Selena

36 | Exploration

SELENA MONTGOMERY

I felt like shit after this morning and now it was even worse.

Getting roped in to being Rossi's training partner felt like hell on Earth. That idiot tricked me. He knew he could beat me and made that bet knowing the outcome.

The one time I fought with Adam in the woods showed me that he was stronger, but I didn't think the same could be said for Rossi. I know it had been a while and Caden never let me even get near a mat to fight...but I was definitely out of shape.

In underground fights in New York, I could take on men twice my size with steroid-pumped muscles. Here it was a whole different story. In street fights, you would fight to put on a little show not necessarily kill them.

Killing would be an unhappy coincidence.

But in the mafia, these men trained to kill. The men guarding my door or the halls were obviously told not to harm me, but their reflexes were slow. The men at the warehouse were too easy to take down too. Adam and Rossi though were on a different level. I guess being the don and second-in-charge meant they had to be the best.

As an assassin, I had some control in how I took someone's life. Hand-to-hand combat would be a last resort. I could easily kill a target with a sniper or other means and then move in closer to get proof of death. The higher priority of the target, the harder the kill. My fighting skills always sufficed until now.

Now I feel inadequate.

These thoughts swirled through my head as I ate lunch with Rossi (against my will). He sat beside me yapping on and on about this and that. Rossi would occasionally stir up conversation in French to the chef who looked like he was cooking for an army.

Rossi was stuffing his face when I finally decided to break my silent treatment on him.

"So you're American..?"

He froze mid-chew, stunned and glanced behind him to see if I was truly addressing him. Raising a finger to point to himself he asked the question with his eyes. I just rolled my eyes and nodded my head back at him.

Swallowing the food in his mouth he finally started to hesitantly respond to my question. "Yeah..." He kept shooting me suspicious glances like he was scared I was going to attack him if he made one wrong move.

"My parents were both born and raised in American, but...."

I just listened intently waiting for him to continue, but I didn't know I was making my biggest mistake of the day because I had just reopened the floodgates.

"...all my extended family is Italian. My Italian sucks though so that's why Adam even recruits Americans and makes sure that all our men can speak decent English. I swear he..."

Rossi just kept talking as I finished my food.

"...and my pronunciation hasn't improved at all. You would think after spending more than ten years in this country with a best friend that's Italian that I would have the language down, but...."

Talking...

"...oh and my mom loved movies. We would watch something new almost every night, but only when I would finish all my homework before dinner. She definitely fueled the obsession and my dad would always say..."

...and talking...

"...the guy who manufactures my knives is Korean and so I learned Korean. Seok –that's his name– says my Korean is great and I only started learning it a like a year ago, but I'm already great at it so why can't I get Italian. Maybe it's because I can't roll my r's. No matter what I do it just doesn't..."

...and talking...

"...Adam tried to cut my tongue out once when I went on an Italian language immersion thing and kept addressing him as Adelram instead of Adam. I didn't think my pronunciation was that bad, but ever since then I've felt kind of set back..."

....until I left the room.

It was about that time of day that Felecity would come by to visit and Rossi was always there.

He had a sixth sense for knowing when she would be around and would come to annoy us. I couldn't believe that I had made the stupid decision to willingly start up a conversation with him. I knew the consequences and I let my curiosity get the better of me.

Never again.

I wandered around the halls trying to get myself familiar with the place. Every time I would roam free around this house –wait no... this is was definitely some kind of mansion–, I found a new interesting room.

Felicity would be arriving at any time, but I honestly I don't think I could put up with it for another minute or I would genuinely try to kill him.

He was like some kind of pest while Adam was busy working. I thought as second-in-command he would be doing more, but he is always just chilling around. Always. When I first got here, I never really saw him around. I wanted to ask what exactly he does, but after lunch I wouldn't be approaching Rossi with any questions ever again.

How long have I been here?

No one really gave me a calendar or anything and a lot of the days blurred together. I didn't have a phone to keep track of the date or time constantly. Whenever, I needed to I would glance at a clock or someone's wristwatch. There was a 6 hour time difference between New York and Italy and maybe that's why I would always just sleep through the day when I first arrived here.

My thoughts immediately came to a halt when I noticed a hidden downstairs staircase.

The temptation danced around my head like a jester taunting me as I reached towards the door knob to find it unlocked. I quickly stepped in and closed the door behind me before anyone walked down this way.

There were always those young girls who were maids and random mafia men loitering the ground floor. Enzo mentioned to me once that the girls worked there to pay off debts their families owed or if they had no where else to go.

I had just been called to that door and the staircase was a happy surprise.

Was this where Adam brought me for that first interrogation?

That would mean that's where Antonio, the one who originally hacked the FBI's database, was that day with a computer.

A computer.

The idea along felt too good to be true.

I had no intention of leaving, but my fingers itched at the thought of just touching a keyboard. I walked down exactly the number of flights I did my first day here. There were less stairs that I remembered in and the corridors felt somewhat darker.

Finally reaching the bottom, I turned to face a hallway of more doors. Three on each side.

This felt like too many choices. If I opened the wrong door, my mission to lay my hands on a computer would end there.

I slowly approached the first door to find and empty room.

Opening the next door across from it revealed the same thing.

I felt disappointed, but there were still four doors left.

I opened the next adjacent door and there was the damn table. I walk in and glance around at the reflective glass that surrounds the room making it seem smaller than it actually is. I felt stupid for not noticing the glass on that day.

Which side was Antonio's voice coming from?

I shake my head at the inability to remember the exact details from then. Stepping out of the room, I shut the door behind me and walk up to the door right next to it.

A feeling of uneasiness settled into the pit of my stomach.

The putrid smell of blood and burnt flesh filled my nostrils as soon as I opened the door to reveal the most horrific sight in front of me.