It wouldn’t be a problem if I could at least remember what I did when it happened. Sometimes I lose a few minutes. Other times, hours disappear from my memory, and that…that’s unforgivable when you’re the head of a criminal empire where every weakness is a golden opportunity for your enemies.
That’s how I end up standing in front of Piotr, who, in my last clear memory, was still alive.
Not missing six fingers. Not with the skin stripped from both hands as if I needed to study every vein and artery up close. His right shoe lies abandoned near the window, a window with a crack spidering out from one corner.
There’s a pool of blood under his chair, my own hands stained the same shade, the liquid creeping dangerously close to the edge of my rug.
And this isn’t even the basement. This is my office. My office, which now looks like a slaughterhouse.
You’re in control. You’re in control. You’re in control.
Now I am.
Ten minutes ago? Hell, it could’ve been anybody in front of me. I want to believe I would have had the sense to stop…but I’m not sure.
I hear a knock on the door, but my body stays frozen, looking atmy masterpiece.
Vasili, my right hand, steps inside and freezes. His gaze sweeps the room, cataloging thirty minutes of carnage I'm calling an "interrogation."
That's what it was supposed to be. Not this.
Piotr had been a middleman. A smuggler. Moving military-issue Colt M1911A1s to a Colombian cartel— over three hundred of them, under the table, without clearance. In this city, no firearm changes hands unless Roman Borisov, the Russian Pakhan, or I allow it. Piotr knew that. And he did it anyway.
"Let me guess," Vasili says, his voice flat. "He was supposed to keep his skin attached?"
He's one of the few who knows about my…episodes. One of the only people who's survived seeing me lose control.
The first time it happened in front of him, I put a CRKT M16 blade through his gut. Three times. He barely made it out breathing.
He got lucky. The first two stabs missed both his liver and spleen, and the third only grazed a rib.
He could’ve called the Council, had me removed from power. Could’ve blackmailed me. Instead, lying in a hospital bed, he set one condition.
See a specialist.
“Damien, I know the kind of shit you’ve seen and done, but I’d like to make it to fifty,” he told me.
And as much as I wanted to ignore it, I couldn’t. I knew he was right.
It’s one thing to skin a man alive when your mind is clear, methodical, when every step has a purpose.
It’s another when you do it in a blind frenzy, blood boiling, reason drowned in smoke.
“The last thing I remember,” I say with a frustrated sigh, pouring myself a glass of whiskey, “is asking him who his contact in the cartel was. After that, everything went red.”
That Persian rug’s done for.
“When was your last episode?” Vasili asks.
I think about it. It’s been a while. “Five months. Maybe six.”
“Has anything changed lately?”
The only thing that flashes in my mind is Roxanne curled beside me in bed, her dark chestnut hair spilling over the pillow, her hand clutching mine through the night.
Vasili frowns at me, eyebrows raised, silently daring me to give him a real answer.
"Whatever it is, Damien, it's throwing you off balance. And we can't afford you being off balance right now." His voice hardens. "Things are tense enough athome. I just got a message from Vory. They picked up another vote. And I don't think we want them getting any more once word gets out that you can't keep your head straight…even during a conversation."
