Mafia King's Fatal Lover

Chapter15 Nightmare

A cold feeling came from her fingertips. Abel stood behind her, clasping her hand with his big palm.

“Hold still.” He forced her to lift the gun.

The man's chest was broad and hot, clinging to her back. Her heart was beating wildly.

“Here.” Whilst his low voice hovering in the ear, Abel circled her with his arms from behind.

A flash of white light obscured the image of Kerry and his son huddling together on the dance floor, turning it into a panicky crowd in the theater. Elektra’s did flip flops. There came an earth-shaking gunshot, remote but perceptible, hazy yet dense.

Her palms were sweaty and her mind was in a trance, so much so that she did not know when her body had leaned against the man behind her.

"What's wrong?" In a daze, she heard Abel’s deep voice, heavy and stuffy, like being immersed in water.

Elektra tried to stay awake. She held up the gun, while Kerry stared at her angrily. With the last of his strength, Kerry blocked in front of the boy.

Her heart palpitated. Time seemed to be infinitely prolonged. Everything became slow, only she breathed faster and faster.

Elektra heard her voice, remote and out of nowhere. It was despair and painful. She was shouting someone's name repeatedly

“Marta, Marta...”

The white-hot light leaked through the c***k of the door and the bullet hole. The smell of gunpowder and blood was everywhere.

Looking through the bullet hole in the door, a woman was standing there. She was a serious policewoman. But today, she put on her gown for the first time.

It was the first time that Elektra saw her in a formal dress, drenched in scarlet stains of dripping blood.

On the stage, the only door to backstage was blocked by Marta. Elektra could not push it open.

The warm blood spread over her and soon wet her costume. Elektra suddenly remembered, it was the dress on which Marta spent more than half a month's salary and it was tailor-made.

She said it was Elektra’s first time on the stage. She needed to look nice.

“Elektra?” Another call again.

But Elektra could no longer tell whether the voice was coming from reality or from memory.

Countless images overlapped.

Multitudinous sound collapsed like debris.

Kerry turned into Marta, and Elektra saw Marta standing in front of her...

“Elektra? Elektra!”

It sounded like Marta, but also like Abel.

For a short moment, everything went out of control.

A woman's hysterical screams rang out in the empty bar, frightening and panicky, like a cornered young beast.

Vito rushed over to pin down Elektra, but Abel has been the first to buckle her in his arms.

“What are you waiting for?!”

He said to Vito with a sullen face. “Go fetch Baste!”

*

Elektra didn’t know wether she had fainted or slept.

The shattered images in the mind crumbled and coalesced into the pale light of day that filtered through the rose windows of the church.

Marta lay quietly among flowers and in the candlelight. People around her wept uncontrollably.

Elektra did not cry, but acted like an unconscious walking dead. Because at that time, she could not bring out extra strength to be sad.

Rumor said that Marta rushed onto the stage to save the player. But only Elektra knew that Marta was only trying to come to her rescue.

She recalled how she used to complain that Marta wasn't good enough for her, and that she always put her work first.

She had never thought that her last public show of doting was exchanged with Marta’s life.

A door opens and closes the distance of life and death.

It began to rain outside the church, pattering and noisy. The crowd gradually dispersed, only Elektra sat there, like a sculpture.

She didn’t know how long she was there until the sound of footsteps coming from behind.

Mylan sat down beside her and handed her a small wrapped box.

The thread of self-delusion was broken.

It was only then that her eyes became wet.

The necklace that she had thrown to Marta in a tantrum turned to be company she kept all along.

“It was a terrorist attack.”

Mylan said hoarsely, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder.

All the strength of the embankment at this moment burst open. Elektra cried out uncontrollably.

“Although the terrorist group responsible for this attack has not yet been identified, the arm supplier behind it has been found by the FBI.”

Mylan's voice was slow, like a piece of driftwood in the middle of an ocean.

She grasped it and found a reason to live.

“It came from Nano family of the New York Mafia and was supposed to be sold to the Middle East.” Mylan said. “But it was intercepted in the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar and then reappeared at Lincoln Center.”

“The FBI suspected that this was orchestrated by Navoi Group, which has clashed with Nano over businesses in recent years.”

“Would you like to be an FBI informant, lurking around his fiancee, helping with the investigation?”

“You're going to get to the bottom of the 'king of underground arms' outside the Big Five Mafia families in New York.”

“His name is Abel Hill.”

“……”

The voice turned into a mist and faded away.

Elektra blinked a little and woke up in her apartment in the Hudson Building.

The morning sun was steamy, and dropped a shadow in the empty bedroom. She sat up, feeling tired.

Bates pushed the door open, surprised to see her awake. But he soon gathered his thoughts and went to the cupboard on one side of the room.

“Better?” He asked with a smile, picking up the small pot on the cabinet and pouring a cup of hot water for Elektra.

Elektra nodded and took the water from him.

Bates held the glass tightly, did not let it go.

“Did Miss Garner know what’s the problem with you?” He looked at her, with a facial expression that was gentle as before.

