Eli (Mallick Brothers Book 4)

by Jessica Gadziala

  --

  "Um, 1A," the super called as I stepped up the walk from the main lot toward the building.

  The super was somewhere in his fifties, thin to the point of gaunt, with stringy brown hair, a godawful porn stash, and these leering black eyes that made you feel slimy whenever his gaze slid in your direction.

  He was also a dick who never learned tenants names, no matter how long you lived there, and called you by your apartment number instead.

  "Yeah, Randy?" I asked innocently as I led my illegal dog up the path, holding half a dozen bags from the pet store in the other, full of wet and dry food samples so I could figure out what he liked, toys, and bowls. The bed was in the trunk. I'd have to make a dreaded second trip for it.

  "That's a dog."

  "Really?" I asked, brows drawn low. "I thought he was just a supremely ugly child. Huh."

  "Dogs are against the rules, 1A."

  He said this while eye-fucking me and scratching his balls. Yeah, he was a real peach, let me tell you.

  "Hey, you know what?" I asked, ducking my head to the side. "I'm pretty sure leering in the window while my sister takes a bath isn't just against the rules but the law."

  That, well, it made his whole body stiffen.

  See, my sister was a bit of an - ah - exhibitionist. She didn't mind having a Peeping Tom. In fact, the crazy chick would put on a show when she knew she was being watched.

  I know, so what, she had said when I told her about seeing Randy 'walking by' the windows to 'do his rounds' whenever she was bathing. They're just tits. I flashed them at that holier-than-thou dude who told me my tattoos were satanic and that I was going to hell last week. He didn't seem to grasp the concept that all my favorite people will be down in hell. Fornicating and sodomizing each other while listening to death metal and drinking vodka straight from the bottle. Sounds like a killer party to me.

  When I had tried to press it, she had shrugged. Autumn, I'd close the curtains if it bothered me.

  And since he seemed only to spy on her, I never felt the need to report him before.

  But I wasn't above using it as leverage.

  "I never..."

  "I have pictures," I added. And I did. Just in case I ever needed them.

  His face fell at that.

  "If I let you have a dog, then everyone else will want to have one."

  "That sounds a whole lot like your problem," I said with a shrug. "Sounds better than being charged with a misdemeanor though, doesn't it?" I asked, turning, not even bothering to hide my smile as I made my way to the door.

  I dealt in sex.

  I knew the ins and outs of every kink that existed.

  I knew that voyeurism and exhibitionism were valid fetishes that were engaged in by many people. That being said, it was only fun when both parties were fully aware of the situation. It was a crime when someone watched you when you didn't want to be watched. I understood that, in this case, it was different. My sister didn't care. Hell, I had heard her flick on a vibrator when she knew he had been watching her once. But Randy still rubbed me the wrong way. Because his behavior was criminal, even if my sister was permitting it.

  So it felt good to hand him his balls about it, to remind him that it wasn't right.

  He probably got the wrong idea about me because I owned a sex store. Most people did. Guys, when they figured it out, thought I was a slut who engaged in all kinds of kinks from BDSM to threesomes.

  Now, I loved sex.

  Sex was amazing.

  It was something that made life just better than it was.

  And I did enjoy toys and games and such in the bedroom.

  That being said, I was a serial monogamist. I had never been able to enjoy casual sex. It just felt empty and unfulfilling to me. I had tried a time or two when I was younger before I decided it simply wasn't for me. A part of me - especially when stuck in a long dry spell - really envied women who enjoyed hookups. But, hey, we all had different things that got us off. Mine simply wasn't that.

  I hadn't been in a relationship in about eight months.

  So I hadn't had sex in eight months.

  I bought liberally from my own store.

  You know, vibrator research.

  So people could go ahead and think what they wanted.

  I wasn't a slut.

  And I personally took offense to the term.

  And to sexual deviants like Randy thinking he had any right to think them.

  "Alright, buddy," I said, unlocking my door. "I am praying you are house trained. And I guess I should lock up my closet. My shoes aren't all that great, but y'know, I need stuff on my feet." I went to close the doors to the bedrooms, figuring any mess would best be contained in the main living space. I walked back out to take the toys out of the bag, smiling as he hopped up on his back legs and barked for each one, never losing enthusiasm even after the sixth toy. Then I put out some water and dry food. "I gotta get to work now," I told him as though he could understand. "Can you try not to eat the furniture? It's nothing fancy, but it would be nice for it to not have bite marks. I'll be back at dinner time to walk you."

  That was a perk to owning your own place.

  Have a doctor's appointment, or meeting with your finance guy, or a dog that needed walking? Hang a sign on the door saying when you'll be back. Maybe people wouldn't be happy about having to wait to get their sour apple lube or Fleshlight, but they would survive. Besides, it was either wait the hour or wait two days to get it on Prime or seven days to get it from a discreet online supply store.

  You had to love being the only game in town.

  "And, ah, yeah. See you later, buddy. Try not to be too depressed about him, okay? We are going to have a good life, you and me."

  That was the plan.

  Then we went right ahead and started living it.

