Author's Note
Ah yes—Chapter 14.
Otherwise known as "What Not To Do If You Want to Impress a Mafia Boss." Spoiler alert: beheading teenage girls and name-dropping Rocco Mancini like you're applying for a gym membership is a very bad idea.
If you're looking for character growth, you won't find it here. These boys have already peaked—and it was downhill, fast, straight into a soundproof room with classical music and a man who owns more scalpels than spoons.
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The office was silent in the way only power could make it—dense, motionless, heavy with the weight of expectation. Late sunlight slanted through tall windows, casting sharp-edged shadows across the polished wood floor. Rocco Mancini sat behind his desk, the quiet pulse of a ticking wall clock the only sound between breaths.
He wasn't looking at anything in particular. Just thinking. Or waiting.
The door opened. Carefully.
A capo stepped in, still young enough to sweat under pressure but smart enough to know when to keep his voice low. He hesitated in the doorway, not daring to move past the threshold until Rocco acknowledged him.
He didn't.
"Boss," the capo said finally, clearing his throat. "We—we have a situation."
Still nothing.
The capo glanced at the floor, collecting his words. "Three boys. Nineteen, maybe twenty. They showed up at the garage about an hour ago asking for you."
Now, Rocco blinked. Just once.
"They said they did something. Something big. To prove themselves."
"What?"
The capo hesitated. "They slaughtered someone."
Silence fell again. But this time, it was colder.
"Who?"
The capo shifted. "Two girls. Teenagers. Thirteen, fourteen at best. Twins."
Rocco's posture didn't change. But the air did. It thinned.
"How?"
"They cut their heads off," the capo said, and his voice cracked just slightly at the end. "Burned the place. Filmed it. They said—" he stopped, looked down, then forced it out. "They said it was in your name. That it was to honor you."
Nothing moved. Not even the clock.
Rocco rose slowly from his chair. He walked to the tall window, hands behind his back. He stood there for a moment, staring out at the city with an expression carved from marble.
When he spoke, his voice was almost gentle.
"They used my name to murder children."
Not a question. A statement.
He turned, eyes like ice.
"They thought that would earn them something."
The capo didn't speak. He barely breathed.
Rocco moved back to his desk and sat. The ticking clock resumed its rhythm, impossibly loud now.
"Take them to Taz," he said. "Unharmed."
He picked up a pen, tapped it once against the desk. Then added:
"Don't speak to them. Don't look at them. Don't even remember their names."
A pause.
"Tell Taz I want them to understand."
Another pause. Quieter still:
"and end it when I say so."
Capo nodded. "Sir"
Tazs lab and procedure room
The steel door opened without a sound. Taz didn't believe in theatrics. He didn't need echoing footsteps or creaking hinges to assert control. Control was in the details—and in this place, everything obeyed.
He stepped inside the holding chamber with two things: a keycard and a clipboard. No weapon. No words.
The three boys had already been dosed. Light sedation. Enough to keep their limbs loose, their minds foggy, but not enough to dull awareness. Taz had calibrated the dose to the milligram.
They lay slumped against the far wall, blinking slowly, confused. Not groggy in the way sleep makes you groggy, but chemically untethered—like waking up underwater.
Taz didn't look at their faces. Names didn't matter. Identity was irrelevant. He only saw bone structure, weight distribution, and response time. Data.
He pressed a button beside the door. Classical music filtered in through hidden speakers—soft, hollow, like memory bleeding through a cracked wall. Something familiar. Tchaikovsky, maybe. He didn't care.
They twitched.
One tried to speak. Taz didn't acknowledge it. Instead, he crouched by the first metal ring in the wall, tested its tension, then moved to the second. Three anchors. Reinforced steel. Welded. He had supervised the installation himself.
He rolled the first boy by the arm. Ankles first. The cuffs clicked into place with a surgical quiet. No bruising. No over-tightening. Precision was not cruelty.
The second one fought a little. Taz didn't respond. He adjusted the cuffing technique. Firmer pressure on the joint, shift the leg, correct the angle. The body followed instruction. The mind would catch up later—or not at all.
The third boy whimpered. Taz didn't pause.
He moved without wasted motion, each gesture part of a rhythm he didn't have to think about. Left ankle. Right. Lock. Move on. Clipboard in hand, he made notes as he walked. Heart rate. Skin tone. Pupil response.
