Chapter Twenty-Seven
A month later
Elio
The room smelled like blood and spilled guts.
The odor was repellent, circulating in the area that had once been cold but was now warm due to the mutilated bodies around me and the body heat from four of my soldiers who would, unfortunately, have to clean the mess that had resulted from my anger and empty mind.
I flexed the muscles around my neck, blowing out a breath of relief as one of the soldiers passed me a cigar and a lighter.
The moment my gaze settled on my hand as it collected the items, I struggled to see my skin.
All that met my vision was blood; coated around my hand, splashed on my forearms, and digging under my nails.
It irritated me, and the urge to soak myself in clean water pulled strong.
I placed the cigar between my lips, lit up the end, and inhaled the smoke until it stroked every nerve ending in my body. I turned back to the massacre.
Five bodies … there were supposed to be six.
The Elite people I’d hired were supposed to be fucking six.
One of them had escaped. One dead man was still breathing, and a sense of unfinished business touched a nerve that made me picture a gruesome punishment for every man involved in finding these people—for their carelessness and inability to get the job done—Angelo and Casmiro included.
I knew my actions were a little … erratic.
The Elite had no idea who had paid them for the job.
Still, it was me—they diverted, made noise, made things inconvenient for me, and I despised flaws in schemes I had taken the time and energy to build.
They brought in flaws—greedy thieves with no regard for courtesy.
I had waited two weeks to do this and wanted to wait a few more weeks—make them sweat a little—but today, my mind had been a void of its own making, webs of anger and a need for blood, and relief had woven itself around my insides, and the urge to visit this little team had plagued me till I succumbed.
Waking up, I wondered why the neutral mood I had carried from the day before never followed me to the new day. In fact, I had been on a phone call with Zahra and, at some point, fell asleep naturally—without taking any pills to aid it.
We had been talking about anything and nothing for hours on end.
It started from the time they reached a club, and she’d retired to a private corner to speak with me, distracting me from reading, as she talked about the most random things.
She refused to disconnect the phone—for some reason—thinking I was bored to death and her company was the only thing she thought would keep me sane.
I didn’t mind because I enjoyed hearing her voice and the voices of her friends in the background.
Even when she returned to their penthouse, and they had dinner, I was still connected to the call until she went to her bedroom, and I finally settled into bed and drifted off with her still talking and on the brink of sleep herself.
One would think that after all that and a night of perfect sleep, I would wake up feeling light and regular—but no—I felt heavy, and when I picked up my phone to check the time and then caught the date, I knew why I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.
It was December 1st, my birthday, and I hadn’t mentally been prepared for it.
After my nineteenth birthday, I always took care by schooling my mind a day before my birthday, but things had been going smoothly for the past few weeks.
I was happy, I was content, and everything was normal; but somehow, today became so gray.
I tried to think of reasons to be happy and grateful, but thinking about them made them gray, too, and the feeling ignited anger.
Uncontrollable anger that seemed to sink into my skin and body.
I had taken the longest shower, went back to the bedroom to arrange my bed, and did not like the little crease by the side, so I redid the whole thing; there was a little crease in the middle, and I redid it again—up to five times before I was satisfied—but the work made me angrier.
Going to find clothes to wear, I despised how everything in my wardrobe seemed dirty; even if I knew they were clean, they somehow managed to look dirty.
I succumbed, selected a standard button-up, and ironed it even though it was already well-ironed.
I performed that action—over and over and over and over again, burning myself on occasion and swinging the machine into a nearby wall out of anger.
I went back to pick it up, inspected it for damage, and returned to ironing.
I had woken up at around eight in the morning and was leaving for the torture rooms at noon.
I could not eat anything. I did not crave food. I craved alcohol, anything that would make me feel numb.
I decided to finish with the Elite group on time, but after I saw them, it took two hours to kill five people completely. Torture and maiming—blood, opened flesh, screams, cries, terror, and gore—somehow, I wasn’t satisfied.
Blowing out the smoke, I tilted my head, studying the one with strawberry-blond hair, now soaked in blood, his fingers still twitching.
“Gun.”
