Rage

Prologue

Prologue

Arkady

“ O n the charge of manslaughter, we, the jury, find the defendant, Antony Accetta, guilty..”

My legs felt like rubber. Surely this wasn’t real. This had to be a nightmare, and I’d wake up any time now, back in my own bed, roll over and get a good morning blowjob from my girlfriend, and get ready for work. I’d go to my dead-end job at the bank, hand other people money until time to clock out, and come home to a box lasagna in the oven and a fat, happy dog on my couch.

Instead, the only dream I woke up from was the one where I lived my sentencing over and over, the conviction they’d been led to by way of DNA tests and analysis of crime scene photos. And, of course, my brother’s lovely testimony.

The one he gave while impersonating me.

I couldn’t blame him–a murder conviction was forever. And he was too busy living the high life to spend the next ten years in jail.

His letters to me while I served his sentencing were laughable.

Keep your head up, brother! Those years will fly by!

You can still file an appeal. I’ll call your lawyer and ask how I can help.

Mom misses you. I hope you’re taking this time in jail to reflect on how you’ve affected not just the victims, but your own family.

The bars on my cell were cold, hard, and uninviting, the overall effect like a cage rather than a cell. My heart pounded any time they brought chow, pacing like a tiger to keep my cool until the tray was in the slot and I was devouring the bland, seasonless bullshit they passed off as food.

Five years ago, my twin brother killed his girlfriend in cold blood and then fled the scene. He called and asked me to help him clean up a mess he’d made.

Until that day, I had no idea my brother was involved with drugs. Until that day, I had no idea what kind of monster shared my face, features, and hometown.

Until that day, I had no idea what danger came from inside the family tree.

When I pulled up to his apartment, all the lights were out, and he met me on the porch, his hands shaking, eyes wide, pupils dilated the wrong way. He was staring a motion light in the face, yet his pupils were huge, and I began to suspect something was up.

I didn’t get suspicious fast enough, though.

“Hand me your phone, man; I gotta make a call,” he muttered, handing me a dead cell phone. “I can’t find my charge cord.”

I took his phone and inspected it, finding it dead. No surprise there. He’d always been bad with electronics. So I didn’t think twice as I handed my own over with a frown. “You’ve gotta get better with this. What if Mom called in the middle of the night with an emergency or something?”

He waved off my concern and reached for the doorknob, hesitating at the last moment. “Go on in, man. I’ll join you in the kitchen.”

I didn’t realize he was setting me up, putting my prints everywhere. I’d been in his apartment more times than I could count for one thing or another. So, it was only natural my prints were everywhere, just like his. But what I didn’t find out until later was the fucker had eroded his fingerprints years ago in preparation for his life as a hardened criminal. Leaving no trace wasn’t a concern when someone else shared your DNA. Your fingerprints, on the other hand, were a liability.

I hadn’t touched his hands in ages. There was no way for me to know what he had planned.

Still didn’t stop me from beating myself up about it.

The light switches weren’t working when I tried them, so I moved into the kitchen from memory, a hand on the wall to keep me from bumping into anything on the way. When I got to the kitchen, though, the light from the window on the far wall above the sink was more than enough to show me just what kind of ‘mess’ I’d walked into.

So much blood.

It was on the cabinets, clear to the ceiling, dripping down like red rain. It was on the walls, insane arcs that displayed multiple hits and violent intent. It was in the sink, splattered where a sharp, shiny chef knife sat, coated in the shit. It was on the counters, smears and drops and prints the shape of hands that reminded me of a B-list slasher flick from the 90s.

It was on the floor, pooling under the body of my brother’s girlfriend, her arms and legs littered with slash marks and gashes and puncture wounds that left no doubt as to whose blood this was.

“Tony,” I whispered, my voice absent in my shock. “Tony, Tony, get in here ? —”

The last thing I remembered before he threw the washrag over my face was the undeniable scent of something chemical–chloroform, I would later figure out, a substance he’d been abusing that had been the perfect way to frame me, put me at the scene, and incapacitate me long enough to switch places.

It wasn’t the perfect crime, as far as crimes go, but the DNA that would typically be used to prove me innocent and him guilty was absent—because any DNA at the crime scene would match us both.

They didn’t listen to me when I finally regained my composure and my senses, screaming in a cell at the general lockup about being framed and a twin brother and how it was all a mistake. The cops beat my ass and cuffed me, then humiliated me by taking my clothes and dressing me in a paper gown—suicide watch, they called it.

A week later, I’d stopped screaming to be let out. Two weeks later, I was being trotted out in front of a packed courtroom to face my accusers—the prosecutor, in my case.

