Page 75 of Bastard Prince
Seeing me still on my knees, Dino stopped, cocking his head to one side as he considered me. A slow smile began to spread across his thick face, lips stretched in a grotesque imitation of true joy, when he moved his hands to his waist and began to do up his opened pants. My stomach revolted at what that could imply, and I shoved the thought to the back of my mind, focusing instead on getting out of these fucking cuffs. Grinding my teeth so hard I could feel it in my temples, I glared at his satisfied smirk, watching as he slowly drew up his zipper.
“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” I said, my voice so low I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.
“Don’t see how you’ll manage that.”
“If you touched her, I’m gonna make it extra painful.”
Dino laughed. “You’re on your knees like a bitch, and you’re threatening me? Not fuckin’ likely.” He sauntered over to me, hands in his pockets as though he didn’t have a care in the world. “I’m gonna touch her. You better believe I’m gonna touch her.” He stood over me, feet spread and eyes narrowed. “I’m gonna keep touching her too, until I feel like I’ve been compensated for my losses.”
“What fuckin’ losses?” I spat, trying to discreetly stretch my fingers again. “You’re a lazy, useless, errand boy who is still at the bottom of the ladder, Dino.” I watched as his face grew increasingly tight, the redness of his cheeks spreading down to disappear beneath the collar of his damp and wrinkled shirt. “The only reason you’re even in the game is because of your father, and even then, I bet he’d have rather cut his own nuts off than have to tell people thatyouare who he has to claim as his son.”
“Fuck you,” Dino raged, landing another punch to my face, followed by another from the other direction. “You think you’re any better? You’re just a bastard. Your tramp of a mother wasn’t evenworthclaiming.” He chuckled, the sound like nails on a chalkboard as his emotions practically spilled out of his mouth. “You’re a disappointment. You’ll never be good enough.” He was pacing now, raking his fingers through his thinning hair, and I watched as he unraveled.
All the while, I twisted that goddamn key, just fuckin’ hoping it would finally unlatch, but the angle was fuckin’ impossible.
“You do everything you can to prove you’re a man, part of the Organization, and what happens? You get slapped down again and again.” I could tell he wasn’t even talking about me anymore, so I stayed silent as he had his little breakdown. “What are you doing, Dino? Don’t offer suggestions, Dino. Get out of my office, Dino!”
Spinning, Dino turned to the wall, punching it repeatedly as he screamed, turning his knuckles ragged and bloody. “Never, ever good enough. Tough enough. Smart enough.” Stepping back, he scrubbed one hand down his face, panting as though he’d just run a marathon. “Well, I showed him, didn’t I?” Dino turned to face me, his wide eyes rolling in his head like a madman. “I shot the fuckingDon! No one else would have had the guts, but I did. I fuckin’ did!”
I raised my eyebrows.
Holy fuck, the guy was losing it.
“Silvio kept complaining to my father that Don Carlo was ruining the family. That he was making us soft. My father listened, but he was too weak to do anything. The two of them would sit and smoke cigars and talk about all the ways they would do it better. Silvio said he thought it was a shame that no one had the balls to do what needed to be done.” Dino pounded his fist on his own chest, the blood on his knuckles smearing over the fabric in a grisly mess. “He looked right at me and said that.”
Yeah, I bet he fuckin’ did, that manipulative fuck.
Dino—desperate, pathetic Dino—seemed like he’d have done anything to earn the approval of the men in the Outfit. And Silvio would have fuckin’ known that.
I watched Dino pacing, knowing that I needed him to keep his focus on anything but my hands, which were still struggling to turn that goddamn key.
“So you thought it would be a good idea if you went and shot the Don, theCapo dei Capi,the fuckin’Godfatherof the De Marco crime family?” I laughed, loud, right in his face. “You dumb fuck. What did you think was gonna happen, hey? Did you think that all the men would rally around you? That they’d hail you as some conquering hero?” Dino’s mouth opened and closed as he huffed angrily, getting more and more worked up the longer I talked. “And you couldn’t even do it right. You fuckin’ missed, Dino! You tried to put a bullet in a man’s head, and you fucked it up like some goddamn amateur.” I scoffed. “No wonder your father is embarrassed by you. Fuck, I’m embarrassed by you, and I don't even fuckin’ know you.”
