Natalia
I stood outside of the double French doors, balancing a tea tray on my knee. I raised one hand and knocked twice on the wooden frame.
“Come in,” warbled a weak voice from the other side.
I twisted the handle and pushed my way within.
The cutlery on the tray clinked as I set it down on the bedside table. Marco looked at me from his bed and gave me a warm smile. He opened his mouth to say something, but a coughing fit interrupted. His thin chest wheezed with the strain. He doubled over, hacking into a handkerchief pressed against his mouth. When he pulled it away, I saw spots of blood staining the white fabric.
I rushed to his side and bent over to rest my hand gently on his back until the attack subsided. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” I asked quietly.
Marco patted my hand where it lay on the covers. “Don’t worry about me, Natalia. I’m an old man. This body ain’t the lean, mean fighting machine that it used to be.” He smiled again. His eyes, hazel and wise, were starting to cloud with age.
I tried to smile back, but part of my heart was too sad to make much of an effort. It killed me to see Marco suffering like this. He’d been bedridden for weeks now, under the doctor’s orders, trying desperately to stave off a cancer that wouldn’t take no for an answer. No matter what we did, though, the coughing grew worse, his strength faded, and bit by bit, his mind started to fail him. It was heart wrenching to witness.
In theory, I should have been glad he was dying. Marco Esposito was the reason I’d ended up in this life. This was his crime family keeping me prisoner, reducing me to little more than a servant in their home. I slaved day in and day out to make their food, clean their clothes, tidy the furniture, and on and on, endless chores that stripped the skin from my knees and the joy from my soul. Twelve years of this had taken its toll on me.
But Marco was also the one bright spot in my long, gray days of cleaning and shuffling quietly out of sight whenever someone entered a room in the mansion. I wasn’t supposed to be seen or noticed at all. As if the house just got cleaned by magic. Marco, though, wanted to see me. Every day that I walked into his room to bring him his pills and the medicinal tea he drank throughout the morning and afternoons, he gave me the same sunny smile and said the same words.
“You are such a beauty, Natalia.” His liver-spotted hand enclosed mine. There was frighteningly little strength in his fingers. The velvety skin was paper-thin, like tissue wrapped around a twig. I worried often I’d make one wrong move and snap something of his. I couldn’t afford to do that. He was in enough pain already.
My response to him was always the same. “You’re a charmer, Marco.”
He winked back. “Pretty girls like you bring out the best in me.”
It was the same routine every day. A moment of sunshine in an otherwise cloud-dense life.
I never would have thought a mob boss would be the one who treated me best of all. After all, Marco Esposito was a name that struck terror into the hearts of just about everyone this side of Chicago. Police officers, lawyers, business owners, and petty thieves all feared and respected Marco and the powerful organization he had built. From what I could tell, it was a far-reaching business, with tentacles that stretched not just across the city but across the country to even the globe. There were always some out-of-towners staying at the mansion, waiting their turn to have an audience with Marco to discuss some business venture or racket or scheme. They came from far and wide to beg for the chance to work with him.
I still struggled to reconcile that image with the man who was laying in the bed next to me. Surely a man this powerful couldn’t succumb to a mere disease. That seemed almost ridiculous. Everything else in his life he solved with a snap of his fingers. How could this be any different?
But it was different. Hordes of doctors tramped in and out of his chambers all day long, but nothing they did was working. The cancer kept moving, taking over, invading, not unlike what Marco himself had done to the city.
“Here are your pills, Marco,” I said, offering a palm full of colorful capsules to him.
He groaned. “Oh no, didn’t I just take my pills?”
“Those were your early morning pills. These are the mid-morning ones.”
“Early morning, mid-morning, late morning—it never ends!” He swished a hand back and forth through the air with each syllable, twisting his face into an exaggerated scowl. “All right, all right, let’s have ’em,” he said. He reached forward to take them from my hands. I watched for a moment as his trembling fingertips combed and combed through the air. He couldn’t force them to cooperate. His body was failing him right before his eyes.
