Page 43 of Taking Over the Dark

And I’m still suffering to this day.

Trauma never leaves you; you just learn to cope with it.

“Well, I don’t care about your life whatsoever, so why don’t we just make this torture fun?” Marcello states his rhetorical question. The shy smile that I give to Marcello only spurs him on, and I can’t wait to see what he has planned.

“My doctor is back at home, or I would take those precious organs… well now, come to think of it, we could just take you back with us.” Cello thinks for a minute, then comes to his conclusion. “No, I don’t want your soul floating around my city.” He looks over at Dario, adding, “Sorry, man…”

My dad spits out, “You’re fucking crazy.” Sounding a little more scared. I know that makes me a bad person getting excited over him finally showing some of his fear, but he’s never caredabout anything. But apparently, he cares about his life enough to know Marcello is a threat to him.

Marcello doesn’t answer him, only pulls his knife out of his pocket and starts circling my dad like the true prey he is at this moment.

He pulls the collar of his shirt out from his body, cutting it off in one quick swipe. Marcello leaves all his other clothing on him before questioning him again. “I’m going to give you one more chance. Who are you working for?”

I don’t know who he’s working for, but he’s got a lot over my dad’s head because he rears back and spits on Marcello. I watch in slow motion as the sinister smile contorts Marcello’s face, and he meticulously starts slicing my dad’s body.

Four perfectly placed cuts to his stomach have him screaming bloody murder. “They’re not even deep, shut the fuck up.” Marcello rolls his eyes sounding annoyed already. “It’s not only Zamir, you know? It’s Ellie and I also in the relationship.” He’s inches away from his face and whispers, “Four of us fucking each other any way you can imagine. And make sure you’re imagining all three guys fucking one another.”

I look at Marcello in question, tilting my head, but he only gives me a wink. My cock can not get hard while the man I want to fuck me into the ground tortures my own father…

But it just might.

My dad’s growling like an animal now, and that only spurs Marcello on. “You know what I’ve found in all my years being around men like you?” Marcello lets the rhetorical question hang in the air between them and adds after a beat, “The ones that get so worked up over homosexuality are the ones fighting it with every breath. It’s okay to accept being gay or bisexual now… Normally, I don’t make anyone come out when they’re not ready, but John Hayden, are you gay?”

If fire could come from my dad’s head, it would be now. He’s blood red. I don’t know if it’s a blush because Marcello’s right or because he is so mad.

He doesn’t give Cello an answer, and that only spurs him on more. He places three more cuts on each of his shoulders. They’re not deep cuts, but they’re still bleeding, and the reaction doesn’t come from my dad until a couple of seconds after they’re done. The knife is sickly sharp and glides through the skin like it’s slicing through water, and it takes a while to recognize the pain. It’s almost how scalding hot water feels cold until it doesn’t.

The back and forth goes on and on, and I grow bored. Busting through the door, I hear Noah say, “I’ve found something. Actually, the jackpot. His old ass left me a treasure, and if I didn’t know he was bad with technology, I would think it’s a set-up… that’s how much information it is.”

Marcello instructs, “Breathe, Noah. And spit it out.”

“John here, set his kids up… He gave Andrei Sokolov every piece of information on Nash and Willow imaginable. And at first I was wondering why. I quickly found out—” He pauses for dramatic effect, but I want to jump down his throat with the need to know why my own flesh and blood would do such a thing to me. “Gambling. John has a gambling addiction.”

“What the fuck, Dad?” His head is hanging between his shoulders. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen any shame from him. I ask my dad, knowing he won’t tell me, but hope I can at least make him feel even worse, “How much? How much are mine and Willow’s lives worth?”

He doesn’t answer me, of course. I turn to Noah, raising my brows. I know he’s looked into it and has the info. “He owes lots of casinos all over the US, close to half a million altogether… and Nash, your mom, he did that.”

That last sentence has his lower body bucking and flopping around like a fish out of water. I hold my emotions back enough to ask Noah more about my mother’s death. We still don’t have answers years later. “What did he do?”

“He ordered the special Ketamine cocktail from Andrei. That cocktail happens to be mixed with fentanyl. He knew exactly that and even requested extra fentanyl because he had plans that couldn’t get fucked up.” Noah puts the “plans” in finger quotes.

My mother wasn’t on drugs?

That’s the biggest question I have: why would he give her drugs knowing it would kill her? I don’t remember them even fighting. Usually married couples fight before one of them kills the other, right?

This had to be from the gambling…

Did his addiction span all the way back to when I was taken as a child too?

I guess Noah sees me thinking and answers my questions for me. “He’s fought this addiction for a long time, Nash.” It almost makes me feel bad for him, but then again, he has not an ounce of empathy that my fucking sister was taken and being tortured as we speak.

And what scares me the most… This man is a cop. Chief of Police, to be exact. The more power men like him get, the worse they get. He truly thinks he’s untouchable.

I can say this as a man, but I don’t think we should be in power. In any aspect. It goes straight to our heads, and anything with a penis uses power to harm in more instances than not.

Trying my hardest to hold my composure and keep an even tone, I start talking again, “It wasn’t enough to kill the only parent we had who cared about us, but you were going to kill us, too. Fuck, Willow could be dead as we speak! And you don’t give a fuck!”

Even if he were to beg for his life, those words would fall on deaf ears.

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