Gio
Gio's hands still throbbed as he mingled among the party guests, clinking glasses and accepting congratulations. At a ceremony just an hour before, he'd officially become a “made guy”—a soldier in the Mancini crime organization.
He'd stood in the basement of a house he'd never been to before, the other made men standing around him in a solemn circle. Mario pricked Gio's trigger finger with the tip of an icepick, then let the blood drip onto a small picture of Saint Francis of Assisi. After that, Mario produced a Zippo, lit the picture on fire, and commanded Gio to hold out his hands.
Gio did as he was told and Mario placed the burning card in Gio's palms, staring into his eyes. “Remember always that as this card burns, so shall your immortal soul burn in the fires of Hell if you ever betray your family. You enter this life alive—from now on, the only way for you to leave it is death. Do you so swear?”
“I do,” Gio answered, desperately trying to ignore the heat blistering his palms.
Mario nodded and his large hands enveloped Gio's, snuffing the flames quickly. Then he embraced Gio as everyone in the room applauded.
“Before tonight, you were only my son,” Mario told Gio as he swabbed the burns with ointment and bandaged them. “But now, you are truly my heir. When my time has passed and it's your turn to lead this family, I know you will do great things.”
“Thank you, Papa,” Gio answered.
Mario smiled and kissed Gio on the cheek. “Now it's time to reward yourself. Go upstairs and have fun.”
Gio walked upstairs to the party that was waiting for him, remembering the first time his father had said those words to him: “Now it's time to reward yourself.”
He was seventeen years old then, and even though he'd never seen firsthand what his father did for a living, he'd heard enough whispers and euphemisms at family gatherings to get a vague idea.
But one day after school, while he was walking home, a van screeched to a halt next to him and two men wearing ski masks got out. One held him from behind while the other punched him repeatedly in the stomach until he puked, sagging to the sidewalk and crying.
“You tell your old man the truckers' unions don't belong to him, understand?” one of them hissed at him. “You tell him if he tries to muscle in on them again, we'll come back with baseball bats and make you one sorry motherfucker.” Then they hopped into the van and drove off.
Gio staggered the rest of the way home, clutching his stomach with tears in his eyes. While his mother comforted him, Mario went into the next room and made several phone calls.
Two days later, when Gio came home from school, his father took him firmly by the shoulder and led him out to the garage without a word. The men who'd attacked him were gagged and taped to chairs, their eyes bulging with fright. Bruno and Julius were standing behind them menacingly.
“These morons broke the rules,” Mario said. “They had a grievance with me, and rather than settle it between men, they chose to make their point by involving a child. We won't kill them, since they didn't take a life. We aren't animals, after all. But still, they must be punished. I want you to be the one who punishes them.” And with that, Mario put a baseball bat in Gio's hands and stepped back.
Gio looked at the men and thought about how it would feel to hurt them in return for what they'd done to him. He knew he should have been excited, but instead, all he felt was scared and sick.
“I don't want to,” Gio mumbled, staring at the floor.
Mario stepped forward again and took Gio by the shoulders. “That's your choice,” he said, “but before you make it, understand—if you decide to leave their punishment to others rather than dispensing it yourself as is your right, then you will forfeit your rightful place in this family. You will always be my child, but for the rest of your life, you will never know real power. You will be someone to be sheltered and protected, instead of someone to be respected and feared.”
Gio considered this for a long moment. He didn't fully comprehend what his father was telling him, but he knew that if he made the wrong decision, he would never find another way to earn Mario's pride or acceptance. No matter how old he got, he would always be an outsider in his own family, someone to be casually banished to another room while the real men made the real choices.
He would always be seen as weak.
So Gio took a step forward, raised the bat, and brought it down as hard as he could on his attackers' arms and shoulders and heads, again and again. He heard the sound of bones breaking, and the wet thwack of flesh pulverized to pulp, like a meat tenderizer coming down on a piece of steak. His eyes filled with tears and his breath came in ragged gasps until his father pulled the bat away and embraced him warmly.
“Good!” Mario laughed, the tang of his aftershave filling Gio's nostrils. “Well done, Gio! That's my boy. You've taken an important first step today. Now it's time to reward yourself.”
