Bad for You

Prologue

“I ’ ve been a bad boy and need to be punished,” says the stronzo tied to the bed in this shithole of a hotel.

His tiny dick is nowhere to be found under his disgusting belly, which jiggles as he cranes his thick neck to look at me standing at the foot of the bed. He licks his porty lips. I will take great pleasure in cutting out that tongue and feeding it to him.

I don’t care what his name is.

I don’t care what any of their names are.

It’s not because I’m trying to detach myself from the deplorable acts I commit, but rather, I just don’t care. It makes no difference to me. They’re all a means to an end, and my endgame is survival because I am hunted.

An eye for an eye, the Bible says—the text my mother once lived by.

Once I found the woman who bore me for nine months, only to abandon me on the doorstep of Saint Maria’s Orphanage, I thought an epiphany would strike and all would be healed.

What a naive fool I was.

I wish I could ask the simple question, why ?

Wasn’t I cute enough?

Did I cry too much?

Or could it be because I looked too much like him?

Many have said my mother and father’s meeting wasn’t fated in the stars. Rather, it was churned in the bowels of hell because nothing good would ever come from my mother, Sister Margarette, falling in love with the convicted and infamous serial killer, Patrick O’Loughlin, and having his daughter…me.

My mother was a woman of God, but she soon forgot the vows she took when her parish sent her to provide spiritual guidance to death row inmate #39280.

My father was found guilty of brutally raping and killing fifteen innocent women. For his sins, he was sentenced to death. During his time on death row, he apparently found God. I often wonder where God was when he tied Tina Gully to a radiator and starved her to death after he was done torturing her with a starved sewer rat.

Or was JC on a sabbatical when my father bludgeoned to death a nineteen-year-old French hitchhiker with his tire jack because he was having a bad day?

This man was my father, the man my mother fell in “love” with, but not before falling pregnant with the spawn of Satan—me.

I want to believe she saw some good in him. That she believed he could be saved. But I know the truth, and that truth is that my mother is as much a monster as my father once was.

The day he was executed was the day I was born.

Again, another cruel twist of fate because I always felt like a part of his soul took over mine on that day. That’s the only explanation as to why I do the despicable things that I do and like them…so very much.

I’m not a bad person.

It’s him, I reason with myself. It’s his voice I hear, spurring his baby girl on to carry on with his legacy.

It can’t be me because if it were, what does that say about who I am?

Oh, who am I kidding? There is no one to blame but me.

I lie because yes, I’m not a bad person. That’s correct because I am far worse. I’m utterly ruthless and depraved and delight in all things blood and violence.

“You have been a very bad boy,” I coo in a sickly sweet voice, which makes me want to vomit. But assholes like him eat this shit up. “So I’m going to punish you how you deserve.”

The pile of shit on the bed giggles eagerly. Little does he know his time on this earth is about to be siphoned off in mere minutes.

The familiar swirl of euphoria stirs in my stomach, the excited feeling of all the bloody and macabre things coming this way.

I reason with myself that this bastardo deserves it. He’s my enemy. He also dabbles in pimping out kids, so he deserves everything that’s coming. He made his choice, and now, I make mine as I leap onto the bed, straddling him as I would a horse.

He likes it. But I’m going to like it even more when I scoop out his eyeballs and ram them down his throat.

I pinch his chin, pursing his lips out to resemble the little bitch that he is. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

He believes I’m getting off on his “bad boy” persona. “I’ve done so many bad things, baby, I’d make that pretty head of yours spin.”

I gush dramatically. “Oh please, Daddy, tell me.”

“I fuck up anyone who stands in my way…man, woman, or child. No one stops The D-Man from getting what he wants.”

I barely contain my laughter. The D-Man? Dead man walking, perhaps?

“I heard you deal…drugs,” I whisper, staging complete and utter shock. “Is that true?”

“You heard right, baby. I’m the motherfucking king of these streets. People cower when they hear my name.”

I smile, but nothing is sweet about it. “Is that because it’s a fucking ridiculous name…Georgie Toole who wears SpongeBob pajamas to bed?”

I literally see the moment when The D-Man aka Georgie Toole realizes he’s about to be fucked…and not in the way he paid me fifteen bucks for.

“Who are you?” He tugs at the cuffs around his wrists, but he isn’t going anywhere. I made sure of that the moment I accidentally on purpose flushed the key down the toilet.

“I am no one,” I reply because I am.

I don’t know my name. I wasn’t given one at birth. But the sisters at the orphanage named me Valentina because I was left on their doorstep on Valentine’s Day. And it stuck.

But the woman who was more a mother to me than my own taught me to own that name. She taught me to be true to who I really am, and that is…I am a killer, trained by the woman who adopted me when I was ten years old.

And that woman is Gianna Ricci.

I owe her everything, which is why I do her bidding and do so with a smile.

