“What?” he hisses.
“They found a pendant horn near the body with a cross engraved on it, and the body was covered in knife scars. You know his…hobby.” Calling it that makes bile crawl up my throat. But that’s how Jack Enzino refers to his son’s murdering entertainment.
He lets out a long curse before throwing the glass at the wall. I turn my face away as it shatters, sending pieces of glass and rum everywhere. Funny how he deluded himself into thinking he could control Mario. Nobody can control such a revolting psycho.
“Fucking imbecile! I told him to stop that shit this month. Thirty fucking days. I’m surrounded by morons!” He turns his fury on me and grabs me by the hair, pulling my head back. “You are not going to ruin my plans! You’ll marry that old fucker’s daughter. It’s the only way to get rid of…” His enraged words land on my face with his spit.
“Yes, Father.” My compliance mask is on.
What I’d really like to say is that I’m fucking gay and that I’d never in a million years want to marry a woman. But I don’t. I need to placate him and leave here as soon as possible.
“The marriage is going to be next week,” I state, more to myself than him.
“The day after tomorrow,” he enunciates each word before letting me go.
I nod, even though I know that every move I’m making, every word I’m voicing is destroying me. I still dive headfirst into the flames, because I know it’s the right thing to do to survive and to protect the people I care about. I don’t want a war to start because of me; casualties are a typical occurrence in these kinds of situations. No, I need to use what I have to crush my father and the whole family from the inside, or at least cripple it so that Don Sebastiano can give it the final blow.
Information is a real weapon in this world and I happen to be very skilled at obtaining it and spreading it. I can ruin theEnzinos. I should have done it a long time ago, I guess I needed a stronger motivation. The memory of Luca’s broken voice when he told me how Mario killed his mother makes my heart throb all over again. The plan is still up in the air but I’ll help him get his revenge. If it’s the last thing I do. I can’t stop my chest from feeling heavy. Nausea has made an appearance, too. But that’s probably because my father is too close to me.
“You’ll be at the altar, saying I do and making me a very powerful man, or else.” The vein on his forehead is popping like a bolt of lightning. I wonder if it will actually burst one day.
“Not a liability anymore, Father?” I can’t keep it in.
He gives me a devilish, yellow-toothed smirk. Apparently, that wasn’t the correct answer. The dark storm in his expression is enough proof of that.
“You’ll do well to remember your place,” he whispers menacingly.
I almost let a bitter laugh slip, Luca said the same. Many times. Fuck, it hurts.
“I know my place very well.”
“You ungrateful—” he seethes, tightening his fingers before letting me go. Another backhanded slap lands on my face, followed by the inevitable burning pain. Only this time, I taste blood in my mouth.
“You’re not going back to your apartment. You’ll stay in the main house until the wedding. I don’t want to give the Leones another opportunity toinviteyou again.”
“No!” I automatically blurt out. Nacho.
“Say that again, you fucking piece of trash,” he hisses, staring at me until I lower my eyes.
I fucking hate him. What does he want me to do, crawl into a nice garbage bag and take myself out? I fucking wish!
The door opens behind me, and my blood suddenly turns cold. The waste of space I’ve been trying to bleach out of my mind is here. Mario. My half-brother.
A phone starts ringing. “Stay put,” My father says in an annoyed tone, grabbing his cell and turning around to answer it.
The next thing I know, the back of my skull is cracking against the wall. I feel Mario’s fingers around my throat as pure malevolence crashes over me, making breathing almost unbearable as it fills my lungs. Stars fill my vision, and my consciousness seems to slip away for a moment. It’s incredible how different it felt when Luca choked me. My kidnapper excited me, while my half-brother terrorizes me. All the violence I’ve been touched with during my entire life broke me, so much that I can’t even remember a time when I was actually whole.
“My dearest, miss me?” Mario’s sweet tone makes my skin crawl like worms in a corpse.
My head is swimming, and everything around me has blurred into a sickening nothingness. But somehow, I gather all my anger and reply with a strained voice, “Like the plague.”
His smile is horribly scary. “That’s my Art,” he states, nuzzling my hair. It disgusts me to have him this close.
His lack of visible anger is unsettling. He is a psychopath through and through. Out of the frying pan and into the fire of this demented, repulsive, terrible excuse of a human being.
I hear my father talking on the phone, uncaring of Mario’s violent actions. But he never stopped him before, so why would he do it now?
Mario’s lifeless eyes make all the hair on my arms stand as he utters, “There’s beauty in all things, how deeply satisfying it is to shatter it into pieces.”