After a few long, agonizing seconds of Marco clumsily struggling to pluck the pills from my outstretched hand, I pushed him gently back against the pillows. He sighed and let me. “Here, let me help,” I said quietly. “Open up.”
He opened his mouth obediently and let me feed the pills to him one at a time, interspersed with sips of water from the glass on the table by his bed. He massaged his throat when he had swallowed the last of them.
“There we go, not so bad, right?” I said, smiling sweetly.
“I feel like a child,” he replied crossly.
I reminded him, “Children don’t own mansions.” Or slaves, said a sinister voice in the back of my head. I tried not to focus on it.
Marco chuckled. “No, I suppose they don’t.” He rolled onto his side, trying to grab for the newspaper on the tray I’d brought in, but it was too far out of reach. The effort set off a heart rate alarm that stood next to his bed.
“Sit back,” I reprimanded, slapping him playfully on the arm.
He laughed and leaned back once more against the pillows. I handed him the paper. “What’s on my docket today?” he asked as he started to leaf through the news.
“Cosimo and Alessandra should be back from their trip early this afternoon,” I said quietly. My voice was somber. I kept my eyes fixed on the floor.
“The prodigal son returns home, girlfriend in tow,” he mused. His eyes flashed with something akin to anger. Cosimo, Marco’s thirty-five-year-old son, was constantly falling in and out of his father’s graces. He was being groomed to take over the family once Marco was no longer up to the task, but it was almost impossible to fill his father’s shoes to the man’s satisfaction. There was only one Marco Esposito, and try as he might, Cosimo was not him. His latest endeavor, a trip to Boston to negotiate an arms shipment with some contacts Marco had made there years ago, had gone horribly awry. Marco had spent all night on the phone, ironing out the messy wrinkles that Cosimo had managed to inject into the situation. It left him in a foul mood wherever his son was involved.
Alessandra, Cosimo’s long-time girlfriend, had taken to whispering in Cosimo’s ear about all the things he’d be free to do once Marco kicked the bucket. I’d heard them talking late at night a dozen times or more, Alessandra curled up next to Cosimo and stroking his hair while murmuring that Marco was old, Marco was senile, Cosimo was so much smarter and more ruthless. The rift growing between father and son was becoming scarier by the minute.
Even worse for my sake, Alessandra had taken an intense dislike to me. I couldn’t figure out the reason why. Maybe it was because of how Marco complimented my looks so often. Every time he did, I could see her lip curl into a sneer if she were anywhere within hearing distance. As long as Marco was nearby, though, I was safe. But the second I stepped out of his sight, she pounced, flinging more chores and harsh accusations in my face without warning.
If something in the house was broken, it was my fault. If a staircase was dusty or a picture frame crooked, I was the one getting the dressing down. She’d positioned herself as the mistress in charge of the house, like some twisted mob version of an evil stepmother, and I was the one on the receiving end of her venom. Her absence the last few days had been an immense relief. I was less than thrilled that she’d be coming back today.
“Won’t you be glad to see Cosimo again?” I asked.
“Hmph,” Marco snorted. “After he muffed the deal in Boston? Not thrilled, my dear, no.” His words were fatherly, if irascible, but his tone was something different. He didn’t sound like the good-natured, television-ready dad that he perhaps intended to portray himself as. No, there was too much blood and violence in Marco’s past for that. When Marco was disappointed, people died.
It scared me. I had yet to understand how a man could have two completely contrasting sides to him. My daddy had been the same way, though, until he died. For the vast majority of my life, he’d been a bitter, broken old man with spittle flying from his mouth as he went off the handle at me. But every once in a while, he’d come into my room and sit on my bed to read stories to me until I fell asleep. I remembered thinking that his face seemed so soft when he did that. Like he was a whole different man. It didn’t make sense to me then, either.
I tried not to think of Daddy too often. Part of me hated him, had always hated him. But the part of me that remembered those bedtime stories would grow sad at the thought that he was gone and the memory of how it had happened. All that blood. Try as I might, I could never wipe it away from my mind.
