Larry bursts into tears, giving up on fighting me now. His body relaxes into his devastation. I’m lifted off him and cradled in Ian’s arms. I rest my head against his chest and wrap my arms around his neck. He walks me to Ryan, where he gently places me on my feet. Ryan extends an arm around my waist, holding me in place. His touch doesn’t bother me, nobody’s does really, not like it used to. I place my head on his chest and cry for a little boy who suffered in ways even I can’t imagine. And I want to make it better for him, but I know I can’t. Some scars never heal.
Duke walks into the bathroom and gives Larry a sinister smile. He pulls out a pack of matches and lights one, then blows it out. He repeats the action with half the pack before he says a single word. “Been looking forward to this for a damn long time. Two things I’ve learned in the last year. First is how much I can love somebody. My daughter and her mother are the most important people in my world. You tried to take them from me, which was a huge fucking mistake.”
“I’m sorry!” Larry’s screaming and crying, nearly on the verge of hyperventilating now. He’s not sorry—he’s just scared, and he doesn’t have the stones to answer for his actions. Instead, he’s lying there, still with his back on the floor, bound to the chair, repeating his false apology over and over again.
“Second thing I learned is how much hate I can carry.” Duke lights two more matches and blows them both out. The third one he lights, he doesn’t blow out. That one he throws in the bath tub right on top of Darren’s unconscious body which bursts into flames immediately. Ian is crouched behind Larry now, forcing the man’s eyes open.
“You’re going to watch the consequences of what you’ve done,” Ian says.
Jeremy and Grady both pass me and Ryan and move to stand on either side of Duke. Jeremy places a hand on Duke’s shoulder as the men watch Darren being burned to death. I untangle myself from Ryan despite his protests and stand beside Grady. He spots me out of the corner of his eye but keeps his attention fixed on the fire before us. I place my head on his arm and try to find a way to comfort him. Holly and Nic both told me how scary Grady can be, but I don’t see it. At least not anymore.
Ian and Ryan lift Larry’s chair from the floor and prop him up so he can better see his son’s death. To my surprise, Ian frees Larry from his bindings and orders him to stand. The man can barely get his body to follow orders. His knees buckle under him, and he has to try again, still finding it difficult to get himself upright. He’s still crying, clearly devastated by what he’s witnessing, and trying to turn away.
“Be a man for the first time in your pathetic fucking life and stop being a coward,” Ian says. He shoves Larry toward the tub where the fire’s contained. The man stops at the edge, then screams out a painful cry and throws himself into the flames. He chose his own fate, something I can respect.
“Do you still like what you see?” Ian asks. I catch the misery in his eyes and want more than anything to make him feel better. The truth is on the tip of my tongue, but I’m scared to say it. More than ever, I want to just be brave enough to tell him the truth, regardless of how well he takes it.
“Nothing and no one will stop me from loving you. They deserved worse than death, and if you had let me, I would have killed them myself.”
“That’s what scares me,” he says. Our eyes are locked as we stand in the room as it fills with smoke and the bodies of father and son smolder into nothingness.
July 23rd
9 months to Mancuso’s downfall
Chapter 23
So much has changed between me and Ian. We’re closer now than before, but there’s a wall between us that unsettles me. I love him in a way that consumes me so fully I almost can’t breathe sometimes. I meant it when I told him that he’s the only thing that makes me feel better. It’s probably unhealthy, but when I think back to who I was six months ago, my stomach turns. I was so weak and broken back then. I still have my damage—we all do, I think—but at least I don’t feel dead now. He makes me see that our scars don’t define us.
On good days, I think I’d like to counsel others through their own trauma. On really good days, I realize that no trauma line is going to hire a woman whose idea of therapy is lighting a man on fire in a bath tub. Not that I lit the match, but still. I could have and sometimes I wish it had been me.
Ian likes to ignore the part of me that revels in the darkness. He also hedges around his own darkness. For the last six weeks, we’ve had nothing but lightness and soft touches and sweet words. If it were real, who he is at heart, I could stomach it. But this isn’t my Ian. My Ian is dark. He struggles with his own image, choosing only to see the hate and rage that fills him, paying attention only to the bloodshed. He doesn’t see what I see—a beautiful man with such a beautiful light that no amount of sorrow or despair can come close to quashing it. Sometimes he’s the only thing that guides me out of the black void. He’s my light.
That’s why today is so important to me.