Eighteen years old.
DUSTIN OBSERVES FROM THE DOORWAY. Even though his reputation is impeccable and the nursing staff and every other fucker in this city are enamoured by him, I still peer over my shoulder to see if we have been noticed.
My hands shake, but I ball my fingers in tight to control them. The beeping of a machine draws me back to the little blonde girl on the hospital bed.
She looks like a doll.
Her face is like porcelain. Below the thin veil of skin, her malnourished body barely thrives, the blue of her veins like soft pen lines down each white cheek.
‘Get it over with.’ Dustin’s hoarse utterance cuts through the room, and I react immediately, cramming down my innocence and youth in order to take hers.
I sit on the edge of the mattress, my eighteen-year-old frame shadowing the tiny person already barely clutching at the seams of her existence. And while the perpetual beeping indicates she is still alive, her white, lifeless features contradict the mechanical echo of her heartbeat. She could be dead. She looks almost dead. Peaceful. I find solace in those thoughts, accepting the cold, heartless part of me that I need to finish this.
Finish her.
For my Family.
For Jimmy.
She knows too much, but that is all he told me.
And what better way to initiate me, to test my utter loyalty to the Family, than by having me kill a helpless child for him. A child who was involved in things her naïve mind could never understand. And yet, she saw too much, knows too much—that is the bottom line.
Do I understand it?
Yes.
They don’t need to tell me what she knows. It doesn’t matter. The ‘bottom line’ is my loyalty to them and my faith in Jimmy despite her potential innocence.
The girl doesn’t move. The clock ticks. The machine reminds me she has a heartbeat, and I grit my teeth. Lifting the pillow, I place it over the sleeping girl’s face, pressing lightly at first, feeling my heart spike as I try to stop hers.
I press down harder, my mind retracting absently to keep myself—
She responds.
Christ. My arms nearly buckle as ice moves through my veins because it is awake—she is awake.
Alive.
Alive, Clay.
I fist the pillow, my fingers rushing with acid, the hot rage and guilt moving down the length of each digit. Rage for the fucked-up hand she was dealt that led her to be below the weight of mine. I press harder, and her shoulders start to lift off the mattress.
She moans.
She is alive.
Her arms fly up and swing, slicing through the air, frantic in their attempt to fend me off, but they are so small and weak, flailing around a faceless girl below a white pillow. And although I can’t see her expression or whether her eyes are open or shut, I remember her face.
Without removing the killer weight of my hand, I lean back, then to the side, narrowly avoiding the swinging limbs as they convulse with desperation.
She is alive.
Her hand is suddenly behind her head, below the pillow, and for a moment, I think she is trying to yank the lower pillow away to give her space to escape, but her hand comes back clasping something shiny and solid.
She slashes at me with the object.
Roaring through my head, my brain barks, ‘It’s her or them.’ The words drilled into me since before I could understand the weight of them. ‘You’re above them all.’
‘You protect your own.’
‘This is your legacy.’
‘Your birthright.’
The chanting continues while my heart races with every bullshit emotion I wish didn’t dwell inside me. Didn’t feed off the last slithers of my soul. My innocence.
This is the beginning of my legacy. Cold. Controlled. Unemotional. The catalyst that will keep me locked and theirs —the Cosa Nostra’s—forever.
‘Hurry up!’
Sweat slides down my face.
No. Not sweat.
Fucking tears.
I lose sight as they flood my vision, the room quickly blurring, just as something sharp drags along my collarbone. She got me. The seeping of blood wets my shoulder, reminding me how little time we have. The blood will drop to the sheets. I’ll leave evidence—
I lunge forward into her face, so close now I can smell her shampoo and the sheets. So close I can hear her dying whimpers. So close I can feel the heat from her body.
She’s alive.
I apply all my weight.
My heart breaks.
Hers slows.
Her body dwindles in strength. Careless arms flop and flail with the remnants of her young life. I hear a groan rumble in my throat as my eyes refuse to stop crying like a bitch. Just like my hands refuse to allow her to breathe. Everything bubbling to the surface. Rage. Loyalty. Pain. Guilt.
Then she is still.
And I’m so close.
No more whimpering.
She isn’t alive.
Panic surges through me, but I don’t have time for it. Jumping to my feet, I follow Dustin from the hospital room, wiping at my cheeks and forcing myself to feign a casual manner while the new echoing of her pulse runs a straight line across the monitor. A droning tone that follows us down the hallway and around the corner.
The sound is her death song.
And mine too.
DON’T FEEL.
After I remove my soiled shirt, I stand bare-chested in the bathroom of my family home and take a white-knuckled grip on the stone vanity.
