DAMIEN ..Everything was spinning as I tried recalling my actions and words from the night before, sitting there in the ruins of my room, the smell of stale whiskey and broken plaster everywhere.Every conversation I had had with Gerald, every violent swing of the bat, everything that had broken, played back like a fucked-up movie trailer in my head.“Where is her body currently?” I asked, the words feeling alien and heavy on my tongue, directed at Gerald who stood near the shattered remains of the TV, remarkably composed.“The water,” he said, his voice flat, echoing slightly in the wrecked space. “Waiting for your orders to put her in.”A fresh wave of nausea rolled over me.Her body.Mabel's body.“Make the call,” I said to him not thinking twice .“There should be no traces, no blood, nothing about her.” I was trying to understand the gravity of what I’ve done, the mistake that has been made, the line I crossed and couldn’t uncross, but I couldn’t take it back. It was done.
LEILA ..I put back together my necklace frame, piecing the little silver bits back into place, the metal cool against my fingers.It was a necklace I had gotten from my mom a long time ago, this simple thing, but it held a picture of both of us inside, a faded photo from a day that felt like another lifetime.I remembered that day, one of the few times she’d taken us on a real outing, not some sketchy back alley meet-up and we had taken a road trip of sorts, knowing I wanted to visit the castle, or elk somewhere we once called castle which was really just a children’s playground shaped like a fortress, you know? Not a real castle, obviously, but to a kid, it felt like one.I had gone with the brothers and she was with us, a rare day where all of us were together and somewhat relaxed.They had this crazy little act of picking on me, shoving me playfully, stealing my hat, the usual older brother bullshit, but I loved it.It felt normal, felt like family, something I didn’t get muc
LEILA..The rain never smelt fresh here. Never. It soaked into the old, lined building that looked tired of existence and clung to the air, melding with the stale rot of spilled beer and the acrid tang of burnt cigarettes thrown on the pavement of the alley shrouded in darkness.I strode through it anyway, fingers tightening around the damp bills in my hands. The wetness didn’t bother me. Once dried, it could be used again.I counted the notes slow, doing maths I was never good at. Mom’s hospital bill. Dad’s debt…there’s nothing left.I barely registered the chipped brick of my building, or the termite-infested wooden stair, until I was at the door of my apartment.The moment I creaked the door open, I knew something was wrong.“Thank goodness you’re back.” My father scurried towards me, his breath burning with the pungent smell of cheap beer, his washed black singlet hanging loosely over his alien bony frame. Thanks to years of drug usage.My stomach twisted. But it wasn’t his si
Leila..Damien shouldn’t be here. His father was Tony Smith, an American—not Italian. I knew that much, yet here he was standing before me in flesh, cloaked in a name that ignited fear at every nook and cranny of Las Vegas.Leonardo Alvaro.Of every monster in the Alvaro family, Leonardo was the worst. The most brutal. The most feared. There was a saying that you must have committed a grave sin to cross paths with Leonardo.It never sounded like Damien.Damien was the boy who ran late to school because he was helping an old woman cross the road. The boy who returned home covered in dirt because he spent his time searching for a lost puppy that wasn’t even his.The boy who refused to leave my side when I was down with a fever.My breath hitched. The air was thick. Too thick. But this wasn’t the time for this. No. I gulped down my panic. Desperately, I stepped forward.“Damien,” I called his name.Like the name was foreign to him, Damien flinched—faintly but not unnoticed.“Please
LEILA..A thick gulp went down my throat, the hard slurping sound slipping into my ears. Thousands of words burned on my tongue. I could utter none. Not with Annette’s words echoing at the back of my mind.Squeezing the gown into my hands, I rose to my feet and began heading to the bathroom when Damien’s voice stopped me—midway.“Where are you going?”I turned. “To change. Obviously.”“You can change here,” he said, so casually.My eyes bulged wide. “In front of you?”Damien leaned against the door frame, arm crossed across his chest and a faint smirk tugged at his lips. “We showered together when we were younger.” His voice came out low—lazy.The air in my lungs stilled as the memory hit me. The two of us, years ago, slipping into the shower like it meant nothing. Clothes flying off without a thought. A care. Damien was smaller then—smaller than me. So short for his age that he barely reached my shoulders. His body was small—too small.Now, he was something else.I stared at him
