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“Listen, I… I don’t know what you heard but… those were crazy times. She wanted it.”

I smack him because he should know the last thing I want to hear about my mother was that she was some whore just spreading her favors around to all and sundry.

“Or…” I say, getting right in his face, “You paid my father to access her. You carry responsibility for what happened that night.”

He shakes his head wildly. “No, it wasn’t anything like that… it wasn’t. She was fine. She wanted it. She was into it. It was some kink she had.”

I take a piece of duct tape and cover his mouth. That was the wrong fucking thing to say. Some kink she had. Like hell.

I pull a photo out of my pocket. It’s of my mother before the abuse started, before my father started passing her around like cheap meat to all his friends and associates—for a price.

Everything was about money with my father.

Everything and everyone in his vicinity needed to be earning to be worth anything.

I shove the photograph of my mother back when she was happy and carefree, right in this piece of shit’s face.

I barely remember this time period. I barely can hold onto the memory of her at all, but I remember this day, both of us running through the sprinklers and her laughing in the summer sun.

I was three when this photo was taken. It was just six months before the abuse started, before my father finally figured out how to monetize her.

It wasn’t enough that she’d given him a son, an heir to the family criminal enterprise, no, that hateful man still needed his pound of flesh.

Pale skin, green eyes, raven hair. My mother’s strong Irish looks came through loud and clear.

Sterling tries to look away from the photograph.

“She didn’t look this happy by the time you got ahold of her, did she? Kind of hard to believe it was some kink she had, given how much she changed.”

I was too young to understand the light that dimmed from her eyes, the depression that took hold.

He’s trying to scream through the tape. He wants to talk to me, explain his side of everything. This motherfucker doesn’t have a side.

“Look at her! Look at what you did!”

He finally looks, and there are tears in his eyes. An amateur would think these were tears of guilt, remorse, but Brian trained me well. These tears only say he knows what’s coming. He’s only sorry vengeance has finally come for him. I pull the gun from the concealed holster in my pants.

“Let’s play a game, shall we?”

He’s shaking his head, eyes wild, pleading behind the tape.

I cock the hammer of the revolver back and pull the trigger.

It’s a blank. I do the same over and over until he realizes that the gun didn’t have a live round at all, that this game of Russian Roulette was all in his head. Just a bit of psychological torture to let him think about what he’s done. I reholster the gun. It’s time to move on to the tools.

I torture him slowly until I see the light leave his eyes. Until he’s a living corpse like what he helped turn my mother into. And then when he’s given up, when I remove the tape from his mouth and all he can do is beg for me to end him, I snap his neck and give him his wish.

I take his body out in one of the boats to the deepest part of the lake.

I’ve wrapped him up and weighted him with rocks, so when I drop him in he sinks beneath the surface with ease.

I watch as the bubbles come to the surface, and then the lake is still and quiet and peaceful.

And I feel again the same way… still and quiet and peaceful.

It won’t last, but I’ll take the brief reprieve.

I take the boat back and clean up the barn.

I didn’t break any skin with the torture, so there is no blood this time.

I go over everything with a fine-toothed comb, making sure I’ve left no DNA behind—his or mine.

No hint that there was a struggle or a death here.

I release all the horses, thirteen of them in total, and hit them on the back of their haunches, aiming them all in the direction of the main house.

I use the cover of the chaos from the escaped horses, to steal Sterling’s car key from the valet station.

Between the horses and the live sex show happening inside, I’m able to leave without being seen.

I drive the car far from the scene of the crime, into the city, back to his own office building.

I remove all the computer elements, tracking, GPS, everything that leaves a forensic audit of where this car has been.

I’m careful about the angles and the way the security cameras hit me as I exit the vehicle. I can’t have my face on camera, not after all this—not after being so careful. I’ll hack into their system later and kill the footage, but it’s best if there is nothing readily identifiable at all.

My driver picks me up a few blocks away at the predetermined location, and then I go home to my sprawling gated estate. Just one more piece of opulence inherited from my worthless father.

I’m greeted by guards and household staff.

Most of them have worked for this house for years, some for decades.

They know the dirty deeds of this family, and even though I’m not full Italian, and they aren’t even members of my version of the mob…

they know to keep the omerta . They know the consequences if they don’t.

I go downstairs to the hidden basement level, and strip off my clothes, burning them in the incinerator. I’m sure there’s no evidence on me, but it’s best to be sure—to leave no loose ends. I take a shower in the bathroom down here, more for the ritual than anything else.

I do what I need to do, and I don’t truly believe these are sins upon my soul, but it’s nice to be clean after a kill. I’ll go to Our Lady of Hope as soon as I’m done here and make my confession.

I walk naked to the giant locked room that no one inside this house has ever seen.

It requires my fingerprint and a retinal scan before the steel door slides open to invite me in.

Inside is a giant concrete block of a room with nothing breaking up the lines of the space except for the steel support poles spaced throughout.

I change into one of many clean pairs of black boxer briefs, black pants and a black T-shirt, and put on a new pair of socks and shoes. I have a closet full of the same black clothes down here, like a supervillain cartoon character. And drawers full of neatly folded black gloves.

I put the revolver next to my other more heavy artillery.

AR-15’s, AK-47’s, handguns, knives, throwing stars, torture tools.

A neat table in one corner contains tranquilizers and syringes.

I’ve got another basement room tucked away on the other side of the house with guns for my team, but no one knows about the second weapons stash in this space.

My cell phone rings.

“I told you, you’re being too sloppy.”

Brian.

“Fuck off, fake dad. I got the job done. And I’m telling you, it was clean.”

I can practically hear his eye roll over the phone.

“You can’t do another job there again. This was the only time.”

“Yeah, no shit. I’m not going back there again, anyway.”

“Are you sure that’s wise? Suddenly disappearing like that might look suspicious.”

It’s been over a month since I visited The Black Gardens before tonight. They won’t notice my absence.

“And return to the scene of the crime? Which one of us is the amateur here? I made a big diversion, it’s all anyone will be talking about for days. I’m done. Let it go. And stop fucking stalking and surveilling me.”

Brian just chuckles and hangs up the phone.

I look up at the wall with several large and connecting cork boards.

I have photographs of the multiple men I’m hunting.

.. personal details, notes all stuck up with push pins.

Red strings connect things. I’ve drawn big arrows.

I have schedules and plans and everyone’s routines all available at a glance.

Brian taught me this organization system.

There’s a lot about Brian that has rubbed off on me.

I pick up a red Sharpie and draw an X through Sterling’s photo.

On one end of the board is a list of twenty-two names written on a large white poster board in black marker—all the men I found connected with my mother’s death.

I draw a red line through Julian Sterling’s name.

My fifth kill. I sigh as I look at the list.

And miles to go before I sleep. Or so the poem goes.