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.
Harvester flailed his arms and lost his balance as he was thrust backwards, dropping the blade and trying to dislodge Darwin’s hand. At that point, nothing but the claw end of a hammer would release the grip.
Even though his eyes bulged from the pressure, the Harvester smiled. Harvester’s sickness fueled Darwin’s rage.
Their forward momentum tossed them to the floor, Darwin landing on top of the Harvester. As he rolled to the side his hand dislodged from the man’s throat. The Harvester was up on his knees in a flash, trying to learn how to breathe again.
Darwin rolled away and bumped into the tool tray. A metal grip lay beside his head. On the other end of the grip was a bar, similar to a police baton, but with long metal spikes. He almost didn’t touch it when he saw the spikes, but knew he needed to be rash here. He needed to use a sharp implement of some kind to end this.
Darwin grabbed the smooth handle and spun around, but he was too late.
Harvester brought his fist down onto Darwin’s wounded shoulder. He screamed and gagged on the phlegm that had collected in his throat.
The Harvester raised his fist again when Darwin, in awe that he held something sharp in his hand, swung it in a clean arc.
The four-inch spikes embedded in the side of the Harvester’s skull, one punching through his left eye, deep inside his head.
Harvester moaned, mumbled something, and sat down. With his good right eye, he found Darwin lying on his back in front of him. It almost looked like he couldn’t figure out who Darwin was.
Then he lost his balance and lay out on the floor, his right eye staring up at the ceiling.
Darwin got to his feet, his shoulder screaming, and looked over at Rosina. She was awake, watching in frightened silence.
Darwin stepped over to the Harvester. The eye met his. Blood dripped out of the four holes in his skull. The Harvester grinned. “That hurts a little,” he said.
“Goodbye,” Darwin said and lifted his foot. He brought it down hard and almost crushed the weakened side of the Harvester’s skull, blood and bits of brain leaking out onto the floor.
Darwin unwrapped the jacket from his forearm and discovered the cut the machete had made. Harvester had gotten in one good hit.
Damn, that’s going to need stitches.
He used his right hand to rewrap his arm and stepped over to his bride.
“How about it?” he asked, trying to put on a cool face, his hand extended to help her up. “You ready to finish our honeymoon?”
She got to her feet and leaned into him, crying.
“Let’s get out of here,” Darwin said and then stopped. “Did you hear that?”
She shook her head.
“Sounds like police.” He eased her off his chest and looked in her eyes. “There was an accident downstairs. A man was killed in the street.”
She nodded. “I know. A man named Paul. I heard them talking about it.”
“I’ve done some bad things today. But it was all in my defense. I didn’t hurt anybody that didn’t have it coming. And I’m sorry for trying to send you away. You have to know I was trying to protect you.”
“I know,” Rosina said. “They all had it coming. But why are you telling me this?”
“Because there’s cops out front and if more cops are on their way, that means they’re coming for me. I could be in trouble. Once everything is ironed out, I’ll come out looking clean, but understand, that may take time and until then, unless that old man is out of the picture, our lives won’t be worth much.”
She nodded. “I understand. Let’s find him before we leave.”
With Darwin in the lead, they cautiously stepped into the room where the old man had gone before Darwin and Harvester fought.
The room was empty. Following Darwin’s lead, they both walked the hallway and looked in every room they could. Sirens ceased in front of the building as officers arrived. They were running out of time.
The elevator kicked into gear.
“I’m sorry, Rosina.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. You did everything right. You saved me, didn’t you?”
He nodded and held her close, keeping an eye on the hallway.
“Did they hurt you?”
“Not really. I was scared, but they were instructed to leave me alone until they had you. I did see them hurt a man really bad. They ended up killing him.” She looked into Darwin’s eyes. “I’m so glad you killed the Harvester of Sorrow. That man shouldn’t be allowed to live.”
“How does someone get the name
Harvester of Sorrow
? That’s so fucked.”
The elevator door opened and six Italian police officers stepped out, guns raised at them.
They were ordered to the ground and handcuffed. Then they were led downstairs to the main lobby where the officer in charge, who spoke fluent English, would come any moment.
During their wait, Darwin saw a couple of the Fuccini family men sitting in police cruisers in the front of the building.
A man in a suit and a tie came up to them. The man’s face changed to anger when he saw the handcuffs.
“Officers,” he called out and then shouted something in rapid Italian.
Two cops ran over and undid their cuffs. Darwin checked his forearm cut. Still bleeding.
“I’m so sorry for treating you like this. They don’t know who you are. My name is Marco. I’ll have an ambulance take you to the hospital where we’ll get you stitched up and then I’ll take your statement. How does that sound?”
Darwin nodded at him.
“I got a call from a colleague of mine, Greg Stinsen with the FBI. He told me what was happening and that he’d be here in the morning. He said to offer you all the support I could. These men can piece together what happened here and we’ll leave now. That work?”
The trio walked out to his car, Darwin holding Rosina’s hand tight as the darkness surrounded him.
As the cop pulled away from the curb, Darwin said, “Can you turn on the interior light?”
“Yeah, sure,” the cop said and flicked it on.
Darwin took a deep breath and stared down at his hand, clasped in his wife’s. He didn’t want to look at the windows. All he’d see was blackness and that didn’t help anything.
It was over for now. A lot of men had died, but they were safe for now. They were in police custody and the FBI would arrive soon. Together they’d launch an attack on the Fuccini family to end the vendetta, the blood debt.
“You still need the light on?” the cop asked.
“Yes.” Darwin looked up at the cop in the mirror. The cop smiled, nodded his head, and looked away to focus on the road.
I definitely need to see the light.
#
He woke in the hospital the next morning, sun streaming through the window’s drapes.
“Rosina?” he called, panicked.
“I’m right here,” she said.
She rose from the chair she’d been in, stretched her arms out as far as they could go, and moaned.
“Sometimes, when I think about what happened yesterday, it almost feels like it was a dream. Then I see your injuries and I know we lived it. But that’s the important part: we lived it. We made it.”
Darwin rested his head back and nodded slowly. “The cop, Marco, is he gone?”
“Yeah. He left after he took out statements, about four in the morning. I just heard from a nurse that Greg called. He’s about five minutes away. Maybe that was what woke you, when the nurse left.”
“What’s next? What are we going to do?”
“You’re going to go home, is what you’re going to do,” Greg said as he stepped into the room.
“Greg!” Rosina shouted and ran to hug him.
“How’s my favorite couple?”