Chapter 1
Riding in the trunk of his stepfather’s car, was not how Luka expected to end his life. But the trunk was huge. Alonzo had clearly invested in premium cargo space. There was room for a couple more bodies. Most people cared about what was under the hood. Alonzo probably shopped by asking, “how big’s the trunk?”
Luka tried to kill the thought; he was about to die, it wasn’t the time for jokes.
The darkness was heavy, and the warm air felt suffocating. The faint chlorine tang of bleach burned his nostrils, not overpowering, but enough to remind him of the secrets this trunk held. More than a few bodies had been hauled to their final destination, scrubbed clean, again and again. If trunks could talk, this one would need a lawyer.
Luka’s arm had gone numb under his own weight. He tried shifting, but despite the large trunk it was still too tight to maneuver, with bound wrists it was pointless to try, it only made him expend energy he probably needed to save. He let his temple drop against the floor; the smell of bleach intensified. His jaw ached as his teeth bared down hard. His chin jumped a couple of times, he couldn’t lose it not here, not now. Wasn’t dying enough of a humiliation, did he have to add crying on top of it. Yeah, apparently he did.
A tear escaped, hot against his cheek, and another followed before he could stop it, his breath catching in his throat, willing the sound back down, because they couldn’t hear him cry, he didn’t want to be weak.
Wasn’t it normal to be scared at the edge of your life? He wasn’t a boy anymore, not really. He had turned eighteen a week ago. A man now. One week should have been enough to flip that switch, right?. He would like to speak to whoever handled the manhood department, because his order clearly got lost. His heart kicked hard enough to remind him he was still just... him, but with a new number attached. His stepfather would have called him “disappointing.”
Alonzo Valenti wasn’t known for compassion. He was the underboss for the Baldivoni family, an Italian outfit with old country rules and new world cruelty, and crossing him was just a slower way of dying. Luka had crossed him by being born.
The quiet from inside the car crawled over him. For an artist, calm was supposed to be a gift: open sketchbooks, imagination, his world in graphite and ink. But here, jammed in the dark, that gift twisted. His mind storyboarded his death, frame by frame, angle by angle, until the only thing he had left was the act of imagining himself gone.
He pictured the field behind the abandoned warehouse: wild grass standing tall, untouched by a blade for years. He would stand tall, strong even if he didn’t feel it. Alonzo in front of him, gun aimed. A puff of smoke from the barrel. He’d shade in crimson pencil for the blood soaking his white T-shirt. It was probably the only color he’d use. More dramatic that way. The last drawing he would never get the chance to draw. He almost laughed, a terrible time for it, it was thin and cruel, and it was stuck in his throat. Even now, his brain was worried about composition. Make sure you die with balance and good lighting.
The imagery made his heartbeat flutter like a caged bird’s wings. His lungs seized.His stomach twisted hard, sour and mean; the ham sandwich from hours ago clawed up his throat like it wanted out, and he forced it back down with a burning swallow. Tasted just as bad now as it did when he ate it.
His thoughts grabbed at him, shoving the panic back. Breath, he told himself. He counted to three as he took in a deep breath, then slowly counted to three again on the exhale. Yeah, this was good. He was excellent at breathing; he’d been doing it his whole life. He could feel his chest rise and fall in the dark, forcing each breath into a slower rhythm. I’m not dead yet. The words anchored him, and little by little, the shaking began to ease.
Voices began to grow closer.
His chest barely moved as he smothered each breath, sharpening his ears to catch every word.Alonzo’s voice rumbled somewhere outside, muffled and distant. As his footsteps drew closer to the car, the words sharpened into focus.
“You know-a what needs to be done, eh?” he said, the soft Italian drawl bending the words, adding that extra syllable like he’d never left Naples.
Luka took a shaky breath.
“Don’t worry, Father. I’ll make an example outta Luka,” Rico said, the words slipping out in a born-and-bred Brooklyn cadence that shared none of Alonzo’s old country vowels.
