The Wrath Walker (The Wrath Series Book 1)

by Matthew Newson

  “We haven’t,” I said as Skeeter just smiled. He knew he had all the power in that situation.

  “Apparently, you have been very interested in me, my affairs, and my associates. I read all about it in the vast files you have on me in your desk, and I see you also have numerous files on my supposed dealings. I must say you seem like a man who has a real problem, and I think I know what it is.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah, you’re fixated on me.”

  “If that’s what you want to call it,” I shot back.

  “You know, I have seen a lot of guys like you in my line of work, and you’re all the same. Looking to blame others for your problems instead of accepting the fact that your life is in the shape it is because you’re the one who screwed it up.”

  “I agree with you that the current state of my life is my fault, and mine alone.”

  “Good. Sounds like you’re finally becoming a man. Well, I too am a man with a problem, but unlike you I’m not going to go around punishing other people who are not responsible for it. You want to know what my problem is, Brandon?”

  “I can only imagine the problems a guy like you has.”

  “It’s grief. Grief is my problem you smart-mouthed punk. I lost two family members this week who suffered, shall we say, rather unpleasant deaths.”

  “Is death ever pleasant, Skeeter? You’re more acquainted with it than I am.” My sarcastic tone in the situation surprised even me, but I figured I was a dead man either way, so I was going to give him a hard time. I was surprised by how well he kept his emotions in check, and how he hadn’t shot me or tried to pull me over the desk and beat me with the gun in his hand.

  “Death, for the most part, is a very nasty thing, but then there are times when it can be very satisfying to those who are among the living.”

  “Says the man pointing the gun.”

  He released a thunderous laugh. “You’re a funny guy, you know that? It’s almost a shame what I have to do, but even though I’m here today due to some very unfortunate behavior on your part, there’s no reason why we can’t be civil with one another.”

  “Look, I know why you’re here, and I didn’t do what you think I did, Skeeter.”

  A smile slid across his face which meant he was enjoying himself. “Don’t worry, Brandon, we are going to sort all this out tonight. I can promise you that. Now, where is Enzo? I sent him to collect you so we could talk, but it seemed like I went to the trouble for nothing because here you are. You didn’t take care of Enzo like you did my two other friends, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t kill Enzo,” I said as the sound of hurried footsteps thundered down the hall behind me. “If I had to guess he’s running down the hall right now to meet us.”

  Enzo barreled through the door ready for a fight but relented when he saw his boss had me at gunpoint.

  “Are you okay, Skeeter?” Enzo asked through labored breathing.

  Seemed all the cigarette smoking had caught up to him.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Come in here, shut the door, and catch your breath. I was just having a talk with our friend here. He said he hasn’t made any long-term business arrangements with some associates of ours. Do you believe that?”

  I shook my head at the code those guys talked in. It would drive me crazy to always have to speak in veiled terms.

  “You don’t say. Come to think of it, I do find it hard to believe our friend here hasn’t made any permanent business deals with our associates,” Enzo said as he walked my way.

  “You two do realize I know you are the mob in this city, don’t you? You don’t have to talk in code around me, and I’ll just say it, even though I know you won’t believe me. I didn’t kill Joey, Frankie, or Ron if you care about him. The walls are paper thin here, and if you shoot me, the whole building is going to hear it. I’m sure someone will call the cops.”

  “Shoot you? Who said anything about shooting you? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brandon. Do you know what he’s talking about, Enzo?”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea, sir.”

  “You know what though? I am enjoying our conversation, but the air in here is a bit stuffy. Don’t you think, Brandon?”

  “It’s never bothered me.”

  “Well, it’s bothering me, and you look like you need some fresh air. Why don’t we go and take a ride and clear our heads, and we can continue our pleasant conversation?”

  Skeeter’s smile faded to a cold and hardened stare.

  If ever there was a time for Wrath to show up it would be then, but he was nowhere to be found as I looked around the room.

