Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

-Confucius

 

Montrose, Pennsylvania.

It took me five minutes to walk from one side of the town to the other.

From the looks of the abandoned restaurants, car dealerships, and stores, it used to be a nice little slice of Americana.

Thanks to the recession, and especially the sagging American auto industry, Montrose is a ghost town.

Granted, it's late in the evening, and I highly doubt the town would be active even during working hours, but there isn't a soul in sight. At least, not a residential soul.

My father is standing in the middle of the street with a gun in his right hand and my girlfriend in his left. She's on her knees beside him, slumped over, eyes fixed upon the ground. He has a handful of her hair, using his grip to keep her from moving or running towards me.

Surely I knew that this was meant to be his final stand. However, I didn't imagine he'd want to go out in such a theatrical fashion. As I approach him, I'm reminded of the various Western's I watched as a child, which, come to think of it, are the only movies he ever indulged in viewing himself.

He was always of the opinion that media (tv, computers, etc.) rotted your brain, but anytime True Grit or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was on, he'd pop a squat next to his recliner and watch along with me. I never knew what it was about the Wild West that appealed to him so much, but now that I've gotten to know him (the murdering, sociopathic him), I realize that he loved the idea of self-government; of lawlessness.

Back in those days, if you had a problem with someone, you could just walk outside and shoot them, or have a duel that ended with the best marksman (or luckiest, as in those days your gun was just as likely to misfire as it was to hit it's target) walking away and the other man lying dead in the dirt.

"That's close enough, Ace," he calls out to me when I'm about fifteen yards away.

"What do you want?", I ask him, though I know the answer.

"Do you know what it's like to spend five years inside of a dark cell? To be told when you could eat, when you could sleep, when you could take a shit?"

I shrug.

"It's hell, boy. It's hell, and you're the one who sent me there."

"I sent you there? You were the one who killed for a living. Who killed my mother and tried to kill me. No, Dad, I didn't send you to jail! You sent you to jail!"

He raises the gun and points it at me aggressively.

"You're the one who ratted me out to the cops! Your own father! Your own flesh and blood! You and your cunt of a mother sold me down the river and I lost five years of my life!"

"So what are you gonna do? Shoot me? Shoot her?"

He shakes his head, then lets go of Bree and kicks her towards me.

"Go on. Get."

BREE crawls slowly towards me, her makeup a mess, mascara having run jagged lines down her face, guided by tears. Her hair is matted and tangled, her wrists are bruised (from either handcuffs or ropes, though I can't distinguish from this distance), and half of her nails are broken and caked with blood. At least she put up a fight.

"I said get!"

He fires a round off to her left, striking the pavement. The bullet ricochets past me and I jump with a start. Bree lets out a scream and quickly gets to her feet and rushes towards me. I wrap my arms around her as she collides with me, her small amount of momentum not enough to move my large frame more than an inch.

"Ace-"

"Don't say anything, just get the fuck out of here. Run, and don't stop until you're in police custody."

I kiss her on the forehead.

"I'll bring back help."

"Don't bother. Whoever's left standing here won't need help, and it'll be too late for the man who isn't."

I let her go. She runs quickly out of sight and disappears somewhere in the dark.

"She's a feisty one! Put up a hell of a fight; better than some of the men I've killed."

"So what now?", I ask as I turn back around to face him. "You gonna gun me down in the street?"

My father smirks, then drops the gun on the ground and kicks it over to me.

"No, son. We're going to settle this the way things should always be settled."

I look at the Beretta on the ground, then back up at him. If I reach for it, he may pull out the other gun he surely has on him and shoot me. If I pick it up and pull the trigger, it may not be loaded. That round he fired off at Bree may have been the only one in the gun.

"I feel as if you've wronged me, and hell....you probably feel as if I've wronged you."

"You killed my mother. Wronged me is an understatement."

He nods and pulls a gun out of his waistband, holding it up for me to see.

"Well this here is the gun that I used to put her out of my misery. I suppose it's only fitting that I kill you with it as well."

I glance back down at the Beretta and decide that, loaded or not loaded, him shooting me or not shooting me, all of it could happen just as well if I stand here and do nothing. I could pick it up and maybe be lucky enough to get a round off and kill him as he kills me.

But that's not what I came here to do.

"So pick up that gun, and let's settle our differences."

I shake my head.

"I didn't come here to kill you. I came here to save Bree."

I kick the gun back towards him.

"I've done that, so this is over."

My father looks down at the gun as it bumps against his boots, shaking his head.

