Page 61 of Vicious Behaviors (The Next Vicious Generation #3)

Marcello

The man in the white straitjacket is oblivious to our presence, almost as if we didn’t even exist. His lips move in frantic murmurs, conversing with the ghosts in his head. I don’t know whether to pity him or fear him.

“This… “I whisper, my throat dry. “This is where you bring people you don’t kill?”

Vincent turns ever so slowly, his expression completely unreadable, carved from the same granite he built his empire with.

“No,” he utters cruelly. “This is where I bring the ones who don’t deserve to die.”

I swallow hard as the voice in my head curls in on itself, silent and still for the first time in my life.

Vincent doesn’t elaborate further, preferring to keep to this nightmarish stroll.

We pass by more doors, glancing at the lost souls trapped behind each one, as if we were window shopping for the right one to end its misery once and for all.

Every room has its own flavor of madness, voices sobbing, screaming, laughing in a high, unhinged way that claws at the base of my spine.

I realize then that this is a warning in the shape of a field trip.

“Why are you showing me this?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from cracking. “Why are we here, Father?”

However, Vincent doesn’t answer me. Instead, he keeps to his pace until we both reach the end of the hall, stopping two steps away from a white door with chipped paint and yellowing at the edges. My father takes out a key from his pocket and unlocks it, swinging the door open for me to look inside.

It’s another padded room, which is sterile and empty except for a single chair bolted to the floor. No restraints. No window. Just the chair and the walls closing in. If it weren’t so blindingly white, I would have mistaken it for the room in the club’s basement.

“Come,” Vincent orders, stepping inside and gesturing for me to follow. “Get in the room, Marcello,” he repeats when I hesitate.

I take a deep breath and step inside, the door clicking shut behind me in an instant. The lock turns with such violence that I have to clap my hands over my ears, certain the loud sound alone could shatter an eardrum.

Still, Vincent doesn’t seem to be affected by it.

He just stands in the middle of the room, with his back to me, a figure carved in stone, impervious to pain.

Only when he turns around to face me do I see the man he truly is.

Not the tailored suits. Not the patriarch.

Not the calculating strategist. No. This is the monster I was born from. Bone-deep and unapologetic.

“You think you can keep secrets from me?” he says, his voice smooth like Italian silk. “You think you can lie to me? Make a fool of me?”

I stiffen, my heart jackhammering as he shoves me into the chair. He tilts his head, examining me with eyes stripped of warmth, cold and bitter, before beginning his slow orbit around me.

“You think I wouldn’t find out about Izzie? Or better yet, Special Agent Isobel Graham?” he hollers, still circling. “I taught you better than this, Marcello. You don’t let the enemy into our home, much less near your heart. You don’t let anyone near it.”

“I didn—”

“Don’t lie to me!” His voice cracks like a whip.

The silence in the room thickens, wrapping around my throat like a heavy noose.

“You think I don’t know what’s on that corkboard in her apartment?

The case she’s building against us, piece by piece?

I’m tired of always having to clean up after your mistakes.

It’s not only tedious work but disappointing that yet again you fail to meet my expectations. ”

“I’m handling it,” I say, my jaw tight.

“Are you?” He continues to circle around me like a vulture. “Because from where I’m standing, all I see you doing is waste precious time thinking about fucking her rather than killing her. Do you think this is a game, boy? Do I have to yet again do your dirty work for you?!”

“I’ll kill you if you touch her!” I scream at the top of my lungs, but no sound comes out at all. Just empty silence. I try to stand, but my legs and feet won’t budge.

Undeterred, Vincent leans in, eyes glinting, and says, “I built this place for men like you. With voices in their heads and too much mercy in their hearts. Would you like me to use it? Lock you up here, while I deal with your precious Izzie?”

“Don’t you touch her! Don’t you fucking touch her!” I shout, but still my voice refuses to be heard. I claw at my throat, my nails digging into my flesh, needing the words to come out. “Don’t you touch her! Don’t you fucking touch her!” But still… nothing.

My eyes sting with furious tears as I watch Vincent take a step back, twirling around with his arms up in the air as if in the mood to dance.

I’m still gripping my throat when he decides to stop, his features morphing right in front of me.

My eyes widen in horror as the face I’m now staring at no longer belongs to my father, but my own.

