We moved up the stairs silently, not a noise among us. My hand went to the doorknob and turned. The boy did not lock it. Perhaps he felt no need to. Not with his connections. Men would know better.
A slow-spreading grin came to my face at that.
The apartment was what I had expected from a boy. One bedroom. One bathroom. A scarce mattress without a frame, a desk with a lamp, and clothes scattered from one end to another. He had just spritzed cheap cologne on himself, and it hung in the air.
“A suggestion,” Mac said, using a pencil to pick a stiff sock up from the floor. “Don’t touch anything.”
The lights turned out, and Mac scanned the entire place with a forensic light. The entire place seemed neon with bodily fluids.
“Tell me, does he not know how to control his cock.” Romeo’s voice seemed to float in the darkness. “It seems as if his cock is wild and untrained—it sprays as a masterless hose would.”
“It could be blood.” Mac moved the light around the room once more before he turned the main lights back on.
“I do not believe it is.” Romeo’s eyes scanned the areas where the fluid had been the strongest.
“Me either,” Mac said, going for the closet. He pulled gloves on before he opened the door.
All the men seemed to stand up straighter.
A collage of pictures had been tacked to the backside of the door.
All of my wife.
He had taken them without her knowing. It was clear by the position of her face. Most of the time she was looking away or down. A few times he had captured her straight on, but she had been in motion. Going toward her car, her Nonna’s arm in hers. Helping her Nonna inside of it. Shutting the passenger side door. Sticking something in the pocket of her jeans while she moved around the car to the driver’s side. Opening the door. Climbing inside. Starting the car. Checking the rearview mirror before she pulled away from the curb.
“He’s fucking obsessed,” Brando said.
“There is something blood-chilling about photos a man takes of a woman without her knowledge,” Guido said.
“Turn the lights out again, Guido.” Mac’s eyes ran over the photos again.
Guido slipped a pair of gloves on and did as Mac had said. The apartment went completely dark, but I already knew whatwe were going to find when Mac ran the fluorescent light over the pictures. The photographs glowed as if they were made of an alien substance. Mostly my wife’s face.
My men’s eyes turned to me. Violence moved inside of me, as hot as Stromboli before an eruption, but I contained it in my bones. My muscles ticked with the almost uncontrolled rage. If I had not been trained as I was, all my life to control my strength and unleash it at the most opportune time, I would have killed every man in the room with me. My rage ran that hot. Even my brothers felt the heat. This was why we were spread out. No man wanted to set me off. Every one of my men knew and understood.
This situation went beyond personal.
This was a boy poking the beast inside of my chest with an ice pick. The only weapon he could handle.
The room grew still as the sound of pounding footsteps echoed up the stairs and reverberated in the narrow stairway. The boy did not come alone.
Without speaking, my men and I moved to the opposite side of the room. When the boy opened the door, he did not see us.
“What the fuck?” He charged toward his open closet door.
This was when Guido stepped behind the boys who followed him and shut the door behind them. None of them noticed the closed door, Guido standing in front of it, arms crossed, until I moved, and they all seemed to startle.
It was the boy, Remy Mestengo, who went off at the mouth—threats, so many threats.
I was one step away from him when he seemed to remember he had a weapon and pulled it on me. He did not have time to pull the trigger. My hand wrapped around his throat before he could compute what was happening. He clawed at my hand, kicking his feet, while I lifted him in the air and sat him down on the chair before his desk. He kicked at the ground when hisculotouched the seat. He was wheezing, trying to scream at me, and moving his feet in wild ways, as if that would help him catch his breath. I had barely exerted any pressure.
Brando kicked the seat with wheels toward me. I caught it and took a seat on his desk, my legs stretched out before me. I released the boy to the seat then. He attempted to catch his breath while he looked between my brother and I, eyes full of frantic panic.
His friends were backing up slowly, their eyes on us, their hands up in surrender. All their backs were stiff against the wall. As if that would save them. We did not shoot men in the back. We faced them.
Dario nodded to the bed and addressed them. “Take a seat.”
The one who seemed to be the most brazen glanced at the bed and then met Dario’s eyes. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, we’d rather stand.”
