The Mafia Contract Series

WINTER

Massimo appears to be in a good mood today. He gently hums as he works on painting my face like an artist who is happy with his work for once. Many times, he has been irritated with his attempts at creating the perfect masterpiece of flawless perfection. Often, he would scrawl across my face with lipstick as if trying to cover up his mistakes and ending his attempts with an aggressive show of anger.

Today his touch is light, almost gentle, but I don’t think the impression of his fingers against my skin will ever stop disgusting me.

His aging face, the deep wrinkles put there by years of savagery and disgusting acts against mankind, outline a living monster who should have been slain centuries ago.

The thinning hair that he so desperately tries to freeze in time, dying it black and undergoing surgery to weave the strands of his victim’s hair into his own scalp repulses me. Yes, Massimo is a monster of a unique kind because he plunders their bodies and wears their scalps as a badge of honor. I wonder how many corpses now lie incinerated in his basement, minus their scalps that now live on the head of the man who murdered them.

Sick, twisted, depraved and psychotic. The man who controls every part of me but my soul. That belongs to two men. Three if you count my twin brother Angelo. I endure a living Hell just for them and one day I will slay the monster myself and set us all free.

It’s like a wind whipping around my soul, from the ground up. A constant realization that my day creeps ever closer. Something in the air, a faint stirring of destiny that soothes my wearied soul and gently caresses it like a nurturing mother holding their baby. My time is approaching and the man I call my husband will discover what it’s like to stare death in the face and know there is no escaping it.

I have heard so many pleas and agonized screams from the many victims he has murdered in the cell next door to my own. I shivered while perched on my swing, waiting for my turn to discover what that feels like. Massimo Delauren is one of Mother Nature’s biggest mistakes and when he breathes his last, it will be the most painful experience of his life and my greatest moment.

He leans back and considers his work and I wait for his judgment, fully expecting him to snarl and scream with anger if there is one speck of color out of place or a smudge that renders his art imperfect.

Today he appears happy, and he sings in a childish voice as if he’s four years old. “Pretty, pretty princess, how I love thine beauty. How I love thine smile and how I love thine innocence. Dance with me, my angel, and let thine happiness fill your heart because you belong to me forever until I say otherwise.”

He hums as he pulls me to my feet, and I have no choice but to skip around the dressing room as he twirls me around and laughs like the maniac he is. It’s difficult to dance on the high heels he always makes me wear, but I know one false move would sour his good mood in an instant. He may not hurt me physically, but he has damaged my soul with harsh words, cruel acts, and denying me one thing. Access to the one person who keeps my heart beating. My son. Frankie.

As I twirl in the arms of a sadistic horror show, I calm my frantic heart with images of my son. He is the one thing that counts in my life. A gift from God to accompany me through hell and provide a guiding light to walk toward, and I will not fail.NôvelDrama.Org (C) content.

Frankie is growing up and yet I don’t get to witness those special milestones first hand. He is locked in his nursery with a faceless nanny, and the only time I visit him is when I have earned the reward. I love it when he smiles up at me from his crib, his long lashes dusting against his cheeks and those beautiful brown eyes filled with innocence and happiness. It’s like staring into a duplicate of his father and my heart twists with regret every time I allow myself to let Alessandro back into my head. I try to push him out, to guard my heart against my most treasured memory, but it’s always there reminding me how different my life could have been if fate hadn’t been so cruel.

One night only was all we had, but what a fucking night it was. We took a moment in the madness and made it ours. A selfish act of greed that erupted into one night of pleasure that I will never forget and not just because of the bundle of both our DNA that rests in his crib upstairs.

For once in my life, I was free. I experienced what it was like to be loved, and Alessandro played that part perfectly. I have come to terms with the fact it was one night only, and I regret nothing. Wherever he is now, whoever he is with, doesn’t matter anymore. At least that’s what I’m training my heart to believe.

Above all, I hope he’s happy and not too disappointed in me because to the outside world I love the monster I call my husband and turned my back on the rest of civilization to live in a gilded cage with him controlling the lock and key.

“Come my darling, today we have a very special treat to enjoy.”

My heart sinks when he laughs like the maniac he is. “But first we must visit my wife and Wesley. They will love hearing what I have planned.”

The fear creeps across my skin like a case of poison ivy. Just the thought of returning to the mausoleum Massimo has created in this mansion fills me with desperation. Since learning of its existence, I haven’t slept out of fear of joining the corpses in the sterile space and I’m nauseous at the thought of spending even just one second breathing the rancid air where death lingers, promising a cruel bitter end.

Massimo is eager to get there it seems and moves at a brisk pace along the marble lined corridor. The place is clean and sterile because any speck of dust sends him into a rage. The servants he employs blend into the surroundings and never appear when he is there. It’s as if they fade back into the darkened corners like shadows shrinking from the light.

