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The evening had been going great. Borderline perfect, even.
Sam and Lucy were both smiling, the former in that beautiful melodious titter I fell in love with all those years ago, and even the latter was quietly huffing or giggling in amusement as Moe regaled some tall tale of our younger days. Despite rolling her eyes exaggeratedly a few times, she did seem to genuinely be enjoying herself again.
Naser couldn’t be there because he was locked down something fierce with his residency, but he was with us in spirit. Wasn’t anything that could be done about it, and frankly, as much as it pained me for him to be gone - especially in such a trying time for Lucy - I was damned proud of the boy for the strides he was taking. He’d do the family so proud, of that I had no doubt.
He was certainly helped by his girlfriend keeping his head screwed on straight. I sure as hell would’ve gotten twisted and turned in all kinds of wrong directions if I hadn’t had Sam helping me keep an even keel during those early days. Even today she keeps me keep my ship in check, as I do hers.
Of course, that’s what I say.
My damned boat’s wheel was ripped from my hands the second Jerry strode out of the kitchen towards Moe. The facade of my good friend visibly hardened. The smile was still holding on his face, but I could immediately tell by Jerry’s rigid, cold, professional stride that something was up.
The man approached Moe, leaned down, whispered something into his ear, and just like that the smile was snuffed out.
I knew what it meant.
I was just waiting for the words.
“Rip. We got’s somethin ta take care of.”
I nodded and stood.
“Don’ worry ‘bout nothin’, girls. Mah boys’ll keep yas enta’tained till we get back,” Moe said, the smile re-forced onto his face.
“Dad?” Lucy asked, voice quiet and guarded.
She wasn’t stupid. Never was. She was rapidly putting the pieces together. I needed to move fast before she tried to interfere.
“It’s nothing to be worried about, Lucy. Me an’ Moe’ll go check things out and make sure everything’s fine,” I answered back, “Everything will be ok.”
I beamed her my most comforting, warm smile that my old, scarred up face could muster. Neither of the girls seemed convinced, but while my daughter’s eyes grew more concerned by the second, Sam simply gave me a firm nod.
Well then.
I guess my first mate has handed over full control of the ship now.
I nodded back, and with that me and Moe made for the front. In short order we were in my car and talking details.
“So?”
“One a’ my boys spotted ‘im driving past yas house. Once would’a been a coincidence, but four times?”
“He’s planning something. I get it,” I growled.
Neither of us were smiling anymore. The masks of moments prior were irrelevant now. It was time to get to work. That little shit had made one hell of a mistake, and it was one I wasn’t going to allow to happen again.
It was for the best that it was one of Moe’s guys that spotted him and not one of the boys from the precinct. If things went through ‘proper’ channels, we’d have all the red tape, processes, and bureaucracy to deal with before we could crush the little cockroach.
Not that those weren’t there for a reason. I knew it in my damned bones they were. For very good reasons.
But this was my daughter we were talking about.
And that piece of shit already hurt her once. I wasn’t going to let him get a chance to do it again.
Even if we did do things by the book, what would we get him for this time? Stalking? Another lenient slap on the wrist? No, not again.
I popped the car into gear and pulled us out of the spot, beginning an overly-fast trip home. Moe was on the phone next to me, device in his hand talking away at his ‘boy’ that had been keeping a silent vigil down the road from our house.
I made a mental note to ensure the guy got something nice later for his diligence.
Our unwanted guest had made another circuit by the house, clearly either staking it out or maybe even working up the nerve to try and actually make a move. All that mattered was he was stupid and arrogant enough to still be hanging around after everything.
Lil’ Tru was a decent drive from our place, but occasional flicking on my vehicle’s lights allowed us to blast through busy intersections and make record time. Even the questionable cab service in town - despite having a nearly global pass form the mayor for ‘minor traffic infractions’ for reasons I still don’t understand - couldn’t make that good of time.
As soon as I pulled off the main road into the neighborhood proper, Moe issued the call. His boy confirmed and began to trail the pickup truck in question around the neighborhood at a comfortable distance. All the while, he kept us updated on their current location.
I knew these streets like the back of my hand and rerouted immediately.
A few more quick turns and suddenly two sets of headlights appeared down the long straight of this section. If he made two more rights, he’d be back in front of my house.
He wasn’t going to make it that far.
“Get ready.”
“Ay’. Do it.”
Moe yanked his seatbelt tight across his chest with one clawed hand and grabbed the door armrest with the other. My foot slammed the gas and the unmarked police SUV’s turbocharged engine roared to life like a freshly awoken and very angry dragon. Squeezing the steering wheel with one hand, the other flipped on the brights as the vehicle thundered dead ahead towards the offender.