The best way to go about my days was in a numb trance. Head down and hands busy, that was the recipe for survival. I didn’t want to attract anyone’s attention, least of all Alessandra’s. These people had tempers that too often ended in agony and misery for those unlucky enough to be in their warpath. I didn’t want that to be me. So far, I was fortunate.
I stood up from Marco’s bed. “Leaving me already?” he asked, arching an eyebrow as he looked at me over the top edge of the newspaper.
“I’ve got to clean the living room today,” I murmured, “before Alessandra gets home.”
“Don’t let her get to you, Natalia,” he admonished. “She’s all bark, no bite.”
I bit my lip to hold back my tongue. Of course, she would never dare abuse me in front of Marco. She knew he had a soft spot for me. But if only he knew what happened when he was out of earshot.
I shuddered. I needed to make sure the living room was spotless prior to her arrival. I picked up the tray and started to head out.
“Never be afraid to stand up for yourself,” Marco called out to me just before I slipped through the doors.
I froze. Stand up for yourself. A boy in an alleyway had told me that a long time ago. I’d never forgotten it. Hearing those words come out of Marco’s mouth was spooky.
“I won’t,” I said softly. But that wasn’t true. I’d stopped standing up for myself the day that the Espositos took me from my father. Standing up would only get me killed.
Nicholas
Two knocks, a pause, two more. The door grill slid open at eye level. Two hazy brown irises looked out from the dim interior. It slammed shut again, then the mechanisms of the locks began to click open and the door swung aside to let me in.
The prospect who was standing guard to the front door of the clubhouse stepped out of the way as I passed by him. I nodded in silent greeting, then walked down the dark entry hallway and emerged into the rosy light of the bar area.
A few men were scattered about, nursing beers or talking to each other in rumbling voices. I remembered how intimidating everything had seemed the first time I came here twelve years ago at Smalls’ side. That was back when Fists had first become president. So much shit had happened since then. This room, though, had hardly changed. Sometimes I wondered if the same men in here now were the ones who’d been in here when I walked in that day so many years back.
Another time, I might find a quiet corner and down a beer of my own. But right now, there was business to be taken care of.
I made my way between the tables and chairs towards the back hallway. An office door was set in the left-hand side of the wall. I knocked. A voice bellowed for me to enter.
Sliding inside, I made sure to close the door firmly behind me. Fists was seated behind his desk, smoking and brooding over a thin file in front of him.
“Ah, just the man I was waiting for. Take a seat, brother,” he said, pointing with his cigarette at the chair across from him.
I settled into the seat. “Here,” I said. I tossed the pimp’s ID card onto the desktop. Fists picked it up and studied it. His face was a maze of scars, tattoos, and skin tanned by years of hard riding. Metal studs jutted out from his eyebrow and nose. Everything about him screamed Do not touch.
He looked up at me. “How’d it go? Any trouble?”
I shrugged. “Went fine. Luca took his sweet time, so I had to ditch a few cops. Nothing major.”
Fists grimaced and dug the heel of his hand into his tired eyes. “I know you well enough to know that when you say ‘Nothing major,’ it means some serious shit went down. How close was it?”
“Like I said, just had to ditch a few cops. I took the alleyway down south that leads from the residential block over towards the junkyard. Lost ’em there.”
He whistled and leaned back in his chair, impressed. “You whipped your car through that little gap?”
I shrugged again. “That’s my job.”
“Where’s the car now?”
“Burned it.”
“Good, good,” he nodded, settling forward onto his elbows. “We made some nice coin from that gig. Shame Luca had to draw so much attention to the stiff, but whatever, life goes on.” His cigarette was down to the filter. He stubbed it out in his ashtray and reached into his breast pocket to withdraw his pack and strike up another. I noticed with a frown that the ashtray was brimming with finished butts. Fists only chain-smoked when he was thinking about something serious. Not a good sign.
