Dark Wish (House of Sin 1)

He steps out from behind me and grabs the man’s chin, who immediately jerks and resists. His face contorts, but the man has no tears left to cry.

“You think that I would do this to an innocent person?” my father asks. When I don’t reply, he adds, “Of course not. Men like him deserve all the pain they receive. He and so many others are part of the problem, part of the disease spread all over this earth.”

“Disease?”

He turns his head back to me, wearing a vile, diabolical grimace on his face. “Sin.”

Sin … Like the church kind of sin?

But why would my father do this? There are laws in place to punish those who commit crimes. “We have police for that, don’t we?” I ask.

“No!”

SLAP!

The sudden smack against my cheeks makes all the noise inside my head disappear. I’ve known this stinging pain for so long, yet I’ve never gotten used to it.

“The police merely take someone into jail. They don’t make them see the error of their ways. Not even with their silly programs,” he rants. “And who do you think pays the police, huh? The working class? Politicians? Only sometimes. No … the real power lies …” He fishes the man’s wallet from his pocket and opens it up, taking out a few dollar bills. “In this.”

“Money?” I ask, finding this all hard to believe.

What does money have to do with punishing the people who committed crimes? Does he get paid to do it? Is that what this is?

“People pay you to hurt others?” I try to insinuate.

When he raises his hand again, I raise mine to protect myself, and he stops midair.

He sighs out loud. “The people who own the money are in charge of this world. You think the police can do anything against those who hold the world in the very palm of their hands? Of course not,” he says, averting his eyes. “They buy out their sins. They own the police.”

“So what do you do?” I ask.

“I work … for those who do not consider incarceration to be enough, for those who do not want their family’s sins to become public knowledge,” he answers, clearing his throat. “We work for the most powerful families in the world. And when they find that harm has been done, they send these criminals directly to us.”

He makes it sound as though I already work here. As if I’m as much a part of his schemes as he is.

But I’m not sure I want any part of this.

My father quickly snags something off the table to the side, grabs my shoulder, and forces me to look at him as he stuffs it into the palm of my hand. When I open my hand and see the blade of a knife, my fingers begin to tremble.

I gasp. “No.”

“No?” My father’s brows rise, but not in a mocking way. It’s more in a daring way, as though he’s threatening me with just a single look.

But I won’t be swayed. Not without proper cause. Not even when the palm of his hand could strike me at any time. I’m not afraid of pain. I’m only afraid of what it would do to me, to my soul, if I made the wrong choice.

So I lift my head high and stand proudly as I gaze at my father towering over me, and say with strength in my voice, “Tell me what he did.”

A tepid but diabolical smile spreads on his lips. “This man …” He leans over and whispers into my ear the very words I wished I’d never heard.

Words that would make any man, woman, or child scream in agony.

Words that ignite your heart into blazing fury until it wants nothing more than to burn anything within its vicinity.

Children. Hundreds. Thousands. Used until they were innocent no more, then slaughtered like animals, leaving nothing but brittle bones for the longing parents wishing their child would come home.

Nothing. Nothing compares to this pain. Not even the searing sun blinding your eyes while your insides were pecked out by vultures.

“There is only one way to make a criminal atone,” my father says. His voice shifts in a way I’ve never heard before, like it’s twisting and contorting as he speaks, almost like a nightmare come true. And if I spoke now, my voice would sound exactly the same.

This is what he wanted me to know. To experience.

The violence, the rage, the perverted reality of our world culminating into one single moment in time when the sinner is not given a second chance, a comforting cell, time spent waiting on a clock ticking by to be free and do it all over again.

No. The pain ends now. It ends here … with me.

“Pain is punishment. Punishment for the unjust, the unworthy, so that they may confess and repent. And if not … they will burn, as they deserve,” Father mutters as he pushes me toward the man, my blood boiling as my hatred seeps deep into my bones. “Now give this man what he is owed.”