"She'll never be safe as long as I'm alive. Once I kill you, I'll leave and go find her. There's no telling what I'll do to her when that happens."

He kicks the gun back towards me.

"Who said anything about you leaving?"

He looks around slowly, but sees no one, which is my intention. Paranoia has a way of forcing men to make mistakes. He smiles when he realizes that I'm just playing games with him.

"You're here alone, Ace. How do you intend to stop me without shooting me?"

I smirk.

"I just walked down this street alone. I've been sitting here talking to you in order to ensure that your attention would be focused on me."

He shakes his head in defiance.

"I've been listening to the police band the entire time," he says as he pulls an earbud from his right ear. "There's no chatter about this."

"You're right," I say as I walk slowly towards him, hoping that he'll back up. "No police, no feds."

He points the gun (that killed my mother) directly at me, but doesn't pull the trigger. Why not? Because now he's curious, and brilliant men don't like to be outsmarted.

"Tony then! Where's he hiding?"

I shake my head again and continue to press forward. He's backing up without realizing it.

"No way would they have had time to get here from Philly, Dad."

His eyes dart back and forth as his mind tries to process who I could possibly have with me.

"If not the cops or the feds, or Tony's guys, then-"

He bumps into Collin, who has been slowly making his way towards us this entire time.

"McGee!", he screams as he spins around to shoot Collin. He pulls the trigger, but Collin has already hit his hand with the tire iron we found in the stolen Civic, and the round careens off somewhere in the distance, nowhere near either of us. The gun clatters to the ground, and I rush my father as he reaches down for it, tackling him as hard as I can. His face is already swollen from the beating I delivered to him earlier, and a few quick elbows to the temple ensure that he won't be getting up. I keep a knee on his chest as I grab the gun, which Collin tries to take from me.

"No," I tell him as I shove him backwards.

"This motherfucker tried to kill us! You can't let him live! What makes you think he won't try again?"

I stand up, keeping the barrel of the gun pointed at my father, who is wheezing on the ground, leading me to believe that I broke his ribs when I tackled him.

"It doesn't matter if he does, and that's the difference between he and I."

I look down at my father as I say this.

"Killing is not in my blood."

Dad smiles.

"You must've gotten your genes from your bitch mother then."

I kick him in the face to shut him up. I may not want to kill him, but I'm certainly not going to stand for him disrespecting the memory of my mother any further.

I pull the stolen phone (I got it from the Wendy's clerk earlier, remember?) out of my pocket and dial 911. The operator quickly answers.

"911. What is your emergency?"

As I keep the gun trained on my father, I explain the situation to her. She immediately recognizes my name, and informs me that the police have been looking for us for a few hours now. She tells me to stand by where I am as officers will be arriving shortly. I hang up the phone and throw it away.

"Cops are on their way."

Collin nods.

"But you," I say as I point off into the distance. "You need to get the fuck out of here."

He seems confused.

"I appreciate the help with this, I really do. Myself and Bree are alive because of you, but we were also put into this position because of you. You stabbed me in the fucking back, and you stabbed Tony in the back as well. How do you think he's going to react?"

Collin nods in agreement.

"I'm sorry, man. The feds had me on some serious charges and they forced me to give them information about you. I had no idea they were relaying it to him."

I'm just glad he didn't know of the situation that happened in Milwaukee.

"It wasn't the feds, at least not the ones you've been dealing with. It was some disgraced former agent trying to win back his badge."

I hold out the gun to him.

"What's this for?"

"They're not going to be happy if I say that I let you go. So, you attacked me and took off."

I hear a siren in the distance. He takes the gun and tucks it in his waistband.

"You'd better get moving."

He extends a hand to me. I hesitate at first, but decide to shake it. After all, he didn't mean for any of this to happen. He turns around and runs off, disappearing behind a building. I take a seat on the ground next to my father.

"It'll find you," he coughs. "It found me early on, and it may not have came to you yet but it'll find you eventually."

"What's that?", I reply.

"The darkness," he says as he grabs my leg, sending a chill up my spine. I push his hand off of me, then shake my head, chalking it up to the delusions of an old man. "I wasn't the first. I won't be the last."

I keep my eyes on the approaching lights. They're not too far away now.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

He doesn't respond. I look at him to see if he's trying to reach for something, but he's still in the same position, lying on his back with his hand on his ribs.

"Dad?"

I lean over and look at his eyes, which are blankly staring off into the distance. I check for a pulse, but there is none. Blood is no longer flowing, which means his heart is no longer beating. His chest isn't rising or falling, and no air is making it's way into this lungs.