I looked at him. “What’s going on?” I demanded.
Fists looked concerned for a moment, then saw me looking at the blooming ashtray and laughed as he connected the dots. “You don’t miss much, do you, Nico?” he asked. He waved a dismissive hand at me. “Don’t worry.”
“What’s the next job?” I pressed. Was it the Espositos? Finally? I leaned forward, excitement tingling over my skin.
“There aren’t going to be any more driving jobs for you, Nico.” Fists looked down at his desk, around the room. Anywhere but at me.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“No more hits. No more heists. No more driving.”
“Fists, are you out of your fucking mind? Why? What the fuck gives?” I was enraged. This had been our plan for years—subtle warfare, chip away at the Esposito power base. We’d been careful to avoid anything that would ignite a full-out war, but the hope was that by carving away the edges of their empire, we’d eventually come to a point where winning such a war was not only possible, but likely. I’d hoped for so long that we were finally at that point. And now, Fists was telling me we were pulling out instead?
“Do you remember when you first came to us?” Fists diverted. His lighter choked, then caught as he held the tip of his cigarette into the flame, hand cupped over it to block the air flowing from the A/C vent overhead.
“Don’t change the fucking subject,” I hissed. “Tell me why.”
“Do you remember?”
I sighed, furious, and leaned back again. Once Fists got going on a tangent like this, there was no getting back to the original topic until he decided it was time. He was one stubborn motherfucker. “Yeah, of course,” I answered. “Can’t ever forget some shit like that.”
That was true. I couldn’t. The memory was seared onto my brain.
# # #
Smalls’ blood was still on my hands when I walked up to The Punishers’ clubhouse. The first light of dawn was peeking down into the city. The air was cold. I didn’t have a jacket. I shivered without noticing.
It was ten miles from the apartment to the clubhouse, and I walked the whole damn thing. I didn’t notice the time passing, either. It was either the longest walk of my life or the shortest. I couldn’t tell which. I didn’t care.
The door to the garage was pulled up when I approached. I saw men inside, working on the exposed guts of a car. Big men. Scary men. I was here to join them.
No one noticed me as I walked up. I stood there for a moment, not saying a word, just calm and silent like a statue. My feet were numb. The blood on my bare chest where Smalls’ head had rested had now dried into a maroon crust.
One of the men turned around from where he had been bent over the hood of the car. He was frowning and wiping his hands with a dirty, oil-stained rag as he turned around. When he noticed me, he jumped and cursed. “Goddamn, kid, what the fuck are you doing just standing there like that? Shit, is that blood? Who the fuck are you?”
I looked back at him. “I want to join.”
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
I simply repeated myself. “I want to join.”
“Kid, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he answered.
I stood still, patiently waiting.
Another man walked from the back of the garage, drawn by the noise. I recognized this one. He was the one who bought the car from Smalls and me. He would be the one to help me now.
“Prez, this kid must be cracked out or something. I don’t know what the hell is happening,” said the first man. He raised his hands and turned away to tinker with some loose parts on the work bench.
I shifted my attention to the man who’d walked up. His name was Fists, I remembered. He looked back at me. His eyes were dark and laser-focused. “What are you doing here, kid?” he asked softly.
“I want to join,” I told him.
He looked up and down, noticing the blood smeared across my skin. He didn’t ask me to elaborate. “What was your name again?”
“Nico.”
“Nico, that’s right. What happened, Nico?”
“The Espositos killed Smalls,” I said, as if that explained everything. For some reason, this man understood. That was enough for him to get it. He nodded knowingly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he offered.
I blinked. The idea of being sorry about what had happened was outside of my ability to comprehend. I barely remembered what the word meant. I was an empty shell. There was only one thought on my mind: revenge.
“I want to join.”
“I can’t let you do that,” he said. “You’re too young.”
I didn’t move. Neither did he. “I just want to join.”
“The Punishers aren’t for everyone, Nico. You’re too young for this.”