LEILA..I stood frozen in the center of the stage, my breath caught—trapped in my lungs.Silence unfurled, and the stretch between us widened, yet it felt like it was pulling tighter.“Don’t make me repeat myself.”I wanted to. I knew I had to. Yet, my body disobeyed. “I….I.” My throat worked as I swallowed hard. “I can’t do this, please,” I whispered out, my lips trembling.Damien leaned off the backrest. “You wanted to pay me back, right? To earn your freedom?” He curved his spine, resting his hand on his long legs. “This is your interview, I need to see your body before displaying it to my clients.”I stiffened, and my whole body tucked into itself. The way the words rolled off his lips. Without a care. Like I was a commodity. It stung—especially coming from him. Someone I had looked up to as an elder brother…then.I swung my rounded gaze to him. “Please, let me do another work. I could clean. Bartending. A chef in your house. Be a maid.” My words a gargled mess, lost in desper
LEILA..His words hung in the air, heavy and stifling.They came his fingers, trailing, from the middle of my collar bone, down the valley between my breasts, his touch like a red metal branding iron—hot against my skin. It was like he was marking me—claiming me.Damien’s gaze remained on me as his fingers continued down until they stopped a few inches above the thong line.He left that place untouched. But, somehow it burned hotter than places he had touched.My breath trembled in my lungs and my logic began to waver, breaking beneath his stare.But I couldn’t—couldn’t do it. Not just because of what he would do to me. But because this was Damien.The boy I grew up with. The boy who used to be caring and soft. Who wouldn’t dare hurt a fly?But that boy was nowhere to be found, no matter how deep I looked into his eyes. The man that stood before was a stranger…a stranger with a familiar face. That was what Damien had become.Accepting his deal was like dining with the devil and we k
LEILA..I hesitate, my hand hovering over the doorknob. Taking a deep breath that doesn’t quite calm the flutter in my chest, I twist it.The click seems so loud in the quiet place, as I pull further, walking in slowly, counting my steps.My breathe hitches as my eyes widens trying to adjust to everything in sight.Or maybe not because I can’t quite see anything here, except where I’m standing. The room is drenched in red, the first thing I notice of it, the red coating everything like the one I had seen in movies, the red room, I could tell the danger of it.I widen my eyes trying to see past all of this, trying to make out even a shade of what I’ve walked into as my head begins to swim that familiar wave of panic rising with fear as the cold grips my body.It feels so cold in here although I’m covered in a robe but it still does.“Where is this?” I whisper as the sound barely came out, the question hanging in the thick air, making it hard to understand.“I guess you don’t listen
LEILA ..I put back together my necklace frame, piecing the little silver bits back into place, the metal cool against my fingers.It was a necklace I had gotten from my mom a long time ago, this simple thing, but it held a picture of both of us inside, a faded photo from a day that felt like another lifetime.I remembered that day, one of the few times she’d taken us on a real outing, not some sketchy back alley meet-up and we had taken a road trip of sorts, knowing I wanted to visit the castle, or elk somewhere we once called castle which was really just a children’s playground shaped like a fortress, you know? Not a real castle, obviously, but to a kid, it felt like one.I had gone with the brothers and she was with us, a rare day where all of us were together and somewhat relaxed.They had this crazy little act of picking on me, shoving me playfully, stealing my hat, the usual older brother bullshit, but I loved it.It felt normal, felt like family, something I didn’t get muc
DAMIEN ..Everything was spinning as I tried recalling my actions and words from the night before, sitting there in the ruins of my room, the smell of stale whiskey and broken plaster everywhere.Every conversation I had had with Gerald, every violent swing of the bat, everything that had broken, played back like a fucked-up movie trailer in my head.“Where is her body currently?” I asked, the words feeling alien and heavy on my tongue, directed at Gerald who stood near the shattered remains of the TV, remarkably composed.“The water,” he said, his voice flat, echoing slightly in the wrecked space. “Waiting for your orders to put her in.”A fresh wave of nausea rolled over me.Her body.Mabel's body.“Make the call,” I said to him not thinking twice .“There should be no traces, no blood, nothing about her.” I was trying to understand the gravity of what I’ve done, the mistake that has been made, the line I crossed and couldn’t uncross, but I couldn’t take it back. It was done.
