I had this coming, I know.

As the two men take turns pummeling me with kicks to my torso and back, I almost regret starting this fight.

Almost.

“Fuck,” I mumble as my face presses into the grit on the ground in the darkened alley. I wince. I’m in a world of drunkenness and pain, my stomach sour from the rough whiskey I’ve been drinking, my ribs are bruised and cracked. The walls rise up around me. It’s just me and the two men who stand over my body, kicking me with everything they’ve got.

They look down at me, their expressions hard.

One of the two assholes that I’m fighting winds up and kicks me again. Pain blossoms brightly as his foot lands against my ribs again with another sickening thud. I subconsciously curl in on myself a little, even though I picked this fight on purpose.

Violence is what I do. It’s all I know. I’m an Aetós man, after all. All three of us brothers were raised by the same chaotic streets, choosing a life with the mafia in order to survive.

I groan when he kicks me a final time, his foot bringing the sweet sting of pain.

At least I’m familiar with this kind of pain.

The asshole spits on me, firing off a burst of rapid-fire French. Between the intense pain and all the whiskey in my system, I can barely understand him. “Fucking stay down, eh? Learn your lesson, you fucking cunt.”

I don’t do anything, don’t signal my intentions either way. The other man just shakes his head.

“Let’s go, man. We have better things to do than to fuck with this idiot.” His French is a little slower than the other asshole’s, and I can understand it better. Either that or I’m getting more sober.

That would be bad. I consider that if I don’t start to try to fight these two again, there will likely be more whiskey in my night. Screwing up my face, I decide to let them walk away.

After all, this is the fourth fight I’ve been in this week. My face is still swollen from the sucker punch to the right eye I got last night. There are always more assholes in fucking every bar in every fucking town in the whole entire world.

And as long as there is whiskey to be had, I plan on fighting as many of them as possible before some French connard punches my clock for the last time.

I lie there for another moment, soaking in my stew of self-pity. Drunk and exhausted, I remember just how exactly I came to be here.

I’m a killer, born and raised by the way of the bullet. My brother Arsen was too until he mouthed off to me on the wrong day. Then I fought with him and left him bleeding out.

I took the only thing that I had left, my family, and I killed that as surely as I watched Arsen’s blood pump out onto my hands. I don’t regret anything else, but killing my brother…

That’s unforgivable.

And now?

Now, I’m just lying here on the ground, face down in the dirt and muck, feeling like… like I’d rather cause numbness by drinking and picking fights than sort out the emotional aspects of my murderous tendencies. When I feel the pain on my face or ribs, I can exist in the moment.

Lurching upward with a groan, it takes me several tries to get to my feet. I stumble back inside through the bar’s backdoor, making it to the bar. My ribs are fucking painful; it hurts to breathe. The bartender takes one look at me, my dress shirt dirty and ripped, my face all busted up. He just shakes his head.

“Non,” he says, jerking his thumb outside. “Aller.”

Normally I would make a scene, but at the moment, I’ve had all the fight beat out of me. Sagging a little, I turn and leave the bar by the front entrance. It’s rather warm outside, a typical June night in St-Malo. It’s perfect weather for being on the French coast, I think.

Too bad I’m too drunk and too numb to really enjoy anything at all. Clutching my ribs and trying not to breathe too hard, I stagger down the broad cobblestone street. Ancient buildings rise on my left and my right, boxy, brooding, and austere.

I come to my hotel, a single unmarked doorway with a creperie to the left and a boulangerie on the right. Heading inside, I go up a flight of ancient stone stairs, wincing with every step I take.

There’s a hotel desk there with a bored-looking concierge working, but I avoid him. I might have bought the silence of everyone on the hotel staff, but that doesn’t mean I want to feel their judging gazes. No more than I want to answer their silent questions.

What happened to you?

What happened to your face?

Monsieur, do you need help?

Tucking my head down, I barrel past him to a long stone corridor, going to the last room on the end. The room is basic, the wooden furniture looking so old that I’m almost afraid to touch it. A bed and a small table, with a fireplace and a large leaded window.

As soon as I get inside, I head for the fireplace mantel. There’s a tumbler of whiskey that I left there, waiting for me like a lover on a cold night. I sip the whiskey, wincing as it burns its way down my throat.

