Chapter 4 MACKENZIE'S FEAR

The more Mackenzie Rodriguez thought about it, the more confused she got about the incident that had happened few weeks ago while she visited her father.

Mack decided to stop thinking about it for a while and go visit her uncle like her father had instructed.

Early in the morning, Mack got on her scooter and headed for Via Toledo, situated on the crime-ridden area of Naples. She stopped in front of a rundown apartment building and pressed her index finger to the bell on the smashed box Marked 'Diamante.' She looked so out of place on the pavement that she could be passed for a fallen angel that missed the correct path and dropped there.

Few minutes later, a voice she knew by heart to be her uncle's yelled, "What the fuck do you want?"

She bit back a giggle at the profanity and the animosity dripping from her uncle's tone, "It's me Uncle Lucca. I have to talk to you."

"Holy shit baby girl, what you doing here? Come on up sugar!"

The door buzzer sounded and Mackenzie skipped upstairs.

Uncle Lucca was standing at an open door, barely clothed with the tightest pair of boxers. At the end of the room, Mackenzie could clearly see the woman on his bed.

"Mia Bella, What are you doing here so early? Have I not warned you not to come on here? Your father would have my balls if he finds out his princessa is here."

"I couldn't sleep, uncle Lucca. Besides, father is in prison, he can't have your balls."

Uncle Lucca pinched his nose bridge, "Mackie... you have to go."

She almost screamed as she defiantly folded her arms and stomped her foot like a child throwing a tantrum, "C'mon Uncle Lucca, I am not a little kid anymore... you always push me away every time, like I do not mean anything to you... you hate me." she was faking all this act and she gazed at him with round eyes and quivering lips.

"Pinche cabrona! Forgive me princess. Come on in. You know uncle Lucca lives for ya."

Mack refrained from fisting bumping the air as she settled with a small secret smile and pushed her way into his apartment.

The putrid stench of weed and hard drugs hit her nostrils and she was hit with a wave of nausea. After she got her dizziness under control, she took in the utter mess her Uncle's one-roomed apartment was in. The pillow cases were strewn about and every corner was filled with debris, the most annoying thing to her was the woman who lay naked comfortably in a room that was disgusting as this.

"Uhm, Uncle Lucca, I don't suppose she is my new aunt?" Mack asked trying to hide the disgusted look clamoring on her face.

"No fucking way! Get off my bed Puta!" Uncle Lucca barked as he smacked the woman hard on the butt. She shot him a deathly glare as she stood up, fully naked and picked her clothes scattered across the room. Mackenzie didn't need to be told what this woman and her uncle had been doing here before she interrupted them and it made her stomach queasy. Mack noticed that the lady stood still with her clothes under her armpits and heels on one hand as she looked furtively around the unkempt room. Mackenzie followed her gaze till it landed on a pair of panties wedged between the seats of the single couch in the apartment. It dawned on her that the lady was most likely searching for her panties. Mack rolled her eyes and her uncle could sense her unease.

He didn't wait for his 'lady' to get dressed before he took her roughly by the arm and threw her out of his apartment as he slammed the door loudly behind him. Mackenzie could hear the woman banging on the door and swearing vile curses at her uncle and she bit back a giggle again.

Lucca now turned to look at his beautiful niece and he padded across the room to the table where lines of coke laid and he took a long sniff. Mack just rolled her eyes as she gingerly sat on the edge of his bed trying to avoid making much contact with the stained bed covers-she shuddered in disgust at the thoughts of the bodily fluids that must have stained it.

"Aargh!" Lucca groaned as he savored the high his cocaine gave him.

"Could you just stop that till I am done with what I came to tell ya, uncle Lucca."

"Talk to me Mackie, I am all ears."

She sat up straighter and cleared her throat, "father sent me to you."

It was as if the coke he sniffed in went straight to his brain because he started yelling, 'what the fuck Mackie, why would you go see Ales? Do you want your father to kill me? Fucking hell!"

"Calm down Uncle Lucca, I think you are over reacting and he was happy to see me."

He narrowed his eyes at her, "What did he say?"

"Nothing much really." Mackenzie didn't want to offend her uncle by telling him the things her father truly said about him

He only grunted.