“It’s time to make your peace,” I calmly state as I always do with the many faceless men like Georgie.

It’s the least I can do.

“You fucking whore!” he screams, the cuffs rattling against the headboard. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

I tsk him lightly. “Shh, let us pray. Our Father, who art in heaven…”

Before he can pollute this world any further, I pull out the blade in my boot and stab him in the throat. I don’t like delaying gratification.

“Hallowed be thy name,” I continue, reciting the Lord’s Prayer as my adopted Italian accent, thanks to Gianna, shines through.

This prayer was recited to me over and over as I was defiled, humiliated, and abused, so this is me taking it back as I won’t allow the past to rule me.

His eyes widen, shock overcoming him as he realizes the mistake he made by picking up a “hooker” on the corner all because he wanted his dick sucked before reruns of Seinfeld .

I slice through Georgie’s muscles and tendons with precision because I could do this with my eyes closed. I have been trained by the best. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”

Georgie’s gurgles indicate he’s drowning in his own blood. I imagine it’s a horrible way to die, and the blood bubbles that pop from his mouth are almost hypnotic.

“On earth as it is in heaven,” I continue, cutting across his throat, then slicing down his chest.

Blood coats my hands and face, just as it always does, and I can hear it—his heartbeat, as well as my father clapping in cadence to the beating of his failing heart.

“Give us this day our daily bread.” I recite this prayer as it seems the appropriate thing to do when taking someone’s life. But it also reminds me of why I do this and revel in the blood.

It reminds me of the blood that runs in my veins—part monster, part saint.

But I am beyond saving.

Once Georgie’s chest is cut open, I peer into the cavity and am mesmerized by his heart—the epicenter of one’s existence, the reason we do what we do. But as I crack open his rib cage, thanks to the tools I carry with me in my bag of tricks, I realize that even though I may have one of these, it doesn’t feel how others do, and that’s because I don’t feel…a thing.

I’m as hollow as Georgie’s chest when I reach into it and rip out his heart.

It looks so…mediocre. I can’t believe the world revolves around this piece of meat that evokes things I don’t understand like…love.

“And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” I whisper, holding the heart to the light and closing one eye, desperate to see what the fuss is about.

I don’t, however, and that’s because I’m as dead as Georgie is.

I peer down at my handiwork and smile. “Daddy is proud of you, baby girl.”

I hear his voice just as I always do when I do something bad. I know this is my mind playing tricks on me, helping me cope with the atrocities I commit and do so with a smile.

I only hear his voice because I don’t know what my mother sounds like. She ensured to take her secrets to the grave by cutting out her own tongue. She’d rather be a coward than own up to her sins and face her maker.

I know who she is and where she is, thanks to Gianna. I owe Gianna everything.

But when I hear another voice, the voice which has comforted and taunted me in the same breath, my bloody dream soon turns into a nightmare.

“Amen,” he says, and I turn slowly to see him standing in the doorway, casually lighting a cigarette.

He wears black ripped jeans, boots, and a black shirt with three buttons undone, revealing that tattooed, muscled chest I know too well because I have laid my head against it, listening to his heart and believing in a thing called love…only for him to rip it away.

Our eyes lock, and I know what I’ve done because the man I just killed was his. He is Gianna’s competition. He was also her faithful student once upon a time, only to turn against her and use her secrets to build his own empire.

Unlike him , I value loyalty.

I was to do this, knowing it would start a war.

But I didn’t care because when I look into those blue-gray eyes, eyes I’d been lost in since I was a child, I knew this would bring him back to me. And there’s a reason for it.

“You’re in so much trouble, tesoro mio ,” he coolly says, blowing out the match.

He tongues his upper lip, and I remember what it felt like when I clung to that tall, muscled body and kissed the ever-living fuck out of that mouth. The mouth that kissed and defiled every inch of my body.

I also remember when that mouth uttered the lie, “Ti amo.”

Those memories have me climbing off the cooling corpse and tossing the heart of his man at his feet. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

It’s been five years, but I can see that time hasn’t healed all wounds. I wish time would have erased my feelings for him, but they haven’t. All they’ve done is make me miss him all the more.

He smiles that slanted grin, and I die a thousand deaths because I lied…I do feel something.

I always have.

In the most dire circumstances, we found one another, and I thought he was my forever. But forever came with an expiration date when he became the enemy.

Lennon Shepherd…the man I love with every beat of my heart, is the man I must kill because if I don’t…he’ll kill me.

He’ll kill me because I have been guarding a secret, a secret so grave, Lennon will never forgive me when he finds out the truth. But if I don’t tell him, then someone else will.

Regardless of our feud, this is the one thing we will both fight for.

But when he enters the room and closes the door behind him, I know it isn’t that simple. But nothing with Lennon ever is.

It’s war…