by A. P. Moraez
Agile, Leo pressed on his phone’s screen, then showed it to the two brothers, all with a theatrical expression, his mouth shaped in a little o; excited.
The video call rang once. Twice. Three times. Ash was holding his breath, and it wasn’t even his neck on the line. Yet. On the fifth ring, it finally connected.
Both brother’s shoulders sagged a bit in relief. Ash could bet his did the same.
The big screen on the wall flicked black and gray for a moment, and then it was filled with a man that held an incredible resemblance to the younger men tied up and sitting around the pit. They had the same hard, brown eyes, tanned skin, and dark, slightly wavy, thick hair. Most important of all, they had the same air about them, like they weren’t people you should mess with. None of them held a candle to the terror Leo was instigating in him, though.
“Franco, my friend!” Leo said right as the man on the screen seemed to register what he was seeing before him. “It’s good to see you! How have you been? Enjoying your new acquisition, I take it?”
“What the fuck are you doing with my sons, Lazarus?”
“Well, you see, that deal we shook on… I hear you had some problems with my shipments? Tightened security, your boy told me.”
“We did; the pigs at the west coast sniffed the product. There’s probably a rat or two in the operation. Had to spend some more money to shut them up and get the boxes rolling in.”
“I see,” Leo acquiesced. “And for your trouble, I hear, I’m supposed to give you fifteen million more than we’d agreed to.”
“Well, that’d cover my extra expenses. You know how this things work, Leonardo.”
“Sure, my friend,” Leo responded with a plastered, plastic smile. “I surely do.
“As I told your boys here, though, that doesn’t seem fair to me. You see, the… goods you’ve surely has been enjoying, which I conceded you as part of our deal, demand even more care and subterfuge than drugs, Franco. The difference is, I can’t take them back once they’re delivered. My other clients would never accept them, so I can’t even cancel our deal and pretend this never happened.”
The man on the screen laughed. “Sucks for you. Either you give me more money, or I’m keeping the putas and the cargo too.”
“Franco,” Leo warned, a dark edge to his voice that Ash had still not heard up to that moment. “I don’t think you understand how,” he threw a look at the brothers, who were paler than the tiles surrounding them, “unbalanced our negotiation is right now.”
“You got my boys, so what? What you gonna do? Kill them?” The man said that and immediately started to laugh. A full-on belly laugh. And he shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have, because the way Leo’s face turned crimson and his full, pierced lips pressed together told that he didn’t appreciate being mocked not even in the slightest. “I know you, Lazarus. You know how much influence I have. You would never harm m—”
It was over even before Ash could process which cry had come from him and which one had come from the remaining brother.
Leo stood there, shiny silver gun, smoke still soaring from the muzzle.
Several drops of blood from the hole the bulled left behind where it had thundered out of Ramiro’s head had landed right on Ash’s own face.
He was petrified in place while a mix of adrenaline, paralyzing fear, and disgust webbed through his whole system.
In the blink of an eye, Leo had pulled the gun that had probably been hidden under his belt, behind his back, and had barely needed to aim before shooting Ramiro right in the middle of the forehead.
Pieces of his brain had flown to the wall right behind them and blood was already pooling under his chair, oozing in viscous rivulets toward the pit.
Franco was wide-eyed, breathing heavily through the video call. His eyes came back from his dead son and landed back on Leo, which was sporting a sardonic, cold smile.
“You were saying?”
Franco took a few more arduous breaths, before thundering out, “YOU SICK BASTARD! YOU’RE GONNA PAY FOR THIS!”
“Sure, sure…” Leo laughed. “Well, you won’t change your mind and deliver my drugs, will you?”
Franco didn’t respond, eyes back to Ramiro’s body, which was sagged in the chair. The pit already had a considerable pool of blood in it.
Ash had had enough, he needed to run; to hide. Anything but more of this brutality.