His pair of blue eyes was stained with a layer of gray fog because of old age. The eyes seemed cloudy, but inside with the occasional flow of light they were able to see through anything.

When a feeling of coldness passed along her spine, Elektra felt somewhat perturbed.

Bates didn’t wait for her answer but continued, “It’s PTSD. So … What did Miss Garner go through in the past, to have such a severe and stressful reaction?”

“It’s just I never killed anyone before.” said Elektra disdainfully. “I was just scared when I saw the scene.”

“Oh?” Bates raised his eyebrows with a knowing expression, “That's interesting. Miss Garner wasn't frightened by Murphy's basement or the fight in the bar. But you were frightened by the two captives?”

Facing his aggressive questioning, Elektra was irritated.

She took a deep breath, put her hands through her hair and looked up into Bates' eyes, said firmly, “I'm fine.”

“Is this about your dead relative?” Bates continued.

His questions was tightening like a coiled snake.

Elektra's facial expression changed abruptly.

“You may say so. Kerry reminds me of my father, who died at the gunpoint of Nano. It’s also because of the Mafia, and also in Little Italy. Mr. Hill knows all these things. So you don't have to bring them up again.”

Her words smelt like gunpowder. The hostility was obvious.

Elektra stopped. If she went on, there could surely be a tense and awkward confrontation. Two of them didn’t speak any more.

The atmosphere was a standoff suddenly.

After a while, Bates pretended to shrug his shoulders and sighed, “There’s a rub: if you stay by Mr. Hill's side, there's no way you don’t kill anyone. If you don't receive treatment...”

“I'll be all right.”

Bates smiled and stopped talking. He returned to his original gentlemanly demeanor and left some anti-psychotic medicine.

He told Elektra to take it on time, then bade goodbye to her.

The door closed behind him. Bates then dialed Abel's number.

“Miss Garner is awake.”

It was a routine report. There was a short pause at the other end.

The man gave a low “Mm.”

Bates recognized the imperceptible husk in his voice.

He had followed Abel for decades, and knew every bit of him over the years.

This was the second time he had sent someone to pick him up from New Jersey to Manhattan for that woman inside.

However, this time was entirely different than the carelessness of the first time.

Abel showed his care, rarely though.

Thinking of her evasive manner, Bates frowned.

“Mr. Hill.” Bates said seriously before hanging up, “Miss Garner seems to have a shady past. She's also very disgusted with stress disorder and refuses to cooperate with the treatment. I'm worried...”

“Got it.” Abel didn’t give him chance to finish the words.

The air in the car was stuffy.

Abel cut off the phone and kneaded his painful temple. He opened the window of the back seat.

"... the newbies are getting worse and worse. Like the one yesterday, she can't even hold a gun properly. ... she has been following with me for nothing.”

Vito was sitting in the front seat. He did not notice that Abel had already woken up and that he was chatting with the driver now.

“But I heard that the new guy is not only good at fighting, she’s also pretty and hot.” The driver said, and added in a low voice, “What do you think a girl like that would look like in bed? Would she be able to enjoy torture, or would she cry for mercy?”

He said with a sigh of satisfaction and a face of yearning.

“Bah!” Vito frowned.

He raised his hand and slapped the driver on the back of his head, “You want to have s*x with that Tigress? Are you okay? Be careful that she has a ring of teeth down there. When you insert her, she'll Chew Your d**k Off!”

They stopped for a while. Then they seemed to be amused, lowering their voice and bursting into laughter.

“Pull over!”

The words were cold as two fired bullets from a sniper's rifle, accurate and lethal.

The air in the car froze. Vito swallowed his saliva, feeling a drop of sweat emerging from his forehead to the soles of his feet.

The driver didn’t realize the hidden danger from Abel’s tone. He smiled, “Boss, woke up?”

Abel ignored him. The sound of knuckles knocking on the door was outstanding.

“Stop it.”

Abel said with a cold face.

Each syllable bit like a sharp knife, nippy and lethal.

The driver braked the car with tremble.

When the first light of the morning broke, there were two men in suits being dumped on the New York intercity highway.

The driver crossed his arms and sniffed the snot that was running to his upper lip.

He asked Vito, looking puzzled, “What's wrong with Boss? Why is he so angry all of a sudden?”

Vito sniffed as well. With a look of grievance and resentment, he pat the driver and said, “I’ve told you not to talk, especially when boss is asleep, see!”

“But...” the driver still didn’t get it and continued his murmur, “We talked secretly before. But we never saw boss being so angry because he was woke up…”

“Bah!” Vito slapped the driver's head again.

“Shut your face, will ya? Think about how to get back!”

“Oh, oh...” the driver nodded.

The moment when he opened his phone map, both of them despaired at the same time.

Abel had dropped them right in the middle of the highway -- a full hour's drive either way!

Ding-dong!

The phone vibrated, alerting message arrival.

Vito took out his mobile phone, and saw a voice message from Abel.

He knew that!

Boss was soft-hearted after all. He would never be pitiless enough to…

Upon the message being played, Abel’s cold, hard and emotionless voice came over the phone

“Walk over there.”