“Go.” Alessio stares at me, jaw tight, and I stare back at him for just a moment. He looks the most like our mother of the two of us. His pale green eyes, just like hers. Perhaps that’s why I don’t rip his head off right here and now. He might be bigger than me, but the way I’m feeling right now…I could destroy this whole place.
Instead, I huff and make my way upstairs to my bedroom. Covered in blood, sweat, and tears. I slam the door behind meand don’t bother to turn on a light. My room is completely devoid of any shiny decorations that shout at me to celebrate the holiday… But a twinkle of something silver still catches my sore eyes. I walk over to my dresser as I pull my button up shirt off. I use the delicate fabric to wipe as much blood and pine sap off my hands as possible…it’s already ruined anyway, before tossing it to the floor.
A silver cross sits on my dresser. It glints in what little light shines through the curtains behind it. My father’s necklace.
The one that had been on him as he died. Someone had brought it up here to my room. It’s been wiped and washed of blood, though in better light I might be able to see tinges of red caught in the creases of the metal.
I grab it by the chain and dangle it in front of me as I swallow hard.
“Damnit,” I mumble. My throat and jaw almost painfully tight.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been staring at it. The ornate crucifix that I’ve never seen my father without.
I slowly put the chain around my neck and clasp it before letting the cross fall to my neck and down between my collarbones. The metal is practically ice cold against my burning skin.
With a sigh, my shoulders fall away from my ears.
I look down and pull open the top drawer of my dresser, grabbing a half empty bottle of scotch and carrying it over to my bed.
“I’ll keep my promise,” I whisper as I sit down on the edge of the mattress. “…tomorrow.”
I crack open the bottle and put it to my lips, taking not just a heavy drink but a chug of the alcohol. It burns down my throat, but I’m used to it. I gasp for air when I’m done, and scotch drips down my chin and to my chest. Onto the necklace.
I chuckle bitterly. “Cheers, Papa.” I take another drink and pull my legs up onto the bed. “I’ll kill those fuckers. Whoever did this, their days are numbered. I promise that too.”
On my bedside table there’s a bottle of pills. I haven’t needed them for a few weeks since I took a bullet to the same leg where I’m pretty sure there’s one now.
I reach over with my free hand and grab it, using my teeth and fingers to take the cap off and dump a few into my mouth.
Anything to get me through the night will do. I just need to make it to tomorrow morning. Maybe then I’ll be able to handle this shit.
My already fuzzy head starts to grow heavier. The ache in my chest numbing along with everything else. I don’t care about the cuts and shards of glass in my hands or the sick scent of blood that still permeates me. The sterile scent of alcohol replaces it all. The pills start to settle in, and the room is spinning. I have to close my eyes or I feel nauseous. It’s hard to keep them open anyway. So, I tilt my head back against the headboard and just ride the slow decent into darkness.
One drink after another until the bottle is empty, and so is my head.
2
Soren
One might think that the holiday season is the slow season when it comes to organized crime, but they’d be wrong. It’s the time of year when everyone’s walls are simultaneously lowered and raised to an extreme degree. We all assume that someone else believes we think we are in less danger and can therefore use it against us, and so, we are in more danger.
It’s a cycle that never really ends, no matter what time of year, nor what holiday season it is.
This is why I always stay as prepared as possible. My gun never leaves my side, not even while I sleep. Even as I lay near naked in my bed while the wind rattles the windows of my bedroom, my gun rests underneath my pillow.
I wake before the sun to the sound of one of my sisters shouting. It doesn’t surprise me even in the slightest, she’s always been hot headed. At first, I simply roll over onto my stomach and plan to go back to sleep, but then I hear something crash downstairs.
“For the love of…” I grumble as I force myself out of bed.
I pull on my pajama pants and a t-shirt before heading downstairs, eyes still blurry with sleep.
“What’s going on?” I ask as I reach the bottom of the stairs. It’s dimly lit down here, and quiet aside from my sister swearing. “Some people are trying to sleep.”
“Fuck you, Soren. Stay out of this,” Rosalie hisses at me. She’s holding a vase in her hand, and I can guess she already threw the other one.
I sigh and step closer to her, looking down in case of shattered glass. Standing back from her is one of our bodyguards, Julian.
“Don’t tell me, dear sister, you’re already fighting with your newest love interest?” I ask her as a smirk pulls at my lips.
