Dinner on Friday

50. Dante

SHOTS FIRED

Mathias stared at me in shock as brain matter slid down the wall behind Luca's crumpled body. I checked the cartridge on Luca's gun before grabbing my father's .22 out of the draw.

I heard a soft chuckle and lifted my head to study my uncle. His eyes were bloodshot, and white powder coated the sides of his nose.

His chuckle died on his lips, and he sneered at me. "You won't get away with this. That shot was loud as hell, and my men will be heading this way any moment now."

"Shut the fuck up. Let them come. I'm ready."

Mathias suddenly clutched his chest, and I watched his face turn red. He started gasping for air, stretching one hand out toward me.

"Dante?"

I sat down on the edge of the desk while casually holding both guns in my hands. "Yes, uncle."

"Please."

I raised a nonchalant eyebrow. "Please what?"

"Help." His voice sounded like chalk on a blackboard. High and annoying as hell as it clawed the walls of the dimly lit office.

The contrast between the irritating quality of his voice and the seriousness of his plea was jarring, yet this very dissonance compelled me to listen, to look past the sound and into the heart of the plea.

This moment right here said so much about Mathias as a man. In the end, men like him always turned into weak, pathetic cowards who were too afraid to die.

"Would you like me to help you the way you helped Carla? How about the way you helped Eva and Madeleine? Is that the kind of help you want?" Agitated, I tapped the gun in my right hand on my trousered knee. His face reddened some more as his gasping turned into wheezing.

"You're a piece of shit scumbag. You don't respect women, not even your own wife. You prefer making money over saving lives. Legacy over the living. Why should I help you?" I crossed my arms, keeping my eyes locked on his face, watching as the life slowly drained from him.

Martin wasn't wrong when he said that slightly increasing one of the ingredients, didn't matter which, was potentially fatal. I got my hands on the only ingredient I could buy at the grocery store and mixed it half and half with the original mixture.

The concoction had so much power packed into it that it could kill a horse within two days. Imagine what it could do to the human body.

Mathias coughed, spitting out blood that landed on my pants and the carpet around us.

"Help," he choked out as his mouth filled with more blood. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he coughed again, gurgling on a mixture of blood and spit. His muscles stiffened before what appeared to be a seizure shook his entire body.

"There's no help for the wicked. It's time to face reality, Mathias. You're dying." At the sound of approaching footsteps, I stood up, ready to go to war.

I was vastly outnumbered, but I had a plan.

Well, somewhat. I hadn't planned much beyond Mathias's death, but I was an inventive man, and I would come up with something.

Anything to get back to Carla.

The heavy sound of boots rumbling down the hallway got closer and closer. Perched behind my father's desk, I aimed at the door. Sweat formed on my forehead and ran down the sides of my face. The office was suddenly too hot to operate in.

The first man from Mathias's camp burst through the door, and before he could react to Mathias's body, I cracked his skull with a bullet. Three more men followed in quick succession, and they met the same fate as the first one.