Insufficient

Chapter 24 - Not Like That

A/N   -   I would like to start off this chapter by giving a big thank you to @iamaprettybrunette for volunteering to help me edit and proofread my chapters. Not sure if she knew the mess she was signing herself up for, but she has truly been a humongous help. 

Zeke's POV

Horrified. That is the only way to describe how I'm feeling right now.

I've had Juliana's sketchbook for the better part of a week now. And no, it's not because I've "forgotten" to give it back to her.

I didn't mean to look the first time, alright? When the maid handed it over to me, letting me know it had been left in her room, I just so happened to drop it. And when it dropped, it also happened to open.

It was just a pencil sketch of someone's face. I thought it was harmless. So I looked some more. Her sketches were a little odd. At first, all I found were a bunch of random men's faces. I mean, that wasn't the odd part, we already knew that she was good at portraits because of the one she did of Elliot.

Don't tell Elliot though. He might not be too happy about that.

It was the other ones that raised suspicion. At first, it was an extremely detailed knife. The knife was laying on the ground, and while the sketch had no colour, you could just tell that it was sitting in a pool of blood.

There was another extremely disturbing one with a picture of a child in it. In this picture, the little boy was tied to a chair, dripping blood, puncture wounds all throughout his face, to the point that he was unrecognisable.

The rest of his body wasn't much better either. The best description I could give was that it was just short of mutilated.

Now it's not like I hadn't been exposed to all of these things. Though Massimo was the one to intimately take the job, being the supposed heir to the Italian mafia, I was to get used to these sorts of things from a younger age than most.

However, to see such a young child, barely five or six, in that way...

It was horrendous, to say the least.

"I need to talk to you." I demanded, slamming the door to the meeting room.

"Zeke! What do you think you're doing?" Snapped my father from his position next to my Uncle.

All eyes were on me, the screen still projecting the layout of what I can only assume to be the Irish mafia's latest shipment.

To my knowledge, they were planning an ambush. Nothing rash, just enough to get their attention. Mess with a few of their shipments, just as they did to ours. And eye for an eye if you will.

"It's about Juliana."

This gets everyone concerned.

"Is she okay?"
"What happened?"
"Does she need us?"
"Why didn't the app go off?"

Questions were thrown at me faster than I could process them, and it isn't until Nonno slams his hand to the table that they quiet down.

"That is quite enough. Boy, you better start talking." He points at me with a deadly look on his face.

"Something about her isn't right." I say, sitting down near the end of the table. The way the set up of the room works is that there's the door, then a long white table containing touchscreens at every seat. Then there was a large T.V. positioned opposite the door.