Once again, he hums as he walks, and I try to still my frantic heart. The last time I met his wife and learned the fate of his friend will be forever etched on my soul as if he took a knife and carved the images into it himself. Dark, cruel, sadistic, and evil. Not really the qualities a woman looks for in a husband and knowing that one day I will end up in that room is enough incentive to make me plot his death a little faster.

As he holds his finger up to the biometric entry system, my heart starts racing with fear and desperation as I consider what the special treat he has lined up could be.

I’m guessing treat is the wrong description entirely because it will probably involve heaping even more misery onto my already burdened shoulders.

As we enter the room, I try not to glance at the golden effigy spinning above the glass casket, knowing his friend is the only entertainment his dead wife gets to enjoy. Wesley betrayed Massimo and now spins as a golden light above his wife’s head as a perpetual punishment for his sins. The fact he’s paralyzed and yet lives on inside his mind is almost too much to contemplate and yet knowing how evil Wesley Vasquez was, I can’t feel sorry for him. If anything, I’m happy he had the cruelest retribution, which just shows how scarred my mind has become.

“Imogen, my darling, you are looking as beautiful as always.”

Massimo falls onto his wife’s coffin and starts wailing as he makes contact. Hammering his fists onto the toughened glass, making me wish he would succeed in breaking through and the jagged glass will sever an artery.

However, Massimo has the best that money can buy and I’m guessing the toughened glass is no exception. You could probably drop a heavy weight on it, and it wouldn’t budge.

Inside, the mummified remains of his wife stare up at him and I shiver with revulsion and fear. The last time we were here, Massimo promised my own destiny was to swing alongside Wesley over another coffin that has yet to be filled.

Massimo’s daughter is the lucky recipient and I pray to God he never finds her because knowing her fate when he does makes me fearful of it ever coming true.

Massimo blames his daughter for his wife’s death because she died during childbirth, and he only discovered she was alive at all a few weeks ago. He always thought a friend of mine, Flynn, was his son and instructed Wesley to make the boy’s life a living hell for killing his wife.

However, Massimo was tricked, and the real baby was sent away and as it turned out, Wesley himself was Flynn’s father.

“Winter!”

Massimo shouts my name and I jump, peering at him through startled eyes, which I quickly attempt to conceal. Massimo expects me to remain emotionless, an empty doll that he controls and commands, and any sign of humanity is stripped away if it shows itself.

His eyes narrow and I struggle to remain impassive as he beckons me across to the glass coffin.

“Come and pay your respects to Imogen. She wants to see you.”

I say nothing and move like an automaton to stand beside the coffin, and he screeches so loud it almost makes me jump.

“Pay your fucking respects, you bitch.”

I’m not sure what he wants me to do and as I hover near the coffin, I’m shocked when he grabs my head and slams me face down onto it, almost breaking my nose.

He holds my head firmly and screams, “Look at her! Look at my darling wife. Look at what they did.”

I open my eyes and stare into the empty pits of death and decay and the bile rises in my throat as I come face to face with mortality.

“Look at my beautiful bride. They did this to her, those bastards who betrayed me. That bitch who forced her way out of my wife’s beautiful defenseless body and took her life along with her. She will pay for that. They will all pay for that, and I will have my delicious revenge.”

Once again, he slams my face down hard, and I wonder if my nose is broken. A faint drop of blood spills onto the glass and, if anything, I am fearful of the repercussions of that. Any sign of anything less than perfection is liable to send him into a fearsome rage, and I’m more afraid of that than anything right now.

He starts to wail like a demon burning in hell and I suppose he is. Put there by his own mentality and as he pulls me to my feet, he packs the madness back into its box and smiles, looking around the room as if addressing a crowd. “So, I brought you here to tell you all of my plan, and I think you’re going to like it.”

He starts to laugh and dance around the room and if I wasn’t used to his manic personality by now, this strikes me as the moment he reveals the full extent of his insanity.

“As it turns out, my darlings…” He turns and smiles as if he’s a kid on Christmas day and just received his greatest wish.

“Today I am going to win. Today I am going to end this and today I am going to finish what I started all those years ago.”

The expression in his eye is different this time. It cuts me deep and chokes me to death. He has changed from the mad murdering bastard into an even more deranged version of himself and he turns to me with all the fury of hell in his eyes and spits, “It turns out that betraying me is a club many seek membership of. Do you remember our old friend Portia Symmons, my darling?” He turns to the coffin and growls, “She has taken me for a fool and sided with my enemies. She thinks she has the right to interfere in our lives, but we both know I am always ten steps ahead of the pack.”

The dread curls around my soul edging out the hope that has always lived inside me for an end to this madness as Massimo says with deep anger coating his words, “Today is the day I cleanse my world of all my enemies and you my darling Winter…” he looks at me with triumph, “Will have a front-row seat and watch everyone you ever cared about discover how powerful I really am. Today they lose everything and there is absolutely nothing they can do to prevent it from happening.”