With the brights trained on him even at a distance it was easy to see that brown little shit panic as my car screamed down the road at him. He did exactly what we expected him to do; he tried to slam his truck into reverse and escape, but Moe’s boy was already there and love-tapped the rear bumper.
As we neared the prick, I ripped the steering wheel to the side while yanking the brake, causing the rear wheels to swing wide with ruthlessly practiced precision, and pulled us to a stop a scant few feet from the front of his truck with my SUV longways across the residential road.
He was boxed in. Textbook execution.
Without giving him time to react, both of us and Moe’s guy flew out of our respective vehicles and closed in. My adrenaline got the better of me and I hopped across the hood of his truck to reach the driver side door just a fraction of a moment sooner.
He hadn’t fully registered what was happening, but his eyes being as wide as dinner plates produced a momentary visceral, vile glee in my gut.
Gotcha, you piece of shit.
He leaned away as my fist made contact with the driver side window. The safety glass pulverized instantly, and before he could open his eyes again my fist grabbed a wad of his jacket and ripped him out through the freshly opened portal.
He tried to scream, but my free hand found his beak and squeezed it closed in one smooth action as the back of his crest made contact with the asphalt.
Moe’s guy - who I then recognized as Tony - had produced a gun and was squatting by Viktor’s head. Moe was standing idle nearby, positioned just so to prevent any possible eyes from the nearby houses from getting a clear view of the three of us.
The little shitstain went rigid at seeing the blued finish of the handgun aim with an almost nonchalant poise right at his face.
Good, he was starting to understand how many degrees of fucked he was.
Leaning down to him, I kept my jaw tight and let my disgust of him rumble through my chest as I spoke.
“You’re going to shut that fucking mouth of yours, and we’re going to go for a ride. If you so much as blink funny, things will get way worse for you real fast. Am I fucking clear?”
Without even giving him time to respond, I yanked him to his feet and shoved him towards the back of the SUV. Turning to look at what the others were doing, Moe was already in pursuit, while Tony was talking to two other guys I hadn’t even seen arrive in yet another car.
As I harshly coralled our mark into the back seat, I glanced up to see Tony getting back into his own car, while one of the new guys climbed into Vik’s truck. By the time I was back in the driver’s seat, the three vehicles were in a row and awaiting me to take the lead.
Good. Smooth as silk.
I put it into drive and we casually began to head back to Dino-Moe’s as though that whole ordeal hadn’t even happened. Ordinarily, the idea of the filth staining the back seat of my car getting closer to either of my girls would’ve sickened me, but Moe was already on the phone again to get them both out to a nice ice cream place nearby.
By the time we got there, they’d already be closed a little early for the night, and, well.
We made jokes about having ‘guests’ over at Moe’s after hours, but it looked like we were going to turn sarcasm into reality.
I probably should’ve stopped myself at the thought, but frankly the snivelling little shit in the back just made it more and more seem like a good idea the longer I heard him whimper and whine.
“‘Ey,” Moe barked sharply as he ended the call.
The interior of the vehicle was deathly silent aside from a sniffle and the more relaxed rumble of the engine. Moe pivoted in his seat to look at our soon-to-be-solved problem, teeth slightly exposed, and eyes open.
It was a rare occurrence, but damn if it didn’t even get me a little. The effect on our passenger was significantly stronger as I watched in the rear view mirror as his eyes widened, unblinkingly watching the old rex in the passenger seat.
“Shut up.”
Two words firmly commanded were enough that Viktor all but stopped breathing for the rest of the trip. At least I didn’t have to hear the little fucker whinge any longer.
True to his edict, the lights were dimmed inside the restaurant when we arrived. Our little impromptu convoy had taken it a bit slow in order to give everyone time to clear out, and only a few lights in the back seemed to have been left on.
Good.
I turned us into the alleyway entrance with the other vehicles silently following before we pulled to a stop at the back of the place. The service entrance door swung open as we stepped out, and Paulie had closed the distance by the time I was opening the rear passenger door.
The fucker only got one strangled “No!” out before Paulie’s massive hand clamped down on the thing’s beak, quelling any further audible outbursts.
“Hey, don’t disturb the neighbors now, neh?” was all Paulie said before yanking him by his snout out of the vehicle. Tony grabbed his other arm and the collar of his jacket and the pair marched him inside as Moe and I followed.
The vehicles would be handled for us. I knew as much already.
We were focused on more private, important matters at that moment.
The party was ushered into the back room, with wall-to-wall tile floor and a conspicuously located floor drain in the center. Overtop it was a lone folding chair. The fluorescent lights above us hummed. As he was pushed towards the chair, it seemed to finally dawn on him how things were going to go, and Viktor began to thrash and squirm in the vice-like grips of Moe’s employees.
