9. ~Julian~
9
~Julian~
My gloved fists plunged into the heavy bag with a ferocity that was therapeutic as fuck.
Talk about fighting shadows.
Or more like beating the motherfucking shit out of them.
I should’ve gone this route sooner, but I’d been stuck on trying to shut it down instead.
Until that talk I’d had with Milo a few nights ago.
The way he’d been, how he’d clearly been upset that I hadn’t been dealing with it.. it’d had an impact. One I hadn’t been able to deny.
And there was also something else pushing me along in this direction.
The search for the madman himself.
They’d declared that using me to draw him out was off the table, but things didn’t always pan out in an ideal way. I would be foolish not to believe that there could be a chance where that would actually need to happen, that we would have to resort to that.
I needed to be prepared.
Christ, I had to be.
If that was the way it went down, I couldn’t lose my nerve or let that fucker get under my skin again. The piece of shit had killed our child and nearly done the same to Caterina and Nico. He deserved more than death. He deserved our absolute worst, every monstrous part of us. I wouldn’t fuck up again like I had at the warehouses. I’d keep my shit together and end Angelo Simone once and for all.
I wouldn’t be the weak link.
I was better than that.
Stronger.
More resilient.
“You’re a survivor. But that’s only part of it. You’re beyond that. So far beyond that. You’re extraordinary. Fucking truly.”
Milo’s words had stayed with me.
He’d been right on the money.
I’d just lost sight of that with all that had happened.
But I never would again.
Especially not because of that psychopath.
“Want a sparring partner?”
I froze mid-strike, then pulled my fist back, and spun to see Levi standing in the home gym doorway.
“You don’t like too much downtime either, huh?”
A knowing look sparked in his eyes. “Too much time to think, right?”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
He rubbed his palms together. “So? Down for some sparring?” At my hesitation, he added, “Better than fighting shadows, right?”
I frowned. “Uh… yeah. How did you—”
“Been there, done that.”
“Okay, yeah. Let’s do it.”
He smiled, then pulled his phone from the back of his black cargo pants, and put it down out of the way on a bench in the corner.
I stepped away from the bag and into the center of the room, telling him, “There are some more gloves in that cabinet by the door.”
“I’m good.”
“You’re good?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Street fighter.”
“Huh. I thought I was getting a scrappy vibe from you.”
He chuckled. “Yeah.”
And then he took position opposite me, raising his hands in a boxer’s fighting stance, his head and back leaning forward.
I assumed my own stance.
“Hit it,” Levi said.
In the next second, I went to surprise him with a roundhouse kick, but he reacted before I’d even followed all the way through, and dodged the blow easily.
“What the—”
He grinned. “You were taking a Muay Thai stance, indicating you were gonna go for a kick from your back leg right off the bat.”
“Huh.”
He crooked his finger. “Again.”
I threw a punch, but he caught my glove in his hand.
“Let me guess, you knew I was gonna do that too?”
He released my glove. “To overcompensate for the first kick going awry.”
“That’s not—”
“You’re fighting emotionally. It’s compromising your impressive ability that I’ve heard about from Milo. The way you can read people so incredibly well. And if you’re looking to fight somebody who evokes a lot of emotion in you as you also do to them, you’re gonna need to employ that skill, have it transcend the rest. And use that emotion against them in the process.”
“You’re talking about Angelo?”
“Isn’t that why you came in here? Why you’ve been here for the last few days, supposedly fighting shadows?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I know it doesn’t seem to make sense given Nico’s stance on the matter of not putting me on the front lines where that bastard is concerned, but—”
“It makes perfect sense to me.”
“What do you mean?”
He dropped his hands. “The hardest part for me to get over wasn’t the powerlessness or even the despair. It was the shame.”
I started.
He went on, “The shame that I couldn’t stop what happened to me, what they did to me, or Brianna. Fuck, especially Brianna. Shame that they were able to make me a victim, able to… do a lot of fucked-up things. I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t move on. And I became obsessed. That shame drove everything for me. It risked a fuck of a lot, too. Even the people I love.”
“How did you purge it?”
“By taking back the power that was stolen from me. I had the main perpetrator incapacitated beneath me, then shoved a gun down his throat and blew his fucking head off. I destroyed his entire organization while I was at it. I took everything from him, even his life.”
“Whoa… that’s… intense.”
“It was, yeah.”
“And it worked? It gave you the peace that you’d been searching for, wiped away the shame?”
“I was too far gone at that point from years of utter obsession to find that motherfucker and destroy him, so it couldn’t have been any other way for me than it playing out that brutal way. Because I let rage drive me. I wouldn’t deal with it. I wouldn’t let myself see that the shame wasn’t mine, it was theirs. They were responsible for everything that happened. It wasn’t my fault. I was essentially victim-blaming myself. But it was something that happened to me, not something I’d brought about. If I’d recognized that sooner, allowed myself to, it would have saved me years of fucking pain, in all honesty.”