He dimmed the lights by five percent. Just enough to tire the eyes, not enough to rest them. The music looped.
When he stepped out of the chamber, he didn't look back. The door sealed shut behind him with a low, final hiss.
They weren't prisoners. They were variables.
The experiment had begun.
Taz sat hunched over the observation desk, lab coat wrinkled, one sock halfway off his foot, and a black pen clenched between his teeth like a cigarette he'd forgotten to light. His hair had clearly lost a fight with sleep and been left unrepaired.
The clipboard in front of him was already littered with his signature scrawl: neat where it mattered, chaotic where it didn't. Neurochemical notes tangled with side remarks and a few doodles of spinal columns.
Through the reinforced glass, he observed them like specimens in a petri dish.
Subject 1: trembling. Subject 2: crying. Subject 3: flatlined emotionally—at least until the music looped again.
He clicked his stopwatch. Scribbled again.
"Subject 2 crying again. Inconclusive whether it's guilt, regret, or boredom. Will reassess when hydration reaches critical."
He shifted his glasses, pulled his magnifying lens down, and leaned forward with a slow sip of tea that had gone cold two hours ago. He didn't care.
More scribbles.
"Subject 3 exhibiting dissociation. Possibly emotionally catatonic. Or just very, very stupid."
He marked a box. Underlined a section labeled neurological threshold.
The music changed to Chopin—again. Predictable. He made a note:
"Loop #12. Same pattern: subtle tremor left hand, gaze fixation, breath hitch. Possibly linked to unresolved mother issues. Or maybe Chopin really is that annoying."
A soft chime blinked on the monitor. Heart rate spike. Subject 1.
Taz didn't smile, but the corner of his mouth twitched—just once. He adjusted the sound feed and murmured:
"Excellent. We're learning."
He clicked the pen. The red ink bled onto a margin filled with notes.
"Next test: reduce light exposure by 10%. If they start speaking to the wall again, consider naming it."
The soft click of the door startled him.
He didn't flinch—Taz never flinched—but his pen froze mid-scribble, and his eyes flicked up over the rim of his glasses.
"Jesus," he muttered. "You move quieter than most gases."
Skylar stepped inside, hands in the pockets of her oversized jacket, eyes already scanning the monitors. Her boots echoed once, then nothing. She knew the rhythm of this place. She'd been here before. Taz hadn't expected her today—and that alone was enough to unsettle him slightly more than the screaming ever did.
"I knocked," she said with a shrug. "You didn't answer. Thought maybe you were mid-murder."
"I don't murder," he said flatly, clicking his pen closed. "I observe."
She wandered closer, peering at one of the monitors.
Skylar sat down perched on the edge of her chair, eyes fixed on the monitor where Subject 1 was sweating through his shirt and losing the last of his dignity.
She blew a bubble with her gum, let it snap, then asked casually:
"Alright, science boy. What'd they do?"
Taz didn't look up.
"Raped and beheaded two thirteen-year-old girls. Filmed it. Called it a tribute to Roc."
Skylar's jaw moved, slow and stiff.
"…Fuck."
Silence.
Then she blinked, let out a breath, and muttered:
"And here I was hoping this was about unpaid parking tickets."
Taz adjusted the heart rate monitor on Subject 2. Calm as ever.
"Nope. Just your classic 'sexual assault, murder, and unsolicited shout-out to a mafia boss' combo."
Skylar laughed—dry and humorless.
"Bold strategy. Let's see if it pays off."
Taz tapped a note onto his clipboard.
"Subject 3 is disassociating. Or possibly thinks he's back in high school gym class. Hard to tell."
Skylar crossed her arms.
"Do you ever wonder how humanity's still standing?"
Taz finally looked at her.
"Every single day."
She tilted her head toward the speakers.
"Play Vivaldi. No one deserves dignity after that kind of stupidity."
Taz blinked once.
"I was thinking Ligeti. Something chaotic. Fitting."
Skylar popped her gum again.
"Perfect. Let their final moments sound like a haunted violin convention."
Taz clicked his pen.
"Noted."
Subject 2 was crying again. Subject 3 had begun talking to himself in a loop.
"Are they always this loud?" she asked, squinting.
"Not always," Taz said. "But grief is stubborn. It likes to echo."