My father is dead.

The sirens are on top of us now as the squad cars screech to a stop just a few feet away from me. I raise my hands in the air but keep my eyes on my father as I stand up and turn away from the sound of their voices. I get face down on the ground, spread my arms and feet apart, and lay there as one of them crashes down onto me unjustifiably and violently handcuffs me. And these guys wonder why people fucking hate them so much. I stare at my father as I'm drug to my feet and guided over to one of the police units, where I'm slammed head first onto the hood of their cars and searched. I have nothing on me, which they find out after going through my pockets and checking under my sac. Fags.

"What happened here?", one of them asks me, but I can't say anything. As I watch them check on my father, then signal to each other that he's KIA, I realize that I'm actually happy right now, not shocked.

And then I understand what he meant before he died. The darkness isn't some demon or dark spirit, but the feeling of enjoying the death of someone else. It's killing your father (albeit indirectly) after years and years of wishing him dead, and finally avenging your mother, then smiling afterwards.

What would she think of her son? What would she think of her little boy being carted away by the police with the blood of his own father on his knuckles? What would she have wanted me to do? Sure, I didn't intend to kill him, but I certainly wasn't gentle with him either. What did I expect to happen when I beat up the old man?

The ambulance arrives, and I watch from the back of a squad car as they put him into a black, leather bag, tag it, and throw it onto a stretcher. There are so many cops and reporters here now, all of them trying to get a glimpse of the killer, who in their minds is me.

They don't know who the dead old man on the street is, they just know that he's dead and I'm in the back of the car. I'm the monster, and they're the villagers with their bright torches, snapping photos of me as I sit in chains, terrified. I may as well have bolts in my neck.

I hear Bree's voice out there somewhere, screaming for them to let me go, trying to explain what happened. No one listens. No one cares about what really happened. They have their version of the story, and they're sticking to it. A son has murdered his father in cold blood for no good reason, and they're going to shout it from the top of a mountain.

My mother used to tell me that the truth would always set me free. She'd say that I would get in trouble for telling the truth, but it'd be much worse if I were caught in a lie.

Well, look what happened tonight. I sat here calmly, and I let them take me into custody without a fight. I wanted to tell them the truth about what happened, knowing I would probably be in trouble for stealing a car and threatening a store clerk, but under the circumstances, my actions were justified.

Now I'm going to have to try and find a way out of this hole that I've dug, and I'm going to have to do it with an entire country trying to kick me back in. Because, as it turns out, nobody wants to hear the truth if it's not entertaining. Everyone just wants to be lied to.

 

I'm sitting in a chair that is made of solid steel, but resembles the model of most wooden chairs that you find in dining rooms all around the world. The table in front of me, like the chair, is very plain, but made of solid steel as well. Both pieces of furniture are bolted to the floor.

Me? I'm handcuffed to the table. There's a curved rod welded to the top of it, and the other end of the handcuff (the part that's not connected to me, stupid. Okay, that was uncalled for. I've been here for a while, staring at these white fucking walls, unable to sleep, eat, drink, piss, shit or do any of the things that I'd like to do. Forgive me if I come off as an asshole.) is wrapped around it.

Of course, there's a two-way mirror on the other side of me, but whoever's standing behind it has yet to introduce themselves.

How long have I been here? Ten, maybe twelve hours? I haven't seen a lawyer, gotten a phone call, or been given a chance to use the head. In short, this is fucking awful.

I'm not sure what's happened to Bree either. I know they picked her up, as I saw her at the murder scene (their words, not mine), but I haven't seen or heard squat since then.

There are a few things I can decipher as I appraise this situation. The first is that I am not being interrogated by the police, nor am I inside of a police station. Sure, I should know where I am based on what building I was brought in to, but after they took me away, I was lost in my own thoughts for a while, and therefore wasn't paying attention to much of anything. Right now, I'm inside of an FBI or CIA building, and I'm locked in one of their interrogation (they'd call it "interview" because it sounds nicer) rooms.

The second thing I can assume is that they don't have shit to charge me with, and they probably don't want to charge me with anything anyway. I stole a car to save my own life, and I threatened a Wendy's cashier when she wouldn't give me her phone, a phone I called the police with. Both acts were while I was under duress, and I didn't actually harm anyone, so I'm safe there. Sure, I killed my father (though I'm having trouble believing I beat him to death when I only hit him a few times), but that was clearly self-defense, and they have him on file as one of the most ruthless killers in this country's history. They're making me sit here in an attempt to break me, in the hopes that I'll start spilling my guts in regards to Philadelphia business.