“‘Ey,” Paulie grunted, letting go of the ptero’s beak. “Stop squirmin’.”
Viktor Martin attempted to yell something, only for it to be cut short by a massive fist to the diaphragm, immediately causing the pitiful excuse for a man to double over and start gasping for air. While he was ‘placated’, the boys quickly threw him into the seat and bound his arms behind him.
He managed to suck in enough air to fight through the spasms, his head whipping furiously between the men lashing him in place.
“S-stop! Stop it! What the fuck are you doing! You fuckin’ guidos better leave me alone! I have rights! I-”
Guidos, hm? His real side came out when his feet were put to the fire it seemed. Clearly I’d been an even worse judge of his character than I had originally assumed after the incident.
Well, it was about to be an irrelevant problem soon enough anyway.
I could hear Moe let out a nasty rumbling growl to my side at hearing it as well, but it didn’t matter. I was about to get my pound of flesh, and then he and his boys do what they wanted with the viscera when it was done.
Stepping forward, the movement caught the little creature’s eyes as he re-centered attention on me. I began to close the distance as Paulie and Tony’s hands clamped down on a shoulder each to keep him anchored in place regardless of his squirming. A stationary target.
Almost feels unsporting.
Almost.
“M-M-Mr. Aaron. Ripley!” he squawked, “What’s going on?”
I refused to believe he could be that retarded. The insult of even questioning what was happening caused my barely contained rage to eek through, and I let a fist fly against the side of his face.
He let out a wet, strangled cry in pain as his head snapped to the side. The impact caught him just right and heavily disoriented him, while the hands on his shoulders kept him locked upright.
“You have the fucking audacity to ask that?” I growled.
“W-what? No! No! I just- I wanted to talk to Lucy, sir! We- I- we just gotta talk! I can-”
Another strike, this one directly to his ribs. I twisted my hips with that one and I could feel a pop as my fist connected. That got a proper guttural scream of pain out of him.
“You had your chances. A whole lot of chances. But what did you do?” I fired back rhetorically. “You came into my daughter’s life. You came into my house. You ate with us. I gave you my blessing.”
With each notation, another blow. Another squeal of pain. He spat up blood onto the floor, but we all looked on dispassionately. It wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough to satiate our desire for retribution. Nevertheless, I grabbed his headcrest and lifted his face to look me in the eyes. If how my face felt was any indication, I was sneering at him with enough malice to melt concrete.
“You took her hand in marriage.”
I spat in his face. It felt appropriate.
“And after all that, after we all placed all that trust in you, what did you do?”
While holding his head in place, I landed my fist directly into the dead-center of his snout. I felt the bone give way immediately with a wet crunch as his entire beak, lower and upper, crumpled with the strike. Pulling my fist back, his upper snout bone was bent at an angle, and the lower portion, which was more fragile, was flopping loosely as his head lolled around.
Again I grabbed his crest and forced him to look me dead in the eyes.
He let out a pitiful little whimper as tears rolled down his face.
I leaned in so close that I almost touched his now-gored face.
“You raped her.”
“Gnuh. Gnuh, I- I- diddn’t!” he gurgled.
“You beat her and you raped her you little piece of shit. You festering fucking waste of a person,” I growled.
“Ah diddn’t. I ‘hwear!” he began to sob.
“And even when you somehow got off easy, when the court saw you as a ‘first time offender’ because of that scumbag lawyer you shelled out for, you couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
I let go of his head crest and his head flopped loosely downward, his body being kept pinned in place by Paulie and Tony, who were completely unphased by my actions.
“You came back.” I spat, verbally and once more physically directly onto the top of his head. “You came back to my house. My home. Where the two most precious women in the world are, and you had the gall to try and do God knows what.”
He was trying to speak through his stupid broken face, but whatever the words were supposed to be, they didn’t matter anymore. We needed to wrap up anyway. Sam and Lucy would be done soon and I needed to get them home.
Get them back safely without ever having to worry about this piece of shit cloud hanging over their heads ever again.
“We tried it the right way, and you spat in our faces by weasling out of it and coming right back to where you were no longer welcome. I was willing to let things be, let the system dole out a just punishment. The system had its chance, and clearly it failed to make a worthwhile person out of you. But you aren’t really a person anymore now, are you?”
I reached down and slid my hands around his neck and began to squeeze. His legs began to thrash as his eyes bulged.
“You’re just a problem to clean up. And then Lucy never has to think about you ever again.”
His legs uselessly kicked against my knees. I would feel that in the morning, but it didn’t matter. It needed to be done. It was a small price to pay for my family’s safety. For my daughter’s safety.
For Lucy.