It was in my grip in an instant, and I angled the barrel to the dying man’s head and rapidly pulled the trigger until his brain particles started to slip out of his scattered head.
Angling the gun back up, I studied my work for almost a minute before nodding. “Hm.” I stretched out my hand that held the gun to the soldier who had given it to me. But for some reason, the weapon remained in my hand.
Slowly, I turned to look at the soldier; his face was pale, eyes on the man I had just shot.
“Was he a friend?”
The soldier snapped upright, blinking back as he looked at my forehead, unable to meet my eyes, body shaken up. From his young face, I could tell he was in his early twenties.
He shook his head fiercely, fear in his eyes. “No, sir. No, sir, I—I am sorry, sir.”
I frowned, irritation biting at my skin. “What in God’s name am I looking at?”
Dread tainted his eyes at the disdain and irritation in my voice.
“Sir, I’m—”
“Go, get out. Make sure I never see you again. Ever.”
“Yes, sir,” he said before hurriedly rushing out of the room.
I looked at the other soldiers, their faces stoic, eyes ahead, awaiting orders.
I stretched my gun toward one, and he quickly collected it. Body firm, trained.
That was what I liked to see.
“Inform the recruitment manager that I would like to meet with him. I will not tolerate little mistakes like this.”
“Yes, Marino.”
“Pass a message across to the data team. Tell them that if they do not locate the whereabouts of the last member in the Elite group before the day ends, I will seek out anyone and everyone they care about, and then I will pay them a farewell visit.”
“Yes, sir.”
I stepped out without another word, two soldiers following automatically behind me as I walked from the torture room to my house. Everyone who passed by avoided my eyes and stayed out of my way; some had fear in their eyes, and some were stoic.
I itched to pick out the ones who cowered—in fact, I would add it to my agenda to do a personal inspection of every man in the empire.
It would take more than a day and even more than a week—but the urge to pluck out blunt thorns was very strong—or maybe the anger simmering underneath my skin compelled these thoughts because usually, I would not care.
When I entered my house, the soldiers didn’t follow.
I headed straight to my bedroom, discarded the cigar, and started taking off the dirty clothes on my body—entering the room half naked, I walked into the bathroom and straight to the sink, turned on the water, and placed my hands underneath it.
The water that came out clean and clear from the faucet was tainted with blood when it met my hands.
I cleaned and cleaned, wiping off dried blood with soap as the bloodied water went down the drain.
When I was satisfied after what seemed like the longest time, I turned off the faucet and went to the bathtub, turning on the cold water as it filled up.
I took off the remainder of my clothes. As I got into the tub and the water rose around my body, my muscles were still wound tight even at the coldness on my skin.
I let my head fall back to the tub’s edge, closed my eyes, and swallowed with effort as I tried to calm my breathing.
It wasn’t working.
When the tub was full, I let my body sink into it.
My chest, shoulders, neck, and then my head until I was completely under.
A soft kind of calmness claimed me, and I stayed that way for a while, holding my breath with my eyes closed—when I was at my limit, I opened my eyes underwater, and the silhouette of my mother leaning by the tub was what I saw next.
She was still in that black dress.
I was about to come up, but her hands came into the water, holding my shoulders down.
“It’s okay,” her muffled voice said with a smile as she held me down, grip strong, while I fought to come up for air. “It’s all right, Elio; you will be with me soon.”
Even though I struggled, my whole body felt like it was paralyzed. I couldn’t move, and she held me tightly, firmly. But somehow, I was still struggling—in my mind, I was still fighting to move, get up, and intake oxygen, but my body wouldn’t respond, and my mother wouldn’t let go of me.
I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and was forced to part my lips underneath the water, both my nostrils and my mouth filling my lungs with liquid—and I was drowning.
Suddenly, she let me go, and the paralysis slipped from my body as I emerged with a force that had water pouring out of the tub to the floor; my hands—shaking—gripped the edge of the tub firmly as I coughed out the water, taking air into my lungs, wheezing.
My chest and eyes burned, my body shook—and no one was there … I was alone … I had been alone.
My mother was not here.
My mother is dead.