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He’s so focused on controlling my life outside of these walls, he pays little attention to my life within it. So when I occasionally have a spot of car grease on my T-shirt or a scratch on my knuckles, he doesn’t even notice. I always have an explanation ready just in case, but I’ve never needed one.
Done showering, I wrap a towel around myself and look in the mirror. There’s a gash above my right eye and the deep purple bruise spreads over my entire cheekbone. Lifting my chin, I study the fingertip-shaped bruises around my neck and touch the cut on my bottom lip. I give myself a confident smile. This is the last time.
After my shower, I feel fresh and clearheaded. I thought it would be different. I thought my hands would tremble, that my heart would race, but I feel surprisingly calm. Calm when I walk upstairs and take the small orange floral suitcase from the bottom of the closet. Calm when I fill it with my essential toiletries, several pairs of clean underwear, and a few changes of clothes. I’m still calm when I walk down the stairs, suitcase in hand, and make my way through the kitchen, littered with the remnants of breakfast. I grab my purse, but I leave my cell phone on the counter. It’s little more than a glorified tracker these days.
Opening the garage door, I smile when I see it. My green goddess. The 1986 Mustang that Brad and his brother, Jake, bought four years ago, shortly after their father died. The one they swore they’d fix up and take on a road trip. Neither of them has touched it since, but I’ve spent the last year fixing it. It’s incredible what you can learn online these days. I mean, you can get yourself a degree using only a computer, right? No reason you can’t learn to fix an engine that way too.
Humming “Bright Side of the Road,” I can’t stop grinning as I pop the trunk and place my bag inside. I climb into the car and, with a deep breath, run my hands over the steering wheel. This is it. My ticket to freedom. It’s been a long time coming.
I get her fired up, and the roar of the engine vibrates through my bones. It’s the sweetest sound I’ve heard in my entire life. Excitement and trepidation coil in my gut. After checking my reflection one last time, I put on my sunglasses, hiding the worst of the bruises. Not that it matters where I’m headed, but I don’t want some cop seeing my busted face and pulling me over out of concern while I’m getting there. It’s a fifteen-hour drive, and apart from bathroom breaks and filling up on gas, I have no intention of stopping until I arrive at my destination.
I’ve got one shot at this, and there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’m going to screw it up.
ChapterTwo
LORENZO
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 downthe 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.