I stare at the square ceramic sink, counting the drops of blood dripping from the thick, jagged wound in my collarbone.
One.
A girl is dead.
Two.
She couldn’t have been much older than nine.
Three.
She fought back.
Four. Five. That overwhelms me with pain. She wanted to live. But also… a kind of pride. No one else will give her that sentiment. No one else was there to see her fight back.
Six.
Don’t feel.
‘Clay?’ my younger brother Max mutters from behind me, a hint of surprise at my presence circling his tone.
I’m not often here.
I twist my face, finding him in the door jamb, once again covered in bruises from rugby or boxing or simply experiencing his young dumb thug life. A life I don’t know.
His grey eyes dart to the blood gushing from the wound along my collarbone to the ceramic, to my pained stare as I hide my emotions from him, but the sinking concern in his gaze wrings them from me. My body wrestles with my mind, seeking a kind of comfort that has always eluded me.
A world of empathy and anger darkens his expression. That hint of wisdom fractures something in my chest, making me want to grasp at it.
Does he know what this is?
Does he give a shit?
Nah. Not him. Not Max.
As feelings crest, my throat tightens to restrict them, so I bark, ‘Fuck off,’ needing him gone before they overcome me.
Max’s brow furrows, but he leaves, and I exhale hard with relief and loneliness—
I face the ceramic bowl again, struggling to remove the memory of the girl as my blood blotches the basin in evidence.
‘You’re so handsome. You look just like my father.” My mother’s voice startles me, and I look up to see her standing behind me in the reflection of the mirror. ‘I thought your brother was bothering you. I should have known you would handle him yourself.’
Dammit.
She moves towards me, her lips forming a straight line across her flawless face as she assesses me.
She sees me, sees the regret. I can’t hide it as it crawls inside my eyes, finding a home.
Don’t feel!
Our matching blue eyes meet, mine instantly stinging with the onset of tears.
Maybe she’ll let me…
Maybe she’ll understan—
‘Don’t!’ she states but recovers quickly, schooling her disdain for my sensibilities and smiling tightly. ‘Butchers don’t cry, Clay. We have nothing to cry about. Nothing is worthy of our tears.’
She grabs a cloth, and I clench my jaw until my teeth ache. It’s a pleasant sensation. It overthrows the need to burst with common sadness for the girl. And, pathetically, self-indulgently, for the eighteen-year-old boy within me who wanted to shake that girl back to life and protect her from her own past, her own knowledge, from being dragged into the dirtiest, coldest corners of this world.
Like some kind of hero.
But I’m not that.
I’m the villain.
I stand frozen as my mum cleans the gash on my collarbone. It seems so motherly—It confuses me.
But her expression, if described in words, would still be meticulous. Elegant. Smooth. ‘What you did today was only the start,’ she says, and I listen to her. I always listen. ‘You are not like everyone else. You are better. One day, it will be your job to weed out betrayals. To finalise loose ends. To make the tough calls.”
I wish I knew my mother better.
I don’t. Watching her work on my wound, I lose focus on her hand. Blood seeps into the sponge. The pink water snaking down her fingers taints her perfect white skin.
My temples flare. I don’t like the marks on her. Protective over her, I snatch her slender wrist when I see the crimson streams draw lines across her flesh.
She stills with my hand cuffing her. ‘You don’t want my help then?’ she asks gently. ‘Good boy. That’s very good, Clay. You’re so strong.’
My heart burns for reasons I don’t understand. That is strength, Clay. I am strong. I didn’t want to see blood on her while she wanted me to be strong; whatever brought her in here in the first place, I can’t say.
I’m alone in this.
That is what strength looks like.
A leader is always alone.
I stare at her blue eyes and delicate features, confused as to what she wants me to do. She is standing closer than I remember her ever standing, and my body twitches with discomfort. Wanting to recoil. Push her away. Wanting to wrap my arms around her—
Would she let me if I tried?
Would she hold me if I needed it?
What do I know about her?
Only that she is still young. Powerful. Graceful. That much is true. She’s in her thirties, having had me young and could easily pass for my older sister, who could easily be in her twenties. Stunning too.
Stunning like a white and grey marble sculpture you admire but never have the courage to embrace.
I continue to stare, and she smiles, her red lips a slight curve on her face. She pulls her wrist free from my grasp, saying, ‘I’m very proud of you.’
Then she leaves the room.
Leaves my hand hovering in the air, still wanting her close. To clean the blood from her fingers. To have her clean the blood from me… For a moment, for just one fucking moment—I cast my eyes to the ceramic vanity covered in my blood—I think I really needed to be vulnerable with someone.