"He...uhm... asked me to get the box from you." Her voice was soft as she spoke tentatively.

"What box?" He asked as his eyes darted unfocusedly about the room.

"You know what I am talking about, Uncle Lucca. Your brother would not lie and you know."

"I don't have it anymore!" He snarled defensively.

"He said you would say something like this....uhm... I don't wanna use his words exactly so uncle Lucca, just hand over the box to me so I would do as he said with it."

He remained silent.

"He said if you refuse that I should say this to you, 'tell that sleazy drug addicted motherfucker to give my box back or I would have his fucking balls on a platter and feed it to the pigs."

There was a moment of silence and Mackenzie grew uncomfortable that her skin was tingling with nervous tension. And then her uncle threw his head back and a loud laughter roared from his stomach. "Typical Alessandro, no."

Mackenzie didn't say anything and her uncle stood from the couch and padded across the room into his bathroom. He didn't close the door and Mack watched as he pressed a palm against the tiled wall and a tile that had never looked out of place to her declined to the side and he reached inside, bringing out a small brown box.

He gingerly held it and trudged back into the bedroom after putting the tile back in place. He stopped in front of Mackenzie and shoved the box into her dainty hands, "I hope Alessandro rots in prison forever."

A short, dry laugh erupted from Mackenzie, "I think for the first time, you would get your wish."

"What are you saying?"

"Father got life." She felt the weight of her words as she said them settle even deeper onto her shoulders.

A dark emotion clouded his drug hazed eyes for a brief second and just as Mackenzie was trying to put a name on it, it vanished and he shot her a crooked grin, "Let me Thank holy mother of Christ."

And he walked away from her to his box television and he switched it on, tuning up the volume, a cue for Mackenzie to take her leave. But she wasn't done; she still had something to say to him.

As she opened her mouth to talk, her eyes caught the newsflash on the television and her mouth slid itself close as she held her breath in shock.

As her eyes riveted on the picture displaying on the divided TV screen, her interest began building and she stood up from the bed to grab the remote control and her fingers flew over the button tuning the volume of the TV even more, enhancing the journalist's shrill voice.

"....Manuel Tommaso escaped from Prison Napoli Poggioreale last few weeks and all efforts by the Federico to apprehend him had proved abortive so the government has issued out a bounty of two hundred thousand Euros to whoever can bring him to justice. Warnings from the Federico is to beware of him, he is a dangerous criminal and all be wary of him and help the Federico take him back to where he belongs!...

"Also, reports of unrelenting illicit activities in the illegal trafficking trade have augmented in Italy, Sources believe that Black diamond drug cartel is the biggest drug supplier in the whole of Italy and even internationally, Alessandro who is believed to be their godfather would spend the rest of his life behind bars as the appeals his lawyers had made were unsuccessful."

"Just coming in now is a video of Manuel Tommaso last seen at the Nostra supermarket, trying to rob the owners..."

The reporter's statement was cut off when Uncle Lucca suddenly kicked off the television from the table it was placed on. Mackenzie gasped as she never expected that.

"What the hell Uncle Lucca?" she fired at him at the same time he yelled, "Pinche Pendejo!"

"You have to leave Italy now, Mackenzie." He sounded distressed.

"What for?"

"Listen to me for once you stubborn girl" he said fervently.

"If this about what's in that box, then..." Mack started to say but her uncle took her arms, shaking her up.

"You have to leave! That motherfucker I recognized him!" He said.

"Uncle Lucca....' She called softly, "You are hurting me."

His eyes moved to where his hands wrapped around her upper arms tightly and they fell away to his sides, "I am sorry Mackie."

"I would be on my way Uncle Lucca... You should get some rest after the... uh... stuffs you took."

"I am not high principessa... if that is what you mean. I know what I am saying."

Mackenzie shot him a smile, "I know you are not high but I woke you up quite early so you need to sleep. I'd come check on you some other time." To soothe him, she hugged him till the taut muscle on his neck relaxed and she took the box walking outside the apartment to her scooter.

Only one thought was in her head.

*Manuel Tommaso was the blue eyed man who had helped her that day in prison and for that, she owed him her gratitude.*