SAVAGE RITES
The Holland Tunnel was a tiled throat swallowing us whole.
Nico drove the car like a weapon, weaving through the late-night traffic. The yellow lights of the tunnel flashed rhythmically over his face, light, shadow, light, shadow revealing the hard set of his jaw and the absolute lack of mercy in his eyes.
I sat in the passenger seat, my hands folded in my lap. I wasn’t shaking anymore. I wasn’t crying. I felt like I had been hollowed out with a spoon, leaving nothing inside but a cold, echoing draft.
She’ll figure it out.
My father’s voice played on a loop in my head. Not the monster Nico painted him to be, but the pathetic, wheedling voice of a man trying to justify murder to himself. He hadn’t just abandoned me; he had gambled my life on the off chance that Nico De Luca had a conscience.
And he had lost.
“You’re quiet,” Nico said. His voice cut through the hum of the engine and the rush of air.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked, staring at the dirty white tiles blurring past.
“I want you to admit I was right.”
I turned my head slowly to look at him. “Is that what this is about? Winning?”
“It’s about reality, Elena,” Nico said, shifting gears as we burst out of the tunnel and into the rain-slicked darkness of New Jersey.
“You’ve been living in a fantasy where your father is a victim and I am the villain. Tonight, the lights come on.”
“He was scared,” I whispered, the old defense rising automatically.
“He bought a ticket to the Maldives,” Nico countered brutally. “He didn’t buy a ticket for two. He didn’t ask the fence to send a message to you. He asked for the money.”
He glanced at me, his eyes momentarily leaving the road to pin me to my seat.
“He sold you for twenty percent of the cut. That is your market value to him, Elena. A discount on a bag of diamonds.”
The number stung worse than a slap. Twenty percent.
I looked back out the window.
“What happens when we get there?” I asked. My voice sounded dead to my own ears.
“The pilot is on my payroll,” Nico explained, his tone conversational, as if discussing the weather. “He’s been instructed to keep the engines running. Your father will board. He will think he is safe. He will settle into his seat and ask for a drink.”
Nico’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, the leather creaking.
“And then, I will walk up the stairs.”
“And kill him?”
“Eventually,” Nico said. “But first, we are going to have a family reunion.”
We took the exit for Teterboro. The airport was a playground for the rich, private jets, corporate charters, no TSA lines to slow down the escape.
Nico navigated the perimeter road, bypassing the main terminal entrance. He pulled up to a chain-link gate with a keypad. He didn’t roll down the window; the gate simply began to slide open as we approached.
They were expecting us.
We drove onto the tarmac. The runway lights were blue and gold strings of pearls stretching into the darkness.
In the distance, parked near a private hangar, was a sleek white Gulfstream jet. Its engines were whining, a high-pitched scream that vibrated in my teeth. The stairs were down.
Nico killed the headlights. The Aston Martin prowled forward in the dark, sliding into the shadow of the hangar, hidden from the plane’s view.
He turned off the engine. The silence inside the car was sudden and heavy.
Nico turned to me. The ambient light from the runway reflected in his eyes, making them look like pools of mercury.
“This is the moment, Elena,” he said softly.
“You can stay in the car. You can cover your ears and close your eyes. You can pretend this isn’t happening.”
He reached into his jacket and adjusted the gun in his holster.
“Or,” he said, “you can get out. You can walk with me. And you can watch him realize that he made the wrong choice.”
I looked at the plane. I imagined my father inside, probably sweating, probably clutching a bag of stolen stones, thinking he had outsmarted the devil.
If I stayed in the car, I was the victim. I was the little girl waiting for daddy to come back.
But daddy wasn’t coming back.
The anger finally hit me. It wasn’t the hot, flashy anger I felt toward Nico. It was a cold, black sludge in my veins. It was the realization that for my entire life, I had been protecting a man who saw me as nothing more than an insurance policy he could cash in.
I reached for the door handle.
“I’m not staying in the car,” I said.
Nico smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was a smile of recognition. He saw the darkness waking up inside me, and he welcomed it.
“Good girl,” he whispered.
