“If you shoot me, it won’t end there. If you shoot my Harvester, it still won’t end there.”
Harvester? What the fuck?
“You’re talking in circles, old man. Start making sense.”
The old man nodded to the one he called the Harvester. “Show him.”
The Harvester raised his right hand and displayed a little box with a button on it. “If I push this button, your wife will be jolted with enough electrical volts to not just kill her instantly, but literally burn her on those chains. Her scorched skin will fall off in pieces, like the burned bark of a tree, seared forever.” He smiled that sick grin again. “Are you aware how horrible that would feel?” He said horrible like a child would ask for cotton candy at the fair: a certain childish glee. It almost made him hop on the spot.
“You’re sick. The both of you are fucking gone. But,” Darwin raised his hand to make a point, “if you did push that button, I would execute the both of you. So who walks out of here? Huh? Ask yourself the real question: do you want to die today?”
The old man shrugged. “I’m old. I’m already dying and since you killed my only boy, I’m dead on the inside. You have killed me, Darwin Athios Kostas.”
“Don’t!” Darwin snapped. “Don’t you ever say my name like that again. Do you hear me? Never, or this ends for all of us.”
His eyes were wild, he breathed in and out between his teeth, every fibre in his body begged him to shoot the old man in the eye. He said Rosina’s name and held the animal urges at bay.
“Fair enough. I will not use your name for the duration of this meeting.”
How the hell does the old man stay so fucking calm. It’s like he knows something. He’s got the look of someone who has already won. That’s it. He thinks he’s won. This is his end game.
“But I want something from you.”
“What?” Darwin asked, his teeth still tight together. He had to think. He had to keep them talking. Rosina’s safety was first. He had to end this on his terms and he had to do it fast.
“I want you to set your weapons down and kick them over to me. I am an honorable man. Do this and I will have your wife released from that machine’s chains. Do we have a deal?”
“Are you fucked?”
“No, I am not. Do we have a deal?”
Darwin tried to clear his head. Could he see any other way out of this? A button push could take place in under a second. If that happened, he couldn’t even touch his wife or he’d be electrocuted with her.
So what then? Shoot both men and hopefully have a perfect shot, each time?
They had him and they knew it.
“You will unhook her? You’ll keep your word?”
“It is all I have. My word.”
Darwin felt he was out of options. He leaned down, set one gun on the floor and then kicked it away.
“The other one too.”
How did he know about the gun in the back of my pants? Cameras in the stairwell?
“No. There’s two chains holding Rosina. Unhook one for one.”
The old man considered this and then turned and nodded to Harvester.
Harvester? What kind of name was that? What an asshole.
Darwin watched as he pushed a switch on a small control panel. Rosina was lowered to the ground. When she was spread out on her back, the Harvester pulled one chain off her arm. He stood, leaving the other connected, the little button held up with his thumb on it.
“If we stop here, you’ll have done worse damage to your wife,” Harvester said. “With only one connection, she’ll still die by electrocution, but it’ll take longer.” He grinned. “There’ll be more agony, more screaming and the smell of melting flesh will be…” he stopped when he looked at the old man.
“Enough. Now, the other weapon.”
Darwin saw the Harvester raise the button to give him a better view of it.
Then did what he hoped he wouldn’t live to regret. He reached into the back of his jeans and produced the weapon. He set it on the floor and then kicked it over to the old man.
He waited for the Harvester to push the button. But he didn’t. He took the mechanism out of his hand, set it down and walked over to Rosina, where he knelt down and unhooked her from the last chain.
“I keep my word, Darwin. Now, we can talk with less tension.”
He was stalling. More men were coming. Somehow, this is a trap.
Darwin started to feel locked in. He needed to get out, run. He needed to take Rosina and run away as far as he could.
For the first time since he was a kid, he wanted to run out into the dark night.
“What could we possibly have to talk about?”
“The debt,” the old man said.
“The debt? What debt?”
“Your blood debt you owe me.”
The old man nodded at Harvester and then Harvester reached behind a small counter that was littered with metal tools of some kind and brought out a machete covered in what looked like blood.
Oh, great, they don’t even clean their tools, was all that went through Darwin’s mind. The familiar stirrings of violence that accompanied the sight of a blade built inside him.
He backed up.
“You will bleed from as many places on your body as we can open. Then I will have you chained up, upside down, your legs spread wide. Two of my men will use a saw to cut you open from the groin down, until the blade hits your heart. In that position, blood rushes to the brain, keeping you alive through most of the cutting. Quite the experience, really.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw the old man picking the guns up. He was defenseless. This mobster had disarmed him, and now they were the ones in power.
All he had was his wits.
At least he did his best for Rosina.
Harvester was really grinning now. He stepped closer, swinging the blade in his hand.
“I love sawing men in half. Only got to do it a couple of times. You’re going to be so much fun.”
To defend himself the best way he knew, with no weapon of any sort, Darwin reached down and slipped out of his brand new jacket and held it to the side. It wasn’t too thick, but it was better than nothing.
“What’s this?” Harvester asked.
“You wanna cut me? Here I am.”
The old man stepped toward the door. “Cut him up, cut him bad. But Harvester, don’t kill him.” And then he stepped out of the room.
Darwin wrapped the jacket around his left forearm. Harvester was four feet away and stepping closer.
“You really are a piece of work. Rarely do I get to meet someone so interesting,” Harvester said.
Darwin didn’t respond.
This was it. He’d held himself together as long as he could. He’d thought of his best response to dealing with the situation at hand, and now, with nothing to lose, Darwin could allow everything to flood through.
All the fury and anger from his childhood, everything he ever hated about his stepmother and all the people who had hurt his wife today, boiled to the surface, hit the top and overflowed into a madness so blinding and all-encompassing, a small part of him worried if he could ever regain normalcy again.
He screamed, grabbed his wounded, bleeding shoulder, and covered his hand in blood. He then wiped it on each cheek as if it were war paint, and said, “Let’s fuck around a little, you piece of fucking rat shit.”
The Harvester hesitated and looked into Darwin’s face. The moment of indecision was over as fast as it showed itself.
Harvester lunged forward, the blade held high.
Darwin threw his covered left arm at the blade and ducked under it, his right hand going for Harvester’s throat.
He clamped on, oblivious of where the blade was now, and squeezed with inhuman strength on Harvester’s windpipe.
In that moment, raw strength pulsed through him, the kind that mothers use to pick cars up off their babies. He tightened his grip so hard and so fast that he dislodged Harvester’s Adam’s apple. He pushed forward and tightened his grip again, screaming in the madness of the moment.