Witness

18. Tony

In an alternate universe, Tony Mierro was a man with patience. 

He had a nine to five job, he took a three percent pay rise every year with a smile, and he could let the little things go. 

In this universe he had a wife, maybe a six or seven, someone passably pretty but not a woman you'd pause in your step for. He'd be balding, he'd despise his family, as he imagines every other working class man does, and he'd eventually drink himself into an early grave. But none of these things would get to him. 

He'd brush everything off with a huff or a smile or a secretive glance nobody quite understood. He'd have the quiet atmosphere of a serial killer but the patience of a saint. 

(He'd probably beat his wife, but hey - outside of the family, he really did have patience.)

But here, at home, his temper is a constantly lit fuse. 

Burning. Raging. Scorching its surroundings. 

Rage simmered beneath his eyes and filled his mouth with hot acid on even the calmest of days. He had a tongue that bites and an ego that pushed the people around him into the gutters. 

He paced back and forth in his small, dirty living room. His sofa was ripped and full of cigarette burns. His washing machine, filled with damp moldy clothes, was next to the smashed TV. The place looked like a drug den without the cash and hookers, it even had the featured cocaine lines on the glass coffee table. 

Leaning over the table, he blocked one nostril with his finger and sniffed everything he could reach. 

Better make it worth while. 

Damien wouldn't be supplying him shit until James Hartley was dead, buried and forgotten. 

His fingers shook. His eyes were sunken in. 

Tony Mierro was an attractive man a few weeks ago. A lady killer. Someone who could make you look past the danger and talk you into bed after a few cocktails. 

He swept the rest of the coke on the table closer to his nose, and then sucked it all up before slamming his fist down onto the glass. It didn't shatter. It didn't even leave a dent. 

He hit it again. And again. And again until his knuckles bled. He plugged his nostrils one at a time and nasally inhaled for five seconds just to ensure he'd had every ounce of high that he could. Then he hit it once more. 

Cairo was the problem. 

Bitch ex-wife. Bitch problem. 

Damien wouldn't have cut him off if he'd never found out she was fucking that vile teenage-boy-looking cop. 

If he hadn't married her in the first place he'd still be living in the mansion. Trapped him into marriage, trapped him with the baby. Always running away from him and complaining to her friends about him and blocking all of his numbers. Fuck her. 

A knock on his door caused him to hit his knee on the coffee table. He didn't feel it. 

The door handle jiggled. 

"Tony?" A thick Hungarian voice called through the wood. 

Tony spat into an overfilled ashtray and stood up, scratching his left arm as he undid the three deadbolt locks one at a time. His hands shook, but he shoved them into his pockets as he wrenched the door ajar. 

"What?" He barked. 

Viktor Varga stared wordlessly at him with dry, vacant eyes. 

Tony looked left and right in the empty hallway, heard the Italian mother of three shouting orders at her children in the flat across from his, and took two small steps back. Vik pushed past him and into the room, looking down his nose at the mess.