Chapter 3 #2
“Well, he’s doing a decent job. You must’ve promised the bastard something good.
Words started leaking through the phone lines.
Vito’s up to his chin in debt, and Arturo was already labeled a monster before doing this shit, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you were chosen to unseat him, even in this predicament. There’s unrest for sure.”
“It’s worth a shot… but it would be all-out war,” Dante adds, not knowing that war is all I dream about. That it infiltrates my thoughts, regardless of whether I’m awake or sleeping, that I dream of it more often than I dream of my wife.
War would heal me right now.
“If we’re going to do this,” the look I cast between them is meant to disuade them, make them fear entering this inescapable void with me, “it has to be done right. We’ll only get one chance.”
It’s fucking insane that neither of them backpedals to the beginning of this conversation, how they continue to stare at me as if I were an idiot for assuming they would. Either I’m too delirious to make this sound as dangerous as it will surely be, or they are as batshit crazy as I am.
I toss another lifeline. “If there is any opportunity to get out of this life, it’s right now. I wouldn’t hold it against you to go. It’s what I want. This isn’t your fight.”
I want to retract the words as soon as I’ve said them, throw the both of them out of this crumbling warehouse by force if need be, but Dante is squeezing the hell out of my forearm. “I’m your brother, X. We are your brothers.”
Bo has already started swabbing my infected skin with a wet alcohol wipe. “We’re not going anywhere without you.”
My eyes close, selfish enough to let the argument I could wage die on my lips. “Then let’s get to work.”
My father waves a handful of hair in front of my face. Hair as black as ink. “She begged for you.”
Dario’s blade digs deeper into my skin, a clean incision that makes my limbs flinch involuntarily.
A game of roulette with my veins.
Laid flat, I watch blood trickle over my forearm, flowing like a stream through the cracks of the cement. Dario is experienced enough to miss every time. I'm losing just enough blood to bring me in and out of consciousness.
Dario’s mouth knots as if he’s suddenly sucking back everything he could hurl onto this slab. “Boss, anymore of this and he won’t wake up.”
My father has straightened by the time I blink again. He seizes my throat, spitting words at me. Words he knows will inflict more pain than the razor-edge of a karambit knife. “She nearly got away from us. She fought like hell.”
He’s lying.
Don’t let him bait you.
Sophie is free. Sophie is safe.
Dio, let her be safe.
He slams the fistful of hair onto the concrete beside me, storming off. “We’re done for the day. Send for the Doc.”
“Dante’s got a message,” Dario whispers for only my ears, bending down to clean his blade before Arturo can notice he isn’t behind him. “The reckoning has come. ”
He grabs his tools, following his boss, the powerful man who has held his position for decades, into the daylight.
I drop my head back onto the cement, exhaling shakily.
The reckoning has come.
“Open your eyes!”
I can’t make out the sound that brings me to consciousness. It’s brutal, and grating, and it revolves, returning every couple of seconds or so.
Someone is grabbing my arms, rattling my shoulders. The painful sound alters as my eyes are pulled open, wincing at the sunlight.
“Fuck! Look at me, Xavier!”
The calm darkness is more inviting than this. My eyes close again… until that noise returns, amplified… and I realize that it’s coming from me. That ghastly sound is coming out of my mouth without restraint. That brings me around enough to look into Dante’s eyes.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this terrified.
“Keep your eyes open, man!” My body flinches as Dario grabs hold of my sides while Dante unravels the ropes tied around my wrists. Those ropes have extended my arms above my head, chained to a pipe for God knows how long. Long enough that I can’t feel any part of my body.
My head drops. Beneath my mangled feet is blood, more than I expect to see.
“These knots are too damn tight,” Dante growls desperately. “Grab my knife. For fucks sake, keep his head up. Keep him awake!”
A hand guides my face up roughly.
“How the hell did it get this far?”
Dario slaps my face to the side, but my eyes still droop. “X was spouting some stronzate about the bloodline dying with him. Arturo lost it.”
“And you did it? You did this to him?”
“What did you expect me to do? Blow the whole operation and go against the boss? He said to continue, so I did.”
With one scathing look, Dante makes it known he hates this man, that he wants to beat him bloody. “We’ll be lucky if he makes it out of this room, Dario. Lucky!”