  On to Plan B.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you guys today, so if you’re going to shoot me, just shoot me.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Brandon. If you don’t get up and walk out of this dump you call a home and go for a ride with us, Lizzie is going to have a very bad day.”

  I knew exactly what he meant by that, and I couldn’t let him harm Lizzie. No matter how much she hated me, I had to protect her, even at the expense of my own life.

  “She has nothing to do with this.”

  “Then get up and let’s go for a ride.”

  I followed Skeeter while Enzo walked behind me with a gun trained on me the entire time. There was a car parked out in front of the building, and as I got in a sharp pain filled the back of my head and wrapped around my skull to my eyes.

  Everything went dark.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Brandon Farmer

  The Black Castle

  I EMERGED FROM UNCONSCIOUSNESS like a man who had been held under water by a strong undertow and then thrust on the shore to the land of the living. Everything was a blur as my eyes opened and closed, because I couldn’t work them any faster than that. The first thing I noticed was that the air was damp around me. As I tried to bring my arms up to rub my head, I found myself unable to move. I became more aware of my surroundings and discovered I was seated in a chair with my hands bound behind my back. I carefully pulled against the restraints while the zip-ties dug into my skin. There was a light on above me that caused me to wince as my eyes adjusted to it. The room gradually came into focus.

  The floor was made of concrete that had darkened with age, and the walls looked to be made of cinder blocks or some kind of stone. I noticed a drain set into the concrete floor at my feet, and there really wasn’t much of anything else that I could clearly make out around me. There was, however, an empty chair in front of me in what appeared to be a dimly lit basement.

  Memories of what happened earlier came to me as a door opened, and I heard footsteps of people as they walked down the stairs I could barely see in the left corner of the room. I pulled harder against my restraints, but all I did was cause them to dig into my skin until I felt the warm and sticky feeling of blood. Skeeter and Enzo stepped out of the darkness as I continued to fight against my bonds. Skeeter unbuttoned his jacket and sat down in the chair across from me and looked at me like a parent does when they’re disappointed in their child.

  “Would you look at this, Enzo? Sleeping beauty is finally awake. You know, we were wondering if we were going to have to wake you up ourselves, so we could continue the lovely conversation we were having at your crummy apartment.” Skeeter moved around and got comfortable in the chair.

  “It’s about time I’d say,” Enzo said with a look of pure joy on his face. That came from his anticipation of my torture and death at his hands.

  “Where am I?” I asked as the light caused me to squint and look away from Skeeter until the throbbing in my head stopped.

  “You don’t need to worry about that.” Enzo snapped back at me.

  “Now Enzo, I don’t see why we can’t share that and other pieces of information with our friend here seeing he’s not leaving this place alive. I mean, who’s he going to tell? Even if he got out of here somehow, it’s not like he has any friends left to share our secrets with.”

  Sk
eeter and Enzo shared a sadistic chuckle.

  “You’re in the basement of the Black Castle, you piece of trash. This is where I conduct a lot of rather unfortunate business dealings for others,” Skeeter said and laughed.

  I had been so optimistic that I had found the way to save my life from Wrath. I’d sensed a renewed lease on life. But as I sat there, I knew I was destined to die. As I began to accept what seemed like my inevitable fate, I considered there still might be a way out of it. Surely those two men were the others on Wrath’s kill list before me. If I kept Skeeter talking long enough, maybe it could buy me some time for Wrath to make an appearance and do what he did best.

  “I know you think I killed Ron, Joey, and Frankie, but I had nothing to do with their deaths. I didn’t even raise a hand to them.”

  “I know you didn’t, Brandon,” Skeeter said sympathetically.

  “You do?”

  “That’s right, I do. It was some wacko in a red suit, and let me say, I believe your story.”

  “You do?” I discretely pulled against the zip-ties to see if my blood had made it so I could slip out of them, but it was no use. My wrists were firmly secured, and my movements only made them tighter.

