Fury simmers beneath my skin, like a pot of water on the cusp of bubbling. Always there. Every waking second of every single day. And all it takes is a flash of heat to make it boil over. Sometimes I wonder if the rage I carry deep inside me will ever abate. It’s been two long years, yet it grows fiercer every day. It used to be that doing shit like this would give me some release—a few moments relief. But, like an addict who needs more each time to reach that euphoric high, even this has lost its ability to calm the raging demons in my soul.
“P-please, Lor—” the man on his knees before me sputters. I punch him square in the mouth, cutting off the plea for mercy which would have fallen on deaf ears anyway. I am not a man of mercy. Why the fuck would I care about anyone in this world when I have no fucking heart? He falls to the floor like the useless sack of shit he is, blood flying from his mouth and spattering my pants and shoes.
He lies motionless. I look down at the droplets of his blood on my black shoe, and that simmering rage bubbles dangerously close to the surface. They’re made from the finest Italian leather, but I don’t give a fuck about that. I do give a fuck about the fact that my wife bought them for me a few weeks before she …
I clench my fists so tightly my forearms feel like they’re about to explode, my knuckles turning white. Grinding my teeth, I stretch my neck to alleviate a little of the tension that seeps into every muscle and sinew of my body. Manfred remains prone at my feet, but that won’t save him. Molten-hot anger, like the heat from an open furnace, blazes through me, propelling my foot into his head. Not just once, but over and over again. I keep kicking him until his face is unrecognizable as human and my shoes are covered with blood and skull and brain.
“Lorenzo? Please?” Manfred’s business partner, Richie, cries from a few feet away, too chickenshit to try to stop me himself. But I can’t stop. Can’t stop unless some of this deep-seated rage abates. I can’t go home to the house where my family lives, where my niece and nephews call me Uncle Loz. Not when I’m this close to the edge. No, I have to leave the worst of it here.
When there’s little left of Manfred’s head to kick, I move to his body and stamp out as much of the anger as I need to in order to function again. Richie’s pleas for mercy diminish with every second that passes, and the sound of him retching and the acrid smell of vomit fills the small room. Instinct makes him rush for the door, despite his former partner blocking his exit. He must know there’s no escape, but people tend to lose touch with their common sense when the compulsion to survive kicks in.
Without stopping my assault on Manfred’s dead body, I reach out and grab Richard by the throat. He should have left me to it. Maybe then I would have worked out all my anger on his buddy’s corpse.
“Lorenzo. Please?” he snivels, tears and snot running onto my hand as I train my glare on him. “I’ll get you your money.”
“You think this is about the money?” I ask, fascinated by the unadulterated terror on his face. “Your lousy ten grand means nothing to me.”
“P-please.”
“You and Manfred lied to me, Richie. And that’s why you’re both going to die in this tiny fucking room and why even your mama won’t be able to identify your bodies.”
His face pales, which is fitting because he’s already a ghost. I throw him across the room, and he stumbles to the ground, trembling as he stares up at me advancing on him. When I force my thumbs into his eye sockets and gouge his eyeballs from his head, his screams for mercy soothe my blackened soul.
I walk down the hallway of my family’s mansion. My home. Lessened by her absence, but still the only place I feel any comfort or solace.
“Uncle Loz. Help.” The squeals of my three-year-old niece, Gabriella, fill the air as she barrels down the hall toward me in her stockinged feet. Shrieking with high-pitched giggles, she runs right into me, and I scoop her into my arms, holding her to my chest. Okay, so maybe I do still have a heart, but it’s shattered into a thousand fragments. The few slivers capable of any positive emotion belong mostly to this little girl and her two younger brothers.
“What are you running from, my little Ella?” She stares up into my face, her dark brown eyes so full of trust and innocence that I sway on my feet.
“Dinosaur Daddy.” She lets out another giggle as Dante comes charging down the hallway after her, the pink tiara on his head at odds with his dinosaur-like roar. Gabriella squeals louder, burying her small face against my chest until all that can be seen are her thick curls.
Dante’s smile falls away when he sees my knuckles, bloodied and bruised. I cleaned up a little before I came home, but there’s only so much gore you can get rid of after you’ve beaten two men to death. His expression darkens, and the irony of the contrast is not lost on me. Me soaked in blood while I hold onto my sweet niece.
“What the hell, Loz?” he mutters. “I thought you were going to talk?”
I give him a nonchalant shrug. “I didn’t like what they had to say.”
He reaches for his daughter and plucks her from my arms. She gives a squawk of protest, but he wraps her up and peppers her face with butterfly kisses, making her snuggle into him with another squeal of delight. Something unidentifiable but not unfamiliar settles over me. I shake my head. She’s far safer with her father than she is with me—her monster of an uncle.
“Hey, why don’t you go find your mom and your brothers while I talk to Uncle Loz?” he says quietly.
She pouts. “I want Uncle Loz to play princess dinosaurs with me too.”
“He will soon. He and Daddy just need to talk first. Okay?”
Gabriella turns to me, her brow pinched into a cute frown as she considers his request. She looks so much like Joey; when she pouts, it’s almost like traveling back in time to when my sister was her age. “I promise I’ll play soon,” I assure her.
“Good.” After a decisive nod, she squishes Dante’s cheeks together and kisses him loudly on the mouth, then wiggles out of his arms and scampers off down the hallway.
With a sigh, I watch her leave and wait for my younger brother’s lecture. While I’m the oldest, he’s the official head of the family. My father denied me that birthright when I chose Anya Novikov as my bride instead of the Italian woman he picked out for me.
“What the fuck, Loz?” Dante snaps once his daughter is out of earshot.
“I told you, I didn’t like what they had to say.”
He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “This shit happens almost every single fucking time you leave the house.”
I square up to him. “Why the fuck do you care about those two pieces of shit anyway? I did the world a favor getting rid of Manfred and Richie.”
He cocks his head, visibly working to keep a lid on his temper. “I don’t give a fuck about Manfred and Richie, but I do give a fuck about you leaving a trail of goddamn bodies in your wake every fucking time you walk out the front door.”
I snarl. “I cleaned up after myself. I always do.”
He gives my clothes a pointed look. “Not well enough.”
Glancing down, I wince at the blood, so much of it clearly visible on my dark suit. Pretty sure some of Manfred’s brain matter is spattered on my shoes too. “I’ll take care of it now.”
“But you drove home like that, Loz. What if some asshole cop with a point to prove had stopped you?”
“The cops don’t stop us,” I remind him.
“It takes one fucking time, Loz.” He holds up his pointer finger, his brow furrowed in a deep scowl. “One fucking time.”
I shrug. “I don’t fucking care.”
“I do, Loz,” he shouts. “I fucking care!”
My pulse races, and I suck in a deep breath through my nose. I can’t do this right now. I can’t—
He grabs my face in his hands, pressing his forehead against mine. “I can’t fucking do this without you, brother.”
“You can.” I choke out the words.
“No I can’t. If you don’t give a fuck about yourself, think about us and how we would ever cope without you. Me and Kat. Joey and Max.” His pleas pull at some of those tiny slivers, gathering enough together to make my heart start beating again. It’s faint but there. “Think about Gabriella and the boys and what they would do if they lost you.” Those words act as the final nail in my coffin, and I break.
Tears stream down my face, and he wraps his arms around my head and neck, pulling me into his shoulder. “This has to stop, Loz.”
“I know,” I admit.
But what if I can’t stop?