Accompanied by a grating groan of pain, I find my voice. It’s barely there. “He had no choice.”
Dante hisses at me in fury, slicing through the cord. “You just had to open your fucking mouth, didn’t you?”
Dario’s hand lands on Dante’s arm, his voice lowering until he thinks I can’t hear him.
Maybe it’s my blugeoned eardrums or the haze of the moment, but the words he utters, words that make my stomach shrink, are amplified as if he were screaming them in my face.
“Arturo said what they did to her. He said there were recordings of them… you know… taking her?—”
Dante didn’t know. I never told him what they did to my wife—one of his closest friends. Only Bo saw her off. Even then, he could only confirm that she’d been beaten.
Somehow, I muster the strength to raise my head. Dante’s hands have stopped unraveling the rope. He looks from Dario to me, finally understanding why I would endure this, why I would orchestrate the demise of my own family.
I'm split open from the inside out—and from the outside in. There isn’t one part of me without a gaping wound.
Some can be seen—others cling to my insides, to parts of me that feel impossible to suppress.
“Maybe we should push this,” Dante says. “Another day would give us time?—”
“It has to be today.” Dario catches my arm as Dante gets it freed, starting on the other side.
“If Xavier doesn’t walk out of this place on his goddamn feet, every man outside is going to flock to Arturo’s side to escape his wrath.
The only reason anyone is willing to turn is to make sure Arturo’s reign ends. ”
My teeth grind as I plant my feet on the ground. Pain is quickly resurfacing, contractions returning to my arm as the blood that was cut off seeps back through me. “Is everything organized? Did Zeke plant it?”
“Yes. Arturo’s on his way to the yacht club now. They’ll head for open water by noon. Your father will be seen casting off—until Bo gets him alone. By three, the vessel will be up in flames, your father presumed dead.”
“My mother isn’t with him, right?”
“She’s been moved to the apartment. I personally checked before coming here.”
I nod, convinced.
This is it.
The one chance I get to hurt him, ruin him, make him suffer as I have suffered.
As Sophie has suffered.
With the final slice through the restraint, my arm is freed, my knees banging into the cement. Dante drops down to help, but I hold up my arm, stopping him. I have to do this.
One glance down at my body and I freeze, feeling my face drain of blood. At one point, I couldn’t have imagined my father would do this. His beloved son—his trophy.
Now, nearly a corpse. I begin to question everything I’d thought when he brought me to this place. So convinced that he still planned to make me his successor, I pushed him every chance I could, knowing he wouldn’t go so far as to kill me.
Seeing myself now, it dawns on me that it was really just a matter of time.
“You need help, X. We gotta get the Doc here?—”
My hands glide through blood as I pull myself onto my feet, only to fall back until my shoulder slams into the pipe. I cling to it with one hand. Breathe . “Get me something to clean myself with and a suit.”
“X—”
“I'll go after this is finished.”
Dario looks proud. Dante looks the opposite. “How will you walk?”
With hatred as fuel, I say, “I’ll do it. Just get me what I need. Get the room prepared.”
Dante nods as Dario sets a leather bag on the chair and a pitcher of water. “It’s already done.”
The look I give him is baring, exposing my internal desires. “And my kit?”
Most doctors have medical bags. Teachers have satchels of schoolwork. A man in my profession carries something similar, except the contents inside have the ability to gut, maim, and carve someone’s soul out of their body.
Dante’s lips thin out to a flat line, the weight of those three words landing upon him like a blow. “Yes.”
This is the only way.
As Dario unzips a clothing bag, revealing a three-piece waistcoat suit, my eyes glaciate on the material. He couldn’t have known when he chose from my wardrobe that this one was passed down to me by my father. The gray wool is vintage but immaculate. I made sure to never work a job in it.
That changes today. There has never been a more fitting occasion to wear it. Already lacking a shirt, I unbuckle my pants. “Dario, pull the car around.”
Out of respect, Dante follows him, offering me a few moments of silence.
I grab the water, pouring it over my head.
The blood and sweat I’ve lived in rains down my body, filth the cloth isn’t strong enough to remove.
As I slide into the clothes, this uniform I can never escape, one item after another, each move calculated in an effort to keep me on my feet, I prepare myself for what is about to happen .
How far I'm willing to lose myself. My morals. The organization’s morals.
As he has, I'm going to beat against tradition.