  “Of course, I do. I believe that story you keep telling just as much as I believe in Santa Claus, you freakin’ jerk.” Skeeter slapped me hard across the face to ensure that his ring dug in and tore my skin. The pain was sharp and caused my cheek bone to feel like it was on fire. Skeeter sat back in his chair and moved around until he got comfortable again. I was just thankful that his ring hadn’t broken a bone. Yet.

  “You know I knew your father, right?”

  “That’s funny, he never mentioned that one to me.”

  “Well, I did, and he was the most honest man I have ever known, and I can tell you this,” Skeeter said as he leaned in close to me with his finger pointed in my face. “He would be ashamed of the lying, murdering, piece of scum you turned out to be.”

  “Yeah, you’re one to talk, and you didn’t know my father.” Rage laced each word as I furiously pulled toward him at the mere mention of my father.

  “Keep your voice down, will you? I’m sitting right here. There’s no need for yelling, so save your strength. Also, this place is soundproofed, and no one is here right now anyway, so there’s no one to hear your cries for help. No one is coming to save you, Brandon. But I did know your old man. We grew up together. We were friends in fact.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m afraid not, my soon-to-be-dead friend. We were actually coming up together in the business that I now run. We did the petty stuff. All the grunt work the upper guys never touched after they got made, and let me tell you, your dad was a piece of work. The way he could take apart a guy in a fight with his bare hands was a thing of beauty. I learned a lot from him that I still use to this day. Things I’m going to use on you here in a few minutes in fact. I looked up to him in so many ways. Your father was a legend, a god among men if you will. He was the one everyone knew would be running things around here one day.”

  “That’s not true. You just said my father was the most honest man you ever met, which he was. He wasn’t a degenerate mobster like you.”

  “Oh! Easy with the name calling, and no, he was better than me, and that is why I said he was the most honest man I ever met. He was honest in his desire to take over everything, while many of us were too scared to say anything when we were coming up in the ranks for fear of being whacked or taxed at the very least by the guys above us back then. But not your old man. I swear he could stare down a bull, and it would back down from him.”

  “I mean it, stop talking about my father!” I yelled through clenched teeth.

  “What’s the matter with you? Oh, I see now, your father never told you about his past?”

  My anger seethed and boiled over. All fear had vanished as my rage consumed me, and I fought against my bonds to attack the accuser of my father’s memory. “Say whatever you want about me but leave him out of this.”

  Skeeter held up a hand to stop Enzo from hitting me, and then he sarcastically smacked me in the face several times. “Hey, knock it off with all of that. Can’t you see you’re bound to that chair? What are you going to do? Nothing. Why would I lie to you about this if I’m going to kill you anyway? I just figured you should know the truth since you have been fighting so hard to find it.”

  “Truth. Like you even know the meaning of the word.”

  “You came after my family and my interests when you come from the same gene pool as me. Your father and I were going to take over this city, but then he met your mother, and he got out before he had gotten so deep that he couldn’t. I guess I should thank your mother, because when your dad left this life, it made room for me to grow and eventually take over. If your mother would have been okay with all of this, you would be doing the same things I’m doing now. You might have taken over your father’s place as the boss of the family by now.”

  “I still don’t believe you. Your word is nothing to me.”

  “You don’t believe me. Well, I expected as much, but how about this? They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so how many words does this one give you?”

  Enzo handed an old picture to Skeeter. He held it up for me to see. It was a picture of my parents on their wedding day standing on the steps of the church where they got married. I almost couldn’t believe how young they looked, and I felt a brief sliver of happiness as I stared at the picture. My mother had her bridesmaids at her side, and my father had his groomsmen on his.”

  “Take a close look at the guys standing next to your old man, Brandon, and see if you recognize someone else in that picture other than your parents.”

