THE KIDNAP
631 Words
The hotel was called Il Gabbiano. €30 a night. €13 left.
Eliana didn’t sleep. She sat against the door with the chair jammed under the handle and watched shadows move across the ceiling. Noon played on loop. “Four million. Or you.” 6 PM played next. “Then let him.”
By 6 AM, pride was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She needed work. Needed to prove Vincenzo wrong. Needed to prove she wasn’t payment.
Palermo disagreed.
Café: “No positions.”
Bookshop: “Try after summer.”
Another hotel: The manager’s eyes crawled down her blouse. “We have… other openings.”
She walked out with €8.50 and a throat full of bile.
The feeling started at 1 PM outside the cathedral.
A shift in the air. Like someone had stepped into her shadow and matched her breathing. She turned. Tourists. A nun feeding pigeons. A boy with gelato. Nothing.
She walked faster. Bus. Three blocks. Doubled back through Ballarò. The stink of fish and old blood should’ve covered a tail.
It didn’t.
By 6 PM Via Alloro was empty. Orange light. Shuttered stalls. She’d chosen wrong. Too quiet. Too many doorways.
The SUV didn’t purr. It appeared. Black. Tinted. Engine killing the sound of her footsteps. It rolled past her, then stopped. Blocked the alley mouth.
Driver’s door opened.
Luca.
Alessandro’s second. She’d seen him that morning in Vincenzo’s office. Scar through his eyebrow. Gun on his hip. He hadn’t spoken then. He didn’t now.
She ran.
Back the way she came. Toward the light. Toward people. Toward anyone.
She made it six steps.
The second man stepped out from a doorway she’d passed two seconds ago. Had he been there the whole time? Watching?
Waiting?
He was younger. Thicker. No scar. Just empty eyes.
He didn’t grab. He blocked. 6’2” of wall.
She pivoted. A third doorway. A third man.
They weren’t chasing. They were herding.
“Get away from me!” Her voice cracked. Too high. Too scared.
Luca pulled something from his jacket. Not a gun. A syringe. Capped. Medical.
Her blood turned to ice.
“No.” She backed up. Hit the brick wall of Il Gabbiano’s side alley. “You don’t— you can’t—”
Luca uncapped it. “Boss says you’ve got fight in you. Says that’s a problem.”
“What do you want from me?" Her voice came lower than she expected almost a whisper
"You have to come with us"
"I don't want to "
"Alessandro knew you wouldn't give in easily "
She went for his eyes.
He caught her wrist. Twisted. Not enough to break. Enough to show he could. “Last time I did this, the girl scratched. Boss didn’t like the noise.”
The needle glinted.
Eliana kicked. Connected with his knee. He grunted and her other wrist was caught by the second wall. Pinned. Stretched. Like she was on display.
“Please,” she gasped. Not to them. To anyone. To the God she stopped believing in at five years old. “Please don’t—”
Luca didn’t answer. He just pressed the syringe to her neck.
Cold. Then a sting.
Then nothing.
Her knees gave out first. The brick was rough on her cheek. The sky was orange, then purple, then black.
She heard voices. Far away.
“—told you not to mark her.” That was Luca. Annoyed.
“She fought.”
“Boss sees a bruise, it’s your funeral. Get her in the car.”
Hands under her arms. Under her knees. Lifting. She weighed nothing.
The last thing she registered was the smell. Leather. And smoke.
Not cigar.
Wildfire. Like the kind that lives in nightmares you don’t remember.
Then her world went black.
- Writer