He must’ve taken an involuntary step, for Ivan clamped a hand down on his shoulder and then his deep voice said right at Ash’s ear, “Boy, I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
And just like that, he was frozen again. Ivan leaned back and grunted in approval when Ash didn’t try to move again.
“Well, that’s a shame,” Leo continued, taking the man’s silence as a big, fat no.
“Unfortunately, Franco, I’m not in need of more staff, at the moment. So, uh…” Leo’s eyes were on him. “Ash, my boy, come here for a moment.”
The remaining brother was screaming, eyes widened and glued to his father’s face on the screen. Franco was visibly shaking, face red, but didn’t utter a single word.
On shaky legs, Ash came to stand in front of the man that had given him a place to stay and what to eat for a whole year. A man he’d been suspicious of for the best part of last year, but would never, ever, in his wildest dreams, have thought capable of committing cold-blooded murder.
As soon as his unsteady feet landed there, next to the tatted-up psycho, Leo smiled at him and raked a hand through Ash’s sweaty hair.
Then he pressed the gun to Ash’s right hand, handle first.
The weight of the metal felt all sorts of wrong; like death. Of his morals and beliefs, of what he’d learned from an early age about violence, with Ms. Baker. Holding the cold weapon felt like a betrayal.
He looked at it briefly, trembling, for a moment, then Leo’s gentle finger was there, bringing Ash’s eyes to his crazed ones.
“You should’ve stayed in your room tonight, sweet Ash. Maybe then you’d get to keep your innocence a while longer.”
“What do you want from me?”
Leo chuckled and brought his other hand to Ash’s tense shoulder, then squeezed it and kept the hand there.
“Do you remember what I told you the first time you stepped foot in my home? What I told you that day we… met out in the garden?”
Ash blinked, unable to think clearly about the words he was hearing. He was probably going through shock.
“I asked you for just one thing, Ash: your loyalty.”
“I don’t understand this, Leo. What, you’re involved with drugs and… and… God knows what else?”
Leo’s smile faded a bit, but his eyes never left Ash’s. He just nodded.
“Why? You’re rich. I read online. You were the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company. You surely haven’t run out of money in less than a decade right? You have Vesuvius, you help kids, you help the city. You’re… you’re a good person. And you don’t need the money. So, why this? Why all this?”
At some point during his rambling, the man had lost a bit of the crazed look going on behind his irises.
“Oh, Ash. You are too innocent for your own good, aren’t you?” The man whispered against Ash’s lips, bringing them closer together with the hand he kept on Ash’s shoulder. “You really don’t fit here with us.”
Ash didn’t know what to say, so he kept quiet.
“But tonight, you will,” Leo said, voice getting louder. He nodded, more to himself than anyone. “Tonight, you’re gonna be a part of us. Of our family.”
“What? I don’t und—”
“All you have to do, is show me that you’re in; show me your loyalty,” Leo explained as he turned Ash toward the remaining of the two unfortunate brothers, who started screaming behind the duct tape all over again.
And then it hit him: in order to survive, he’d have to kill. Leo wanted him to kill, in cold blood, exactly as he’d just done.
“LEONARDO, YOU BASTARD, THIS
WON’T END WELL FOR YOU. I’M TELLING YOU! DON’T DO THIS! LET’S TALK!”
“You’ve had your chance, old friend, and it’s time you learned I’m not in the habit of giving second chances.
“C’mon, Ash,” Leo whispered against his ear as he adjusted the gun in Ash’s hand, positioning Ash’s hand over the trigger. “There you go. Get as close as you need so you won’t miss it. Once you’re positive, just squeeze the trigger. Squeeze, don’t pull.”
“Leo, I can’t do this. I’m not a killer.”
“You’ve done it before, haven’t you? It’s no different.”
“It is! It is different! When I killed that man, it was because he deserved it. It wasn’t like this. Not like this.”
Leo chuckled right behind him. He was standing up straight now, his firm chest warming the base of Ash’s neck, so close to each other as they were standing. “You think this man doesn’t deserve it? Oh, Ash.” He massaged Ash’s shoulders with both his hands. “Romulo here was killing people for his daddy way before he could legally drive.”
