The Body #4: Nico and Cosi

Chapter 24 (Janie): Clean Up This Place

***TW for violence, torture, brutal death***

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

My phone chimed and I looked at the bloody woman on the ground in front of me. 

"For your sake, you better hope it's good news, or I'll make sure there isn't one inch of untouched skin anywhere on your body and still make you dig your own grave before I bury you alive."

She whimpered and shook but I didn't have one fuck to give. My girl and her baby were fighting for their lives, so Desti could whimper away. My heart beating with fear, I pulled out my phone and read the message from Ant.

She's out of surgery. Cosi and baby are doing as well as can be expected, but next 72 hours are critical.

I wanted to sink to the ground and cry in relief that Cosi had survived the first hurdle, but it wasn't going to happen in front of this bitch. I needed to get to the hospital to see Cosi myself, but Desti needed to die first. 

She probably wanted to after the last three hours. It was a delicate balance, a fine line I was walking – causing her extreme pain but leaving her alive for part two of the fun. Hello, consequences. Bet you're rethinking a lot of poor choices you made in your life, Desti.

Someone else Ant had texted me about might need to be introduced to some consequences if he didn't stop being a fuckwad to my girl Moxie. Ant was trying to distract herself (and me, if I was being honest) so she sent text after text about a situation.

The girls had been talking about getting Nico a change of clothes since he was covered in Cosi's blood. They'd decided Moxie's husband was closest in size to Nico, so Moxie had texted Enzio, asking him to bring a clean shirt and a pair of jeans to the hospital.

Her phone had rung immediately, and after arguing quietly with her husband, she finally snapped, "Forget it, then. I'll just ask Lucio to get Nico some clothes. I'm sure he'd be willing to help at a time like this!"

Then she'd hung up on him. Thirty minutes later, Enzio had walked into the waiting room, all seething, put-upon, hulking male, holding their three-year-old son, Gennaro, in his arms. Moxie had taken her son from her husband's arms and cuddled him. 

Ant had texted that Enzio hadn't asked after Cosi, nor did he ask Moxie how she was or make any move to comfort her -- and Moxie looked as rough and as distraught as the rest of us did. He'd simply handed off the grocery bag of clothes, taken his son from Moxie and left. He still wasn't handling news about his wife's superpowers well.

Moxie had lost her battle with tears and then blamed it on worry over Cosi, refusing to talk about Enzio. Ant had ended the text string with anger.

All of us wanted to off him as he walked away -- Vic actually had one of her shurikens in her hand -- without a word to his wife when one of her best friends had been shot and was in surgery. Not one word! What a fucking dickhead.

Fortunately, unlike the girls at the hospital, I had someone I was already mad at and could add my anger at Enzio to her bill. Walking over to her, I ripped the duct tape off her mouth as she screamed.

"Good news. Cosi and the baby survived the surgery and are holding their own. That means it's time to start digging your grave. However, when I hand you the shovel, I would highly recommend not coming at me with it because I'll use my whip on you in such a way that the last three hours will seem like a warm up for the main event. Do you understand?"

She looked at me with fear and nodded.

I opened the trunk and grabbed my chemical-resistant rubber gloves and shoved them in my back pocket, a little something-something in a Rose Fertilizer container and the shovel. Throwing the shovel in front of her, I pulled out a huge knife, waved it in front of her face, and warned, "I'm about to cut your zip ties. Be smart...although I'm really hoping you aren't."

She stood up and for a minute, I could see her weighing the odds, so I pulled out Ol' Butterball.

"I could shoot you in a bunch of places that would hurt but wouldn't prevent you from digging your grave. Let's get going."

Apparently that was code for start begging and pleading for her life as she picked up the shovel and started digging. I cracked the whip at her several times, making her shriek and jump, but at least she shut up for a few seconds and it made her dig faster.

She was about three feet down when I felt Lucio behind me. He must have either left or finished his meeting with Santo and the other Heads and of course he knew where I was.

We bantered a bit, and I knew he was trying to distract me. Lucio always had a mind to my feelings and tried to lighten my mood in situations like this. Eventually, he nodded toward Desti and asked if he could shoot her because her mouth had never stopped once.

"Let's hurry this up," he said, pressing a hungry kiss to my lips. "I got plans for you tonight."

I almost lost control of my emotions right there. My husband was pulling out all the stops to distract me from why we were here. That thought I pushed down; I wouldn't think about the horror of the day until this was done.

"Enough whining," I called out to her. "Shut up and dig faster, Desti."

An hour later, she finished digging. The whole time, Lucio stood beside me, giving me the strength of his presence and reassuring me that Cosi was holding her own based on the updates he'd been reading from Ant for me. My husband knew I just about stopped breathing every time my phone chimed with a text so he'd asked if I wanted him to read them, and I'd accepted gratefully.

"That's deep enough," I called to Desti. "Throw the shovel up and lie down."

"Don't do this. Please." She was crying hysterically. I didn't care.

"You brought this on yourself. Now throw up the damn shovel and don't make me get the whip to make you lie down."

Sobbing, she'd tossed it over the side. Standing at the edge of her grave, I pulled my gloves from my back pocket and picked up the container that was not rose fertilizer. 

"Do you know what's in here?" 

"No."

"This is lye. Concentrated lye so it works in just a few minutes. Don't you love time savers?"

"No! Don't do this!"

"You fucked with the wrong girl. Cosi's one of my best friends. You fed her foods at every single meal that made her sick -- while she was pregnant. You could have caused her and the baby serious harm. And then you and your papa went to her home to kill her. You're the daughter of a man who shot his own step-daughter and you let him. You're also the daughter of a whore, a murderous bitch who dealt in trafficking helpless people. You're no better than either of your pathetic parents. You could have been, but you chose evil."

Opening the container, I liberally sprinkled lye all over her, head to toe. "You messed with the wrong girl. You chose to try to kill someone I love. Someone you should have loved."

She started screaming as the lye began working in all the whip marks I'd made. 

"You made Cosi hurt in many ways, and I simply returned the favor because if someone fucks with those I love, I fuck them back harder. But most of all, Desti, you're evil and I do not show evil mercy."

Her screams were otherworldly as she faced the ultimate consequence of her actions. I stepped back as Lucio picked up the shovel and began covering her with dirt, much more quickly than I could have done. I was relieved when he finally finished half an hour later and the screams abruptly stopped. Desti had paid.

Lucio threw down the shovel, held his arms open to me and I walked into the only place on earth I could let my guard down. Lucio crushed me to him, knowing how much I needed his strength right then.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier, little ghost. I've got you now," he soothed me. "I've spoken with the hospital administrator. Cosi has specialists monitoring her carefully and her nurses are top tier."

Pressing my face against his chest, I let the tears finally flow as he held me tight. 

"Are you done, Ginevra?" he asked when I stopped crying.

I nodded against his chest.

"Then let's get you to the hospital after we clean up this place."