“No, I’m not.” There was no mistaking the certainty in my voice. “I know what I want.” By now, a few other men had circled around, curious about what this bloodstained child was doing in their chop shop. To them, I may have looked young, but they didn’t know, on the inside, I was already a man. Fists saw it, though. He knew.
“You would have to be initiated,” he cautioned. “It’s not easy. It hurts.”
I shrugged. Just like the concept of being sorry, the thought of pain didn’t even register. It might as well have been a piece of a dream, too alien to make any difference at all. I knew pain. I’d seen it. It wasn’t real to me anymore. “I don’t care,” I said. “Whatever it takes.”
Fists stared at me for a long time. The birds on the telephone wires had started to chirp. Car murmurs were picking up. But for me, the only in the world was Fists’ eyes, looking at me and considering. Weighing. Wondering.
He reached a decision. I knew it right away.
“Come with me,” he said. He turned and moved towards the back of the garage. I followed without looking at any of the other men. I heard them muttering to each other as I left, wondering what was going on.
I kept my eyes trained on Fists’ back as he wound through the garage and into the clubhouse. We walked through the bar, drawing confused stares as I passed, and down a long hallway. At the far end was a staircase. We descended.
The basement below was dark, except for one buzzing light suspended from the rafters overhead by a wire. It illuminated a tattooist’s chair, set into a cracked concrete floor. An array of ugly metal tools gleamed along the wall.
Fists spun to face me. “You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked.
In my entire body, there was not an ounce of hesitation. I nodded.
“Okay. Let’s go.” He pointed towards the leather chair. I sat down. He walked to the bank of tools and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. The electric whine of the lights hummed. Otherwise, the room was silent.
I couldn’t see what he was doing until he turned around and held up a syringe to the light. He eyed it to check the levels and flicked the needle twice. A single drop of clear liquid beaded up at its tip.
“Give me your left arm.”
I extended it and laid it across the armrest. He wrapped his plastic-encased fingers around my wrist and twisted so my palm faced the ceiling, exposing the veins in the crook of my elbow. He slapped at them sharply to encourage the blood flow. I watched the green-hued tunnel rise up a bit.
Fists lowered the needle down and slid it under the surface of my skin. I felt a tiny pinch as he depressed the plunger, emptying the syringe into my body. His eyes were trained on my face the entire time. I didn’t look away.
Satisfied, he withdrew the needle and set it aside. I looked at my elbow. One tiny bead of blood shimmered, fresh and hot.
“There are two phases to the initiation,” Fists said, leaning back in his seat to look at me. The inside of my skin had started to heat up all over my body. A crackling tingle, like internal static electricity, began to flow around me as he spoke. “The needle was the first. The drug I’ve injected you with will make you feel pain more intensely than anything you’ve experienced in your life. It can make you think a summer breeze is like daggers in your flesh. Mark my words, Nico,” he said, eyeing me fiercely, “this will hurt very, very badly.”
I kept my gaze locked on his. I could feel sweat starting to collect on my forehead and under my armpits. The heat within me had begun to ratchet up. The leather of the chair suddenly felt rough, like sandpaper on my skin.
He paused to see if I would say anything. When I didn’t, he stood up and started to walk around me. I hadn’t noticed the straps dangling from the chair, but now Fists reached and fixed each one down, locking me in place. He bound my legs, my thighs, my waist, my arms.
When the last of the straps was secured, he came around to stand in front of me. I hadn’t moved my arm. It still laid palm up on the armrest of the chair. The injection site had started to turn into an ugly green, something foul and unnatural.
“These next part will take place very quickly,” he said. “I’m only telling you so you’ll know what’s coming.”
I was having trouble focusing on his words. My breath was beginning to shorten and a dull pain crept on like an unexpected headache. The muscles of my legs and back had taken to writhing uncomfortably, twisting and spasming like angry snakes. The drug was taking hold.
“Look at me, Nico,” he said. He lowered his eyes to look straight at me. His expression was unreadable. “I’ll ask you one more time. Are you sure you want this?”
