Witness

29. Tony

In an alternate universe, Tony Mierro was a man who could control his impulses. 

He could give you a story, as always. 

He could pretend he was that star athlete, or that family man who hated his wife, or something else normal and super fucking boring. But Tony doesn't want to be these people and it is certainly obvious that here, in this universe, he does not have control over his impulses.

Here are the things that Tony does have:

He has friends that are forced to respect him and a brother that hates him and an ex-wife that can't stand the sound of his name. 

He has a prissy little video-game obsessed son that's loaded with his DNA but does not display any of the bests parts of who he is. 

He has this prison. This... padded, decorated, painfully quiet prison, that Damien calls home. His elder brother may have a mansion, but it is filled with paintings and rugs and empty fucking space. It has TV's that don't work, vodka bottles that were emptied long ago, and bedrooms that haven't seen the light of day in weeks. 

Damien Mierro, seemingly, does not care about the finer things in life. Tony does. 

So bored. 

Numb. Tediously trapped in this huge house with no entertainment what-so-ever. 

Damien sells cocaine, does he? Then where the fuck is it? 

He had been through Damien's bedroom, poured drawer contents onto floors, thrown books across rooms, pulled up a floorboard or two. Fuck, he had threatened Vik and Bence with blunt kitchen equipment more times than he could count. 

The sweating did not equal addiction. 

Nor did it equal the biggest come down of all time. 

It just meant anger. Sizzling on the very edge of his fingertips, burning each end of a loose string until they met in the middle and caused an explosion, shattering the walls around him. 

White walls. Dull furniture. Dark rooms. 

Damien, never anywhere Tony thought he would be. 

"What are you doing now?" Bence sighed, forever tired of him. 

Tony's head near exploded. 

He pulled up more floorboards and emptied more drawers and picked at more of his skin. That string burned and blistered and shriveled until Bence sighed once more and Tony himself became the fuse, throwing his body that vexing sound and taking the twin down in one clean swoop. 

Hands bloodied and inexplicable rage satisfied, Tony Mierro walked the hallways of the quiet Mierro mansion and laughed at his brother for leaving him with only one obstacle to overcome. 

With nobody else around to beat to a pulp, he walked out of the front door with a smile across his face, leaving it ajar for Damien to find later. 

Let beggars rob him blind. Let the police raid him. 

Tony didn't care. 

Truly, Tony cared for nothing. For no one. 

He had not let the doctors diagnose it, nor had he let his father see it. Sometimes he thought that Damien knew. Could sense it, or smell it on him; the way that Damien could scout out an unloved teenager in need of a father figure and twist them into a cheap business asset. 

The ex-wife, obviously, was a delirious moment of... not weakness, but something. Delusion. 

He'd go there now. To Cairo's house. He'd bang on the door, or huff and puff and blow her house down. But she probably wouldn't be there, not since he'd been released, and Damien refused to let one of his dogs find her again, said it was for Tony's own good.