Two months later, I was sentenced to ten years, the sentence much lighter than it should have been, thanks to my brother’s moving speech on my addictions and drug abuse and not being in my right state of mind.

My mother turned her back on me. She assumed I was the child she’d always had problems with. Tony had done a great job covering his tracks, assimilating into my life well enough to fool even our parents. He took over my career, took over my home, fucked my girlfriend, even dropped my dog off at the humane society as a stray.

That hurt more than knowing my girlfriend didn’t realize she wasn’t fucking me anymore. That it wasn’t my cock slipping between her lips every morning.

Two years with the bitch, and she jumped on someone else’s cock just because he claimed to be me.

It must’ve been an excellent cover he’d put together. Or a really shitty girlfriend. Come to think of it, it might have been a little of both.

A knock at my cell door jarred me from the morbid thoughts and reminiscing about a crime I didn’t commit. My least favorite corrections officer stood in my doorway, his twisted smile more like a smirk that promised pain. He was the type who liked to use the criminals in his care as part of an underground betting ring to line his own pockets in exchange for little favors. He’d tapped me when I first came in, thinking I was some wild and crazy junkie with aggressive tendencies. He had no reason to think I was some bank teller from the middle of Iowa with a thick accent and a predisposition for girls whose curves were as soft as my hands.

I got my ass kicked so bad those first few fights, I had to spend a week in the infirmary. When I came back to my cell, he beat me again and left me lying there in my own personal hell.

I learned how to fight after that. Worked out as best I could. Bulked up and got fit and picked up skills to survive the next ten years in this fucking concrete nightmare.

And here he was again, after promising me two weeks off from the fights thanks to a broken rib I picked up from the last match.

I rolled over on my bunk and shielded my eyes from the annoying ass fluorescent lights overhead. “What the fuck do you want, Macy?”

His nightstick collided with my cell bars with an angry ping, making my ears ring. “That’s Officer Macy to you, inmate.”

“Sorry,” I amended, rolling into a sitting position. “Officer Macy, how delightful to have you gracing the doorway of my humble abode. Whatever could I do for you on this fine day? Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?”

“Har de har har, asshat,” he growled, stepping into my domain with zero fear. He’d turned me into a literal fighting machine, and yet acted like the tiger wouldn’t jump him at the first opportunity and slit his pig throat. “I need you to come back early for a fight today.”

“Our deal was for two weeks, Macy,” I said dryly, jerking a thumb at the calendar behind me on the wall. “It’s been one.”

“I know what it’s been, Accetta. I can read a fucken calendar.”

The urge to mock him was too good to pass up. “Coulda fooled me.”

That one earned a boot to the side of my leg. Fuck all, it hurt when you got kicked by one of these fuckers’ steel-toed work shoes.

“You fight tonight, and I’ll make it worth your while. I’ve got a lot riding on tonight, and my other guy is in the hole, so he’s out.” His eyes scanned me up and down in a pointed look of sheer disgust. “You’re all I got on short notice.”

“How convenient,” I muttered, rubbing the side of my shin. “What’s in it for me?”

“I’ll put in a call to your parole board and get you out of here at your next hearing.”

All thought of the sore rib I was nursing, the aching throb in my leg, fled the building as my mind processed what he’d just said.

I could be a free man.

My last hearing hadn’t gone so well. They denied me parole based on my brother’s concern that I might be a flight risk. That I might not be rehabilitated enough yet. He was really just gunning for me to snap in here and be declared mentally unwell. Or killed in some freak accident.

But the parole board ate it up, as always.

Having the word of an officer lent me a level of credibility I couldn’t gain on my own. And if he knew someone on the board, my chances of getting out of this place were as good as gold.

Still…why would he let his cash cow go so easily?

“Why help me get out of here when I’d bring you more money inside?”

“Don’t you worry about me. I got a big boy coming in who’ll rake in the dough. Losing your scrawny ass ain’t gonna hurt me. But you’ve never really belonged in here, now, have you, Accetta?”

I glanced at the floor, then let my eyes pass over the eight-by-ten rectangle of a room that had been my life for the past five years. Everything left of me since that day was within these four walls. Pictures I’d drawn of things I remembered on the outside, angry diary entries I’d ripped out, crumpled, and then stuck to the wall with toothpaste and tape, letters from that fuckstick traitor of a twin, his lies and insults circled in red pen over and over until the line ripped through the paper.

I had plans for him when I got out of here. I could take my life back when I made it outside. I could make him pay for what he’d done to me, how badly he’d ruined my life.

“You know what, Macy? I don’t think this rib’s all that sore anymore.”

He grinned as I stood up and rotated my arms in a circle, stretching for the brutal fight ahead that would likely either kill me or set me free.

“I knew you’d see it my way.”