  ONE

  Eli - 1 year later

  You'd have heard it all by now.

  Don't drop the soap.

  Hang a 'do not disturb' sign on your ass.

  If you're someone's bitch, they'll protect you.

  If you do chores, you can curry favor to keep a dick out of your ass.

  And, to be fair, those were actually pretty sound pieces of advice. Prison rape was daily and brutal. If you were new, and especially if you were new and young and small, your ass was open game. One of the guys I got bussed in with was immediately taken in by the Neo-Nazis and became a bitch to the big guy. By the time I noticed him again six weeks later, he was thin, bruised, and a shell of the man he had been when we arrived.

  You could avoid all that drama if you came in connected to one of the organizations within all prison systems. If you had a history of being a white supremacist, a wise guy, a Blood, a Crip, or one of the dozens of Latino prison gangs, you were likely to be protected.

  If you weren't, well, you had to get crafty.

  "What you think you're all big and bad because you beat the shit out of that politician's son?" I had been pushed up against the wall my third day there by some low-level Irish mob jackass. "You're in prison now, pretty boy. We know how to fight back. You want to start with me? Huh? Come on, throw a fucking punch, pussy."

  See, I didn't want to start.

  I had made the decision to keep my head down, do my time, and then move the fuck on with my life.

  But when his hand landed on my shoulder, shoving me back into the wall, well, let's just say it happened.

  You know what I mean.

  The rage.

  That thing that moved through my veins, that burned them like battery acid, that made rational thought impossible, that turned me into a monster I wasn't at any other time.

  By the time the alarms went off, and the C.O. came running, the Irish dude's face was all blood and broken bones.

  Me, well, I went to the SHU.

  And had time added onto my sentence.

  Not much since I was new, he was a bully, and the warden knew how it went, but time. They jacked me up to seven yea
rs, but I was told I would only serve six, then have a year of parole on the outside. Not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things. But time.

  Extra time.

  Because of the exact same thing that got me shipped off to prison in the first place.

  Naked. In a cement floor and walled room with no window, no nothing except for a hard bed with no mattress and a stainless steel sink and toilet combo. For months.

  Yeah.

  It set a man to thinking.

  It was the only way not to go crazy.

  And, being I am who I am, my thoughts went first to my family. They'd been there. At my trial. Of course. I wouldn't have expected anything less. Hell, I had them tattooed on my arm.

  Vis necia vinci.

  A power ignorant of defeat.

  It was right there on my skin, though anyone who knew the Mallicks knew that shit - that mentality, that loyalty, that love - that went right down into the marrow.

  I hadn't engaged them. I hadn't even looked their way. Just like I hadn't given them what they needed from me at the police station the night of my arrest. They needed to hear it was okay, that I would be okay.

  They needed that from me.

  The problem was, I couldn't give it to them.

  I didn't have it.

  At the time, shame was something not unknown to me. I had felt it time and time again when I came back out of my spiral, when I realized what I had done. It had never been a lasting thing, though. I guess that was the difference. Because there had never been any kind of repercussions from my actions - mostly due to the fact that I only ever beat people who were in the underbelly and had it coming - I could accept it and move on.

  This time, I couldn't do that.

  Every single day I was paying for what I had done.

  There was no accepting it and moving on when it was the very reason I was eating slop, showering with other men, and having lights out at nine at night like a fucking eleven-year-old.

  It wasn't that the bastard didn't have it coming.

  I'd never forget the sound of that woman's screams, her pleas for it to stop, for someone to help her. I could still see her face when I closed my eyes at night - all bloodied and broken open.

  He deserved every last punch the motherfucker got for putting his hands on a woman.

  But he wasn't in the underbelly.

  He was connected.

  And daddy-o wanted my nuts in a noose.

  So he got that.

  I would have gotten off if it was anyone else. No jury would have convicted me when they saw the pictures of that woman from the hospital. You know, the ones the nurses took before her husband's lawyer showed up and ushered her out for 'home treatment.'

  It was a case of right time, right act, wrong family.

  The shame didn't start until I was trying to get Coop to sit down for his treat, and the cops came out of nowhere with a warrant.

  If there was one word to describe how I felt when they pulled up, sirens going, attitudes getting thrown around, my face getting slammed onto a hood as bracelets went around my wrists, that word was humiliation.

  It was embarrassment I had never known before.

  And it didn't stop there as I had been paraded through the station, interrogated, gotten called a lowlife piece of shit.

  I heard it enough, I started to agree with it.

  Off to jail to wait for trial. Strip search. Blue overalls.

  Fucking animals, the guards would say.

  To trial.

  Like any other lowlife piece of shit.

  Sentence handed down.

  Bus to prison. Strip search. Orange pants and white tee. Trapped in a cage.

  Fucking animals.

  Given a toothbrush, travel paste, a bar of soap, and a roll of toilet paper.

  Like every other lowlife piece of shit.

  It wasn't until three weeks in the SHU that I realized it.

  There would be no end to it.

  The rage outs.

  My own personal battle between Bruce Banner and Hulk.

  The monster I had been groomed to become when violence hadn't come as easily to me as it had to Ryan, Mark, and especially Shane.