The man before him started shaking his head, as if denying everything Leo was saying.
“Oh, you’re calling me a liar now, boy?” Leo threatened, the word rumbling from deep in his chest.
Romulo’s eyes got impossibly bigger and he increased the head shakes.
“He was, Ash, believe me,” came the murmured words behind his ear. “A lot of them were criminals, people that had wronged his precious papa. But loads of them were innocent too. Little children and women included. Their family didn’t get where they are by playing nice.”
Ash was breathing with difficulty, the full impact of what was being asked of him finally landing on his shoulders.
“You just have to squeeze the trigger, Ash. Easy as that, and you’re one of us.”
Despite the moral war going on inside his head, the survival instinct was winning.
When he took three tentative steps forward and raised his arm, Leo laughed out loud. “There you go! I knew you could do it!”
Tears fell from the man’s eyes. Romulo. Romulo was his name. At some point, he’d been a child. He’d been an innocent child trying to find his way in the world, exactly as Ash had been. Sadly, the world wasn’t a fair place, and now he was here, his life hanging on a thread that could be cut off at any point, depending on Ash’s own will. His deep brown eyes reminded him of John’s, and Ash hung to the feelings of anger he still held for his negligent father when he rose his arm even higher, until it was level with Romulo’s forehead.
Lucky for him, he’d decided to come as close as possible. Now, with a mere couple inches between the muzzle and the man’s forehead, his shaky hand wouldn’t have a chance to miss.
Franco was screaming again through the video call. No, he said. Stop, he said. Let’s talk about it, Lazarus, he said.
But everyone knew it was too late now.
Ash closed his eyes and thought about better times. Times when all he’d had to worry about was getting back to the house, from his forest, in time, so that John wouldn’t catch him all muddy and dirty. Times when sapphires made of the purest stars had been his lifeline; his reason to breathe. That time when his heart had vanished in the wind, blown away with daisy petals.
Nothing but low-class filth.
A part of him had died that day, when those words reached his ears, spoken by what he’d always thought was the voice of a best friend. A big chunk, at that. Not much had remained.
Most of what remained finally perished, too, when he opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.
The splash of blood on the far wall was the last thing he registered before his legs gave out and the pain in his head brought him to his knees.
VOICES AROUND HIM. Instructions to take the bodies away; swipe off the blood.
Somewhere to his right, more behind than in front of him, someone was locking something away. Franco’s voice was cut off, his threats suddenly disappeared.
Ash couldn’t register much more than the searing pain that seemed to be splitting his goddamn head in two, right in the middle.
He’d dropped the gun as soon as his knees’d hit the white tiles. The last thing he’d seen before the pain brought him to his knees was all the blood marring the wall behind the man whose life he’d ended.
“Hey, Ash.” Leo’s voice was close. Too close. A warm hand at the back of his neck. “You okay?”
It was too much, the pain. He could only shake his head.
“Ash? What’s up? What are you feeling?”
He clenched his teeth until he feared he’d break them. The pain was only now starting to lower from the deep, cutting fire to a lessened throb.
“Head—” Speaking hurt. “Headache.”
“You did good, today, Ash. You’re one of us now.”
Ash could only nod, afraid that speaking out loud would make the pain get worse.
The warmth of Leo’s hand at the back of his neck was gone.
More sound; more orders.
Chair legs scraping against the floor.
Muffled noises of heavy weights being thrown against metal.
Water splashing against stone.
Liquid gurgling down a drain.
The pain had lessened to a bearable level now, and things seemed to be getting back to normal. Only… behind his closed eyelids, something seemed to be happening. Something… unusual.
It started as only a dot, right in the middle of all the darkness. A dot of the purest blue light, it pulsed for a moment, then disappeared. Only a few seconds later, it reappeared. This time, it was bigger. One more pulse, and it was gone. When it reappeared again, after a few more seconds, it wasn’t alone. Two other dots popped up alongside the first, all the same size and shape. Ash tried squeezing his eyes more tightly, to see if the things would get gone, but they didn’t. They pulsed in unison.
