Page 10 of Dirty Big Sins

Chapter Five

VINCENT

Twenty yearsearlier

I stood in front of the grimy bathroom mirror and scrubbed the blood from my hands. It had crusted over long ago and as I worked to remove it, many of the wounds began bleeding again.

My stomach trembled with another clear threat against me. I’d already lost everything I’d eaten earlier that day, so I didn’t know how anything else could be left. As the nausea threatened to weaken me again, I scrubbed harder, desperate to wipe the memory of what I’d done as much as the incriminating evidence.

“Boy, you need to stop acting like a pussy and get your ass out of the bathroom.”

My stepfather’s hard timbre rattled through my bones from outside the flimsy door. The cheap tract house we lived in might as well have been constructed from cardboard because it didn’t do shit to muffle any noise.

It kept out nothing.

Not the sounds that tainted the dank air of our shitty little gang-infested neighborhood. Not the oppressive heat that tried to suffocate us on a daily basis. And absolutely not the monsters that always came after the innocent. I almost choked on that. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t innocent. Not anymore.

Tonight I’d been the monster.

I grabbed a towel and finished cleaning up as quickly as I could.

Today, just three months after turning sixteen, I’d ended a life.

I hadn’t meant for the violence to escalate quite to that extreme, but I’d finally grown stronger after two years of intensive training and in an unexpected moment I’d learned just how dangerous I could be. Those skills, however, were meant for the ring, not the streets. Bennie would flatten my ass if he saw me now.

My boss and part-time trainer had no tolerance for bullshit and I had no doubt my actions tonight would qualify as such in his book.

The red haze of anger that had filled my mind had yet to fully recede. How could it when all I saw was the young girl and the gang banger on top of her pinning her down in the alley that I traveled every night between the gym and home.

She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. What the hell she’d been doing out there after dark alone I had no idea. People in my neighborhood tended to be smarter than that. They knew there were certain places you didn’t go after the sun went down. And they certainly knew what would happen if they did it by themselves.

The need to hit something flared to life inside me again and my fingers automatically flexed in response. I gritted my teeth against the pain of broken skin stretching across muscle and bone, drawing fresh blood.

A groan slid from my mouth before I could clamp it down. Holding my breath, I waited for Henry to pound on the door again. I couldn’t hide in here much longer, which meant I was going to have deal with him whether I wanted to or not.

This was not the night.

I’d tipped over the breaking point tonight and I wasn’t sure I could make it safely back to the other side. Not when I could still hear the blood rushing in my ears as anger not only fueled me, but it possessed me as well. The fact pleasure had surged parallel to that anger at the first crushing blow of bone giving way to the strength of my punch should have alarmed me. Instead, I’d embraced it. Used it. Fanned its fucking flames until it was too late.

The need to hurt still burned hot. Maybe it was just the adrenaline still dumping into my system. Whatever it was, it was fucking dangerous.

“Leave me alone,” I snarled before I could stop the words tearing from the depths of my soul. I really couldn’t take any more tonight. I looked briefly back in the mirror and what I saw still frightened me. I didn’t look the same as I had when I woke up this morning. Something had changed.

I was different.

“What the fuck did you say?” Henry yelled, shaking the knob violently. “Open this goddamned door right fucking now.”

I knew with every fiber of my being that opening that door now or any other time was a mistake. Maybe a deadly one. Yet, I found myself drifting in that direction anyway.

I hadn’t even finished checking for blood.

But Henry never stopped. He never assessed a situation for an appropriate response. He simply did what he wanted, when he wanted. And now so did I.

The flimsy door popped open before I could tear it free and Henry barged into the tiny space. The angry slash of his mouth meant nothing, but the glazed look in his eyes did. Drunk again. Which meant there was no escaping this.

He grabbed my arm and attempted to drag me into the hall. But I was ready for him and dug in my heels, blocking his ability to move me. The shock that crossed his face gave me the moment I needed to rear back my right arm and land a close-range punch that clipped the right side of his head.

The momentary shock of pain that radiated from my bruised and torn hand up to my elbow was nothing in comparison to the satisfying sound Henry made when he flew backward into the wall directly across from the bathroom door. He hadn’t expected me to fight back.

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