Witness

2. Tony

In an alternate universe, Tony Mierro was a star athlete.

He had blue eyes and blonde hair and he was not born into a family bred for violence. In this universe he was popular at school, not a dropout. He got average grades paired with a scholarship to the university of his choice, and he certainly didn't start selling drugs at thirteen.

Sometimes he wondered what would've happened if he was born to different parents, in a richer part of the broken city that sucked out his soul. If he would've been a businessman, or a paramedic, or a football player. He was always good at football.

He wouldn't have played for a shit team either - none of those ones that had bookies in their back pockets and a manager with a bigger love of watching men shower after the match rather than the match itself. 

His own company wouldn't have gone amiss. He would've run it to the ground eventually, with the drugs and the women and the overspending. Still, he'd never know.

Because here, at home, he did start selling drugs at thirteen. In this universe, he is a thug.

His father, a dirty bastard from the gutters of London, taught him how to shoot a gun when he was eight. He put his grubby fingers over Tony's little ones, pushed them into the hole above the trigger, and them made him aim it between his brothers eyes.

This is Damien's lesson, his father had said.

Tony didn't understand. Although he didn't understand a lot about Damien, his older brother, and the strained relationship he had with their father. They may have shared a bedroom but they did not share much beyond that.

Later, when Damien had learned whatever lesson putting a gun to someone's skin taught them, his father took Tony into the woods and they shot at birds. Pigeons. They got away with it for an hour before the pigs were called.

(Always the pigs, never the police - his father did not teach him that word.)

His father was arrested. He was always arrested for something, always on bail or house arrest or a wanted man. A few days in jail and he'd be back out again though; Tony knew that each and every time. They had slippy fingers, couldn't keep a grasp on him long. 

Some days he'd wait for his father's return by the window. 

For hours and hours. Even on day's he wasn't guaranteed his release - sometimes he'd get out unexpectedly. Some associate of his would've made bail. (Or paid off the cops; both were equally as likely.) 

Damien never joined him at the window. He was rarely ever home. 

On those days, the endless days of waiting for something not guaranteed, he especially liked when it rained. When the water pounded against the glass and forced its way past his eardrums, deafening. On those days it felt like the water was in his soul, like if he didn't keep hearing the rain he would drown in the silence it left behind. 

It always seemed to be raining in London. 

London was the sort city built to look glum, with its rain and its poverty and its houses crammed into whatever space wasn't taken up by a skyscraper office building meant for the ultra-wealthy. You know the kind - the one's who suck the poor dry, avoid their taxes and don't put any of their accumulated wealth back into the economy. 

There were two sides to London and both of them always looked fucking dull. Always grey, always wet, always disappointing. 

Perfect for a thug. 

Never shy of grey corners to hide in, or dodgy characters in back alleys to cut a deal with. 

Each side held a different class; the rich, and the people who desperately wanted to be them.