Chapter 37
CEZAR
I pulled into the driveway without telling Codrin I was coming. I wanted the house empty. Safe for at least five fucking minutes.
One can dream.
My father was already waiting outside like a vulture circling fresh meat. The second my foot hit the ground, his men closed in. It wasn’t surprising. Still, a part of me always hoped it wouldn’t happen. That maybe, just once, I’d walk through that door without being dragged somewhere to bleed.
They hauled me down the hall to one of my rooms. The ones he pretended were just for training. I was forced onto my knees while he launched into one of his classic tirades.
One of his favorite lackeys hovered nearby. The one who liked building torture toys. A pathetic version of Vasile if he had no talent and hated himself.
They strapped me into a chair designed to hurt. My right arm was bound tight, stretching the already aching muscles around the healing wound. Then my legs were locked into place.
“You think you can do whatever the fuck you want, Cezar?” Father surrounded me. “I’d kill you outright if your brothers wouldn’t notice. That day will come. For now, I want to see just how weak you really are.”
I drowned out most of what he was saying until my attention snagged on a shimmer of metal. A spear. Aimed directly at the spot where I’d been shot. My pulse raced.
“Codrin told me you got hurt.” His mouth twisted into something between disgust and delight. “Eventually, I made him tell me more.”
My insides turned. How much did Codrin actually say? And what did Father do to make him talk?
“Heard you nearly died. Too bad, really.” He drew the words out, soaking in every ounce of sick satisfaction.
“I’ve always seen that as my job since I’m your father.
Let’s see how long you can hold out. After being wherever the fuck you were.
Probably shacked up at one of your whores’ houses.
You look pretty damn healthy for someone who got shot not too long ago. Let’s fix that.”
He grabbed a box and tied it to a string hanging from the ceiling. His lackey yanked my left hand up and forced me to hold it. The thing looked small, but it weighed a hell of a lot more than it should have.
“Hold it up for an hour, and this ends. Drop it, and you’ll see what happens when you fail,” he said over his shoulder as he walked out. “Failing is all you ever do.”
Once the door shut, I looked around and put the pieces together. The string was rigged to a trigger on the spring mechanism. If I let the box fall, the spear would launch forward, straight into my shoulder. Fucking great, this was going to hurt.
No clock. No way to count. No way to tell how long I’d been stuck like that. My arm shook almost instantly, muscles from the bullet wound still weak. Every time the box moved even a fraction, the spear inched closer.
Metal hook.
The memory surfaced without warning.
A year ago, Father chained me to the floor after I fucked up one of his precious deals.
My wrists were stretched so tight above my head that my shoulders felt halfway torn from their sockets.
My ankles were shackled too, spread apart just enough to make every movement hurt.
Then came the chain around my throat, locking me in place with barely enough slack to breathe.
I could kneel. That was all. Couldn’t stand or curl up. Couldn’t even fucking turn my head properly without the chain biting deeper into my throat.
The concrete beneath me smelled like death. Father walked in eventually, and Baciu was shoved into the room behind him. The old gardener stopped dead the second he saw me shackled to the ground. He looked terrified.
Baciu had worked here longer than I’d been alive. Kind eyes. Wrinkled hands always stained with dirt from the gardens. He used to sneak extra fruit into the kitchen for us when we were kids and talk about his granddaughters nonstop while trimming the roses outside.
They were around 6 back then.
Father didn’t explain a fucking thing, even while Baciu kept asking questions in a shaky voice. He only stared at him in silence before pulling a bag over his head.
Chemically soaked.
The old man panicked instantly, stumbling backward while Father held him in place like it was nothing. His movements weakened fast, legs giving out first before the rest of him sagged.
I didn’t react, wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
Then I saw the hook hanging from the ceiling. They shoved it through both of his legs while he was unconscious.
Remembering it made bile rise in my throat. Even now, I could still hear it. That wet, tearing noise.
They hoisted him above me like slaughtered livestock.
The first drop hit my forehead warm. Then another landed on my chest. It just kept coming.
Blood soaked my hair, my face, my clothes. Ran into my eyes while I fought against the chains hard enough to rip skin from my wrists. Father just stood there and watched.
Baciu woke up screaming, and the sound still fucking haunted me. One of Father’s men shoved fabric into his mouth after a few seconds, muffling it into broken animal noises.
I couldn’t do a fucking thing.
Father stepped closer, dragging his knife slowly up Baciu’s stomach. “This is all your fault, Cezar. Everything is always your fault. Useless piece of trash.”
They left us there. Baciu choked above me while I drowned beneath him. I cried so hard I threw up. Begging anyone to listen. Begging Baciu to hold on even though I knew he couldn’t.
I fucking showered in his god damn blood.
The room smeared around me as the memory morphed with the present, the scent of iron and rust swallowing me whole.
The box slipped.
The spear launched straight into my shoulder.