Someone crouches down beside me and touches my arm. “Lorenzo?”
I get to my feet and move back a pace, and then to the left. “Here. This is where the camera must have been positioned.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine, as if I’ve been half-strangled. I look around wildly and see the door. “He always entered from the right. There was a…” I move my arm back and forth, remembering how the table looked, four feet high and human-sized. Long enough to fit a man. Or woman.
“There was a chair,” I say, my voice reaching my ears from a long way away.
I can see the ropes binding my sister to the chair, her blonde hair tangled and falling over her shoulder. Her tear-stained and mascara-streaked face and the terror in her eyes. Terror and total confusion. She didn’t understand why any of this was happening to her and her captor never bothered to explain. Maybe Sienna went to her death never knowing why, or maybe in her heart of hearts, she knew.
She was tortured and killed because of me.
“Is this the place?” Cassius demands, his voice rough with emotion. “Were they killed here?”
The walls still hold the echo of their screams. The air is dank with their misery. I can smell their blood in the concrete. “This is where our sisters were killed.”
Chiara moans. “I didn’t want to be right. This isn’t the man I knew. This isn’t the face he showed to everyone.”
“Bambina, whose house is this?”
“Mom and I came here the summer after your sisters were murdered. It rained all week and Nicole and I were bored. There was nothing to do but play hide and seek. The basement door was always locked and I was told never to come down here, but one day I tried the handle, and it opened.” Her eyes grow unfocused at the memory. “The smell. I was too young to know what it was, but I know now. It was death. There was something terrifying about his face when he found me down here. Just for a second, he looked like a monster. Something out of a nightmare. I was only ten years old and you’re full of make-believe when you’re ten, and I told myself I’d imagined it. I forgot all about that day until just before when Nicole and I were reminiscing. Do you remember what we talked about, Lorenzo? I thought that the man who murdered your sisters was a doctor, or someone medical. While I was going through all the cold cases Vinicius dug up, I thought to myself, this killer must travel a lot. He must have a good excuse to be away from home so often.”
Chiara takes a deep breath and looks around the basement.
“The man who owns this house is a medical researcher. He travels all the time for medical conferences. He knows Dad. He’s a really good friend of Dad’s and he has been for years. To look at him, he seems weak and harmless, but I saw who he really was the day he found me in this basement. I saw the monster in his eyes.”
My fists clench so hard that my nails cut into my flesh. “Who is it?”
She swallows hard, and whispers, “Mr. De Luca.”
Just outside the door, there’s the sound of a footfall. For a split second, we all freeze and Cassius and I stare at each other in horror as we realize what we’ve done. We’ve brought Chiara to a serial killer’s house.
I lunge for the door just in time for it to swing closed. Someone on the other side has pulled it shut and locked it.
I pound against the door. “De Luca? Open this door. Open this fucking door!”
A menacing voice travels through the door, so different from his usual weak, whiny tone. “I told you to stay out of my basement, Chiara. You think I haven’t learned by now? This house is protected by a silent alarm.”
“All those years ago, I saw your true face and I told myself that I imagined it,” Chiara says, her eyes wide and terrified. “You’re a better actor than Vinicius realized. You’ve been acting all your life, pretending to be a weak and timid father and researcher.”
“Who’s in there?” De Luca says in a sly voice. “Is it Vinicius Angeli? I strung your junkie sister out before I killed her. The withdrawal was so terrible that her whole body was on fire. How it made me laugh. I barely needed to torture her myself.”
I beat on the door with both my fists. “Open this door, you murdering fuck!”
“That sounds like the crude tones of Lorenzo Scava. I made your sister so beautiful. Aren’t you grateful? Perfect on the outside. A filthy piece of trash on the inside, just like her brother.”
I pull out my revolver and fire three shots into the wood. The bullets penetrate but don’t pass through.
Chiara calls out, “Mr. De Luca, why did you do it? What did these men and their sisters ever do to you?”
“Chiara, you’re so na?ve it hurts. Of course you flocked to four broken men, the goody-goody politician’s daughter. This was all your father’s idea, and I was happy to oblige. What does he do to people he doesn’t like? He makes them suffer. He made your mother suffer, or were you so wrapped up in yourself that you didn’t notice how much he’d broken her by the end?”
Chiara puts her hand over her mouth and sobs. “You did all this for Dad?”
“For the price of his silence. Your father found out about my artistry and he agreed to turn a blind eye on the condition that I found my victims outside Coldlake, and if I performed a little favor for him. Four sweet little favors. How he hates the syndicate for their power and lawlessness. The mayor let your men play in his city, but they were going to be happy over his dead body.”
Cassius steps up to the door without a word, lifts his foot and kicks it hard. The door barely shakes under the force of the kick.
“You’ll never make them happy, Chiara, no matter how many times you let them fuck you.”
Chiara has tears streaming down her face. “How could you? All those women were innocent.”
“I don’t need to justify what I do to those who crawl about on the surface of this earth like worms.” De Luca sounds crazed as he shouts, “I’m above you all! I’m better than all of you. You’re cattle. You’re nothing, and so were your sisters.”
“Shut your fucking mouth, you stronzo fiammeggiante,” Cassius roars between kicks.
“Those videos are some of my finest work. I hope you’ve enjoyed rewatching them as often as I do.”
He’s there. He’s right fucking there, just inches from me, and I can’t get my hands on him to tear him apart. I push my fingers through my hair and growl in frustration.
There’s the sound of footsteps disappearing back up the stairs.
Chiara screams after him, “You can leave us here to die, but our friends will still find us. It’s all over for you, Mr. De Luca. Everyone’s going to know what you’ve done. Your wife. Nicole.”
The footsteps stop. “Will they, though?”
He gives a cold laugh, and then he continues walking up the stairs.
“Don’t you dare! Leave them alone!” Chiara screams, but there’s no answer.
Cassius goes on kicking the door and ramming it with his shoulder, but we’re trapped like fucking animals.