One.
Two.
Three.
One.
Two.
Three.
And then they started… circling, as if dancing. To and fro, mingling and intertwining between them; elongating. Soon, it was a frenzy of movement; slashing, jumping, sliding, and pulsing.
“I think we broke him, Leo.”
Ash opened his eyes to find both Ivan and Leonardo watching him with a mixture of amusement and concern in their faces. To his utter surprise, the things were still there. What the hell was going on here? Were they some kind of eyesight trick? A thing from his imagination? Shouldn’t he be able to control what he did with things he imagined, though? Because if that was the case, then the lines dashing and growing and flying around the two men were definitely not something out of his imagination. Because the more he wished them to just disappear, the crazier they got.
And they weren’t just three now, but seven.
Seven dashes of the purest, most luminous blue he’d ever seen, contracting violently around the two dangerous men in front of him. Never stopping their crazy dance, they tightened around their torsos and heads, then seemed to explode into tiny little dots, pretty much like Ash’d always imagined stars going supernova would be, and then they quickly regrouped into the seven original shapes again, only to repeat the process as the mad dance continued.
It was like they were trying to send him a message and, weirdly enough, he could read them.
Dangerous, they said. Wrong. Dangerous. Run.
“Ash, you alright?”
Startled, for the first time in minutes on end, Ash pulled his gaze away from the lights and his eyes landed on Leo’s. Immediately, the seven bolts of blue rushed toward him and, for a moment, the whole room changed, as if he was seeing all of it through a filter. It lasted for only a couple seconds, then everything was back to normal.
“Yeah.” Ash cleared his throat and, with a poignant protest from his tortured knees, finally rose from the position he’d been in for what felt like an hour now. “Yeah, I’m… I’m okay.”
Leo was grinning at him
like he’d just won the lottery. Ash took an involuntary step back when the man surged forward toward him, but Leo didn’t seem to notice.
“I have to admit, I didn’t know what to expect of you when I brought you down here tonight.” His eyes had never been more luminous. They still had a bit of the crazy gleam from before, but now Leo looked less crazed an… happier. “But you sure didn’t disappoint me. I’m proud of you.”
What was he supposed to say? Was he supposed to rejoice about what he’d just done? Feel proud of himself for having taken a life?
Lost in Lazarus’ eyes, Ash startled when Ivan’s thick arm snaked around Leo’s tattooed neck and he licked Leo from jaw to temple.
“C’mon, Leo, you know this shit turns me on.”
“We’re not alone,” Leo admonished halfheartedly, at the same time his eyes rolled in pleasure when Ivan rolled his hips behind him.
“I don’t care. It’s been days. I want you.”
Leo laughed.
Ash’s heartbeat immediately picked up when, to his surprise, Leo turned in Ivan’s arms and they started making out right there, in front of him.
Leo was a tall man, way taller than him, but even him wasn’t a match to the raw power and mass that rolled from Ivan in waves.
When Ivan leaned a bit down and their mouths finally latched onto each other, Leo moaned loud and, to Ash’s horror, his own body started to respond.
They’d just killed two people and, no matter how much Leo tried to convince him that they’d deserved what they’d gotten, nothing would ever erase from his head the look on that man’s eyes when he realized he wasn’t getting out of this room alive.
Still, the two in front of him seemed to have completely forgotten the bodies lying on the medical tables to their side, on the far wall.
And, to his absolute shock, Ash’s own body seemed to be forgetting all about it, too.
Each time Leo’s and Ivan’s tongues showed, glistening with saliva under the fluorescent lights, his heart beat a little faster, his cock got a little harder.
They broke the kiss for a moment, coming up for air, but Ivan’s mouth never really left Leo. Languorously, he licked a path to the point where Leo’s neck connected to his shoulder, and closed his mouth there, eliciting another deep moan from him.
