Page 3 of The Beast’s Broken Angel
I watched Dad gather his last bit of strength, lifting his head with enormous effort to look at me, silently telling me things the men couldn't understand.
His voice, rough and bubbling with blood, forced out a final message: “Adrian. Be stronger than them. Survive. Remember who did this.”
The words came out clear despite how hurt he was, making sure I understood while sounding to his killers like a normal goodbye. The leader laughed, showing real emotion for the first time all night, the sound completely empty of anything human.
“Touching last words. But totally useless. Your family ends tonight, Calloway. Your name gets erased from both the business world and the underworld by morning. Complete elimination prevents future problems.”
My eyes locked with Dad's across the room, saying more than words could. His eyes gave me final gifts: permission to survive by any means necessary, approval for future revenge, love that would continue even after he was gone.
The gunshot was quick and businesslike. No dramatic pause or extra cruelty, just getting the job done. The leader himself fired the perfectly placed shot that killed Dad instantly rather than letting him suffer more.
I watched Dad's body slump forward, blood spreading across his pyjamas in a pattern like the inkblot tests in my psychology picture books.
Their comments after killing him seemed completely disconnected from the fact that they'd just murdered someone: “Primary objective complete. Start clean-up. Extraction team needs us done within ninety minutes.”
The sharp chemical smell reached me before I saw what they were doing. They were pouring gas or something all around the bedroom, making sure it would burn well. The smell came through the closet slats despite the cedar, the gasoline scent making me understand immediately what they planned.
I watched through the thin slots as the leader supervised the evidence destruction with the same care he'd given the torture.
“Make sure you soak all the important areas,” he told the others. “Blood spots, fingerprint surfaces, DNA spots.”
The blue-eyed man poured extra accelerant on the electronics and papers, showing he knew exactly how to destroy evidence. The leader talked casually while they worked:
“Burn it all. Make it look like an electrical fire that started from the master bedroom panel. The kid stays locked in the closet. Calling him 'collateral damage' makes the story cleaner for the investigating cops.”
The casual dismissal of my life as “collateral damage” and a way to make their story better showed how little human life meant to them. They were efficient, wasting no movements, not talking unnecessarily, showing no feelings about the horrible things they were doing.
I clawed desperately at the closet door as the first flames appeared. They lit the gas trails in a pattern designed to look like an electrical fire instead of arson. The special lock on the closet door, meant to protect Mum's jewelry, was too strong for my child's strength to break.
The irony hit me later: the security meant to protect us was now ensuring my death.
The flames spread frighteningly fast, showing they'd used professional-grade accelerants chosen to burn everything quickly, including bodies.
I watched in horrified fascination as my parents' bed caught fire, the Egyptian cotton sheets where Mum had read me stories during thunderstorms now turning into a funeral pyre.
The fire moved exactly how they planned it, creating a rapidly closing window for me to survive.
I gave up all dignity, pounding on the door with my small fists and screaming for help that couldn't possibly come. My basic survival instinct took over, even though my brain knew it was hopeless.
The blue-eyed man paused by the closet, listening to my screams with his head tilted curiously, like a scientist observing a lab rat .
“Kid's still aware,” he noted to his friend nearby. “Still thinking clearly despite the situation. Interesting.”
Reducing my terror to an “interesting” observation became my standard for true evil, the marker against which I'd measure all future monsters.
Smoke started coming through the air slats, filling my lungs with toxic chemicals and burning materials. It stung my eyes and burned my throat, each breath giving me less oxygen and more poison.
The horrible realization that I might suffocate before burning provided no comfort, just a different way to die.
The fast-moving fire created a strange, terrible beauty. Flames in blues, oranges, and occasional greens from burning chemicals making a kaleidoscope of death coming closer and closer.
Through the thickening smoke, I saw the team leave. Job done, they evacuated in an orderly way, not wasting time watching the consequences of what they'd done.
Their leaving created a weird loneliness, a child dying alone while his killers walked away without seeing the end of their murder.
My terror started changing to resignation as I got less oxygen. Dizziness replaced panic, a strange calm coming over me despite things getting worse.
Terrified beyond thinking but still driven by survival instinct, I burrowed under Mum's hanging clothes on the closet floor, trying to escape the advancing flames.
My hands found a silk scarf that had fallen from a hanger during the struggle, suddenly seeing it as possible salvation rather than just a fashion item.
Dad's practical safety lessons came back through my fog of fear. Wet fabric over your mouth helps filter smoke.
I dragged myself toward the small bathroom attached to the closet, desperately trying to reach running water to dampen the makeshift mask.
The sink was just out of reach, requiring me to stand, which I couldn't do as the thick smoke forced me to crawl along the floor searching for any remaining oxygen.
The plan failed as the fire got hotter. Heat came through the closet walls even where flames hadn't reached yet.
The right side of my body faced the door where flames now came through widening gaps in the wood, my pajamas catching fire despite my desperate attempts to press against the farthest wall.
The abstract idea of fire's danger became very real as flames touched my skin. Pain beyond anything I could understand, beyond words, beyond anything I'd ever felt before.
The terrible truth became perfectly clear despite my oxygen-starved brain: I was experiencing my own body being consumed by fire, becoming a demonstration of how fire works rather than a child who deserved protection and compassion.
When my skin started to burn across my right side, neck, and face, the pain went beyond what my eight-year-old mind could process.
My nervous system overloaded with input it couldn't handle, creating a strange state where part of me seemed to float above, watching my own destruction from a distance.
My screams got weaker as the smoke-filled room ran out of oxygen, my voice failing along with my consciousness as my body approached shutdown.
The strange mercy of biology kicked in, consciousness flickering like a bad lightbulb, darkness offering brief escapes from the unbearable pain before awareness returned with fresh agony.
The fire ate through the closet door with growing hunger, the fancy woods providing excellent fuel for the spreading fire while the remaining structure briefly protected me from complete burning.
The terrible choice presented itself: if rescue came, surviving meant enduring unimaginable pain; if no rescue came, the pain would end with my life.
My consciousness split under this impossible burden. Part wanted the release of death while another fought with primal determination beyond conscious choice.
The last thing I sensed before darkness took me completely came as if in a dream.
New voices calling my name with real urgency instead of clinical detachment, the closet door being broken open, a shape reaching through flames to pull me into air that burned my scorched lungs with each desperate breath.
Through pain-blurred vision, I recognized Harrison Blackwood's profile as Dad's financial advisor lifted my broken body from the fire, his suit jacket wrapped around my burning form to put out the flames.
“I've got you, son,” Harrison said, his voice breaking with what seemed like real anguish. “Hold on.”
Even as my saviour carried me from the burning house, my broken mind recorded every detail, planting the seed of vengeance alongside gratitude for rescue, the complicated emotional foundation for the damaged man I would become.