real.
My father taught me about real monsters. Giana and Angelo's father taught us all aboutrealmonsters. They're made of flesh and bone, hidden deep inside the minds of men. These aren't the kind of monsters that come fresh out of horror movies with the telltale decaying green skin and a penchant for eating flesh. No. The real monstersaremen. Men with hidden guns, violent fantasies, and greed that burns deep in their bellies.
I know these monsters well. I've lived in their world for so long that I easily forget where they end and I began. I'm a monster too.
We're all monsters here.
All of us hold a little bit of evil inside us, and sometimes that evil can overwhelm us and have us do despicable things. Then we become more than just monsters, we're monsters haunted by ghosts. And we learn to live that way. Evil wins over good.
And right now, four of them block my view. Four monstrous heads hovering over my beaten body looking down at me without expression. All of them puffing deep on the ends of thick Cuban cigars. White smoke clouds the air; the thick tang of it fills my lungs.
"It hurts me deeply," Tony grumbled over me, flicking ashes at me from the tip of his Cuban, "hurts me deeply that I lost my trust in you. Corey, you were like a son to me. A son."
Now, Tony?Tony knows pain.
Not only does he know how it feels, Tony gets off on causing pain. Real pain. I once watched the man giggle while he waited for a pot of water to boil, only to pour it in some guys lap,while it was still bubbling.
Tonyisa monster. A real fire-breathing, soul-wrecking monster. Because from what I saw, all the poor guy did to earn that boiling pot of water in his lap was scratch a dent in Tony's new Mercedes. But it could have been something more, what did I know, I was only sixteen at the time. That day, Tony held my face in his strong hands, making sure my eyes witnessed the rest of the boys pulling back the poor guy’s pants. A few layers of blistering torn flesh along with it.
But that was then, and this is now, and now it’s my turn to feel the pain.
Tony's face disappears from my sight. Someone tugs at my leg and drags me across the floor, the pain making me lightheaded and dizzy. I'm tugged over rotting wood; somewhere a sharp nail tears into the leg of my pants and bites into my skin, scraping a line of fire through my flesh. The room blurs in and out like a dream. Some sort of illusion, some sort of last rite. Tony and his men, there are only three left, standing over me laughing, the barrel of their guns aimed right for my head. I inhale long and slow, the air rattles wetly in my chest. Something rough and hard wraps around my wrists.
"I brought you into my family. I kept you. I kept you safe. I loved you.Loved you,Corrado." My wrists pull up, and my body lifts off the ground. My shoulders and back strain from the position my body stretches in. I'm swinging by a rope, on my tippy toes trying to stop the spin. "I want you to beg for your death, my son. Beg me."
I hock up a mouthful of saliva and blood. Spit it at his feet. All these months, all these years of being involved in this organization, have been for this moment. Kill or be killed. The only thing remaining between me and my last breath is Tony's fetish for torture.
He’s taking his sweet time torturing me, but I know he’s going soft with me; dying at the hands of Tony is usually a lot worse. I've witnessed firsthand the despicable things this man can do. Doesn’t matter if I live or die, Tony won’t last the rest of the night. He won’t be getting away with anything this time. Someone will find him.
Something flutters off to the side of my vision.
A quick movement.
A soft blur of motion. Everything seems wrong suddenly, off. I try to lean up, tense my arms to pull up and I catch the movement again; a quick glimpse of a girl. She's walking up through the dirt road and into the shelter of the warehouse.
God, no. No, nononono. Don't let it be her. This changes everything.
Drip.
A warm wet splat hits my chest.
Drip.
Drip. Drip.
A line of thick red crimson streams down my arm. Blood.
Pain is white hot.
Kick the pain down, stuff it in a box,
down,
down,
down.
I focus on the girl.God, please make her turn around. Walk away. She looks so young, so breakable, that my lungs growl out a warning. Leave. Run! I want to scream, but I can't. Her eyes are on Tony the whole time, expression blank. In her hand, swinging from her fingers, is a dirty gray cloth. Blood drips into my eyes, with my hands tied above my head. I try to blink them clean.Put your pain in a box, lock the lid, hidden in the dark where the nightmares belong. Control it, dominate it, own it. That's what my father taught me.
