Dark Vengeance by Kristi Belcamino (libby ebook reader .txt) 📗

It was hard to comprehend.

He’d been so damn careful. But somehow this asshole had figured out who he was and where he was. It was nearly inconceivable. But it had happened.

And now he was being ordered around like a fucking child. X didn’t follow orders.

X didn’t like being told what to do. Neither did Joseph. Never had. That’s why Joseph had done what he’d had to in order to create this life for himself. That’s why he’d become X.

That’s why he would kill himself before he went to prison. That’s why he wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone and anything that got in his way.

The thought of being told when to sleep, eat, and shit, was the worst sort of hell he could imagine.

As a young boy—as Joseph—he’d had enough of that to last a lifetime. His mom controlled every single thing he did. No wonder his bio dad hadn’t stuck around long enough to meet him.

His mother didn’t have to work because of the family trust, so instead she made running—and ruining—Joseph’s life her full-time job.

From the time he was a toddler, Joseph had had a regimented schedule.

The day began with a bath, which involved hair washing, scrubbing until his skin was red, brushing his teeth, flossing and then dressing in clothes that had been laid out the night before. Only then was he allowed to have some milk and breakfast.

After eating, he was required to watch an educational video and practice the alphabet before he could have an hour of “play.” The play involved a rotating set of educational toys that his mother had researched as age-appropriate for him.

Only after that hour, was he allowed to have a “potty break” to go poop.

After being forced to wear poopy pants for the entire day when he couldn’t wait for the “potty break,” Joseph eventually learned how to train himself to poop on demand—even if it meant his stomach hurt so bad it brought him to tears.

The rest of Joseph’s day, until bedtime, was just as strictly regulated.

It involved educational activities but also piano lessons and Chinese language classes. His mom would pipe Chinese language tapes through speakers in his room during naps and night time.

When he started elementary school—a Chinese immersion school–Joseph thought that he finally would have the freedom he dreamed about. The kind of freedom he’d read about in early books or been able to watch during his one hour a week of regular cartoons. He usually chose to watch a cartoon featuring a little bald boy who had what seemed to be a dream life with dream parents who doted on him and let him live a life making his own choices.

And while Joseph did enjoy utter freedom at school, he still had to go home to his mother every day.

Eventually, as a pre-teen, Joseph managed to convince her to knock before entering his room. It was the result of his mother walking in on him masturbating—in full ejaculation. He saw her look of horror, and it made him feel powerful.

When she gasped and closed the door, he threw a book at the door and shouted that she should knock.

To his surprise, she never mentioned the incident. Not once. But from then on, he kept his door closed, saying he was doing homework, and she seldom disturbed him, unless it was dinner time. And when she came to announce it, she always knocked.

It was the most freedom he’d ever had at home.

Joseph realized early on that the key to keeping her off his back was conformity. As long as he kept straight A’s and did well in his piano practice, she backed off.

But inside, he was bristling. Inside, a torrential storm was brewing.

X was forming in the womb, eating up the hate that Joseph felt, feeding on the shame and pain that had nowhere else to go.

With Joseph’s extreme discipline, he could finish his homework each night easily. That meant he had hours on hand to do whatever he wanted behind his closed door.

At first, he spent most of that time masturbating, simply because he loved thinking about how horrified his mother had been. Plus, it felt good—amazing really.

But eventually he found other ways to amuse himself online.

Mostly it involved pretending to be someone he wasn’t with girls who lived far away.

He’d quickly found that girls who didn’t go to his high school and who didn’t know how odd and socially awkward he was, found him attractive.

Really attractive. They’d send him nude photos or get on Facetime with him showing him their bodies as he masturbated.

That’s when he learned every skill that would birth the man he was today:

X. King of an island. With nubile young women at his beck and call. All for the price of a drug fix.

Sure, he was a fugitive, but he’d already been here six years.

If the U.S. government hadn’t found him by now, he wasn’t going to worry.

And he hadn’t worried. Until he got the email.

The bastard knew who he was and was going to blow up Joseph’s life unless Joseph did exactly as he was told.

X slammed his laptop lid closed.

As much as he hated being told what to do, he knew he would do as he was asked and then go back to his life.

He really had no choice.

6

A few minutes after Keiki disappeared on the motorcycle, Arrow grabbed his surfboard and said, “Come on, the waves are macking.”

“Yeah!” someone said. There was an excitement in the air. The waves were massive, so I figured that’s what they were talking about.

The first shimmer of light shone on the water from the east.

The group moved as one, standing and plucking surfboards off the sand, and then they were in the water, paddling out to the break.

As the flames of the bonfire died down, I sat facing the water watching the surfers gracefully swoop across the waves.

It was mesmerizing.

I thought about the surfboard propped against one wall in Rose’s kitchen and could imagine Rose gracefully navigating the