“We will never need to think about you aga-”
____________________________________________________________________________
The gentle thud of the speed bump roused me from my thoughts. Blinking a few times, my brain shifted gears as my cognizance returned to the physical world. Sam was pulling us into the parking lot of Holy Stone Hospital. She was pushing the boundary of reasonable speed in a parking lot, but it wasn’t worth raising a fuss on.
What mattered was that Lucy was checked on as soon as possible. The car lurched to a stop and I sprung out through the door before Sam even killed the engine. Pausing for a brief moment for Lucy to not be pressed against the door, I popped it open gently and extended a hand to her.
She paused for only a minute before taking it and I gingerly pulled her out of the vehicle. Not enough to force her, only enough to guide her along. I had to give some assistance, as she was barely aware of her surroundings it seemed. She’d largely retreated into herself and stopped talking since we found her on the front porch.
Between that and the obvious injuries, it was enough to know what she said was the truth, but I knew that if we were going to get the offender behind bars so my daughter could be safe, then we needed to do things properly.
By the book.
The sooner we acted, the better chance we had to make sure the case against him would be absolutely airtight. It gnawed at me that I had to all but force her through all this while she was still nearly in shock, but it needed to be done.
The doors of the main entrance whisked open as we entered the brightly lit lobby. A few medical staff were already there and waiting and, as much as it pained me to let her go for even a moment, I whispered a gentle but firm affirmation that they’d help her, and released her into their care.
She was led away to be checked up on and any and all possible evidence to be gathered. The woman at the main desk gave us some instructions on where to go to wait for her, somewhere on the second floor.
Sam was numbly clinging to me, lost in her own world as I had been once all the necessary calls had been made ahead of our arrival. All that was left was to wait. I held my wife’s tiny hands in my own to give her the grounding and support she needed.
She was a kind, beautiful soul, and I knew the events of this night had rocked her understanding of the world to its foundations. While the dark thoughts and hypotheticals in my own head brought some nascent catharsis, I knew better than to let myself dwell on them.
I needed to be present and aware for my wife. And when Lucy returned, for her.
“It’s OK, Sam. She’ll be OK,” I offered.
We both knew nothing about the revelations tonight was OK, but it needed to be true. A comfortable lie so she wouldn’t fall apart.
After a brief further quiet, she asked the obvious, yet baffling question we both had been thinking non-stop since we found Lucy.
“Why would Vik do this to her? He’s such a nice man…”
I didn’t have an answer. Other than the obvious one, that was: That we didn’t really know him. That he wasn’t nice. That he had deceived us and he hurt our daughter. That he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing that had been lying to us for years, and we were none the wiser with wool over our eyes.
That we failed our daughter yet again.
But I couldn’t admit to that. Not tonight. Not when the wounds were raw and our family was holding on by a thread.
So I gave a non-answer. The only one we could accept.
“I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know.”
Whatever kind of a person Viktor Martin had been– Had become? Had been all along? None of it mattered anymore. He was a danger. A monster.
One that would be kept from me and mine at any and all costs if I had a say in it.
Despite suppressing them, the silence led to me warring with myself over vengeance versus proper justice. I knew what the right answer was, even if I hated admitting it.
We had to put that little piece of shit behind bars and far, far away from Lucy. To make that happen, I couldn’t take matters into my own hands. I knew better. I was better. I wouldn’t stoop to his level.
Even if I felt like a failure of a father for it in the moment. Wished I could take immediate revenge. Wished I could just give into the paternal instinct in my head that screamed for me to destroy that shit who beat and violated– God I hate even thinking about the word– my daughter. Wished I could act out the perverse, dark thoughts I’d lost myself into a short while ago.
But no.
No, that wouldn’t help Lucy or Sam.
I needed to be Commissioner Ripley Aaron. Stalwart father and husband. Law-abiding citizen. Not some shoot-from-the-hip vigilante asshole.
That said…
There were options available to help make sure he wasn’t a problem ever again without falling into the abyss that was whispering to me.
I lifted my head from the top of my wife’s and pulled my phone back out, before deftly punching in a number I knew by heart. Not in the contacts. Never in the contacts. It wasn’t that it was illegal, exactly, but it was undeniable that Moe had connections and had extended offers.
For famiglia.
I’m just upset I needed to utilize it.
It rang twice before someone picked up.
“Yea? Wha’dya ya wanna orda’?”
It took only a moment for me to remember the code phrase.
“Hey yeah, do you guys sell mango trees?”
The line crackled with the idle noise of the phone being put down and I waited. It took several minutes, as no doubt the old rex had been asleep, but his voice came through clear and awake. And slightly annoyed.
“... at this houah– Whose dis!?”
“Hey. It's Rip. I know it’s late, this is important. Got a favor to ask. Need some eyes on a perp, off the books stuff. Just this weekend should be fine.”