16. Tino
A messagefrom Dom pings on my phone.
Den at three. Duchess is meeting us. She’s not leaving until she agrees to what we want. >
Good luck with that,I think.
Dom believes he can solve every problem in life by being a bossy asshole. He’s like his dad in that regard. I’m worried about him, and Kirill. I’m even more worried about Mackenzie.
My whole body hurts today, and my head is pounding. I’m at the point where if I don’t take the Oxy, my head splits. I never used to have headaches like this until I started taking increasing doses of my painkillers. I also start to get panicky and sweaty.
I open my toiletry bag and pluck out the bottle of pills. I give it a shake. I can tell there aren’t many left, and my body floods with anxiety.
I’ve been through an ever-changing roster of doctors. I’m getting to the point where there isn’t a private doctor on the eastern seaboard I haven’t seen. I don’t want to start getting my drugs on the streets, because you don’t know what they’ve been cut with or what you’re actually buying, but I might not have a choice. I know I need to stop, or at least cut down, but right now isn’t a good time. There’s too much stress going on all around me. The pills help with my physical pain, but they also help me deal with all that other shit.
I promise myself every day that I will stop at some point. It’s never the right time, though. I’m aware that I keep making excuses.
I ball my hands into fists and stand, pacing the room. These fucking dorms are so claustrophobic. The square walls, and the gray floor, and the small windows. Academic jail cells for the kids of criminal elites. That’s all they are.
Deciding I can’t sit in my room and wait, I tip one of the pills out of the bottle and swallow it down dry. Then I change into some running gear and pull on my track shoes. I’ll go for a run and see if that helps.
Once I’m outside, with the sun on my face and the wind blowing gently over me as I race through the trees, I start to feel better. I’ve been having a new and disturbing symptom recently. Every now and again, when I’m least expecting it, I’m taken back to the events of that day. The day my world erupted into pain.
The gunfire. The screams. The men dragging me from my room and beating me over and over with sticks and fists. Kicking me with their boot-clad feet.
I should be grateful. My sister got it a lot worse than I did. The things they did to her are the kind of things no one will ever forget. Least of all her. She’s been in therapy ever since. Twice a week, paid for by our father. Me, though, I’m expected to suck it up. I wasn’t assaulted in the way she was, and also, as my father always reminds me, I’m the man of the house. Once Father has retired, everything will fall to me. I will be the one in charge. I will be the one who needs to fight the battles.
Women can be weak, and they can need help. We men can’t. I learned that lesson as a very young boy.
I stop running and take a seat on the bench with a view out over the track field. I take a swig of the water from the bottle attached to my waist. Catching my breath, I let myself think back to the first time my father told me that big boys don’t cry.
I’d only been around seven or eight years old. A bigger boy, José, a son of one of the men who worked as an armed guard for my father, had pushed me so hard that I fell over and broke my nose.
I’d been in so much pain that I’d immediately started to cry. The kid laughed at me for being a big baby, and I told him that when my father found out what he’d done, he would be in so much trouble. My father was the man in charge. No one got to do that kind of thing to me. I understood as much because I’d seen Father threaten men with their lives for looking at my mother the wrong way.
I’d raced back to the house, at the far end of the compound where we lived. I was shouting for my papi and at the same time trying to wipe away the blood that kept pouring over my mouth and chin and down my throat.
My mother had come first, running out of the living room and crying out when she saw me. Not long after her, my father appeared, with two of his regular guards. They both stood by his side with their hands on their hips, resting casually on the guns they had there.
My father had hunkered down to my level and looked me in the eye. “What has happened, my son?”
“José pushed me, and I fell over, and I’ve hurt my nose, Papi,” I had said truthfully. Tears and snot mingled with the blood, and Mami gently dabbed at my face with a handkerchief.
“Did you hit him back?” my father asked.
“Of course not, Papi. He’s bigger than me, and older.”
“Those things don’t make him a better fighter than you, though. Or they wouldn’t if you knew how to defend yourself properly. We will start lessons soon. No son of mine is going to be beaten by the hired help.”
“For God’s sake,” Mami had cried. “I think his nose is broken. He needs to go to the hospital.”
“He can see the doctor here at the compound,” Father had insisted. Then he looked back at me. “Stop your sniveling, boy,” he snapped. “It’s okay to cry when you’re small, but now that you’re turning into a big boy, you can’t cry like this.”
I remember trying to blink back the tears. And every time I sniffed, searing pain burned through my nose and into my eyes.
“What will happen toJosé, Papi?” I asked. “Will you send him away?”
