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Spreading the contents of the first envelope on the table, I sift through a few photographs. They are of a shady-looking man who looks to be in his mid-thirties. The first one is of him standing with a Mexican man having what looks like a heated conversation. The second is of the same man snorting a line of white powder off a stripper’s chest. I scrunch my nose up with disgust. The third photo has me covering my gaping mouth, silencing my shock. The same man from the previous photographs lay in a pool of his own blood on the ground. Oh my God. Does the sick bastard keep photographs of the men he kills?
With shaking hands, I flick to the next photograph. A woman and two young children stand over a freshly dug grave. Another was the same woman with the children walking along the side of the road and then another at the park. Is this the dead man's family?
I move from the pictures to the papers that were also in the envelope. Three Money transfer receipts each for a hundred thousand dollars. A piece of paper with all the man’s information on it. His name, date of birth, address, names and ages of family members and children. Even what school his children attend.
Shaking my head with confusion, I grab another envelope and open it. This time it was pictures of a different man. He is foreign-looking. Indian maybe? Photographs of him ushering three Asian women from a building with an automatic weapon in his hand. The woman looked young and scared. There are some pictures of a few small children and then more bank transfer receipts, all each with a sum of one hundred thousand dollars. What the hell are all these?
Frantically I open more envelopes, each one containing pictures of what I can only assume from the photographs as bad men, drug dealers, human traffickers, paedophiles, and gang members. Then with each set of photographs is their bio and more bank transfer receipts.
I would bet my life that these are all the men that Luca has killed.
Luca has a conscience!
From all this paperwork and receipts I am looking at, it appears as though he has sent money to each and every one of his victim’s immediate family members. I say victims, but as I look through the photographs of these men, they were all monsters in one form or another. I know that does not make it right that Luca killed them, but it sure as hell does not make me feel sorry for them. The innocent family members, yes. However, while they may miss them, the world will not.
Luca may be a bad man, but he butcher’s men that are just as bad, if not worse, than him. I don’t open any more envelopes. I don’t need to have any more dead faces burned into my memory. What Luca has done to these men is wrong, but he has attempted to make it right with those who have been left behind. It is a bitter yet sweet victory. I don’t believe these men saw any injustice. They were terrible human beings.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” Luca’s bark startles me, making me drop the envelope I held onto the pile of other already opened ones on the desk. His eyes almost glow red with rage as they look over the open envelopes.
“Get out!” he screams.
I stand from my seat on shaky legs. “Does it make you feel less of a monster, paying off their families?” I shoot off my mouth again, knowing I will come to regret it. “Do you think that makes all of this okay?” I pick up some of the pictures and throw them across the room.
“I said get the hell out.” He steps further into the room, his hand’s fist at his side, his face pink with anger.
I should stop, quit now while I still can. But who am I kidding? I have always spoken my mind with Luca; consequences be damned. “I’ll save you the effort with me. I have no family for you to bribe, so I guess you get to keep your money when you kill me.”
“GET. THE. FUCK. OUT!” Luca’s voice vibrates through the walls, the hairs on my skin prick, sending chills all over. There is a deadly warning in his eyes that scares the absolute shit out of me. Luca’s anger has reached a dangerous level, and I do not want to die today.
Slowly, I step from around the table and walk past him. As soon as I reach the door, I run as fast as I can to my room, shutting the door behind me. I let out a long sigh of relief, but my heart still pounds heavily, anticipating for the big bad wolf to come to blow my door down. I stand against it, waiting, listening, anticipating his next move, but he doesn’t come for me. I guess I get to live to see another day.
Twenty-Six
Luca
Slamming my glass onto the bar, I nod to the bartender to pour another. Elijah’s club is packed tonight; half-dressed women parade themselves on the dancefloor while the men stand in circles drooling over them. They are pathetic.
The music beats loudly, pulsing the pain I already feel in my head. I had to leave my apartment. I don’t know what I would have done to Scarlet had I stayed. I feel like she has peeled off my skin, leaving me exposed and bleeding out.
