Page 4 of Sweet Misery

My father visibly swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Please,” I rasped. “No?—”

His lip descended on my breasts, sucking and kissing them. Bile burned my throat, my body ice cold inside.

I wanted him dead. He had to die. I was going to kill him. So help me god, I would kill him for this.

Saconne let out a booming laugh before striking my father and sending him to the ground.

“You’re really a disgusting piece of shit, aren’t you?” Saconne kicked him in the ribs amid my father’s cries. “Touching your daughter and leaving her to me for a debt you incurred? Your cock so hard as you hope I let you fuck her before you go.” Another kick. My father cried out again, begging for him to stop.

“That’s fine. She’ll make a good toy for my sons.” Another kick. “Her pussy belongs to the Saconne’s now.” One more kick. My father collapsed onto the floor completely before Saconne walked away and went back to his desk where he pulled out a cigar.

“Get him out of here,” was all he said before lighting his cigar. My father was dragged from the room, sobbing softly, leaving me alone with the monster and two guards.

“You really do have perfect tits,” Saconne said as I stood trembling before him, still exposed. “My sons will enjoy you. And wouldn’t you know it. They just lost their last toy. Are you a virgin, Arianna?”

I swallowed, my body trembling.

“Y-Yes.”

Saconne smirked. “Even better. A shinynewtoy. They broke the last one. It was a used one though.”

Before I could beg for my life, a black bag was pulled over my face and a sharp pinch met my neck.

And that was it.

I was gone.

2

MASSIMO

The house felt cold. It was more than a temperature thing. It was like the entirety of the place was waiting to exhale a cold whirlwind of bullshit onto our laps. Almost like a storm was coming.

The fucking Arctic, yet still the ninth level of Hell.

That was our home.

Hell. We’d dubbed it that long ago.

I watched my twin brothers Renzo and Roman from my chair as they threw a knives at the wall, both aiming for the tiny speck in the paint. It was a dangerous game they played, sometimes spilling blood, sometimes trying trick shots to one up the other. Their laughter had started to grate on my nerves the last few hours. They tended to get annoying when they weren’t spilling the blood of others. I think they often got bored and annoyed too because then they would cut one another like a couple of fucking creeps. They tended to get a little too…intimatesometimes when it came to blood.

Our youngest brother, Severo, sat alone and away from us on the other side of the room, sketching in his pad. I knew each drawing he brought to life on paper took him just a bit furtheraway from this hell we all lived in beneath our father’s control. He would spend hours drawing things. And unfortunately, those things sometimes were murder scenes he’d helped with. It never failed. If a murder was committed and he was part of it, he drew the entire scene out with intricate, life-like detail. He’d collect blood and dirt from the murder scenes and add them as a sharp contrast of color to the dark lines he’d create. Sometimes he’d cut himself to add to the grotesque artwork. I hated when he did it. It was a constant reminder of the shit we dealt with. Why he wanted to immortalize any of it was beyond me. When he wasn’t drawing, he was scribbling words into another leather-bound notebook. Again, he’d use his blood, victims’ blood, and I wondered sometimes if he’d kill little creatures and use their blood. I’d never witnessed it, but Severo wasn’t normal. Quiet. Studious. Strange. That was Severo. Where the twins were wild and free, Sever was withdrawn and quiet. I was somewhere in the middle of both sides as the eldest.

“Sever,” Renzo shouted. “Catch!”

Renzo let the knife fly. I watched it topple end over end across the room, not moving a muscle as the steel flashed through space.

Sever didn’t even look up. He simply snagged it before it struck him and whipped it back, not a drop of blood spilled. Renzo dove off the chair to avoid the fast throw while Roman laughed maniacally.

I sighed and shook my head, taking another drink from my whisky before inhaling a hit from the joint I held. We mostly handled the drug side of our father’s world, but we’d been getting more things to do lately. I knew it was because Father wanted me trained to take over as his heir. I had little interest in any of it, but I put on my leather killing gloves daily and pulled the trigger as was expected of me.

Cold. Heartless. Brutal. That’s what they said about me.

Maybe they were right. I’d lived a life where cries and pleading didn’t mean shit to me. It didn’t save me or my brothers growing up and it sure never saved anyone on the other end of our barrels. Or knives in the case of my younger twin brothers.

Sometimes I wondered if my cruelty was because it was a way for me to filter out my anger at my own abuse at our father’s hands. Give it to someone else so I could feel in control for once in my life.

---