Page 23 of Devious Roses
I take a step toward him. “Freight trucks don’t just get stolen. Particularly ones that happen to be smuggling drugs. You must think I’m gullible.”
“Salvatore, c’mon man… how long have you known me? How long have I done business with you guys? The Mancinos, Belinis, and Viscontis were all who I started with! Your father and me—we were close!”
“You have one week to correct this issue. If you fail to do so, I will correct you. I will break you. They,” I say, gesturing to my enforcers, “will break you. You’ve got a wife and a baby, right?”
He nods.
“Then I suggest, if you want two working legs so you can run around and play with your kid, you get right.”
We leave Suarez where he is, exiting his warehouse, and stepping onto the city street outside. Fabio comes up on my left and asks me where we’re going next. Before I can answer, I notice a guy in all black on a motorcycle parked across the street. He’s lowered his visor and lifted his kickstand as we’ve walked out, and as my gaze lands him, he promptly merges with traffic. Within seconds, he’s swerving between cars and disappearing down the street.
I follow him as best as I can from where I’m standing.
Once again, it could be the paranoia that somebody’s sending a message… or it could be a real threat looming.
Most infuriating of all, a certain somebody sabotaging me. Even from within his cell.
I’m going to get to the bottom of it.
“Find out who that was,” I say. “Somebody’s up to something, and I want to know what it is.”
* * *
The cell where Lucius is kept resembles the one he held me in. Dark, dank, drafty despite the cinderblock walls. There’s no furniture to be found. Not even a toilet. He gets a bucket to piss and shit in, though I’m told he’s long ago been incontinent. He shits and pisses on himself all the time and then is forced to lay in it ’til one of my guards takes pity and mops up the mess.
I’ve considered ending it. Putting him out of his misery. In the last year I’ve only come down here three or four times. I’ve been too busy living my life, enjoying the first year of my marriage, and settling into my responsibility as Don.
Yet, whenever I’ve come close to pulling the plug, I stop myself. I remind myself Lucius kept my father imprisoned for twenty years just for the hell of it. He forced Stefania into a marriage where he drove her into alcoholism just to cope. From the moment I was born he sought to torture me. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of getting my ass beat. Ending up with so many black and blues that my teachers would send worried notes home and leave wellness check voice messages ’til they discovered who my father was.
Then they stopped altogether and pretended they didn’t see the injuries.
My inner child will never be over it. My thirst for revenge, desire to make him suffer, will never end.
He’s only suffered a fraction of what I have. Of what everybody else endured.
The cell door cranks open with a great pull from the guard on duty and I step into the decrepit black hole.
The rancid smell that’s become a staple of the cell hits my nostrils. I have an iron clad stomach and don’t get nauseous or sick easily, but it’s one of the worst smells imaginable.
The sheer foulness of human waste paired with a sourness in the air.
It’s the kind of stench that could make you lose your mind if you smell it long enough.
I step into the room and kick Lucius in his side. I use my shoe to roll him over, flipping his meaty, half dead carcass onto its back.
He’s awake. His evil beady little eyes flick up to me as if he already knows who it is.
“What’ve you done?” I ask simply. “What shit are you up to?”
He blinks and offers a stare so vacant you’d question if he’s experiencing reality, or some hallucination.
I kick him again. Harder in the ribs. “Tell me what the fuck you’re doing. I know it’s you.”
He opens his mouth and moves his dry, cracked lips like he’s about to speak, then sputters out a phlegmy cough. He uses his stub of an arm to prop himself up and spit it out somewhere in the near-distance, at a point that’s shrouded in shadows.
I push him back down with the heel of my shoe. “You’re going to answer me. If you’re going for pity, you should know better. I will never take mercy on you, Pop.”
His vacant stare lasts for another second. Then it vanishes and his ugly features transform. The face of the devil takes its place—his large, clay-like features contort into a nasty grin showing off scummy teeth and his bushy brows cut into a deep crease.