I don’t want her to see me any other way than the monster I am. I don’t deserve it. I don’t want it. Besides, it was not intended to redeem me in any way. It is in no way an act of kindness or a Band-Aid for my guilt. I took away a life; money does not compensate for the family’s loss. Scarlet is right!
Images of the men I have killed cloud my mind. I don’t give them a second thought. They were all scummy human beings, if you could even call them that. Men that took way more than they could ever give. It’s their families that haunt me. They are the ones that ultimately got punished for the sins of their loved ones. That’s why I do it. I gave them money because I took away their only supply of it. Husbands and fathers that, despite being criminals, provided food and shelter for these people. Without that money, most would end up going hungry or homeless. I can live with the death of all those men on my hands, no question. However, with a clear conscience, I cannot live with the unnecessary ongoing suffering of the children these men leave behind.
That is the defining line between my father and me. He would never see past his own vendetta, his own need and greed for power, to see the destruction he left behind. He thought from the moment I was ten years old I was no longer a child. He exposed me to the darkness of the underworld without any regard for the impact that would have on such a young mind. The day I saw my first kill would be forever etched into my memory. It’s still so vivid, the gruesome images of a man's brains blown out of his skull. The smell of steaming flesh is still pungent in my nostrils. I was only ten years old, for fuck’s sake. My father wanted to toughen me up and make me a man, but all it did was give me nightmares of the monster I called dad. I was so traumatized by it that I pissed the bed for the next six months, which only strengthened my father’s motivations to acclimatize me to the brutality of his world. My world.
Nicolai is only a few years older than me, but he seemed to adapt better to it than I. It was as though he could flick a switch and change his demeanor whenever his father was around. He knew better than to show him his fear. Often, he would lie for me, help me quickly change the sheets on my bed after I’d woken in the night wetting them. Maybe because he was the eldest, he felt he needed to protect me from my dad, as he recognized his cruelty all too well. Or maybe he was trying to save me from becoming the very man I despised. Either way, Nicolai always knew the right things to say to calm me after a nightmare and gave me sound advice on handling certain situations with my father. But the most valuable lesson of all, he taught me how to turn myself off to the chaos of the world I grew up in. By fifteen years old, he had successfully turned me into a mini version of himself. Strong, resilient, and hardened.
I was only fifteen when my father handed me his gun and ordered me to make my first kill. Unlike the vivid recollection of the first time I saw him kill a man, this memory is faded and blurred. I no longer see his face nor his blood that I spilled. It has mingled and merged with too many other faces, too much blood, that I can’t decipher it. I filled my mind with the blackness that consumed me the moment my finger pulled the trigger. The only way to survive it was to erase it. That day marked a new beginning for me, leaving behind any doubts that I could have a life beyond that. Shame and regret held no place. Pride, protection, and power became the law to obey. Bitterness, resentment, and anger wiped away the remains of the boy in me, turning me into the merciless monster I am today.
“Did you find what you're looking for in the bottom of your glass?” Elijah approaches the bar, leaning his elbows on the bar top. He always regards me with the same accord. I don’t answer him. My miserable glare back says it all. No, I didn’t.
Elijah sighs, signaling to the bartender for a drink. “People come to my club for three things: sex, alcohol, and dancing. Now, I know you're not hard up for women, and I have seen the hundred years’ worth of whiskey in your apartment. I also know you can’t dance to save yourself. So, what sorrows have you drinking my bar dry and not your own?”
I pick up the drink the barman placed in front of Elijah and down it in one mouthful.
“My home has been overrun by an irritating, obnoxious redhead.”
Elijah laughs, a head back, belly jiggle kind of laugh. “Luca the butcher Valsetti drove to the drink by one tiny woman.” He laughs again, attempting to straighten his lips when he notices I am far from amused.“Come on. She can’t be that bad!”
