

“What if it explodes?”

“Willa, it’s only a scanner. It won’t explode.” He reassured me. He was aged and his hand had a slight tremor, we really ought to take on his son but Flávio had built up the family trust so we couldn’t just let him go.

I drank directly from the wine bottle, trying to get as much in my system as possible but then I nodded and lay flat on my stomach, whisking away my hair.

“The jelly will be cold.” I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing.

A small device glided over my neck, it buzzed quietly and seemed to take forever. A nervousness bubbled up inside me as I expected to be told the worse.

“Hmm,” he commented.

“Hmm, what?” I asked impatiently.

“There’s definitely something there. Something reactive, electrical and switched on.” He pulled out a pen from his pocket and drew on my flesh, I held my breath. I really didn’t like him poking back there.

I heard the camera sound on his phone and then he held the image in front of my face. I studied it silently, searching for the scar.

“So the actual object is about the size of a standard battery as I’ve drawn.” He pointed to an oblong shape with the tip of his pen but I focused only on the scar, it was barely visible. It felt much bigger with my hand. “We would need to carefully cut you open around the object and then gently lift it out.”

“Is it a bomb?”

“Quite possibly.” I exhaled and my hand reached for the wine again. “It’s quite deep too, sitting two centimetres below your flesh.”

“So, you think you can remove it?”

“I can remove it, I’m a doctor.” I sighed out of pure relief. “But bomb removal is not my specialty, there lies the problem. To do this safely I’d need to cut you open and someone else would have to remove the bomb. You can’t go back to the safehouse so we don’t have access to the surgery or correct equipment, we don’t have a sterile environment. In all honesty it’s a huge risk Willa. Even if I open you up I have no idea how to remove it safely.”

“Fuck.” I chugged the wine.

“If we had the design plan then we could potentially turn it off before we started the surgery and then safely remove it but without that we have no idea what this thing is, what it does or how to stop it.”

“Okay.” I put my hand up to stop him, the outcome looked bleak and I really didn’t want to hear him speak anymore.

“We have other options we can seek. I can come back with the bomb experts, scan you again and hear their opinion. But in the meantime I urge you to find the person working with him. If approaching Ace will draw too much attention then go under him and find the brains behind the operation.”

“So the person who created the bomb and told him how to attach it?”

“Exactly.” He started gathering up his equipment and packing them away. “You should get some rest Willa, you don’t look too good. Maybe this mission was a little bit too much for you to take on. Mafia leaders from all over have gone up against the Blackburn family many times and failed. You’re just one girl, cut yourself some slack.”

“Don’t underestimate me Flávio, I can do this. Yeah he might have got me good by sticking this thing in my head but that only proves I need to work harder. Approach it from a different angle. I’ll get you the bomb design and I’ll prove to all of you mother-fuckers that I can do this. I will be the one to take Ace Blackburn down, you will see.”

“I only tell to rest because I care Willa. I feel like Alessio is putting too much on you, you’ve never done anything this big. Get some sleep and hydrate, doctors orders.”

I shown him to the door and then I rose my middle finger up behind his back. When he turned around I quickly dropped it back down and smiled sheepishly.

“So lovely to see you again Willa, if only it was under better circumstances.”

“You too Flávio, stay safe. It’s a cruel world out there.”