Page 36 of Beneath the Light of the Moon

14

Ride or Die

Mikko - 15 Years Ago

Blood ran down the length of his fingers before slowing along the flesh of his palm. The sticky liquid soaked into the knees of his pants as he knelt there, dumbfounded. It was the first time he’d had to follow through with his father’s threats. It was the first time such a color stained his hands. This violence was abhorrent, a gritty means to an end that Mikko didn’t understand.

Why not strategize in other ways? Why crush people in hopes they’d fear you enough to respect you?

None of it made sense. Only the loud thrum of blood rushing in his ears and the racing of his heart kept him grounded. And even then, his body felt light. He wasn’t sure he was really here. Black spots crept into the corners of his vision, the adrenaline taking over and shutting down his organs in an attempt to survive.

“It had to be this way son,”his father murmured, standing nearby with the gun still clutched in his hand. Truthfully, he’d forgotten Alek was there, his brain tired and overwhelmed. “This is the only way foryou to learn.”

Dead eyes stared back at Mikko, a single hole framed between the eyebrows of the man before him. Only a few moments ago he’d seen his father interrogating him, and now…

Now his life had been snuffed out without a second thought. Heartlessly.

“I don’t understand why I’m here,” was all Mikko could manage, his tongue thick with emotion. He was trying and failing to not show weakness even as acid bubbled up in the back of his throat. Alek hated it when he cried, blamed it on his mom for raising him to be weak. But Mikko knew his father didn’t mean it—remembered a time where Alek was also gentler. Now those days were long gone.

Alek spoke. “Mutts that disobey get put down. No exceptions.”

Squeezing the blood-soaked rag in frustration, Mikko finally looked up. “This isyourmess, not mine. Why should I—”

Smack!

Alek’s palm struck the back of Mikkos’ head, clipping him in a manner that wasn’t meant to be painful. It was a warning. “Everything I do in the name of this company is for you too. We went over this already.”

“We did.”

“And are you deaf?”

“No.”

“Dense then? Your brain too stuffed full with pretty things and the sweet nothings your mother whispered to you as a child for you to realize life isn’t like that? Look at what it did to her. After all she gave—all the good deeds she did—cancer still sucked everything away.”

A tear formed in Mikko’s eye. His father was right.

His mom had embodied life, what it meant to be unique and unapologetically yourself, and it’d only sent her to an early grave.

“Youdrained her, took everything from her.” It was the wrong thing to say, but it slipped from Mikko’s mouth regardless.

“And this is why we’re here,” Alek gritted. “You say the stupidest shit and expect people to go along with you.”

Mikko’s resolve hardened. “Learning from the best, you could say—”

Before the last of his sentence had left his mouth, Alek was on him. Gripping the short hair at the nape of Mikko’s neck, his father pushed him to the dirty floor. The dead man’s ring of blood seeped out, the uneven surface letting it pool nearby. Alek’s heavy weight landed on his back, his hot breath at his ear. Blood and cooling crimson splattered across Mikko’s face. His cheek agonizingly ground against the hard floor until his jaw ached, droplets of copper and grime slipping into his mouth as his father pressed harder. Sputtering, Mikko bucked and thrashed, desperate to be let up.

This was too much—

And in a twisted moment of fate, Mikko’s eyes locked with the dead man’s across the mirrored pool of his cooling life source. There they were, two people who were not so dissimilar. Faces pressed to the floor, eyes wide with fear, and Alek—a man who reigned over the city—looming above them.

The tears in Mikko’s eyes fell, the salt mixing in with red.

“This was supposed to be a simple day,” Alek chided. “A moment where I could’ve shown you the ropes, made you into a real man, but you’re too squeamish. I can’t believe you’re my son.” His fingers gripped tighter at the back of Mikko’s neck. Cool wetness was absorbed into Mikko’s clothing, the entire front of his shirt and pants ruined from the blood. “I’ll beat this weakness, thisdisease, from you if I have to.”

Mikko cried out as his father put more pressure on his head, the floor beneath him unforgiving. His nerve endings felt like theywere on fire, hairline cracks seemingly racing across his stained face, his skull moments from shattering. The other man’s bodily fluids coated Mikko’s lashes, clumping the short hairs together. Each blink fragmented the picture unfolding before him, the blood marring his vision. The pressure behind his eyes became unbearable, his gasps loud and muffled all at once. Time slowed until—

“I’m starting to think you’re a bastard. No son of mine would act this pathetic—this feeble.Ty mne protiven.” You disgust me.