“Fuck you!” Dino roared, grabbing me by the shirt and hauling me to my feet. I was taller than him by a good few inches, but he compensated for that by pulling me close. My wrists were still cuffed, but with him screeching in my face like a maniac, he wasn’t paying attention to my hands, and I finally gripped that little key in a way that would let me get enough leverage to actually turn the damn thing. “You think you’re so fuckin’ smart? You don’t know anything about me!”
“I know you’re a little bitch, Dino. That’s all I need to know about you.” I twisted that key, smiling when I felt more than heard the soft click that meant the cuff had released. “There is one more thing I know about you, though.” Dino scrunched his eyebrows together like a confused baboon, and I grinned, letting all my darkness out, and loving the way his red face blanched when he saw it. “I know you’re a fuckin’ dead man.” I said quietly, raising my hands and showing him the cuffs, now dangling from one wrist.
“How—” But he never got a chance to finish.
Swinging my fist as hard as I could, I slammed it into Dino’s face, once, twice, the feeling of my knuckles connecting with his flesh damn near orgasmic. The rage flowing through my veins was like the sweetest drug, fueling me, filling me with righteous fury as I rained down hit after hit.
Dino backed up, his hands flailing in an attempt to fend me off, but there was no stopping me.
“You made some mistakes, Dino,” I snarled, swinging a fist into his gut, hunching him over as he gagged for air. “Some big fuckin’ mistakes.” Placing my hand on the back of his head, I brought my knee up, smashing it into his face as he wailed. “You started thinking too highly of yourself.” Gripping him by his thinning hair, I hauled him upright, only to smash my fist into his face again. “You stuck your nose into places it did not fuckin’ belong.” Another punch, this time from the other side. Dino was starting to wobble, his eyes half closed as he continued to back up. When he hit the wall behind him, his eyes snapped open, staring at me in naked fear. It had been too long since someone looked at me that way. Too long since I held a man’s life literally in the palms of my hands, the only thing standing between survival and death for that one, pathetic, sniveling, piece of shit. “For that alone, I would have killed you.”
It had beenfartoo long since I had felt a man’s pulse beat frantically beneath my hands as I watched him take his last breath. The power that came from taking a life felt like nothing else in the world, as though pure gasoline burned inside me, only needing a single spark to make me combust.
And standing here now, staring at Dino and knowing that I was about to end him, I felt it again.
And it felt amazing.
“But the biggest mistake you made, Dino, was one you should have known to avoid.” He pawed at me, the blood and saliva flooding his mouth making it impossible for him to form clear words, but I could tell from is pleading tone that he was begging for his life. “You put your hands on my wife, Dino.” I batted his arms aside, clamping both my hands around his thick throat. “You touched what was mine, something that belongs to me. Something that I vowed to protect.” Slowly, I squeezed, putting all my anger and hatred for this man—for the threat he represented to my family, and for the stain he was on the world at large— I poured it all into choking the life out of him. “You had no right to even look at her,” I snarled through clenched teeth. “Never mind soil her with your filthy fingers. For that, for daring to try to hurt that perfect woman so you could feel better about yourself, I’m gonna kill you and I’m gonna fuckin’enjoy it.”
And with that, I squeezed, staring into the eyes of the man who wanted to take from me—from us—everything we’d been working for. He wanted to have what he didn’t earn, and he didn’t care who he had to hurt to do it.
In the end, it was quiet, Dino having stopped struggling when the first tear leaked out of his eye, trailing down his ruddy cheek to land on the filthy floor. I waited until I was sure, watching his eyes as the life faded from them, leaving behind a dull and vacant stare where moments before there had been bright, shining terror.
When I was positive it was over, I released him, letting his body crumple to the ground at my feet in a fleshy heap.