And as Bruno and Julius loaded the bleeding, moaning bodies into the trunk of a car to be delivered God-knew-where, Mario called for a limo and took Gio to a brothel on the South Side. As they stood in the parlor, Mario ordered the women to line up so Gio could choose one he liked.
“Remember, whoever you choose, she's yours for the rest of the night,” Mario told Gio. “You can do anything you want with her, anything at all, and she can't refuse. Understand?”
Gio understood. And as he chose a woman named Gilda and followed her into her room, he felt the quivering fear in his gut giving way to a hot miasma of hatred and disgust. He loathed himself for feeling so shaky and terrified by his own actions in the garage earlier and for his moment of helpless indecision. He was filled with a sudden urge to take it out on Gilda.
Someone he'd never met now offered to fulfill his every fantasy, and he wanted to hurt her. He wanted to make her feel as small and helpless as he had felt. If he couldn't take pleasure in terrorizing other men, at least he could take out his rage on her.
Gio had never considered harming a woman before in his life, but over the next three hours, he choked, whipped, brutalized, and humiliated Gilda in every way he could think of. Every new act of terror he carried out on her made him feel stronger.
More like a man.
And no matter what he did to her, no matter how much genuine pain and fright he saw in her eyes, she kept on taking it and letting him do more and more, until finally, the fury inside him was all used up and he felt something like peace.
He felt like a god—dangerous and unpredictable, unmoved by the pleas and suffering of those under his power, able to inflict pain or end it at a whim.
After that, there were many more times when Mario involved Gio in his criminal activities, and after each time, they went to the same brothel and Gio indulged his darkest desires again. When the visits with his father became more infrequent, Gio started going to the brothel on his own after every successful crime he committed.
Then he started to go in between crimes, during times when he was stressed or horny or even just bored. After a while, he found himself no longer satisfied by whores, and he began seeking out underground sex parties so he could explore his urges among people who were more experienced. He became a regular in the scene.
And no matter how far he went, no matter how hideous or shameful his lust became, it seemed like there was always some woman who was happily waiting to help him give in to it. With each new torture he devised and inflicted, he felt morbid blossoms of self-love bloom inside himself.
By this point, Gio's hobbies were becoming a well-known rumor within the Mancini family. Certain sexual preferences—like adultery, homosexuality, or pedophilia—were strictly looked down upon, since they could be used to blackmail members of the organization into betrayal. But even though Gio's obsessions were considered extreme, they were still technically within the rules, and he was left to his own devices. If Mario knew about them, he gave no sign.
When Gio turned twenty, he bought his own house and converted the attic into his Special Room.
Now Gio had finally become a made guy, and he was scanning the dimly-lit room restlessly, looking for someone to help him really celebrate.
He felt someone tap him on the shoulder and turned. A short woman with long brown hair and brown eyes smiled up at him, handing him a fresh tumbler of scotch. “Congratulations on your big night, Daddy” she said, slurring slightly.
“Thanks,” he replied, taking a sip. “Do I know you?”
“Not yet,” she grinned, “but a few of your friends invited me. My name's Katie. They said I'm the kind of girl you'd want to meet tonight.”
“Oh?” Gio asked, mildly annoyed. “Why is that?” He looked around and saw Bruno nudging Julius as they watched this interaction. The last thing he wanted was to be set up by the other guys based on what they thought his interests might be. The whole idea of them gossiping about the kind of sex he enjoyed bugged him, even though he supposed it was inevitable.
Katie leaned in close, and Gio felt the warmth of her breath tickling his ear. “Because you can do absolutely anything you want to me, no matter how fucked up, and I'll love it and beg you for more. How's that sound?”
Gio looked at Katie again, her eyes glittering darkly, her smile growing wider. She looked hot enough, but there was something else about her that seemed off. Still, he couldn't figure out what it was, and he knew he probably wouldn't find a better offer that night. The other women there might be more gorgeous, but would they do even half of what he needed to get the satisfaction he craved?
He doubted it. And what good was sex if he couldn't do the things he really wanted?
“Come on, Daddy,” she pleaded, tugging on his arm. “Tonight's your lucky night. Let's go.”
Gio thought it over for another moment, then beckoned for her to follow him to his car.