I stare out the window for a while, ruminating on why I am here. In St-Malo, I mean. After all, the booze and the company of pretty whores can be found anywhere.

After I killed my brother, I had some time to look at the wreckage of my life. To wonder how I got to that point, the point of walking away from the smoking husk of my existence.

When I think about it, I know without a doubt, that my life would’ve turned out very differently if I’d never met the man I called Uncle. Uncle never would’ve taken three boys under his wing. Never would have introduced us to the mafia. Never expected us to kill people when we were barely teens, without so much as a hint of remorse.

Maybe we would’ve starved without Uncle around to feed us. God knows we never had anyone else looking out and keeping us…

Well, safe isn’t quite the word.

Keeping us intact, in body at least. But our souls?

Like my brothers, I was willing to sacrifice that if it meant a warm place to sleep and food in my belly. Even if it meant that I would lose a part of myself that I could never get back. The part of me that shied away from violence, that didn’t know what it was to wake up with blood-stiffened clothes and realize it was from my last victim.

I don’t know if I really liked killing, originally. It made me uncomfortable, thinking about snuffing out the essence of another person. That was back when I still held some things sacred, among them the holy rites of the Church.

But I know that now, my soul is so caked with the blood of enemies of the family… it’s dirty and stained, it will never be clean. I’m twisted. Sick. Depraved.

And I have acclimated to that. Better yet, I’ve thrived. The blood on my hands may never wash off, but it has nourished my soul, fed the black and monstrous part of me until it grew to overtake my entire being.

I empty my tumbler and root around for more whiskey. There are a couple of empty bottles by the window, but no whiskey in either of them. Stumbling over to the bedside table, I pick up the phone. As soon as I hear a human voice, I demand that more whiskey be brought to my room.

I hang up and go back to the window, squinting out into the evening. Fuck, I must be drunk if I’m having this much trouble seeing the street below.

I see a figure walking by and to me, he looks like Father Derrik. More accurately, he’s a blond-is guy wearing all black. I squint at him again, but he just continues on down the street.

Father Derrik. Now there’s a man who is just begging for something violent to happen to him. When I first crossed paths with him, he’d only just left the Roman Catholic Church. With his blue-eyed good looks and religious intensity bordering on fanaticism, Derrik had nowhere to go but up.

I know that he had Aurelia murdered. The pretty blonde girl I once thought would change my life, died suddenly… and it was as if a light went out. Everything grew dimmer, especially, my already blackened soul.

That’s why I’m here in France. I have a pact with the devil, God, and everyone in between that I will die for all my sins… just as soon as the good Father does. So, I’m hunting Derrik by day, getting insanely drunk by night. Sleeping with anyone who has the vague look of Aurelia, the love of my young life.

Would Aurelia approve of what I am doing? Almost certainly not. But then again, she didn’t really understand what she saw in me, the flicker of attraction she felt when she looked at me. She didn’t know about my past, about the things I’ve done.

The things I still do.

I may seek death, but I won’t be satisfied until I can take my enemy with me. It’s only right.

A knock sounds on the door.

“Come in,” I call, not bothering to turn from the window.

“Pardonnez-moi,” a man says, entering with another bottle of whiskey. “I’ve brought what you asked for.”

“Set it down on the mantel and leave.” I square my jaw and fold my arms across my chest, in no mood for talk. He creeps over to the mantel, setting it down.

The thought occurs to me that I don’t have to be alone tonight. Really, I don’t have to ever be alone, but I can’t stand to have a woman hover near me, wringing her hands.

It reminds me too much of Arsen and his girl Fiore.

No, I just want a whore, someone who will do her job and then leave of her own accord.

“Get me a girl,” I say over my shoulder to the man, who is almost out the door. “A blonde.”

“At this hour, monsieur?” he asks hesitantly.

I turn to him, my eyebrows arched. “You question how I live my life, do you?”

He folds in an instant, bowing. “No, monsieur. Forgive me. I will call around at once.”

Flapping my hand, I shoo him off. “Go.”

I stare out the window once more. I wonder if he will do as I demand with any sort of quickness, or whether the whiskey will pull me under the dark waves of sleep first.