Skylar leaned over his shoulder, eyes flicking to the clipboard.
"You wrote 'possibly mother issues or Chopin-induced psychosis'?"
"I stand by it."
She grinned. "You're a freak."
He looked up at her, deadpan. "You're in my lab on a Sunday watching three guys lose their minds to piano music. Pot, kettle."
She gave a one-shoulder shrug, then nodded toward Subject 1. "That one's gonna snap first."
Taz made a note.
"Skylar votes Subject 1. Statistical irrelevance, but entertaining."
She laughed softly and sat down in the spare chair beside him, pulling one knee up to her chest. No judgment in her eyes. Just interest.
And Taz, who rarely let anyone near his world, didn't tell her to leave.
He just passed her a pair of headphones.
"Want to listen to the breakdown up close?" he asked.
She slid them on without hesitation.
Some people ran from darkness.
Skylar leaned into it.
Taz adjusted the dials on the sound feed, his eyes flicking across heart rate graphs and brainwave patterns like he was watching the stock market crash in real time. Skylar sat next to him, chewing the sleeve of her jacket absently, one leg bouncing.
A few minutes passed in silence before he said, almost offhandedly:
"So… how's Reagan?"
Skylar didn't look at him. Her eyes stayed on the monitor.
"She's at my place," she said. "Travis and Owen don't know where I live. And maybe Rocco's people can keep her safe if they try anything stupid."
Taz glanced sideways at her, but didn't interrupt.
"I told her she better call me if shit goes south," Skylar added, dragging a hand through her hair. "You know how she is. Proud. Stubborn. Definitely the type to bleed out before asking for help."
There was a beat of silence.
Then Taz smiled. Just a little.
"So are you," he said simply.
Skylar smirked. "Yeah, well. That's probably why we get along. Trauma twins with boundary issues."
Taz nodded, eyes back on the monitors. But his tone was lighter when he asked:
"She sleeping?"
Skylar hesitated. "Not really. She jumps at every sound. Double-checks the locks twice an hour. I offered her my bed, but she crashed on the floor like it was instinct."
Taz clicked his pen against the clipboard and murmured:
"She's still surviving. Not living."
Skylar turned to look at him for the first time.
"Yeah," she said. "But she's safe. For now."
Taz didn't respond. Just scribbled something in the margin of his notes.
Then, almost too quietly to catch:
"Good."
Taz didn't respond. Just scribbled something in the margin of his notes.
Then, almost too quietly to catch:
"Good."
They sat like that for a while—not talking, just watching. The music looped again. Subject 2 scratched at the wall. Subject 3 had started humming under his breath.
Then, suddenly, Subject 1 let out a strangled noise.
His body jolted forward against the restraints, shoulders shaking. He wasn't crying. Not exactly. It was deeper than that—a crack in the center of something that had been pretending to hold. His head dropped. One of his hands clenched so hard the knuckles whitened.
Taz leaned forward slightly, pen already in motion.Taz didn't look away from the monitor when he asked:
"Does this scare you?"
His voice was casual, but the question wasn't.
Skylar leaned back in the chair, one leg over the other, still chewing on a stale piece of popcorn she'd found in her jacket pocket.
"What? This?"
She gestured vaguely toward the screen, where Subject 1 was visibly unraveling.
"No," she said. "What scares me is running out of popcorn before Subject 3 starts talking to the walls again."
Taz turned his head slowly. Just enough to raise one brow over his glasses.
Skylar smirked—and lobbed a single piece of popcorn at his shoulder.
"There. Emotional support popcorn. You looked tense."
The kernel bounced off his lab coat and hit the floor with a soft tick.
Taz didn't react. Not at first.
Then he picked up his pen, scribbled in the margin of his notes:
"Skylar Payne: disrespectful snack-based assault.
Outcome: tolerated."
He didn't smile. But she saw the twitch in his cheek anyway.
Skylar straightened in her seat, eyes wide.
"Yes," she whispered, grinning. "Called it."
Taz glanced sideways at her. He didn't smile. But he did nod.
"Subject 1: early collapse confirmed. Skylar: irritatingly accurate."
She threw a popcorn-kernel sized piece of paper at his shoulder.
He didn't flinch.
But he left her name on the notes.
And that, in Taz's world, meant everything.