“No one betrays the Valenti name,” Dante added, his tone just as smooth and local as Rico’s. “We got it handled.”
“I can always depend on-a my boys,” Alonzo said, pride dripping off every word.Luka’s body went rigid as the car rocked, doors opening, weight shifting, his world rearranging. Of course, Alonzo wasn’t doing this alone. He’d brought them. For one raw moment, Luka thought they were his brothers. Then Rico and Dante’s lack of stepping in to save him scraped that word out of him. They weren’t here for him; they were here because of him. They would always be Alonzo’s sons before they would ever be his brothers.
Congratulations, Luka. You finally brought the family together.
Luka’s internal image of the picture smudged and redrew itself. Alonzo’s outline faded from behind the gun, and Rico’s shape took its place, his brother’s face set in executioner’s calm. The image hit harder than any bullet could have. His chest cinched. Their mother’s face surfaced next, soft eyes with a tired smile, and he could almost hear her breaking into a sob at the sight. A Valenti gun aimed at her youngest. Her oldest son pulling the trigger. The thought alone felt like a betrayal he was being forced to commit just by imagining it. If she’d still been alive, it would’ve broken her heart clean enough to kill her.
The car jolted to life, and his body rolled with it, rocking from one side of the trunk to the other like dead weight he refused to be. Every nerve in his body clawed at his instincts, run, run, run, but there was nowhere to go. Fear didn’t sneak up on him; it crashed in, full force. His heart hammered against his ribs, sweat breaking slick and cold along his spine, like his own body was already trying to bolt without him.
As much as he hated the life he’d been dropped into, he wasn’t ready to let it end him. Not yet. There were places he still wanted to see, Paris, especially. In his mind, it was all pale stone, crooked balconies, people arguing beautifully in the street. Ridiculous, really. He’d never made it farther than Brooklyn, and now he was boxed up in the back of a car like a return package.He dragged himself away from that picture and forced his brain toward survival. Strategy felt like the only thing that still belonged to him.
He planted his feet against the trunk lid and shoved. Muscles strained, wrists bit by tape, the tendons in his neck burning, but the metal didn’t budge. Of course it didn’t.
He sucked in a breath, tried again, angling his body, hunting for leverage in ten claustrophobic cubic feet of space. The trunk seemed to be shrinking now. Nothing budged. He wasn’t Superman. Just a scared kid with his knees jammed to his chest and no air.
No point in trying for the emergency trunk release, it was disabled. This was not a car so much as a container, built to be prisoner proof and problem proof.
Maybe he could take another approach. If he timed a kick for the second the lid opened, and got lucky, he could catch someone under the chin, or send their balls into another country, it might buy just enough time to hit the ground running. But even that fantasy collapsed under reality: bound hands, no room to coil, three, maybe four men outside. They’d have him face-down in the dirt before his willpower even showed up.
He needed something. A weapon would be nice.
He swept his bound hands across the disturbingly clean floor, fingertips skimming over bare metal. Carpet had been removed a long time ago, it was too inconvenient to clean after a murder. His fingers grazed canvas. A bag slumped in the corner. His pulse jumped.
Please be a gun, please be a gun, Luka chanted to himself. Alonzo may not have been an idiot, but he hired them, and who knows what they might have left behind.
He hooked his fingers into the strap and dragged the bag closer, working by feel. The zipper teeth scraped his knuckles as he eased it open just enough to slip his fingers inside.
It was cold and smooth with flat edges. It wasn’t a gun, or even a blade. There was a deep scratch carved into the corner. He knew it instantly.
Alonzo’s laptop.
The same one that held a secret that could have set him free. He’d seen it a year ago and done nothing. Now it sat at his fingertips like a weapon he’d never dared to raise. The universe was in on the joke. All those years knowing about that smoking gun, and here it was sitting in the dark with him, doing nothing but reminding him what kind of coward he was.
Thanks for reading. Please leave comments and let me know:
What did you think of the chapter?
How did the pacing feel?
Any parts that felt like they dragged and pulled out of the story?
