Chapter 39
TIFFANY
Iwas terrified. I have never seen madness like it. He was consumed with rage, anger, and desolation. I experienced his pain; it’s something familiar, and yet I couldn’t walk away. His friend was dead, and he blamed himself. It makes perfect sense now.
We head home, and as we step inside the door, Mrs. Harrington materializes and says with concern, “Would you like me to fix some cocoa, sir?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Harrington.” I answer for him. “Perhaps a stiff brandy would be better; in fact, you may as well leave the bottle.”
Joseph says nothing and merely heads to the library, and with a sad smile to the concerned housekeeper, I follow him.
The fire blazes, the warm glow comforting, providing comfort when it’s sorely needed.
We take our usual seats before it, and Joseph gazes into the flames, a tortured expression on his face.
As Mrs. Harrington enters, she places the tray with the brandy and two huge glasses beside me.
“Thank you, Mrs. Harrington. You may finish for the night.”
My smile is warm because it appears that our housekeeper also shares my concern.
As she leaves, she closes the door softly behind her, and then we are alone.
I say nothing and merely pour the brandy and offer him the glass.
He stares into the fire, not once glancing in my direction, and as he begins to speak, my blood runs cold.
“We were at school. I’d met a waitress in the diner in town who made it perfectly clear of her interest in me. I was besotted by her.”
He rolls the brandy around the glass and sighs heavily.
“I arranged to meet her by slipping her a note one day. I told her to meet me in the alley behind the diner during the day. We were heavily guarded even then, and it was the only opportunity I had to slip free of the guards. Zac begged me not to, but I wouldn’t listen.
I was more interested in getting laid; it was the most important thing to me. ”
He leans back, his face ashen, and hisses, “She set me up. I fucked her against the alley wall while Zac kept watch. It all happened so quickly; I had no chance to react. She pushed me away as soon as she heard tires screeching to a stop. Fleeing to the diner, leaving me to face Armageddon.”
My blood runs cold as he hisses, “It all happened so fast. One minute I saw my friend and the next he was dead on the ground, shot in the head, neck, and chest, death almost instant. I sank to my knees. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and then they came for me, dragging me into a car, knocking me out with one punch. ”
Tears fall from me, but not Joseph, his expression is blank, cold even.
“I woke up naked and hanging from a hook in a warehouse. The men jeered and took turns using me as a punching bag. Taunting me, telling me of their plan to cut me to pieces and send my body parts back to my father, one for every day of the week until they ran out. They tortured me, sending him videos, taunting him, demanding money and promising they would kill me if he didn’t pay up.
I was there for seven days. For two hours every day I hung from the hook, beaten and ridiculed; their words still haunting my memories.
They brought Zac’s body to the room they locked me in at night, leaving me with his lifeless body as a reminder of my guilt. ”
I can’t help the sob that escapes, despite how strong I am trying to be. I can’t ever imagine going through such horror, and I wonder how he survived at all.
“Then they came.”
He runs his fingers through his hair.
“The door to my cell burst open, and Zac’s father stood there.
I still remember his howl of pain when he saw his son.
The tears that brought the strongest man I had ever met to his knees.
He cradled his son’s body in his arms, his heart shattered into a million pieces, and I will never forget that moment for as long as I live. ”
He places his head in his hands, his voice breaking, and instinctively, I go to him, taking the glass from his fingers and pulling his head to my shoulder.
I can only offer physical comfort. I’m aware that no words are up to the job, and his voice breaks as he whispers, “My brother Simeon was stringing up the men responsible, along with Julius. Nico issuing instructions; the guards scattered, doing the same thing until they all hung like a row of soldiers, naked and bloody from the cuts in their skin courtesy of the blades of my family. The Ravera family. It turns out they were a new mafia family in town. Their stay brief; their hostile takeover unsuccessful.”
I stroke his hair, hoping it’s helping, and his voice is angry as he hisses, “Simeon gave me a machete. He told me to avenge Zac’s death.
I was eighteen at the time and had never seen anything like this before.
As it turns out, it was an easy ask. One by one, I butchered the men responsible; their dying screams of agony not enough to drive the guilt from my mind.
When I finished slaying the men, I collapsed, and when I returned home, I was no longer a kid anymore. ”
“I’m so sorry, Joseph. I really am.”
I hold him so tightly it must hurt, tears flowing down my face as I attempt to hold it together.
His next words chill my blood as his voice lowers.
“It took days to recover. Zac’s father never did and shot himself the next day through grief.
He couldn’t live with what he saw; what happened to his boy, and I had two deaths on my conscience, father, and son.
I wasn’t finished with my revenge though.
The one thing on my mind was retribution, and I built myself up, and as soon as I could, paid a visit to the diner when Sally finished work.
She set me up. One of the men taunted me with it.
He told me she was a whore who turned tricks in the night.
His whore. He told her to trap me, to set up the operation, and when she left that night, I was waiting. ”
I shiver at the venom in his voice.
“I took her to a disused warehouse on the east side of town. I had no compassion, no empathy, merely a cold heart and murderous rage. She begged and pleaded for her life, but I wasn’t listening.
I held her against the wall of the cold warehouse and, in Zac’s memory, I spat in her face and sliced the blade from one side of her neck to the other.
I savored every expression in her eyes as she died with my hands holding her against the wall of a rotten warehouse.
It didn’t help. I had no one left to kill.
I was left with the images playing on repeat in my mind and so I shut down.
Became the emotionless prick you had the misfortune to marry, and only Su Yin has the ability to bleed my pain with pressure points and needles. ”
My heart breaks for him. For what he went through, and what he did to avenge his friend’s death. Nothing about this is good – explainable, not forgivable, but it is understandable.
I hold him a wreck of emotion, and as the flames dance in the grate, his shoulders relax, and for the first time since I met him, I really believe there is hope.