DAMIEN ..I moved to the end of the room, the dark space then felt suffocating, taking off the baseball bat that was kept propped against the wall, the wood cool and solid in my hand.The thought of Leila being in my house, in my space just miles away, twisted something cold and harsh in my gut.I could use this on her, my thought wandered, my grip tightened on the bat, and maybe make her mother see her daughter go through it, feel just a fraction of the pain we’d felt, the pain that was a constant ache behind my ribs. The thought was ugly and monstrous but it was there, a dark whisper born of years of hurt.The thought of how much I had gone through, picking up minimal jobs back in the day, scraping by just to take care of Gerald when my dad was there laying in that hospital bed.I guess that’s why he had to move on from this earlier and that’s what I wanted, to give him that security, until things were supposedly back to normal which they never really were. All that sacrifice,
DAMIEN ..I moved to the other end of it, the cold granite of the tombstone pressing against my hand for just a second long before I pulled it away, throwing the flower in my hand to the floor, watching the petals scattered like littler pieces of something broken.It felt like it was just a few months ago, not fourteen, since we stood here for the first time, the raw gaping wound of losing him still fresh and the invisible bone in my throat didn’t seem to want to go off, stuck right there, all of this was a reminder of the day the world shifted on its axis.I fixed my shades back to where they were, shield my eyes from the weak sunlight that somehow felt too bright that day, moving towards my brother who had both hand crossed in front of him, a silent sentinel staring at the grave.It had been fourteen years already, etched into the stone was a number that felt both impossibly long and horrifically short.It felt like he just did it yesterday, the act that brought us here, the act
LEILA ..The weight of what he had just said settled heavily on me as I walked through the hallway leading back to my room trying to look back at the footsteps, even though I knew better than to actually turn around.It was messing with my head, this whole situation.He was kind of a gentle person this time without telling me to pick up my things and leave, which was totally unexpected after… well, everything.Although there was still little command in his tone even if he tried to be careful while I rocked on his crotch more of his dick back there, a chill crawled up my spine remembering how it felt.I didn’t look back, but I felt the weight of his gaze, mightily settling on me, burning into the back of my skull even through the damn wall I wished I wished was between us, just that feeling of being watched like he owned every inch of space I occupied, even the air I breathed.Actually he does.Pushing open the door, the familiar mess of my room greeted me, not totally a mess but I
DAMIEN ..That same day, my father had returned home, as if some instinct had warned him what was happening.He walked into the house, his face etched with a weary resignation, and then he saw a letter lying on their bed.I hadn’t touched it.I had gone into their room earlier, a knot of dread tightening in my stomach, to see if she had packed her things. And yes, everything was gone.She was gone.Leila was goneShe left without even looking back at us.He was a shadow of himself for a long time after that, a ghost haunting the halls of our once happy home. He was always complaining, his words laced with bitterness, and he stopped looking after us, lost in his own grief. He loved her more than he loved us, more than he had even loved my birth mother, who had died years earlier, two years after giving birth to Gerald.I watched him drink himself into a stupor night after night, embarrassing us at every turn, racking up more and more debt.Then, he fell ill, his body finally succum
DAMIEN ..I watched her retreating back as she gathered her things, her movements stiff, each step a testament to the pain she wouldn't voice.She didn't turn back as she limped towards the door, a silent goodbye.I knew she was hurting, both physically and emotionally, but she wouldn't let it show.That's Leila for you. Sex with her was always electric, a primal connection that left me breathless, and the way she moaned my name… it drove me fucking insane, and she knew I loved seeing her in that garter belt, a small, wicked detail that always set my blood on fire and she knew me too damn well, understood the twisted desires that lurked beneath the surface.This was it. The end of the Elvares.They were finally erased, a stain wiped clean, and if any of their bloodline, any distant cousin or forgotten offspring, still drew breath somewhere in this godforsaken world, then they should be ready for a war unlike any they had ever imagined.They should come armed with a fucking army,
LEILA ..Maybe everything I had ever thought about Damien, the darkness that clung to him like a second skin, the ruthlessness that could chill you to the bone, all seemed to trace back to my mother’s actions.All this time, all he had wanted, deep down, was to exact the same kind of revenge, a bitter truth that settled in my stomach like a lead weight.I could feel it in the air, a lingering tension that even Gerald, who usually bounced back from anything with a grin, couldn't completely dispel but Damien… Damien wasn’t wired that way.He didn’t simply get over things, not even for a little while.He would make sure you understood the depth of his pain, would rip your heart out if you didn’t feel it too.He truly lived by that twisted code of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” a philosophy that painted his world in shades of vengeance and retribution.The kiss deepened, becoming a slow, deliberate claim, he controlled the way we shifted on the bed, a subtle yet
LEILA ..“I want you here.”His words hung in the air, each syllable echoing in my ears like a warning bell, as if I was caught trying to escape, or maybe this was the last time he was ever going to see me.“I want to get some rest, and I think you need it too,” I said softly, placing my hand gently on his arm, trying to remove his grip on mine.I was still wary, acutely aware that he was the one who called the shots in this here, but he was weak now, vulnerable, and he desperately needed rest. “I just need a few minutes,” “It might help me sleep. I can get anyone to do it, but I think… I think I want to hear you speak.”He tried to push himself up higher against the pillows, his movements stiff and pained.He should have been lying flat on his back, protecting the wound, but instead, he was trying to sit up, his face etched with discomfort.“Why did you never question Mabel?” he asked, his gaze suddenly intense, piercing. This wasn’t the time to talk about my mother, not now.M