Page 248 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet

I had a job in the carpentry shop turning chair legs. It was boring work, mundane, and normally reserved for the unconnected and new inmates to the prison. I could have had something else, but this suited my purposes perfectly.

Christopher started work on his fourth day inside.

He was responsible for loading the truck.

I knew this because I’d slipped the guy in charge of assigning tasks a wad of cash to make this happen.

On the sixth day, I found my opening.

It was almost quitting time, and most of the men fucked off to hang around and shoot the shit at the end of their shift.

Only Christopher and a couple of the meeker guys continued their tasks for fear of angering the higher-ups.

When someone asked Christopher a question, I ducked into the loading truck and crouched behind a stack of unvarnished dining table chairs. There was a metal click as he swung the door open, light flooding the interior for a moment before the door swung shut behind him. He shuffled forward half-blinded by the four-chair tower in his spindly arms.

It would be too easy to kill him.

I wished I could have taken my time.

Skinned him alive or beaten him, let him recover, then beaten him again in a vicious cycle that wouldn’t end until his mind had broken alongside his body.

He’d almost ruined Elena’s life.

He deserved more than a quick death.

But it was all I had to offer, so I’d make sure it was a brutal one.

He didn’t notice me standing in the shadows, looming over him like some boogeyman in a children’s story.

Only what happened next was considerably too graphic to be in any children’s book.

I had a chair leg I’d turned that afternoon in my right hand, and I used it like a baseball bat against the side of Christopher’s head.

There was athunkand acrunchas the wood, backed by the entire force of my body, met his skull.

He crumpled, the chairs in his arms toppling over. I caught them before they could cause a clamor against the ground, carefully placing them behind me.

The pathetic excuse for a man groaned on the floor, clutching at his head.

“Hi,” I said to him as I squatted beside his body, at ease because three Made Men were watching the doors while I took my time with thiscazzo di merda. “Christopher Sallow, right?”

He groaned louder.

“I thought so.”

I poked him with the bloody wooden leg until he rolled onto his back and then grabbed one of his hands, holding the palm steady so I could impale the screw of the chair leg into his palm.

He screamed.

But with the truck door closed, you would only be able to hear the sound if you stood right outside, as my fellowcamorristidid while keeping watch.

I pulled the other chair leg from the sleeve of my jumper and pinned his other hand. It was too easy because he was made of nothing but bones, and then I impaled that too.

His scream devolved into a snot-filled garble.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

“Do you remember Elena Lombardi?” I asked, almost conversationally.