He got out. I followed.
The wind on the tarmac was biting, whipping my hair across my face and cutting through my thin clothes. The smell of jet fuel was overpowering.
Nico walked around the car and offered me his arm.
I took it. His wool coat was rough under my fingers, the muscle beneath hard as stone.
We walked toward the plane.
The wind tore at us, but Nico was an anchor. He walked with a terrifying purpose, his strides long and even.
We reached the bottom of the airstairs.
A flight attendant was standing at the top of the stairs. She looked pale. When she saw Nico, she didn’t ask for a boarding pass. She simply stepped aside and vanished into the cockpit, closing the door behind her.
Nico looked down at me. He shouted over the noise of the engines.
“Last chance to turn back, Little Mouse.”
I looked up the stairs. The cabin door was open. Warm, golden light spilled out onto the metal steps.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We climbed.
Step one. He left me.
Step two. He lied.
Step three. He sold me.
We reached the top.
Nico didn’t hesitate. He stepped through the doorway, pulling me with him.
The cabin was luxurious cream leather seats, mahogany trim, fresh flowers.
And there, sitting in a club chair halfway down the aisle, facing away from the door, was a man.
He was pouring a scotch from a crystal decanter. His hand was shaking slightly.
” Hey, Captain,” my father called out, not turning around. “How long until wheels up? I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
Nico released my arm. He stood tall, filling the aisle, blocking the exit.
“The flight has been canceled, Tony,” Nico said. His voice was smooth, deep, and carried perfectly through the silent cabin.
My father froze. The crystal stopper slipped from his fingers and hit the table with a loud thud.
Slowly, agonizingly, he turned around.
His face was older than I remembered. More lined. His eyes were bloodshot. When he saw Nico, the color drained from his skin, leaving him gray.
And then, he saw me.
Standing next to the reaper, shivering in a thin camisole, with a face made of stone.
“Elena?” he whispered, his voice cracking.
“El… baby?”
“Hello, Dad,” I said.
And I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Nico’s Point of View
Fear has a smell.
It was rolling off Tony Rossi in waves, filling the pressurized cabin of the Gulfstream until it choked out the smell of the leather and the fresh lilies on the table.
I stood in the aisle, blocking the exit, and watched the Rat crumble.
He was pathetic. It was almost insulting that this man had managed to steal five million dollars from my family. He was sweating through his linen shirt, his hands shaking so badly the ice in his glass rattled like wind chimes.
But I wasn’t looking at him. Not really.
I was looking at Elena.
She stood beside me, her shoulder brushing against my arm. She was wearing a thin white camisole that offered zero protection against the cold wind whipping through the open door, but she wasn’t shivering anymore.
Her face was a mask of porcelain and ice. Her eyes, usually so expressive, were dead.
I felt a surge of dark, twisted pride coil in my gut.
I did that, I thought. I took the frightened little mouse from the library and turned her into this.
Most women would be screaming. They would be crying, begging their daddy to explain, begging me for mercy. But Elena just stood there. She looked like a queen standing in the ashes of her kingdom.
She was beautiful in her ruin.
“Elena,” Tony stammered, taking a step toward her. He looked like he wanted to hug her, but he was terrified to get within striking distance of me. “Baby, I… I didn’t know he had you. I thought you were safe at the school.”
“Don’t lie to her, Tony,” I said. My voice was low, bored. “It insults her intelligence. And it annoys me.”
I took a step forward. Tony scrambled back, hitting his shins against the coffee table. He collapsed back into the club chair, looking small and defeated.
“I had to go,” Tony pleaded, his eyes darting between me and his daughter. “Elena, you have to understand. They were going to kill me. I needed to get away, get set up somewhere safe, and then I was going to send for you!”
“With what money?” I asked. “The money you stole? Or the money you were going to make by selling her out to the fence?”
Tony flinched. “I didn’t sell her! I just… I made a deal for a flight! I figured… I figured she’s smart. She’s resilient.”
I felt Elena tense beside me. I waited for her to snap. I wanted to see what she would do. I had handed her the knife; now I wanted to see if she would use it.