“Cat got your tongue, Marcello?” My doppelganger smiles manically.

“Tell me, just what are you trying to claw out of your throat? A warning? Perhaps a threat?” He laughs hysterically.

“Please. You couldn’t hurt a fly if it weren’t for me.

” I shake my head vehemently, trying to contradict him, only for him to laugh in my face.

“Oh, how wonderful it is to be you who’s silenced for a change,” he sings, elated.

“It was bound to happen sooner or later. You’ve known all along it was only a matter of time before I took the reins from you,” he continues to taunt.

“Fuck you!” I spit out, missing my mark.

The devil, now materialized and wearing my face, ignores my useless curses.

“I’ll be the Capo Dei Capi the Outfit actually deserves.” He smiles wickedly. “I’ll be a better son. A better brother. And as for our Izzie, I’ll be the lover she always wanted, one you could never be.”

“I’ll fucking kill you, I swear to God!”

“God?” he mimics, making me aware that he hears me just the same, even though no sound comes out of my mouth.

“God has no vote on the matter. Isn’t that what you told that bothersome priest who’s fucking Enzo?

No, Marcello. You only have me to deal with.

Only me.” His hellfire eyes shine bright at me.

“But don’t worry. After winning their hearts, I’ll rip them out of their chests and watch their last heartbeat pump in my fist. As for your Izzie, I’ll carve our name on every inch of her flesh before pouring kerosene on each cut and setting her aflame.

Her love will burn out for us and turn to ash, one way or another.

I’m just saving you the pain of having to be there when she finally leaves you.

She doesn’t love you. No one does. How could they? We’re monsters.”

Only when I get the image of my family dead and my love burnt alive imprinted in my mind, do I find the courage to rise from the chair. I launch at the devil himself, wrapping my hands around his throat, strangling him until he is no more.

He will not taint my soul any longer.

It doesn’t belong to him anymore.

It belongs to her.

“I love you, Marcello. You won’t hurt me.

” I think I hear Izzie call out to me, my harrowing nightmare intent on keeping me under.

“I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me.

I love you.” I hear the sound of her voice again, even if a bit fainter now…

mangled almost. “I love you so much. Come back to me. Please, Marcello,” she continues to beg. “Come… back… to… me.”

I fight my way from the darkness and follow her voice into the light.

Only when my heavy eyelids flutter open do I realize my real nightmare has just begun.

Both of my hands are tightly bound around Izzie’s throat, strangling every ounce of air in her lungs, her face a bluish-white horror to witness.

“No! No! Fucking no!” I shout maddeningly, releasing my grip and pulling her up into my arms. “Izzie, wake up… Please, bella, wake up. Fuck. I need you. Don’t leave me.

” I can’t even bear to slap her face to wake her up, so instead I rock her back and forth, rubbing her back while pleading with God himself to return her to me.

When Izzie sputters and gasps for breath, my panic episode doesn’t register, keeping to my manic rocking.

“Please, God. Please. Not her. Not her. Please,” I cry out, still in my unhinged and desperate state.

“Mar,” she croaks out, her vocal cords raw from having been strangled with such brutality.

Instead of her voice bringing me the peace I so prayed for, I scramble away from her and our bed.

“I almost…” I shake my head frantically. “I almost…”

“But you didn’t,” she finishes for me, the rawness of her voice like a dagger stabbing right into my heart.

“But I almost did,” I cry, pacing left to right, while pulling at the strands of my hair. “I almost fucking did.”

“But you didn’t. I knew you wouldn’t.”

The fuck?! Is she serious right now???

I fall to my knees and grab at the bedsheet just so I’m not tempted to pull her into my arms again.

“Why didn’t you stop me? You stopped me before. Why didn’t you kill me?!” I sob out, dropping my head to the mattress.

When I hear Izzie slowly moving toward me, I fall back on my palms and use them and the heels of my feet to crawl away from her.

“Don’t, bella. Please. Don’t get any closer.

Please. I can’t bear it,” I supplicate with agitated urgency and then make the mistake of glancing over at her neck, red and tender from my unworthy hands.

“You should have killed me. You should have never let me in. He won’t rest until he kills you.

He won’t rest until I have nothing left to live for.

If he took you from me…. if you had died… ”