Deadly Sins

by Laura Read

  ‘You don’t need to fucking announce me, Arnie. I’m his wife,’ Tracy said, barging through the door.

  She knocked on the door and waited for him to invite her in. Then she walked inside the office and shut the door, smiling seductively as she leant against the doorframe.

  Joe sat behind his desk, scratched red leather surface set into dark mahogany. He poured champagne into a flute with frosted strips curling up the sides like flames. Lust darkened his face and he walked over to her with the glass in his hand. He slipped an arm around her waist and took a slow sip of the champagne before lifting the glass to her mouth to pour the liquid between her scarlet lips.

  He made her consume the whole flute, casually stroking her hip with his thumb while she drank deeply until the wine ebbed. Placing the glass down he grabbed her waist with both hands and kissed her forcefully.

  She kissed him back, tongue slipping inside his mouth, and felt his hands sliding under her dress as he lifted her up to pin her against the door. His hands roamed to her breasts and slipped inside her bra to push the material down. He branded a trail of love bites across her skin, her fingers digging into his silk shirt.

  His mouth once more found hers and suddenly he was lifting her towards the desk. Sitting her down on the edge, her legs wound around his and she pulled the shirt from his trousers to unbutton it. His fingers found the clasp of her bra and he threw it to the side of the room. Then he found the zip at the side of her dress and slowly slid it down until it reached her hips.

  She pushed him slightly so she could stand and switch places with him. Her desire-filled eyes locked with his as she slipped the dress from her shoulders and it pooled at her feet. She stood over him wearing black lace knickers and heels. Straddling him, she kissed him again.

  His hands once more found her breasts while hers undid his belt and the button on his trousers. Her mouth travelled from his lips to his neck while her hands finished unfastening his trousers, then her lips moved down his chest, over his navel and across the thin line of hair trailing down to her target. He looked down and stroked the top of her head, Julie’s blonde hair smooth beneath his fingers.

  The door burst open and Tracy stood in the doorway, glaring at the sight of Joe and Julie, face contorting in rage. Julie screamed and leapt up, covering herself with her hands before she reached for her dress.

  ‘Shit, what the fuck are you doing here?’ Joe said, zipping up his flies and buttoning his shirt.

  Tracy ignored him. She threw at Joe the wedding ring that was snaked around her finger, which had been eating away at her like a cancer for years. She was tired of his cheating and lies, his fists when he came home drunk and wanting to fight, hiding the bruises and tears after he’d beaten her. No longer would she put up with his excuses for staying late at the club to have sex with cheap barmaids looking for cheap favours, how he treated her like dirt, his arrogance and selfishness.

  She pulled a gun from her bag and aimed the barrel at the evil bastard she once thought she loved. Joe grabbed Julie by the shoulders, using her as a shield to defend himself from the weapon in his wife’s hands. Julie struggled, screaming and staring with wild eyes at Tracy, before the gun fired and a bullet shot through the air to lodge in her chest. Her eyes went wide in shock before they glazed over, blood pouring from the wound in her torso and from her mouth.

  Joe dropped Julie’s dead body onto the floor.

  ‘Please, baby,’ he pleaded with Tracy, his ears ringing from the shot. He held his arms up in a praying gesture, face flushed and tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘Baby, please… Think about what you’re doing.’

  His last words were muffled by the loud ringing in her ears, but Tracy read his lips and laughed. ‘I’ve thought about doing this for years,’ she said, before pulling the trigger once more.

  Too late, Joe threw his arm up to protect himself, but the bullet sailed across the room and buried itself deep inside his skull. He collapsed to the floor, eyes filled with fear even in death.

  Arnie ran into the room, gun raised. He took in the scene and Tracy pointed her gun straight at him.

  ‘Shit,’ he said under his breath.

  Before he could do anything, Tracy turned the gun on herself. Pointing the barrel at her head and looking at Arnie for the last time, she pulled the trigger. The shot rang out and she blinked unexpectedly before the life left her eyes. She fell to the floor with a faint smile gracing her lips.

