Page 52 of Bitter Poetry

The two men sitting in the front get out first, their eyes scoping the street before they open the doors for Leon and me. There is another car behind, and the four men, all ex-military, have likewise exited the car and remain alert.

Just one of many changes.

“He doesn’t know anything,” Leon tells me as we enter the house where two more men are standing at the door. “Plentyof men for hire, no questions asked. It’s important we send a message. Build a reputation that makes targeting us for money less attractive. On the plus side, we can safely assume Ettore doesn’t know you’ve been fraternizing with his future wife. It wouldn’t have been your hand he was targeting were that the case, and, after, you would be dead.”

He has a point.

When we enter the room, I find a man bound to a chair before a sturdy table. He’s been washed up, and his hair is still damp. His face shows the evidence of a beating, his eyes swollen and black. The way his mouth is hanging open and drooling blood, I’m guessing he’s lost some teeth.

His hands are spread out on the desk, and straps hold them down. A hammer, the one he brought with him when he entered my office, is sitting beside them, right where he can see.

“Think of it as a wedding gift to Ettore,” Leon says, smirking.

I give him a look.

He pats my shoulder. “Trust me, you’ll feel better after. Not a lot, but enough to get through this farce.”

I do trust him.

The man sitting at the table represents Ettore and what he wanted to do to me.

He’s trying to break me. Literally. Mentally. He’s taken my fucking woman and fucked with my life.

“He needs to learn that we’re not going to take this. I’ve done too much of that over the last three years,” Leon says.

I nod. I pick up the hammer and test the weight, imagining how this would have felt coming down over my fingers… My hand… Breaking them… Breaking them so severely that I’d never be able to hold anything again. Never be able to write. Never be able to touch Carmela with it…

I nod to one of the men. He obligingly presses the hired thug’s hand flat and spreads his fingers out while the deadbeat slurs protests that I couldn’t care less about.

The sound of the hammer smashing his little finger against the solid surface of the table and his subsequent scream is more satisfying than I thought it would be.

Those sounds would have been mine. The agony he experiences, likewise mine.

I don’t stop at one finger. I break every fucking one, and then I smash his hands as well.

And I’m done.

I toss the bloody hammer down on the tabletop next to the ruination of his hands. His continuing cries of agony are a horrifying sort of balm. My chest is heaving. I feel something trickle down my cheek. When I run my fingers over it, they come away smeared in blood.

A soldier steps forward and passes me a gun.

I’m not a killer. I’ve never killed anyone before. But I guess I’m going to have to change if I want to realize my goals.

There’s a brief hesitation. A moment where I acknowledge I’m not going to be the same man afterward. And then I put it right up against his forehead and press the trigger.

A small recoil, a loud bang, and the remnants of his brains are scattered across the back wall.

The soldier steps forward again, taking the gun from me and carefully wiping it down.

“You ready to go?” Leon asks.

“Yes,” I say.

CARMELA

Today is my wedding day. It feels more like my funeral.

I’m in my bedroom, surrounded by an army of personal stylists who have done an exemplary job. The dark shadows under my eyes are carefully hidden. A few drops have removed the redness from my eyes. My dark hair is curled and teased into an elaborate updo, and my makeup is light and classic.