The coast is clear so I clutch my mother’s hand and run down the hall to my room. Once inside, I close and lock the door. I turn to find my mother standing with her mouth wide open as she stares at something behind me. I spin around and find myself face to face with Lanz, who had tucked himself into the corner behind the door.
“I figured you’d come back for this since I found your mother’s outside,” he smiles and holds out my phone.
“What are you doing here? Are you crazy?” I shout.
“Crazy? Yeah, probably, but you made me this way.”
“I haven’t done anything to you. You’re the one who won’t leave me alone.”
“You get out of my house!” my mother shouts and he laughs at her.
“Hold on, honey. I’ll get to you. Right now, I’m dealing with your cunt daughter. Did you know that she’s fucking a guy who’s almost forty? Crazy, huh? Mom likes guys my age and the daughter likes guys mom’s age. You’re both pretty fucked up.”
“What do you want, Lanz? I mean, what are you expecting to accomplish?”
“Why? Are you scared? Good, you should be. I plan on being the meat in a nice mother/daughter sandwich. If you’re good about it, I’ll go home drained and satisfied. If you put up a fight, I’ll do the same thing, but I’ll have to kill you both first.”
“You’re full of shit. You aren’t gonna kill anyone,” I barely get the words out when he smacks me in the face.
“You little punk!” my mother cries out and rushes toward him but he grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her down on the bed.
“You two aren’t off to a good start,” he sneers, pulls a bottle out of his jacket, and takes a drink. “Let’s get this party started.”
13
THREE IN THE MORNING
ANTHONY
At first, I wasn’t sure what woke me, but as I look down at my phone, I see that I’d missed a call from Aria. Alarmed, I dial her back. She’s never called me at this time of night, and I fear that maybe her mother decided to restart their altercation.
The call goes straight to voicemail. I try again but get the same result, so I text her. I wait almost ten minutes without a reply before deciding to get out of bed and start putting my clothes on.
There’s no traffic this time of night so the drive should take about thirty minutes. I try to call her six more times, hoping her battery had died and she now had time to charge it. My nerves are strung tight when all of my calls still go to voicemail. There’s definitely something wrong, so I step on the gas and barrel through the red signal ahead.
I nearly reach her house and slow my car to a crawl. Lanz is parked in his usual spot across the street. Thattesta di cazzo.He’s really done it this time.
I turn off my headlights and creep closer, planning to ambush him and beat his ass. I’m close enough now, so I turn the wheel and pull my car right up to his bumper, leaving him with no way to escape. I peer through the windshield but the driver’s seat appears to be empty. With my senses on high alert, I step out of my car and approach his door. Grabbing the handle, I pull the door open and lunge forward but the car is empty.
My body clenches in anger, already primed for a fight, and I drag in a deep breath, willing myself to calm down just a bit to think clearly.
I leave my car on the street and walk up the driveway, expecting to find him hiding in the bushes and peeking through the windows, but I circle the entire house and find no sign of him. I’m about to ring the doorbell when something cracks under my foot. I bend down and shine the light from my phone on the shards of broken glass on the walkway. This little shit broke a window. Not wanting to alert him to my presence, I climb through the hole in the window he left for me.
The first floor is dark and deserted, but the hall light on the second floor is turned on. I’ve never been upstairs and all of the doors are closed, so I move to the only room with light shining under the door. I throw the door open to find the master bedroom empty and begin inching my way down the hall, opening every door as I pass until there are only two remaining. Left or right? I place my hand on the knob of the door on the left and begin to turn, but I stop when I hear voices from the room on the right.
Pulse leaps in my throat, barbed wire coiling in my belly. If that fucker even harms a hair on her head, I will show him no mercy.
I step over to the door and reach for the knob. A female voice cries out from the other side and all I can see is red. I barrel through the door and see Aria and her mother seated together on the bed. Her mother is crying and Aria has a swollen red whelp on the side of her face. My insides freeze into a block of ice, my head spinning, threatening to explode.
Lanz is facing them but turns as he hears me enter the room. He’s holding a large knife and thrashes at me with the sharp blade, but I dodge his advance. He continues to swipe at my face and chest, but he’s unsteady on his feet so I grab the blade in my hand and squeeze it as it slices through my flesh, my blood trickling onto the carpet.
Lanz stares at me as if stunned that I would slice my own hand, but he quickly recovers and attempts to pull the knife free from my hand. I squeeze tighter, feeling the blade all the way to the bone, and punch him square in the face with my free hand. Aria leaps to her feet and pulls her cell phone out of the punk's back pocket.
She calls the police as I repeatedly slam my fist into his skull until he loses consciousness and falls to his knees. He lets go of the knife handle. I toss the blade to the floor and kick it out into the hall before using my boot to knock him from his knees to his back. His head bounces off the floor when he lands.
Aria ends her call and rushes to the bathroom. She returns with a towel and wraps it around my hand to stop the bleeding.
“Are you okay?” she asks, searching my face with frantic eyes.
