Page 162 of Savage Roses

But it’s one big trap.

At the end of the night, Leandro changes like a light switch. His warmth and humor vanish and he turns to me with the rest of his men surrounding us.

“I know the lie you’ve been telling,” he says plainly. “You let me marry my daughter off to you. You let me welcome you into my inner circle. You made me believe you were worthy of my empire. A fake fucking Italian like you. A RussianscarafaggioI’ll crush myself.”

When a Don turns his undivided attention on you, you’re as good as dead.

My nerves kick in and bullets of sweat soak me. I blubber and beg and think fast as to how I’m gonna explain my deceit.

Any second Leandro can order somebody to put a bullet in me and finish me off.

Instead, he regards me with the same eerie emotionlessness, and then orders his men to collect me. Never would I have imagined the ordeal would be recorded—my emasculation is gonna be caught on tape.

They bring me to a room. The torture room they use to torment guys from the outside who they wanted to punish.

I am that guy.

An outsider that nobody knew about at first. That they’ve found out about now.

I’m stripped naked, my out-of-shape, pudgy body revealed for anybody attending to see.

They strap me down and roll in a table of different torture devices.

Leandro comes up to the side of the table and peers down at me. “You are the worst kind of a coward,” he says. “The lying, deceitful kind. Your father—Mario—stood in his deception. But you have tried to trick us. Therefore, you deserve to be made into nothing.”

“Please,” I choke out.

The guy on the other side of the table is dressed in medical garb—a surgical gown, a mask, and a cap on his head. There’s a flashlight attached to his forehead as he picks up a rusty hacksaw.

“Don’t do it!” I plead, fixated on its sharp edges.

Leandro smiles. “You’ve deceived me,scarafaggio. I gave you my daughter. I entrusted you to be my successor. But that has been built on a lie. Like Maldini, you’ve proven to be nothing but a cockroach. Now, you must pay.”

“DON’T DO IT!” I scream as the guy with the hacksaw, the fake fucking doctor, bears down on my groin area.

“Don’t worry,” says Leandro. “I hear you’re nothing satisfactory. My poor daughter has been forced to copulate with you. If only I had known giving you her hand was punishing her. By the looks of it…” He pauses, his gaze raking over me. “That rumor is correct. Cut it off.”

I scream into the night. I thrash against the leather binding. My body goes numb to any pain, though blood gushes out, pooling on the floor.

I’m hysterical as the flashlight from the fake doctor blinds me. He hacks away, sawing into me like I’m a rump of fucking meat at the deli counter of a supermarket.

My testicles go first. Then the rest of me.

The inferior part of me that apparently everybody’s belittled me for. The part that wasn’t enough to pleasure Stefania.

I wasn’t good enough for her but my brother sure was.

As if now I won’t be subjected to more torment, bearing the knowledge that I’ll never…

No heir. No manhood to produce my own…

I scream until I pass out.

Until it’s over, and I wake up a new kind of man. The worst kind of man. A man emasculated in the worst, most permanent way.

All recorded. Caught on tape for fucking shits and giggles.

You’d think I’d be hurt and traumatized. I’d be devastated.

---