Chapter 13

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TW: torture and murder

Rowan

Torture is a unique art, my father always used to say, as he buried metal in my skin and let my own screams fill my ears. It took meeting Corbin barely five years ago to recognize exactly how twisted my parents were.

Pain was my upbringing. So I convinced myself it was normal.

It took meeting someone on the outskirts of this rotten family for me to understand that even if terrible things were normal for a mafia, that didn't make any of them right.

My parents ran my world. They confined me to their ideas, their corrupt logic.

I was never beaten in anger, or for punishment. I was never tied to the chair in front of me for misbehavior. It wasn't a result of correction when my father severed my nerves and my mother stopped by to reprimand me when she could hear my screams upstairs.

Pain was a tool my parents used to teach me that no amount of suffering should ever surpass loyalty to the family. As I grew more used to it, they rewarded my silence, my indifference. As I grew more used to it, my father tried harder—in order to teach me what really hurt, in order to carve out my ability to feel anything.

My own body became the lessons that taught me how to abuse others, and—for years—at my parents' discretion…I did.

"Well?" Granger sputters, eyes frantic and wide beneath heavy brows. Curses lace every other word he utters while I sit across from him, reliving the sensation of blades cleaving flesh from my bones. "Git on with it, you—" He slurs a thread of swears, but I barely acknowledge them.

How many times did I pass out in the chair in front of me and long for a more eternal darkness?

How many hours did I exist in a perpetual nightmare I couldn't wake up from?

My eyes close as I set the weight of what was once the serrated knife my father preferred down.

I fix my attention on Granger.

He stiffens.

"Why?" I ask, the word hollow.

"Why?" he spits. "Why do you—" He swears. "—think?"

"All the reasons I've come up with are fickle. Money. A sense of power. Paltry ambition. Boredom." Rising, I stand feet from him, wince as his putrid breath mingles with the old memories in the air. "I want your reason in your words."

"This whole place'll fall apart without me. You'll lose half your family. Yer weak, Rowan. Tha rest of my men will rise up against you and devour the Veleno name." Granger's lips curl in a wicked sneer. "After what your mother and father did to you, do you even have tha guts to hurt me now that they're gone? Just being down here brings back too many sweet memories, don't it?" He exhales a laugh. "The second they were no longer breathing down your back, you collapsed into a boneless little—" He swears. "Yer not a leader. You think I'm scared of you? You think I'll bother stroking your ego? I've been in this family since you were born. To me, yer nothing but a tiny, helpless—"

I register the gunshot.

The silence.

The way Granger goes limp in his restraints as red soaks into his shirt.

I did not register removing my gun from my waistband, taking the safety off, or pulling the trigger.

For me, taking someone's life is as effortless as breathing—even though right now air sticks like glue in my chest.

"Weak," I mutter into the clotting silence.

I am weak.

I was too weak to kill him months ago at the first sign of insubordination. My father wouldn't have let this go on as long as I did. He'd torture his men back into submission whenever they deviated. Some, he'd kill. The ones he let live sang his praises after their weeks of "correction," believing they'd been blessed with a second chance even though they deserved to die.

I still don't know how my parents maintained such extensive abuse over so many.

I still don't know how, now that I've found clarity, I ever accepted any of it.

Acceptance must have been a coping mechanism, a survival tactic. It's all that makes sense.

The last thing I ever want to do is be like them.

But it's difficult to reconcile that, despite all their flaws, they were skilled leaders who didn't hesitate to mold the world around them to their vision.

Who knows how many I've condemned in an effort to portray virtues they shunned?

How does Briar craft peaceful havens into her den of darkness—without compromising the light in her eyes?

I need whatever she has.

Almost as much as I need fresh air in my tight lungs.

Turning sharply on my heel, I leave the shadows of my past and Granger's corpse behind.