  2

  Dissection

  Tony greeted Angela with underlying sympathy in his voice as she entered Febrile for the second time that night. Her hair was tousled and damp from the rain outside and a large leather jacket enveloped her, smelling faintly of spiced cologne.

  ‘Everyone upstairs?’ Angela asked.

  ‘The old man isn’t here yet,’ Tony informed her, meaning her father was on his way. ‘You sure you want to go up? No one would hold it against you if you wanted to wait here.’

  Angela sighed but started walking towards the stairs. ‘Thanks, but I’d rather go up.’

  ‘It’s not pretty, Ange,’ Tony warned her.

  She grew tired of her father’s men trying to guard her from upsetting and dangerous scenes. Over the years she’d seen more than her fair share of violence and the consequences.

  When she was a teenager, her father took her to a warehouse where a Balanescu employee lay murdered: her first lesson on the brutality of the family business. Blood pooled beneath the dead body, dark sludge on the ground, the man’s face contorted and eyes empty; the stench was unbearable. Staring at the corpse she recognised the limits of mortality and it frightened her that in her last moments she too might be left defenceless in a pool of her own blood, dying alone. The experience prepared her for what would come.

  Weeks later her father fought for his life when his oldest enemy slashed his neck. Enclosed in white sheets, flat on the hospital bed surrounded by machines, seemingly mere wires kept him alive. The doctors told the family that he wouldn’t live, so Angela sat by his bedside and swore that he wouldn’t die alone and when he passed she would do whatever it took to protect the family. Despite the odds her father survived, but she learned afterwards that she couldn’t protect her family from what they inflicted on themselves.

  During her father’s recovery, she observed the aftermath of his trauma and how his dependency on alcohol increased. Once out of hospital, his priority was to murder the enemy who attacked him and his entire family. He spent hours drinking alone then would shout at and beat her mother, blaming her for his anger. In the past he might have shown leniency, or first would understand the motives behind a threat, whereas now he only responded with violence towards his enemies. The power of Angela’s oath to protect her family waned with each passing year as she learned her father was not the man she thought him to be.

  The club was empty: security had cleared out the public before the police arrived so there would be fewer witnesses. The cops would make a scene, searching for hidden drugs, money and weapons. Before they were called in, Angela, her father and Vincent wanted to see firsthand what had happened in Joe’s office, not just because of their attachment to Joe but because they needed to know every detail, judge the reactions of their employees, and remove any incriminating evidence.

  Her father would be baying for blood, someone to blame for his son’s death. Angela thought that someone from security would be his scapegoat, his prey once the police left. When their enemies discovered what had happened, they would laugh at her father, believing he was weak, and weakness was the worst insult that could be levelled against a boss. He would act to preserve his power, exact punishment with his personal brand of violence.

  Cracked plastic cups, spilled drinks and gum wrappers littered the dance floor. Although Angela loved the club when it was crowded, filled with music, movement and lights in every direction, she liked the solitude of the building when no one else was around. The click of her heels echoed as she paced through the large room, making her fe
el small yet welcome in the dark space, her footsteps tracing the same paths as those before her. Slowly she took the stairs, trying not to form any preconceptions about what lay at the top.

  The news of her brother’s death stripped the air of smugness and apathy she usually adopted. Vincent stood at the top of the staircase watching her, noticing the dark circles shading the thin skin under her eyes. She seemed lost in her thoughts, searching for purpose for being here.

  She reached the top of the stairs and turned towards Vincent, pulling her jacket closer around herself for comfort. Earlier he watched her leave the club wrapped in another man’s arms, his leather jacket draped across her shoulders, which he was sure he’d seen before.

  They were silent as they walked across the landing and into a thin corridor lined with closed doors. Vincent yelled out, ‘Dom!’