And that, my friends, is why they're taking so fucking long. Eventually, someone is going to come in here, throw a very plump folder with a lot of papers on the desk, and it'll have my name on it. Then they'll sell me some bullshit about how they've got "this" on me, and they've got "that" on me, and if I don't become an informant for them, then I'm going to jail.

The truth is, they don't have shit on me, and they never will. I'm too good, I'm too careful, and up until last month, I'd never even hurt anyone.

Ace Vincent is squeaky fucking clean.

"Seriously people, let's fucking get on with it! It's Thursday and I've got to get on a plane to China ASAP!"

No response. I look at the steel table, and seriously consider slamming my head against it until one of them comes in, but I need to stay healthy. Though my wrestling career seems a bit trivial at this point, it's still my ticket out of Philly and my only chance to get out of Tony's pocket. Beating Steve Jason on Sunday night is still at the top of my to-do list.

The door opens behind me, but I don't bother to look up. I already know what's going to happen. Some piece of shit fed is going to slam the aforementioned folder in front of me and give me the predictable spiel.

I hear high heels. Great, some bull-dike female fed. She should be fun to deal with. The chicks are always the biggest assholes.

"Mr Vincent," she says sternly, or at least as sternly as her delicate voice can pretend to sound. I look up at the mirror so I can see the hideous face that will surely counter the very pretty voice. "I'm Agent Shinn."

"Damn," I blurt out. She shakes her head in annoyance, though she tries to do it with subtlety. She must get that reaction more than she likes. I can only imagine the hurdles that such a beautiful woman has to leap over to be taken seriously in a profession dominated by men. Still, I don't feel too bad for her. She's a fed after all, and therefore, she's the enemy. "They give you fuckers a badge straight out of middle school now or what?"

"I'm the Dougie Howser of the FBI," she says confidently as she walks around to the other side of the table and sets down the dreaded manila envelope, which is even thicker than I envisioned it to be. "I may be young, but I'd advise you not to try to play any head games with me."

I smile. She pulls a chair out from the other side of the table and sits down, still not looking at me, but smirking.

"I'm much smarter than you, and I will fuck with you back."

"Such ugly language coming from such a pretty girl."

She opens the folder, then looks at me nonchalantly.

"Mr Vincent, you are not my first case, and you will not be my last," she says quickly, leading me to believe that this is either rehearsed, or that she's telling the truth. Probably the latter. "You are also not the first handsome man to try and use his charm on me."

I pucker my lips and make my best handsome face. Is that even a fucking term? I've been in this room for too goddamn long.

"I have always been of the opinion that you catch more bees with honey than with vinegar," she says with a smile, before lowering her brow and changing her tone. "But if you keep fucking with me, I'm going to turn into a real cunt."

I raise an eyebrow as she slams a C-bomb down in the room. It nearly makes me shiver. There's just something about that word that makes my skin crawl, and I cuss like a fucking sailor. Hearing it come from this gorgeous woman's mouth adds another level of dirtiness to it, and I feel like a need a shower.

"Alright," I say. "So should I call you Agent Cunt?"

She smiles. The word doesn't seem to bother her, though I nearly vomit after I say it. I may not like it, but I'm just trying to keep the upper hand.

"How about Dookie Howser?", I add with a smile. "After all of that shit you just talked, and the bullshit charges you're about to throw at me, I'd say that the name fits."

She smiles.

"Agent Shinn is my name. I've earned the title, and unless you want me to start calling you names, I'd advise you to stop."

I laugh.

"You're going to call me names?"

I look at the mirror.

"Can I get a fucking professional in here please instead of this fucking fifteen-year-old Twihard?"

"Murderer," she says, and I snap my attention back to her. "Ohh, you don't like that one now, do you?"

She slides a picture across the table towards me and I stop it with my hands. I can't see the face on the body yet, but I already know who it is. They have a picture of Joey Carrelli, and they know that I killed him. As I flip the picture and look at the corpse, I realize that I've never seen this person before.

"What the fuck is this?"

"Hitman," she says, sliding another picture towards me. Once again, I don't recognize the person.

"Baby killer."

The next picture she slides is of a child who's been shot in the head. Obviously, I have no idea who this is or how it happened

"What the fuck is all of this?", I ask angrily. "You trying to frame me?"

She shakes her head and shrugs.

"I don't have to frame you, because you killed all of these people. You're a murderer, Ace. Just like your daddy."

I clench my jaw then slide the pictures back towards her.

"You better shut the fuck up, bitch. I never killed any of these people."