“Resilient,” Elena repeated. Her voice was flat, unrecognizable.
She walked forward. She moved slowly, like a predator stalking prey. She stopped right in front of her father’s chair.
“You left me in a diner in Ohio for three years while you planned this,” she said. “You let me work double shifts to pay for our groceries while you were sitting on millions.”
“I was protecting you!” Tony cried. “If I spent the money, they would have found us!”
“And then,” she continued, ignoring him, “you sent me to Blackwood. Into the lion’s den. You knew who Nico was. You knew what the De Lucas do to people who cross them.”
“I thought the scholarship would cover it! I thought you’d be invisible!”
“I wasn’t invisible,” Elena whispered. She leaned down, her hands gripping the armrests of his chair, trapping him. “He found me on the first day. Do you want to know what he’s done to me, Dad? Do you want to know what I had to do to survive because you were too busy booking a flight to the Maldives?”
Tony looked away. He couldn’t meet her eyes. The cowardice radiated off him.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “El, I’m sorry.”
Elena stared at the top of his head. I saw her hand twitch. She wanted to hit him.
“Where are the stones?” I asked, cutting through the melodrama.
Tony looked up at me, sweat dripping down his temple. “If I give them to you… do I walk?”
I smiled. “Tony. You know how this works. You don’t get to negotiate.”
I pulled the gun from my holster. The sound of the polymer against leather was loud in the silent cabin. I didn’t point it at his head. I pointed it at his knee.
“The stones,” I said. “Or you lose the kneecap. Then the other one. Then the fingers.”
Tony scrambled for the leather satchel at his feet. He fumbled with the buckles, his breathing coming in jagged gasps. He turned the bag over, shaking it out onto the table.
Diamonds spilled out. Uncut, dull stones that looked like sea glass, rolling across the mahogany surface. Millions of dollars in raw carbon.
I looked at the pile. It was a lot. But it wasn’t everything.
“This is the twenty percent,” I noted. “Where is the rest?”
“Safe deposit box,” Tony wheezed. “Zurich. I have the key. I have the codes.”
“Good.” I holstered the gun. I walked over to the table and scooped the diamonds back into the bag. I weighed it in my hand. It was heavy.
I looked at Elena. She was still staring at her father. She looked like she was trying to memorize a stranger’s face.
“Elena,” I said.
She didn’t look at me.
“Elena,” I said sharper.
She turned. Her dark eyes met mine. There was no light in them. Just a vast, empty darkness that matched my own.
“He’s all yours,” I said. “Say what you need to say. Because you’re never going to see him again.”
Tony’s head snapped up. “What? You said…”
“I said nothing about letting you go,” I corrected. “You’re coming with me. To a place where no one will ever find you. You have a debt to work off, Tony. And it’s going to take you a very long time.”
Tony lunged for Elena’s hand. He grabbed her fingers, clutching them like a lifeline.
“Elena, please! Don’t let him take me! I’m your father! I raised you!”
I watched Elena’s face. This was the test. The final exam.
If she cried, if she begged me to spare him, she was weak. She was just another girl.
But if she cut the cord…
Elena looked down at her hand in his. She looked at his weeping face.
Slowly, deliberately, she pulled her hand away. It wasn’t a violent motion. It was a dismissal.
“You’re not my father,” she whispered. “My father died in Ohio.”
She turned her back on him. She walked toward me. She didn’t look back.
“Take me home, Nico,” she said.
I felt a rush of adrenaline that had nothing to do with the heist.
She had done it. She had killed the last part of herself that was good.
I reached out and grabbed her nape, pulling her flush against me. I didn’t care that her father was watching. I wanted him to watch.
“You did good, Little Mouse,” I murmured.
I looked over her head at Matteo, who had just appeared in the doorway of the plane, flanked by two of my security team. I nodded at Tony.
“Bag him,” I ordered.
As my men swarmed the cabin, dragging a screaming Tony Rossi out of his chair, I guided Elena out the door and back into the cold night air.
She didn’t shiver this time. She walked beside me, her head held high, cold as ice.
She finally belonged to me. Completely.
.