  A tall man appeared from Joe’s office wearing a security jacket, his white shirt undone at the neck and tucked into designer jeans. A thick chain hung from his tanned neck matching a gold Rolex. He stank of cologne and the gel combed through his hair made him seem greasy.

  Dominic Vittoriani took too much pride in his appearance. His vanity corrupted him to such an extent that he now lacked individuality, his every attention focused on maintaining his façade. In order to gain some semblance of power and command the respect of his peers, he wore expensive jewellery, styled his hair and bought designer clothes as if they were necessities. There was no substance to him, his mind materialistic and far removed from anything that didn’t concern earning enough money to obtain the latest trends.

  He boasted he had everything he ever wanted in life, but Angela knew better. As a teenager, he married a trophy wife, a blonde and ditzy woman with the same materialistic ideals as Dom. They owned a seemingly perfect house in a quiet suburb, bore two teenage sons afforded every luxury, drove the latest cars and took several holidays a year. Yet despite living a life of overindulgence, and bragging about it to anyone who could bear to listen, every so often Dom lapsed into depression and drank himself into the ground.

  His friends only thought that he drank heavily on nights out. He never told anyone he was depressed; he didn’t admit to himself when melancholy possessed him. His unhappiness spoke to him of dreams he never chased and fantasies that never manifested. He was alone in the grand scheme of things, successful in his work and as a member of the Balanescu family, but not as someone the world would remember.

  Two months ago he got drunk at a party in Febrile and at the end of the night Angela ran into him while he waited for a taxi, she in a similar state and about to walk home. She stopped to talk with him, swaying and gesturing wildly, holding onto his arm to keep balance, flirting, and finally asking whether he wanted to come back to her apartment for a drink.

  Dom didn’t possess faithfulness to his wife. She was a characterless creature in his play of material life. She might as well have been a mannequin in a shop window, hollow of personality, passion, soul, but adorned in beautiful clothes expressing solely the designer’s flair. In contrast, Angela was expressive and opinionative, her clothes were tailored to her own tastes, and as she smiled at him he uttered the single word: ‘Yes.’ So began their first night of sex tinged with a trace of guilt, a kind of sex Dom never experienced before.

  He slept with Angela several times during the next couple of months, usually when he was drunk and called her up to ask whether he could come over. He felt secure in letting himself go with her. When he undressed he removed his phoniness, his artificial self, forgetting his possessions and unfulfilled potential, locked away safe in her bedroom.

  No love was forged between the two. Their relationship was meaningless, uncomplicated, purely lustful, developed so both parties could feel less alone. Dominic would never be able to love another as much as he loved himself anyway. It was pride to which he was devoted, and he would gladly sacrifice his property, marriage, children, and the whole world just to make himself feel better.

  Earlier that night he changed out of his security jacket into a leather jacket so no one would think he was working. He caught Angela leaving the club as he headed out for a cigarette and offered to walk her home. Then he took off his jacket, wrapped it around her shivering shoulders and snaked an arm around her waist.

  In the midst of sex, Dom’s phone rang but he ignored it. Afterwards, Angela curled up in their sex-stained sheets and watched him pace as he returned the call. When he got through he was told that Joe was dead.

  ‘Vincent?’ Dom asked. Although he tried not to make it apparent, he avoided eye contact with Angela, and Vincent realised to whom the leather jacket belonged.

  ‘Go downstairs and wait for Leon,’ Vincent ordered, keeping quiet about his revelation. ‘Stay down there when he gets here. I don’t want it getting too crowded.’

  Dom nodded and edged around them to head downstairs. Before he left, he stopped to say, ‘Sorry about Joe, Ange.’

  Dominic already said this to Angela when he’d been in her apartment. His little act of contrition was to keep up appearances in front of Vincent and it made her angry that at a time like this he thought of self-preservation before her own feelings.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said tartly, then she turned her back on him.

  Vincent looked at Angela, wondering whether he should reveal that he knew about her and Dominic. He decided against it. ‘You sure you want to go in?’