  It was something that had become a part of me, something I used to help keep control over the family business, something that was an asset more than a flaw.

  So as long as I was that man, the Eli Mallick I had been raised to be, so long as I was him, yeah, I could never hope to see an end to the rage-outs.

  I would live the rest of my life worried I might flip again, get sent back to jail. Maybe kill someone and never get out.

  That could very well be my fate.

  So, alone in that cell, starved for fresh air, light, or any human contact, knowing this was no life for me, I made the decision.

  I couldn't be that man anymore.

  I couldn't live that life.

  I couldn't - fucking forgive me - be a part of my family.

  For my own good.

  But for theirs as well.

  See, I might not have been acknowledging them at the police station or my trial, but that didn't mean I wasn't aware. When my mother broke down. Hardass, take-no-shit, balls-to-the-wall Helen goddamn Mallick broke down. Fee and Lea had lost it too. My brothers, though they weren't exactly criers, you could feel the devastation even from across a crowded room.

  And while they weren't there because it was no place for them, my fucking nieces...

  I just took something from them. I took a person they loved from them, someone they trusted and depended on. I ripped that away from them. I took a little piece of the blissful oblivion of childhood from their perfect little hands.

  By the time I was out, they wouldn't even remember me.

  They wouldn't know me.

  I would be some strange guy, not Uncle Eli.

  I had done that. I had made my mother and sisters-in-law cry. I had crushed my brothers. I had let down my nieces.

  I could never be that person again.

  By the time I got out of SHU, the decisions had been made.

  I would be cutting off contact.

  It would make it easier on all involved. They could move the fuck on. Not have my memory hanging like a ghost in corners for six years, not having to be a spirit kept alive. They didn't deserve that. They deserved to be happy. They deserved to have Thanksgiving and Christmas without thinking Poor Eli, all alone at Christmas in prison.

  I was giving them back their freedom.

  They wouldn't see it as that at first. They would think I was punishing myself, I was adjusting, I was in a bad headspace. But, eventually, after a year or two, they could move on. They would have to. That was how life went.

  It. Moved. On.

  As for me, I was giving myself a chance.

  If I never wanted the rage to win again, I needed to stay away from anything that triggered it.

  Like the family business.

  Like anyone at all who might mean them harm.

  Like every single other inmate in prison.

  The assault stunt that got me into SHU and got some extra time on my sentence, it had been enough to keep people from fucking with me. Even when I got out fifteen pounds thinner, pale, with sleep deprivation bruises, and shoulders that had the weight of the world on them.

  No one fucked with me again.

  Eventually, I just became invisible.

  "Damn, man, your family fills your commissary every fucking week, huh?"

  I used it for essentials at first, figuring it was a necessary evil, knowing the money came from one of my legit businesses. I stocked up on some extra toothpaste, deodorant, fucking toilet paper.

  But then my focus switched as I passed an old man - a lifer, in for killing the man who had fucked his wife... with an electric meat slicer - painting in his cell.

  I hadn't been aware that items like that could be gotten through commissary. When I went to check, sure enough, right there under domino or chess sets, there was a list of art suppli
es that could be gotten. Sketch books, canvas, watercolor paint, colored pencils, crayons, markers, and graphite.

  So I stopped buying shit like shaving cream and detergent.

  And I bought as many art supplies as I could with my money each week.

  Spend your time well, an old man had told me when I got out of the SHU. I figured he meant that I should take college courses, get a prison job, and stay out of trouble. Maybe that was what he meant. But I didn't have any interest in the college courses offered. My job only kept me busy in the laundry a few hours a day. And thanks to becoming invisible and having some affable enough ex-junkie and ex-heroin dealer as a cellmate, I didn't have to worry about the third thing.

  But if I was going to spend my time, he was right, I should do it right. I should do it being useful. I should do it engaged in something that had always made me happy.

  Outside, in my old life, I had time to scribble here and there, to design shit for the menu at Chaz's or the flyers for Fee's business or shit like that.

  But I never got to immerse myself.

  So that was what I did.

  That was how I chose to spend my time.

  And when you work at something twelve hours a day for a year, yeah, you got good. The kind of good that got noticed. The kind of good that even guards were saying I should make a career out of it when I got out. The kind of good where some fucking old school wise guy gives you the name of a gallery and tells you to tell them to say that Anthony Galleo sent you and that he wants your art on the walls.

  As much as I wanted to cut ties with the criminal underbelly, I kept that name scribbled on the back of one of the canvases. Just in case I wanted to use the contact.

  Things were going par for the course.

  Except I had underestimated my family.

  One year down the line, they still hadn't given up. They still tried to call, tried to visit, tried to write.

  I dreaded mail day.

  Because it was like a motherfucking knife to the gut every time I had to return shit to sender.

  It didn't matter that I had made my mind up. They were still there, in the marrow, buried too deep ever to be extracted. And a huge part of me wanted that contact, wanted to read what was going on. Shane and Lea had to have been starting their own hoard by then. Had Scotti and Mark gotten married? Were Mom and Pops well?