He stepped up to me, intensity rolling off him. “And you’re not me. The brutality you engage in is a product of what’s happened to you. It’s not who you are, is it? You don’t relish it for the sake of it? Only as a means to put down an opponent, to protect yourself and those you care for? And as I’ve heard, you’re a fan of the adrenaline rush. Just not the violence on its own?”
“That’s right.”
He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let your pain and this shame turn you into somebody you’re not. Because, believe me, it’s not always possible to go back once you start on that path. It twists you faster than you can imagine until you’re warped into a foreign version of yourself.” He squeezed my shoulder. “The shame is his. Not yours. All right?”
“I hear you, yeah.” I grasped his hand on me. “Thank you.”
“If I can use my fucked-up experiences to prevent somebody else from suffering as I did, I will.”
“It’s just… it’s easier said than done when it comes to the shame of it all.
He stepped back and folded his arms across his chest. “You know, Rina told me you’re a breath of fresh air through all of this darkness the four of you are caught up in.”
“She did?”
He nodded. “When she called me up asking me to give her an assist, she laid out the situation, and she told me about her relationship with the three of you. Being able to be that through all of this is no small thing. It’s fucking striking. It’s more than even strength and resilience, it’s another level. Don’t let Angelo take that from you. Don’t let anyone.”
“I won’t,” I uttered unsteadily, the emotion of it all getting to me.
I wouldn’t let him take anything more from me.
Levi unfolded his arms and assumed a fighting stance again. “You still want to do this?”
“It might come to it, right? Me going head to head with Angelo?”
“It’s a possibility,” he admitted.
“Last time I had a chance to put an end to him, I fucked it up. I got emotional.”
“Coming face to face with your abuser is unnerving as fuck,” he said. “But there’s an emotional aspect on his end, too. He’s obsessed with you. He wants you as his. That can be used to his detriment. You have the power to use it against him. You see it, right? You’re actually his weakness.”
I… was?
I thought about it for a few moments while Levi looked on, giving me time to process.
The bits and pieces running through my mind, all of it… I started putting them together.
“Beg me, Julian. Fucking beg me already.”
It had been more than him wanting to teach me a lesson, to break me and own me from a pure domination perspective. It had been more than even him being in pain and lashing out at somebody else in a bid to purge it.
He’d needed that from me.
He’d wanted it. Desperately.
He’d wanted me . And he’d wanted me to want him.
“I’m his weakness,” I breathed, as the realization rolled over me.
There was power in that.
Control.
Over him.
I stepped up to Levi and assumed a fighting stance. “Again,” I said, tossing him a wink.
He went first this time, and I blocked his blow, then deflected another, bringing my knee down when he also went in for a kick.
He smiled as he realized that I was doing what I did best—reading the fuck out of somebody.
We met blow for blow, moving rapid-fire, until sweat was pouring off both of us.
I was growing tired, faster than him. I guess his extensive street fighting experience gave him an edge where stamina during combat was concerned.
He managed to snag me in a headlock, and he swept his leg at the back of mine, making me crash to my knees as he held me basically incapacitated.
“Damn,” I chuckled against his grip. “Holding back, weren’t you?”
“Maybe a little,” he said, releasing me, then giving me a hand-up. “I fight to decimate, but we’re just sparring.”
His phone buzzed over on the bench, cutting into our conversation.
In the next moment, that buzzing was joined by a piercing alarm coming from it.
“What’s that?” I asked as he darted over there.
I rapidly pulled my gloves off and tossed them aside as I rushed over there to see what the fuck was going on.
He scrolled for a few seconds, then swung around to tell me, “There’s been a breach.”
The three of us stood hovering around Levi in the living room, as he sat rigidly in front of his command center setup, his fingers flying across one of the laptop keyboards.
“It’s the same people as before,” he reported.
“Shut it down,” I told him.
“No. I need to trace the hack. This is the optimal opportunity.”
“What about the security breach factor?” Nico questioned.
“Not an issue. Rina’s got a poison pill in the—it means anything they obtain will be destroyed the moment they access it. Meanwhile, let’s see what they’re after.”
He was stopped from doing that when something suddenly flashed up on the screen.
A black, shattered circle with cracks of red and green light breaking through, kind of like an eclipse, really.
“Goddammit,” Milo exclaimed.
“What the shit is that?” I asked.
Levi stilled, his face paling. “Motherfucker.”
“You recognize the symbol,” Nico realized.
“What is it?” Milo pushed, grasping the chair and leaning in.
“Erebus,” Levi choked.
I saw something spark in Nico’s eyes. And then he told us, “In Greek mythology, Erebus was the personification of darkness, a god from the dark part of the underworld. The son of Chaos.”
“That definitely doesn’t seem to bode well,” I uttered.
“It really doesn’t,” Levi spoke. “I’ve come across these guys before. In my crusade against Lynch.” He stared out at us, a haunted look in his eyes. “They’re nowhere and everywhere. They’re above the law and in the darkest recesses of the underworld. They’re ghosts and demented gods. They’re fucking death.”