Witness

7. Tony

In an alternate universe, Tony Mierro was a family man. 

He kept his wife, Cairo, and they raised Jordan (albeit with a different, stronger name) together. Every Sunday they had dinner with his parents and Damien, because Damien was a family man in this universe too. 

Tony was only six months old when his mother left. He doesn't even know what she looked like, all of the photos of her were burned alongside her possessions, alongside the very memory of her. He couldn't conjure an image of her in his mind even if he looked at a photo of every single woman in the world.

Damien, however, was seven. 

Seven is an impressionable age. Children develop attention spans at age seven; their motor skills are vastly improved; they can dress themselves, tie their own shoes; attend school. A person can remember 60% of the events that happened to them when they were seven, and Tony had no doubt that Damien remembered their mother. 

He had been fed bits and pieces of her. Whore. Drug addict. Too young to be a mother. Too old to go back to school. Useless.

Richard got cagey whenever Tony brought her up, so Tony stopped bringing her up. 

Thus her memory died with Richard. 

Tony regularly had to accept a lot of truths about Damien and one of them was that he was a closed book, sealed with a million locks and duct tape and whatever else you could tie something up with. Somewhere beyond those locks was his mother, but Damien would never open up enough to let her out. He'd never know who she truly was. 

All he had left were Richard's words. Whore. 

This was one of the easier truths, believe it or not. 

He'd never had a mother to love and he didn't need one now either. 

One of the more difficult truths, though, was that Damien did not like fuck ups. He didn't like a lot of things - his nerves were constantly grated, constantly on edge - but he trusted his men to get things done. To do it right. 

'Fuck up' was not in Damien's vocabulary. 

He didn't leave wiggle room for anyone. If you were asked to do something then you'd better get that thing done, exactly as it was asked of you. This amount of drugs here, this person owes this much money. Debt equals debt. Job equals job.

Death equals death. 

Tony turned up the newscast channel and sank back into his plush leather seat, biting down on his thumbnail until it split in half. 

"-attempted murder of James Hartley, a thirty one year old police officer from London."

The skin around his nail began bleeding. Tony poured whiskey over the open wound before pouring a generous serving into his own mouth.

"Attackers beat the police officer, a detective inspector, almost to death before burying his body in a local cemetery. The extent of his injuries has not yet been announced, but we do know that he remains in critical condition."  

Attackers, plural. They thought Tony was multiple people - enough rage to fill a room, enough to fill a country, probably. Part of him was deeply satisfied with that. 

The satisfaction couldn't last. 

Critical condition was not good enough. 

Tony Mierro had exponentially fucked up. He'd never fucked up so bad so big and he had no idea how Damien would react to the news, but it would definitely be negatively. 

He began pacing the room. 

The options were vast but all stupid. He could find out what hospital he was in, sneak in and finish off the job. He could get to Cairo first, warn her not to let him talk if he woke up - but the thought of that, of her protecting him - he threw the TV remote against the screen, watching the pretty reporter disappear as it fractured with the impact and she turned into static.