Page 62 of All Your Lies
“How dare you do this to me! I gave you everything, Marco, everything! For you to fuck it all up,” he says, spit flying from his mouth and his face red with anger.
“This is the first right decision I’ve made since the day I killed that person.” He gazes over at me. “I tried to turn myself in, but he wouldn’t let me. He said he’d send Rosie and Mom to the Stockade if I didn’t fall in line.”
My insides quake at the information. Marco was protecting them. He was going to send my mom and sister into the sex trafficking ring if Marco didn’t go along with his plan? I clenchand unclench my fists multiple times to get my fury under control.
The Stockade was the first business I set fire to after I saved all the women. It always made me sick when he would take Marco and me there in our teens. It was my father’s highest income stream, so it was the cherry on top of the cake when I burned it to the ground.
I hand them the rope. “Tie his ass to the chair.”
My father puts up a pathetic fight, just like the pitiful man he is.
“What’s the matter? You had no problem testing torture tactics on us as children to strengthen us, as you liked to say. It’s time you get to experience a taste of the hell you inflicted on us.”
Marco attempts to cover his mouth, but I stop him. “I want to hear him scream. Hold his head back,” I say, observing my father’s terrified eyes. “A tooth for every year I was caged like a fucking animal.”
Marco holds his head back by his forehead while I grab his lower jaw and chin.
I can’t help but smirk as his gurgled screams pierce the air. It’s a pleasant contrast to the agonized cries he used to extract from us.
I grab a pair of pliers from the array of tools Vic brought. My father struggles against our hold. His skin is flush with perspiration, and the putrid scent of urine fills my nostrils.Disgusting.
As I squeeze the grips, the sharp sound of his tooth cracking fills the air, signaling my cue to rip it out.
The hole releases a captivating shade of bright red, leaving a trail down the side of his mouth and onto his pristine white button-down.
His pleas and tears fall on deaf ears as I continue, not relenting until his mouth is nearly toothless and a river of red runs down his chin.
I glance at Vic, motioning for him to have his turn. He deserves this just as much as I do.
He walks around and grabs a heavy machete. “I’d like to make this painful, slow, and something that lasts for hours, but I have a flight to catch and children to make,” he says with a light in his eyes I only see when he speaks of my sister.
I roll my eyes, the disturbing images of him and my sister that he conjures making me cringe, but I let him have his moment.
Vic grabs my father’s wrist and places his hand on the desk. My father promptly places his fingers into a fist, no doubt knowing what’s coming. Vic slams his hand on the mahogany wood desk repeatedly until he opens it up and his palm is flat.
“This isn’t for me,” Vic says as he looks into my father’s eyes. “This is for the daughter who never got the father she deserved.”
The machete whistles through the air before chopping off four fingers at once. Bright red blood squirts across his desk. Vic grabs a few mutilated fingers and crams them into my father’s mouth, even as he attempts to spit them out. My father is shaking and looks to be on the cusp of passing out. The metallic smell of blood permeates the office.
I ought to have a twinge of remorse. However, only satisfaction is present.
Vic places the weapon on the table and grabs my father’s shoulder, who is now fading fast and scarcely conscious. “It’s been nice, Hector. I’ll see you in hell.” He gives both Marco and me a salute before walking out of the office.
“Fuck, remind me not to get on his bad side.”
“You can leave, and I’ll finish this.” I gesture to the poor excuse of a father with his head lolled to the side, his severed fingers still in his mouth.
“No. I want this,” he says, surprising the hell out of me.
He used to leave before partaking in the dirty work. He grabs our father’s head by his hair and angles his head up straight.
“It was always going to come to this moment right here. You ruined our lives and so many others. Have fun in hell, Pop.”
My eyes go wide as he takes a letter opener that lies on top of a stack of forgotten papers before plunging it into the side of our father’s neck. Marco removes it, then plunges it back in. Again and again. I finally grab his arm once our father is long since dead and his neck mangled to a pulp.
Marco went into a trance as he repeatedly stabbed him. He was panting, shaking, and whispering unintelligible words.
It’s then I realize he might have had it just as hard, or harder, than I did, which is fucking with me since our father doted on him. He was the golden son. But was he? Or was he just another one of my father’s victims?
