Page 31 of Monstrous Grave

Without a second to spare, I tear the note from my door, fingers curling into fists as I enter the apartment. The air crackles with a sense of unease as I methodically activate the security alarm, which will alert me if anyone tries to break in. I double-check every lock and window, ensuring no one can trespass. I make sure he hasn’t entered my apartment while I was gone before finally retreating to the safety of my bedroom.

Adrenaline shoots through me as if I’ve been drugged with the strongest chemical before I grab the gun in my hand, the weight of it a comforting reassurance.

Minutes drag on with agonizing slowness as I steel myself for the inevitable to come, not knowing what the future holds.

Chapter 13

Who am I?

I guess you’ll soon find out

They say scars on the body fade with time, their jagged edges softening, their raised skin smoothening, and the once violent pink hues mellowing into nothingness. As years pass, these scars will gradually diminish until they’re barely noticed. I wonder whether this is because we grow accustomed to their presence or if they truly fade into oblivion.

Yet, what about the invisible scars? The ones that don’t mark the skin’s surface? Those etch onto the fabric of our souls, an imprint we will never be rid of.

They say scars on your body eventually heal, while the scars on our souls never do. It’s a true testament to my body, the scars staining me like a brand I cannot rid myself of.

Empathy and sympathy are foreign concepts to me, emotions I could never grasp. While I know I’m meant to harbor some form of emotion toward others, be it remorse or regret, that simply isn’t me.

I kill without feeling anything, it’s why they call me notorious. Sometimes, I take a life as an experiment, if only to see if I’m capable of feeling. Each time, I end up disappointed—or at least, I think it’s disappointment, like a vague ache in my chest. My emotions are few and far between, as they’ve always been.

Growing up as I did, I suppose it was an advantage not to feel pain, betrayal, or hurt. In the criminal world, weakness is a luxury one cannot afford—only a stoic façade that unnerves the enemies.

Most children would have been traumatized by what I endured. The worst of it was when my father, in a twisted attempt to teach me a lesson, shot my shoulder when I was but a fifteen-year-old boy. He claimed it was to test my ability to stitch my wounds without shedding a tear like a “shitty baby.” My right hand wears the scars from when he forced me to grasp scalding flames—to test my endurance, he’d said.

That moment particularly affected me, and I’ve been forced to wear a leather glove to cover it up. Kids like to fucking stare at things they shouldn’t.

Other times, he’d say he loved me if only to gain my trust again. All to mold me into the heir he wanted, but I never intended to be that person for the Grimaldi syndicate.

Until one rainy day changed everything.

I still feel the chill of that moment when masked figures emerged from the shadows, ambushing me and holding me at gunpoint. I realized they knew everything about me, details I’d never divulged to anyone.

My memories before the orphanage are fragmented, but the stern-faced man in the photographs at my dead mother’s apartment remains in my mind. I recall her tears as she used to gaze upon those images, whispering wishes for a different life untainted by darkness when she thought I was asleep in my room.

My mother had fled from my biological father, determined to shield me from the criminal world that had tormented her. Yet, despite her efforts, fate had a way of being cruel.

Fourteen years after her passing, that same man from the photographs resurfaced, threatening to take everything from me if I didn’t comply. They demanded I start anew as the heir to their criminal family because the firstborn son had died—a brother whom my mother had left behind when he refused to escape with us. When they ambushed me, they thought I had something to lose, and I scoffed at them because I had nothing.

Until they showed a photograph of her sleeping in bed with her shirt riddled up against her stomach, taken from the point where I used to sneak into her room during the nights.

They threatened to kill the only person I’ve ever been capable of feeling something for.

I did as they said, no matter how much it hurt to leave her—I couldn’t let any danger befall her. For years, I bided my time at the García cartel, waiting for the moment my father would die. When he died in a gang war, I finally got the free reins to fully take over as the second-born son, evidently earning my freedom and respect from my cousins and associates.

He was the biological father I never got the chance to meet before the orphanage—Louis García—the absent father my mother had tried to hide me from before she passed away when I was nine.

It seemed she was a García, and so was I.

——————

It’s time, I think as I slip into the shadows slithering around the building before me.

The moment I’ve been waiting for during all those agonizing years of solitude, forced to do my duty as the heir to the García cartel even when I didn’t want to.

It was a long time ago when I was ripped from the sanctuary I once knew and thrust into the world of being an heir to one of the infamous families in Penumbra Crest. Years since I had to fabricate my death and betrayed the only person I’ve ever cared about, all to protect her.

As the years have passed, my indifference has grown, and now I no longer care about it all. It’s become a duty as much as it’s become a part of the game I’ve been playing with myself—a twisted game full of lies and deceit, with people suffering underneath my thumb.

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