She slides the entire folder towards me and it bursts open. Hundreds of pictures spill out, all of them are shots of dead men, women, and children. Gunshot wounds, burnt flesh, severed jugulars, caved in skulls, and blank eyes all stare at me.

"What the fuck is this?", I ask as I cover my mouth. "Who the fuck are all of these people? Who killed them?"

Agent Shinn looks me in the eyes and points at me.

"You did."

"No!", I scream, slamming my fist on the table, then sweeping my arm across the desk, clearing it of the images.

"Every single one of those souls was killed after you told Tony Sigleone where he could find them."

My eyes dart back and forth as I try to think about something, anything else. My match with Steve Jason (you did this) on Sunday, my (this is your fault) girlfriend, the upcoming (you knew what would happen) NFL season, the assassination of (dead women and children) JFK, but it's there. It's all there, and they're all there, and they're staring me in the face, and now that the evidence is staring me in the face, I can no longer pretend that what I did for a living wasn't bad. I can no longer pretend that finding people wasn't as bad as killing them, because, as it turns out, it is. The guys who dropped the bombs on Japan can't pretend that they didn't kill people by saying that it was actually the bomb, and the bomb can't blame it on the explosion. Everyone involved is responsible, from Tony, to me, to the guys who pulled the trigger.

I look down at the photos and see the face of a little boy. He has the thousand yard stare, and a bullet hole right between his eyes. I can't imagine who would be sick enough to shoot a child in cold blood. I realize that it could've been me. My father would've done this to me. It should've been me. If it would've been me, then all of these people might be alive right now.

"What do you want?", I ask her. "Why are you showing me this?"

"I'm sure that you've been able to justify what you do to yourself because you don't see the end result. You probably believe that only bad people die as a result of your actions, but as you can see, that's not the case."

"They were all bad," I say quietly, shame clouding my thoughts. "I read their rap sheets. Your rap sheets on them."

I point to her, then at the mirror.

"I tracked them with information that came from the fucking Bureau itself. I know they were bad men."

"Is that what Tony told you?"

I look at the mirror. I look at myself. How the fuck could I have been so stupid? How the fuck could I have been so blind?

"We didn't know," he says.

"We should've."

"She's bluffing man. She's trying to fuck with your head."

"No, this is no bluff."

I look back at the pictures, and the faces finally start to register. I see Salvatore Maronicci, a.k.a. Sal Knucks, a former hitman who fucked a made guy's wife. I found him in California, hiding in some shithole apartment with his pregnant wife. I never saw her, but as I scan the pictures, I find a pregnant woman amongst them. There are more names, more faces, more assholes, but for each asshole, there is a woman, or a child staring right back at me. For every guilty party, there is an innocent one.

"We have to do something about this," I tell myself.

"Mr Vincent?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to help me bring down Tony Sigleone. If you help us, I'll ensure that all charges against you are dropped."

"I don't care about the fucking charges."

"Okay," she says uncertainly. "They'll be dropped nonetheless."

"What should I do?"

"You'll be returning to the XWF. As of right now, you are to conduct yourself as you normally would. We'll release you, and then release a statement to the press clearing you of all charges-"

"I'm not like him, you know," I tell her in reference to my father, stopping her mid-sentence.

"No, Ace. I suspect that you're not."

"Tony is just the tip of the iceberg. The real monster in Philadelphia is Yuri Gamburg."

"Well, since you've split up with his daughter, you're not going to be very helpful in going after him."

"Ana will be."

"Who?"

"His mistress, she'll help. I can get to her."

"Yuri is not your concern, Tony Sigleone is. That is, as long as you agree to help me."

"If I help you," I say, staring at the pictures. "If I help you, is he going away forever, or is he going to get off on some bullshit Is he going to give you information and get away with all of this?"

"If you help us," she says, leaning forward. "Then he's going to get the needle."

I nod. I don't have to say anything, she understands what I mean to say.

She stands up, pushes her chair in, then begins to gather up the pictures.

"Wait," I say as she reaches for the one of the ten year old boy, shot in between the eyes. "Can I have that one?"

Shinn looks at the picture for a moment, then turns to me.

"We can't ever make this right," she says, letting her guard down for a moment. "But we can try to make it better."

She hands me the picture. I fold it up and put it in my pocket as she exits the room. I look back at myself in the mirror, expecting him to lecture me yet again, but he is too busy staring at the ground. It appears that he's ashamed as well.

"We can't go back and change anything," I tell him. "All we can do now is make sure that it never happens again."

He looks up at me and nods in agreement.

"Never again."