Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
VanDinn is lit by a bulb that hangs on a very deliberate length of cable from the ceiling. The entire scene has been staged to create drama. If Angelo had used the lighting that came standard with the building, the whole place would be brightly lit with a fluorescent glow. That would ruin the horror tableau laid out before us. Instead, he’s ensured that there’s just a single light that illuminates the oddness and casts everything else in deep shadow. Everything he does is intentional.
Angelo opens the door and gets out of the car, leaving me behind in the back seat. I stay where I am. There is nowhere for me to run. Nowhere more for me to go than poor Mr VanDinn. I do not want to be a part of this. I don’t want to see it, or hear it either.
Hiding inside the vehicle, I know I have to witness as much as possible for the purposes for future prosecutions. I can’t shy away from anything Angelo and Bobby do. I have to not only watch, but take careful notes, committing all these events to memory.
I find myself sliding forward to the very edge of the back seat, staying technically inside the shelter of the vehicle, while exposing myself more fully to whatever horrors are about to come.
“You must be hungry, Mr VanDinn,” Angelo says, his tone cordial and his intention dark.
Bobby gets out of the driver’s seat, carrying the box of cupcakes, and the bottle of orange soda. He is smiling more broadly than I have ever seen him smile before. He is quite handsome when he smiles. If only it weren’t out of pure malevolence.
VanDinn’s eyes dart to Bobby, and he pales a little further. I am now almost certain that the injuries he has sustained so far are from Bobby. It’s not that Angelo wouldn’t beat the hell out of someone, it’s that he would be more methodical about it.
I have to assume that this is some attempt at the polar antonym of blackmail. They must want something from VanDinn, something they are attempting to intimidate him into giving them.
“You have to let me go, Vitali. You know you can’t kill me.” VanDinn doesn’t bother to talk to Bobby. I wouldn’t either. Angelo is the master who holds Bobby’s leash.
“Not kill you, no, of course not.” Angelo sets the box of cupcakes in front of the bound and bloodied VanDinn, carefully moving the little pink plastic tea set pieces out of the way to make room for it on the table. “I am well aware that you are what you imagine to be untouchable. I cannot kill you. But I can take you apart. The question you must ask yourself this afternoon, Mr VanDinn, is do you want to eat a cupcake, or do you want to eat something else?”
VanDinn shoots him a look of pure horror. I feel the same creeping awfulness, and I am very, very glad that Angelo decided to spare me in his own twisted way.
Angelo follows the strange and frightful question with a clarifying statement.
“I cannot kill you. But I can geld you, VanDinn.
“Christ…” The word escapes me as a soft whimper. Angelo is not looking directly at me, he is at a three-quarter turn from me, but I see his eyes flick very briefly back toward the vehicle where I am now cowering.
VanDinn is a very bad man. The sort of man that would have to be kept in solitary confinement in prison if his many and varied crimes were known. Angelo has chosen to humiliate and belittle him, and now I am almost certain he intends to mutilate him.
“It is a pity that you were correct earlier. I cannot kill you. There are too many who need you. However, I can absolutely punish you. I can make every moment of your life a living hell from which you are desperate to escape and yet cannot.”
“I can kill myself,” VanDinn says.
It’s astonishing that Angelo has done nothing besides put a box of confectionary in front of VanDinn, and yet he already has the man willing to end himself.
“Not an option I would encourage you to take. If you think I am a devil, imagine what true devils await you on the other side, VanDinn. Men like you and I must cling to life as we can, knowing what dark treasures we must have stored up in the hereafter.”
Angelo reaches into his pocket and pulls out a very elegant and well-made switchblade. It’s a street weapon, but in his hand, it looks like a fine tool. Angelo warps the world around him, makes what should be common and basic somehow elegant and admirable. I am watching two criminals shake down another criminal. There should be nothing here to engage me any more deeply than a superficial judgement. But Angelo has made this art.