Page 92 of The Strength Of A Woman

“Prepare twelve body bags. No one gets out alive.”

We arrive on time to contain the shooting inside the second house. Two men lie on the ground in the courtyard, and many others are fighting my men inside.

A couple of them make a run for the house she’s in.

“I’ll take care of those,” I say, unbuttoning my suit jacket as I pick up an automatic weapon from inside the floor of the car.

Within moments, the air smells like gunpowder, and gunshots ring in the otherwise quiet town.

Some are muffled, while others pierce the air with their sharp noise.

Fifteen minutes later, we’re looking at a pile of dead bodies.

Unfortunately, we lost a man, and three others have wounds they need medical care for.

Cosimo makes arrangements for them to be seen by a private doctor, someone who knows what he’s dealing with and won’t make it a public matter.

It takes about an hour to clean the two houses, have the bodies tucked into bags, and make a phone call.

Waiting for the other end of the line to ring, I pour myself two shots of bourbon.

I lift the glass to my lips for a first sip before turning around and sliding into a chair in the main room on the first floor.

Finally, someone picks up.

“No. I need to speak with him,” I say, just as Varela’s right-hand man inquires about my call in an innocent voice.

He’s giving me the runaround.

“I don’t care who he’s with. I didn’t think he’d be such a coward, so prove me wrong and put him on the phone.”

I wait for a few long moments before another man picks up the phone.

A creepy, monotonous voice speaks to me.

“What do you want, O’Hara?”

Varela has never been capable of showing anything but disdain to anyone he’s dealt with.

It’s his brand, the way he rattles everyone, especially when he has no reason to be dismissive.

“The better question is, what do you want, Varela?”

A shrill comes from the other end of the line in the form of a fake chuckle.

It ends just as abruptly as it begins.

“You have something that belongs to me.”

“You have to go through the steps, don’t you? Isn’t it customary to ask for someone’s hand in marriage and have her family deliver her to you?”

“And that’s your idea of having her delivered to me?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t buy used merchandise. I only want top quality. Unopened packaging.”

He laughs again at how clever he thinks he is.