“No. He won’t go anywhere. His father is one of my best men, and he is here to keep you and your mother and sister safe.”
“Will he be beaten, then?” I had asked.
“Only if you learn how to do it yourself,” Papi had said. He’d taken hold of my upper arms and shaken me hard enough to make my teeth rattle. “You need to grow up and stop being a crybaby. You are embarrassing me in front of my men. Next week, you are going to start training. You will learn to fight and defend yourself. I’m trying to raise a future heir to this empire.”
“Last week, when one of the girls made my sister cry, you sent her away,” I had exclaimed.
“Your sister is a girl,” my father replied. “It’s different for them. They can’t help being weak. We aren’t that way, and it’s time you learned to take your place here.”
He stood and turned away from me, looking back one last time. “Go with your mother and see the doctor, but stop your sniveling.”
I had gone to see the doctor, and he’d given me some medicine. It was a bitter tasting liquid, but he told me it would take the pain away. It had, and it also made me feel floaty and happy. Whenever I hurt myself after that, I never bothered to go to my father, or even my mother. I would just find the doctor and he’d give me some of the floaty medicine and make everything better.
Now, sitting here as a grown man, I’m scared the medicine is in control of me and not the other way around. The only problem is I don’t know how to stop. One of the only times I don’t feel the urge to pop one of my pills is when I’m with Mackenzie. For some reason, when I’m with her, the screaming in my head calms a little. Of course, it doesn’t stop the physical pain, but it does help me deal with things when I’m around her.
I have a sick secret. It’s one I find hard to even admit to myself. My dirty secret is that when I’m hurting Mackenzie, whether it’s with my belt or my actions toward her, it takes some of my own pain away. I guess it’s like Dom’s self-harm in some sort of sick reverse. If she knew, would she hate me? At least, I think she would.
I glance at my watch and realize I don’t have long before I’m meeting the other two in the den, along with our precious doll. If Dom tries to make her join us with his usual hardheaded demands and orders, Kirill and I will try a different tactic to make her ours.
The one thing she can’t resist is the sexual attraction between us. If Dom starts getting on his high horse and it looks like she’s going to run, I think Kirill and I should use her sexuality to trap her. She’s the most wanton, sensual woman I’ve ever met. She is as hooked on this as we are. Dom doesn’t need to push her into this. She’ll choose it if left to her own devices because, just like us, she can’t do any different.
I place a quick call.
“Da?” Kirill answers.
“How you doing?”
“Peachy, I think the American’s say,” he says then coughs.
I wonder if he’s heard anything back from his father about the watches yet, but I don’t ask.
Christ, we’re all so fucked up.
“Listen,” I say. “This meet with Mackenzie in the den, if Dom starts to do his imperious bullshit and is bossing her around, how about you and I defuse things?”
“Happy to, my friend, but I don’t think I can dance at the moment. I am a little sore.”
I chuckle at that. “I was thinking more along the lines of sex.”
“With Dom?” He makes a gagging sound.
“Ha ha, asshole. No, with Mack. We defuse the situation by getting down with Mack, and Dom won’t be able to refuse.”
“No, he’s as desperate for her as we are. So, what is the plan?”
“If he starts to lay down the law, one of us can move things in the other direction and the other gets on board with it. I think it should be you,” I say. “Start to undo her blouse or stick your fingers in her panties. Move things away from Dom being an arrogant dick.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the one with all the charm,” I reply.
“Da. This is true. I do have very much charm. Also, I have very good looks, where you are an ugly bastard.”
I hear the laughter in his tone.
“No way. You got the charm, and I got the looks.”
“What did Dom get, then?”
“Aside from being bossy? I suppose we have to admit he got the charisma.”
“A little, I suppose.”
I laugh again. “So, we have a plan?”
“Yes, we have a plan. I’ll put things in motion, and you back me up.”
“Absolutely.”
By the time we’re due to meet, I’m angsty again. I really want to take another pill, but I only have a few left now. I guess I’ll just have to drink my way through things tonight. Sex is a good distraction. Tomorrow, I need to see if I can find a doctor who will be willing to prescribe me some more pain meds. If not, I might have to go the route of getting them from somebody on the street. Either way, I can’t be without.
I’ve taken a shower after my run, and as I’m getting dressed, I notice with some shock that my fingers shake slightly as I button up my shirt. God, when did I get this bad?
I slap some aftershave on my cheeks, run my fingers through my still damp hair, and take one last look in the mirror. I’m looking as good as I ever do, and it’s time for me to get to the den.
I just hope Dom doesn’t push things too hard and fast, and if he does, Kirill brings his A-game.