Page 39 of Bleed
“You don’t need to do this man. Come on now.” I weep in feigned despair to Valentino, peering out from behind my split fingers, tightening my back until I’m up straight and ready to move.
It’s not like I could ever outrun a bullet to the back, but I’m not going down without a fight.
“Yes I do.”
“Fuck you man!” I scream, my three words laced with anger, fear, and regret. “Fuck you!”
“No, fuck you asshole.” Valentino says and presses the weapon deeper into my back.
“At least face me.”
“Sorry brother, no can do.” He says quietly and I hear the ever so slight creak of the trigger being depressed slowly.
Holding my breath, I prepare to die, and when a loud shot rings out, breaking the silence, I fall forward, flattening myself to Dani’s “corpse” covering her with my blood-soaked body.
My breath is still gone, but the pain of a searing hot bullet is absent. There’s no burning track through my body, no hotness burning my insides, nothing, except absolute silence outside of me, and the galloping of my heart in my intact chest.
What the fuck?
“Oh no, no, no, no! What did I do?” Antonio screeches out above me just as a pistol falls from the heavens and lands on my ankle, cracking right on the bone, and a heavy body slumps into a lumpy pile. “I’m gonna die. They’re gonna kill me!”
I know the raw emotion behind his cry. He knows what he did, he saved my life, but in the mean time he sealed his fate. It’ll be a slow, painful, torturous death by the hands of all the men in the family’s crew. He’ll be made to suffer like no man has ever suffered before for killing the heir of the Carlucci family.
Crawling off Dani and pulling her up with me as I grab my knife from the floor, I turn to my friend and sous chef, seeing the utter mortification on his face as he looks down at the body of Valentino bleeding out of what is left of his head on the floor. There’s a hole on the side of his skull and the other side is blown out. A point-blank shot to the temple. The fucker was dead before he even hit the floor.
Antonio is such a young man, barely twenty-five, who had his whole life ahead of him and now he’s a dead man standing because of a split decision to save me. I can see it written on his face, and he sees it on mine as he looks up at me and tears fall from his eyes, dripping down his ashen cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” I say to him, reaching out, grabbing him, and pulling him into me, holding him tightly against me as Dani steps over the corpse and wraps her arms around us both.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll take care of you.” She whispers to him, rubbing his back, trying to console him.
But him and I know the truth. Even if the family isn’t sure he did it, even if we tell them it was me, he’s still going to die, and in a way that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise as I think about it. There will be no mercy.
“No, you can’t.” He cries, looking in my face, staring his dark brown irises into my hazel ones. “Damien, you gotta…”
“I know.” I say, squeezing him tightly to me, pressing his head to my shoulder. “I know.”
“You will not.” Dani yells, slapping me on the back of the head, holding tightly to him. “No. No one else dies because of me.”
“It’s not because of you.” Him and I both say together.
“It is!” She screams, trying to hold us both together, keeping me from letting him go. “It’s all because of me!”
“It’s just the way life goes.” I say, still pressing Antonio to me, not wanting to release him, because we all know what I must do the second I let him go, and I’m just not ready to do it.
Enough of my friends have died the last few days, ever since she came back. Almost like the world is making me give up everything for her. I know it’s dribble and that isn’t how life works, but it sure as fuck feels like it as I tighten my grip on the handle of my knife until my knuckles crack.
We stand over the cooling body of my former boss, the three of us, absorbing the pain and sorrow from each other, with Dani and I trying to pour all the strength we can into our friend, my friend, the man, the fucking kid, who was just hours ago supposed to be my successor.
“Damien.” He whispers, rubbing his eyes on my shoulder, giving me his tears. “Make it…”
“Shhh. I will.” I say to him through a thick swallow that scratches my throat and chokes me. “You won’t feel a thing. I promise.”
“Thank you.” He weeps, holding onto me tightly, like his life depends on it, because well, in reality it does.
“Thank you my brother, my friend. This will not be for nothing. I’m going to end them all in your name.” I say, my voice deepening with a heavy breath, the feeling of rage churning inside of me, growling like a beast.
The longer I hold him, the angrier I get. I’m going to annihilate the entire family, hell, both families, till there’s no one left but Dani and I. The world has never seen a man as enraged as I’m becoming as each sorrowful second passes.