  As Skeeter said those words, my eyes fell on the man who was standing next to my father. He was thinner and his hair was jet black, and then I shuddered at the revelation as the small amount of happiness I had just felt died in me.

  “You were his best man,” I choked out.

  “Yes. I was. We were also altar boys when we were kids too. We used to get our hides beat by this one nun we loved messing with, but we just couldn’t help ourselves. There was one time your old man made the nun cry, because he kept saying, yes sister, every time she told him to shut up. She ran out of the room crying hysterically. I tell you; those were the days. Your father and I hated that nun, and we made it our mission to terrorize her. You know, kid stuff.”

  “That sounds terrible. You hurt that lady for the sin of trying to teach you when you were a child.”

  “You think that was hurtful? Let me tell you what was really hurtful, and that was when your garbage mother made your father leave our business, and it was right after she found out she was pregnant with you. Your father kept your mother in the dark about all the stuff we were doing because he figured it was better that way. When she caught wind of how we were forming our own thing and planned on forcing the Riccis out for good, she freaked out on him. She threatened to leave him and never let him ever see or meet you.”

  “Sounds like the smartest thing she ever did, if you ask me.”

  “Well, I’m not asking you, Brandon. Your dad was like a brother to me and I loved him like one too. It broke my heart the day he came to me and told me he was out, and it still breaks my heart to this day. So, I gave him a pass and let him leave on the one condition that he never say a word about what we had done or else he’d lose the family he loved more than the one he was leaving.” Skeeter handed the picture back to Enzo who put it back in his inner jacket pocket. “To this day, I never knew how your father could settle into such a boring and unfulfilling life. Reading and selling books all day. I mean, come on, what kind of a miserable crap existence is that?”

  “He loved what he did,” I said.

  “Yeah well, I’m just glad he is dead now, so he didn’t have to see what happened with you. It would have broken his heart to see how you turned out. Now you sit before me, and it appears the sins of the father hav
e now come back to the son.”

  I chuckled to myself. “When did the mob start reading the Bible?”

  “Didn’t you just hear me say your father and I were altar boys together? We literally had the Bible beat into us as kids from the nuns at our school. You know the hardest part in all this is? I see your dad when I look at you. You look a lot like your father did when he was your age.”

  It stung to hear I looked like my dad because I hadn’t really seen any pictures of him when he was younger, and now I knew why. If everything Skeeter said was true, my father had been a terrible person in his youth, but at least my mother had helped him turn his life around.

  “What’s your play here, Skeeter? You’re going to kill me, and continue running the city until someone comes along and takes you out? You know that’s going to happen to you, right? Someone is going to take you and your whole crew out just like you did to the Riccis.”

  “You’re right about one thing, and that is I am going to kill you, there’s no doubt about that, but I’ll let you in on a little secret since you just found out we are connected. I’m not the one who is really running things here.”

  “Boss, don’t...”

  Skeeter waved Enzo off. “Who’s he going to tell, and besides, confession is good for the soul. No one’s ever going to see this poor sap again, so what does it matter if I tell him? Besides, we had a little Bible talk, and it has been a long time since I’ve gone to confession. So, what the heck?”

  I wasn’t sure where he was going, but I figured it was a good thing if he kept talking, and hopefully Wrath would show up soon.

  “There’s an entire group of some very dark and nasty people over us calling all the shots. They were the ones who helped us run the Riccis out of town, because they didn’t want to play ball with them. Don’t worry, your father got out before those people entered the picture. But the things I’ve seen these people do, the power they possess, is far worse than what any gun or knife can do to you. It makes no sense at all, but I can honestly say after being around those people for as long as I have, I can tell you that there really is a devil. The most terrifying part is, the majority of the city doesn’t even know they exist, but most likely interact with them every day. One of these twisted individuals could live right next door to you, and you would never know the sick stuff they’re into. As long as we do what they say when they say it, they let us remain in power over the city under their direction,” Skeeter said with a troubled look upon his face.