Page 87 of Vicious Behaviors

He walks behind the bar, opens the trapdoor on the floor that leads to the basement, and begins to descend the steps.

“Come on, kid. Can’t keep your dad waiting,” Dom says, slapping my shoulder and urging me forward. The second our feet touch the ground, we find Vincent leaning against the wall beside a locked door.

“Dom,” he instructs with a nod.

Ever the loyal and obedient general, Dom pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the door. I step through first, followed by Dom, who leaves Vincent to enter last, to make his deliberate entrance.

Inside, I spot a familiar face. “Aldo?” I say, the name slipping out as his bruised face triggers my memory of our only encounter.

The last time I saw him, he ended up without his front teeth after saying the wrong thing just to get me in the ring. Seeing him gagged and bound to a chair wasn’t exactly how I thought I’d see him again, though it doesn’t surprise me either.

“You know this piece of shit?” Dom asks, nudging Aldo awake with a hard kick.

“Yeah. He works out atNonno’s. Even sparred with him once. He’s Elio Zappa’s man.”

“Usedto be Elio’s,” Vincent corrects with a cold voice. “Now he’s just garbage.”

My father looks at Aldo as if trying to decide whether it’s worth breathing the same air as him. I turn to Dom, waiting for the backstory in all this.

I’ve never seen my father coming to the club’s basement in all the years I’ve worked for the Outfit. Mostly because it’s down here that we usually do our interrogations and other less distinguished things.

“His wife died last night in the ER,” Dom finally answers, his tone unexpectedly cruel.

“A hit?” I ask, confused. Aldo’s a low-level soldier. Nobody would go to the trouble.

“No. It wasn’t a hit,” Vincent growls, shrugging off his suit jacket and draping it over the back of a chair. “She died from having her skull caved in. With an iron, no less. The same iron I suspect must have ruined one of thisbastardo’sshirts.” Still gagged and bound, Aldo looks at me as if pleading for his life. “But that’s not all, is it, Aldo?” Vincent seethes, pulling off his tie and rolling his sleeves up to the elbows. “He made his little girls watch. How old are they, Dom?”

“Seven and five, boss,” Dom replies, his voice low and dark.

Seven and five years old.

Their innocence tarnished forever by watching their mother be murdered by their own father.

Vincent takes a slow step forward, his tone calm, almost conversational. Almost. “Tell me… how many times did they cry for you to stop? How many nights did they lie in bed, praying you’d leave their mother alone? What kind of father are you? What kind of husband? Are you even a fucking man?”

There’s something in my father’s eyes I’ve never seen before. I’ve seen him cold. I’ve seen him triumphant. I’ve even seen him angry.

But this? This is beyond anger. Beyond rage. This ishisdemon, unleashed from the deepest part of his soul, and it’s hungry for its pound of flesh.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Vincent asks, though he never removes the gag. “A prayer, perhaps?”

Aldo’s water-filled eyes find mine once again, pleading with me as if I were the only friend left in the room. I step forward, just enough for him to see me clearly. To see that he has no friend in me.

“Any man who hits a woman doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as me,” I say, my voice steady, final. “That’s been the Outfit’s law since my father took the throne. And you, Aldo, you’re not a man. You deserve what’s coming to you. May God have pity on your soul, for you will find none with us.”

I take a step back and fall in line with Dom, just as Vincent looks at me over his shoulder. And there in his eyes is a glimmer of what I want to believe is pride.

Then it begins.

My father rains down hell, and neither Dom nor I make any attempts to stop him. What my father does to Aldo for the next few hours would make even the monster inside me flinch.

As he slices and dices into Aldo’s flesh, a thought takes root in my head. This… this is what my father wants me to become. This is the lesson he’s been trying to teach me for over a decade. He found a way to tame his demon. It only comes out whenhelets it.

My mind runs a mile a minute as I try to make sense of the scene before me. If my father has found a way to coexist with the darkest part of himself, then maybe I can too.

These are the thoughts running wild in my head as Dom and I remain rooted to our individual spots as Vincent’s crisp white shirt turns crimson.

Aldo barely clings to consciousness when Vincent finally steps away from him, breathing heavy after a job well done. However, the mad look in his eyes tells me he’s not finished with Aldo yet. In fact, he’s only just started.