  ‘I want to know what happened,’ she snapped.

  Vincent sighed, knowing she would say something like that. ‘Make sure you don’t touch anything.’

  Angela walked towards the office, stopping in the doorway. Arnie stood inside the room with his hands behind his back, a neutral expression hiding his emotions. A few drops of blood stood out on his skin and blond hair, but Angela hadn’t the heart to tell him. Tony said on the phone that Tracy shot herself in front of him so she presumed it was Tracy’s blood.

  Her eyes gradually registered the rest of the blood-soaked room. She saw Tracy slumped in the middle of the floor, gun held loosely in her hand, half her head a pulped mess ripped apart by her bullet. Her mouth remained intact, curled into a faint smile, and her one visible eye stared blankly at the ceiling.

  A timid creature when sober, Tracy always wanted to be accepted at family events but never had much to say. When she was high though she was confident and able to flirt recklessly, although no one listened to what she said in her agitated, drugged-up state. Angela grew to pity her sister-in-law for having nowhere else to turn apart from towards her next fix.

  Tracy came from a less well-off family. Her mother died of cancer when she was a child, and her father, a butcher, brought her up on his own. The day she married Joe she was pretty and youthful. Now she looked like a skeleton; she stopped eating when she became dependent on coke. Angela could see the faint bruises she tried to cover up – the reason she turned to cocaine in the first place.

  The story was similar to that of Angela’s mother, Isabella. She married young too and gave birth to two children: Joe had been thirty-two and Angela was twenty-five. Isabella turned to food instead of drugs to drown out her abuse and melancholy. As her depression worsened she became more slothful by the day. She never worked after marrying and spent most of her days in bed. She woke in the afternoon and took hours to dress and prepare dinner. Occasionally she threw parties for her family or Leon’s acquaintances, acting as the perfect happy hostess so no one except her family knew about her condition.

  Watching her mother as she grew up, Angela became aware that she was seen as powerless. She didn’t want to end up like her mother or sister-in-law: without independence, influence or a career. She hated the look of surprise on her father’s face when she made a criticism about the business or needed to explain why she wrote something down in the books. Her opinions weren’t considered because she was female and her feelings of inadequacy swelled.

  Joe never wanted his sister’s help either, ignoring her views just as their father did. He condoned
violence, which she loathed. Often she tried to tell him how she felt, but her words fell on deaf ears. In her family aggression was used as a second skin for protection; whereas Angela sought escape from cruelty, Joe chose to embrace it.

  She stood in the dark office looking down at her dead brother, realising that she could not feel sorry for him. He brought his gruesome end upon himself. If he had respected his wife and the vows of his marriage, he wouldn’t be lying on the floor cold and lifeless.

  Why had Tracy done it now? Why not sooner? Angela looked at Tracy for the last time, at her mute mouth, vacant face, twisted and limp body, and wondered whether she seemed so different in death to how she’d been before when alive.

  Then she realised what made Tracy take her own life. Whereas normally she was emaciated, a small round bump made her body-hugging dress stretch even tighter. She’d been pregnant and didn’t want her child born into this cruel world in which men abused anyone deemed weak.

  Angela felt her eyes well but she forbade herself to cry here in front of the men. She turned to Vincent. ‘I’ve seen enough.’

  Vincent led her through the corridor towards the stairs but he stopped abruptly on the landing. He stood to attention whenever he saw Leon Balanescu, as did most people when they met the man, although Vincent did so out of respect whereas others did so in fear.

  Leon took Vincent under his wing when he was a teenager working at the local pool hall, seeing a younger version of himself in him. One day Vincent disclosed that his manager fell behind with the rent owed to Leon because he gambled the money away. Leon asked Vincent to raid the manager’s house for anything of value to make up for his missed payments and promoted Vincent to manage the business instead. Vincent remained loyal to Leon since that day, becoming his most entrusted employee, and over time earning himself the nickname ‘the lieutenant’.