The pace of the escalating pain had quickened even further. Now, everything was hot and searing, like a bad sunburn over every inch of my skin. I shifted in my chair, trying to find somewhere comfortable, but nothing felt good.
Then I looked up into Fists’ face. For a brief flash, it turned into Smalls’. I could swear for a moment they had traded places and instead of this mysterious biker, it was Smalls, standing over me with his fingers resting lightly on my forearm. “C’mon, shorty,” I imagined him saying. “Pain is just another thing. You’ll be all right, won’tcha?” He vanished before I could answer, and reality came screeching back into place.
“I’m sure.”
Fists nodded. “Okay. Now, I’m going to break your wrist. It will be the worst pain you’ve ever felt or will ever feel.” He breathed in for a moment and let that sink in. Then he reached into his pocket and withdrew a small bottle. Inside the bottle was a thick, viscous brown substance that sloshed from side to side. He put it in the palm of my left hand. “This bottle will stop the pain the second you drink it. If you choose to use it, you’re out. But if you make it through on your own, you’ll be one of us. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
After that, I didn’t have time to blurt out or react. Fists picked up my wrist and my forearm and with a quick jerk of his hands, snapped it.
The surge of pain was indescribable. A white-hot lava ran tidal through my veins, ripping and cauterizing every nerve ending, only to ebb for the tiniest of seconds before returning. Endless waves coursed. It was rampant, uncontrollable. I vomited until there was nothing left in my stomach and then I vomited some more.
Breaking my ankle on the fall from the fourth story of the group home was like a kiss compared to this. The beatdown I’d suffered at the hands of the drug dealer was a gentle shower. It didn’t even feel fair to call those experiences painful. They weren’t in the same class as this, not anywhere near the same realm.
This was pain. This was agony.
Fists had walked to the edge of the circle of light. He turned to look back at me, bucking in the chair and gibbering with my eyes rolled back in my head. “See you on the other side, kid.”
Then he disappeared. I heard him climbing up the stairs, then the door creaking open and shut.
I stayed in the basement, and I suffered.
But I didn’t drink the bottle.
# # #
In his office, Fists released a cloud of smoke over his shoulder. I realized I’d been touching my wrist as I remembered the ordeal in the basement. All that remained on my skin was a tiny, dimpled scar, just a half-inch stretch of white tissue to commemorate the day and night I’d spent writhing and moaning in that chair, thinking the pain would never end, that I would feel this way forever.
Eventually, it did end. Fists had come back down and found me still conscious in the chair. The straps had ground down on my arms and legs enough to scrape the skin completely raw. I’d broken three teeth and bit off the tip of my tongue from clenching my jaw so hard.
But I made it. I survived, and I became a Punisher.
“Why did you decide to come to us that day?” Fists asked.
“You know why,” I answered.
“I want to hear you say it.”
I took a deep breath. “Because I wanted to kill them.”
“You wanted to kill who?”
“C’mon, Fists, stop fucking with me.”
“Say it.”
“I wanted to kill the Espositos,” I said finally. “I wanted to murder every last fucking one of them.”
Fists nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s why you’re here.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that driving isn’t going to do that for you. It ain’t gonna get you there.”
“Then what’s the plan?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“I’m done playing games. Tell me what your plan is.”
Fists shrugged, finished his cigarette, and stubbed it out alongside the others. He tented his fingers in front of him and looked at me coolly. “Peace.”
My mouth opened, then shut again. “Peace? Peace? You want to make peace with them?”
He nodded. “I’m calling off every contract and operation that might infringe on Esposito territory. We’re going to offer to squash everything, forgive all blood debts, and give peace a chance. We’ve been fighting them for a long time, Nico. It’s time to try something new.”
“There’s no fucking way Marco Esposito is going to just forgive everything that’s happened over the last decade,” I growled.
“It doesn’t matter what Marco thinks,” Fists answered.
“Why the hell not?” I demanded, gripping the edge of the desk between my hands.
“Because Marco’s dead.”