ARELLA (A Mafia Story)

Fifteen

"Gag him." I command my soldiers with a roll of my eyes.

They follow my command wordlessly. Craig drools through the dirty sock that is duct taped to his mouth.

Alessandro shakes off the dark hoodie that he's wearing, handing over the material to me. I take it, watching what he's going to next.

He walks over to the plethora of tools, scanning his options. Leaning back against the cool wall, I cross my left ankle over my right, checking the time on my watch.

Arella should be napping right about now. I'll head home after Alessandro is done and give my baby girl a hug. Maybe I'll even stop at the toy store on the way home and pick up the giant bee plush I saw in the window.

She'll like that. Arella loves bees. I'll have to thank Freya for that one. My wife is the one that introduced her to the love of the stinging insects.

The sound of metal clanking against metal sounds throughout the room. I look towards Alessandro to see his implement of choice; a pair of pliers.

"Son?" I call out.

His head snaps to mine, his brown eyes looking directly into mine before dropping. I love it when he looks me in the eyes. It's uncomfortable for him so I never make him do it.

Out of all my sons, he has the clearest, most vivid brown eyes. All of them except Davide. Davide is the only one out of the four boys that has his mother's green eyes.

"I brought these for you. I know how much you hate germs." Reaching into my back pocket, I retrieve several pairs of gloves I brought just for this occasion.

One of Alessandro's rare smiles tips the corners of his lips. Many people look at him and think he's emotionless. That's not the case. He feels just like the rest of us. You just have to know him to see it.

Tossing him the gloves, he puts down the pliers to catch them. Unzipping the bag they're in, he reaches into his back pocket and grabs a small travel sized bottle of hand sanitizer.

After dousing his hands in the strong smelling liquid, he puts on the gloves.

Craig watches the whole interaction with terror in his dull colored eyes. Smirking, I step up to the strung-up man.

Leaning closer, I whisper, "You seem to have underestimated my son. He's much more capable than everybody gives him credit for. Including you, his own therapist. The one man that was supposed to help him, not torture him.

"This is your penance. He'll kill you slowly, painfully, mercilessly. There's two options for you, Craig," I step back, slowly rounding his body. He tries to follow me with his eyes, not wanting me out of his eyesight, "Both end in your death. You can tell us who's running that website, or you refuse and I'll make sure that Alessandro doesn't finish you.

"I'll have one of my men patch up whatever wounds Alessandro gives you, wait until you're all nice and healed, then bring Alessandro back here to repeat the process. Over and over again until you're begging us to kill you.

"We kill you today after you give us the name or we torture you over the next few months. Which is it? Fast death or a slow one?"

Craig breaks down, sobbing worse than Arella ever could.

Fucking baby.