The Hitman's Secret

Ch 33: Playing God

MATTEO

Valentina didn't shoot the man once. She didn't shoot him twice. She emptied the rest of the fucking magazine into Tomasso's face.

Four consecutive shots rattled the mansion's walls as Val triggered slug after slug into her enemy's head. The first bullet killed him, but she didn't stop until the bone constructing his skull shattered. Pieces of bone separated from his body, colliding against the floor with wet slaps. Eventually, the men holding Tomasso's arms dropped, and his body fell.

Matteo had seen his fair share of violence, but the brain matter seeping out of the blasted holes in Tomasso's head made his stomach roil. Everyone in the foyer watched the scene in stunned silence.

Everyone, that is, except Valentina herself.

She stared down at Tomasso's crumpled body, her shoulders back and chin tight, the gun now hanging limp by her side. Not a muscle trembled. Her breaths remained calm and controlled, and the echo of that final gunshot still radiated between the walls.

At last, his principessa huffed a single vacant laugh, as if amused by the sight of the capos' unrecognizable face. Then, she turned and leveled her cold gaze at every living person in the room.

Her eyes were horribly bloodshot, dozens of broken vessels spilling red across the whites as a result of the attack. An ugly red bruise already started to form, the outline of Tomasso's fingers on her delicate neck.

Matteo felt the familiar fumes of rage billow inside, and suddenly four bullets to the head wasn't a violent enough death for the traitorous capo...

Matteo had been sitting around the table in the lounge, discussing the Irish Kings with Leonardo and the other capos, when they heard it. Screaming.

He'd seen Val and Elisa quietly exit the room mere minutes earlier. Dread, unlike anything he'd ever felt before, consumed him as he pushed away from the poker table and raced out of the lounge. Adriano raced ahead, a man possessed by the sound of his wife's panic, and Matteo would never forget the sight that greeted him.

It would be etched in his mind, his nightmares, until the day he died.

His Valentina, seconds from having the life snuffed out of her by a jealous, cowardly man. Her skin had turned purple, her eyes bulged from their sockets. If Adriano had arrived even a moment later, the absence of oxygen could've killed her. Or left her brain dead.

Matteo had been shot and cut-up, tortured and brutalized, but none of that physical pain prepared him for the onslaught of anguish that he felt at the possibility of losing Val.

"Anyone else?" she challenged, her voice a mere husk of its usual clear, confident tone. Blood splatter marred her face and arm, and the bright crimson was disturbingly out of place on such beauty.

Val held the gaze of every capo in the foyer, a cold invitation for another traitor to come forward and receive the same treatment as Tomasso.

Matteo knew that there were more capos who held the same views as Tomasso, but none stepped forward. Of course not.

Disloyalty and cowardice festered at the heart of the Romano famiglia– no, the entire Cosa Nostra. If changes weren't made, the crime organization would fall, either to external forces or internal power struggles. Perhaps both.

If it wasn't for Valentina, Matteo would've walked away weeks ago. For some unfathomable reason, she still wanted to take her place among the famiglia. As if she thought she could save it from itself.

After staring down every one of the men lining the gruesome scene, Val seemed content. She tossed the emptied firearm on Tomasso's dead body and stepped over him, spearing toward the staircase.