Guns Over Girls

The Mafia rules are 10 in all.

And I knew them all by heart. While kids my age were in school learning the letters of the alphabet and how to form words with them , I , at the age of six spent hours in the shooting range, shooting at haystacks shaped like people, getting beaten and punished brutally for missing the shots and memorizing the rules that I knew would bind me for life. Not that I didn't study. I was homeschooled by a mafia tutor and I never got to see the life outside of the large walls that sealed me off from the world out there. I had no friends. My father made sure of it. I was being prepared to take over the mafia.

My Father, Alfonso Topaz is the most powerful mafia leader. His name alone sends chills down the spines of the other mafia leaders and normal citizens alike. He conducted different illegal businesses and even the police couldn't do anything about it. His mafia wasn't an underground one. Everyone single person knows who my father Is and how horribly terrifying he is.

I hated him. I never really accepted the fact that my mother was going to marry him. When I was 5, after my real father died, she told me she was getting married to a good man who would be a good husband to her and a good father to me. Even as young as I was then, I knew who Alfonso Topaz was and he was no good man. I remember her holding me with tears in her eyes and quivering lips as she said "We're going to live a happy life with your new father, he would love you like you are his own son". Her eyes didn't hold that much of a conviction when she said that to me.

But we were never happy.

I was locked away from her the moment I turned six. She cried. I cried. She was trashed. Raped. Beaten. Molested right in front of me and each time I was made to watch. Each time I was made to watch my step-father rape her to his heart content, I was beaten up for crying. It was the first mafia rule "Never shed a tear". Soon, after going through immense torture and pain, I couldn't cry anymore. I only watched my mother struggle to get away from him each time until he was finally done with her and cleans up. " Good boy" He would praise me then remind me of the 4th rule of the mafia "Treat them like the trash they are"

Day by day my mother was starting to become a shadow of her self. She wore tattered clothes , and tried to use the little makeup she could get to cover the bruises that marked her face like tattoos. Her lips became white and her skin ghostly pale. Still, she kept repeating the mantra "you will be happy"

And now I've turned 18, I have never been happy.

As I walk down the underground dungeons of my step-father, I can hear cries and wailings mostly from women. He built an underground dungeon with cages to keep his prisoners who were either men captured from another mafia or women who were sex slaves. In one of those cages was my mother, his legally married wife. As I walk past the cages , I try to shut my ear from the pleas of the people who were left to starve to death. I didn't have enough food to go round, I am here for just one person .

I finally get to the cage that holds my mother and I dropped the plate of food heavily in front of her. She looks up from her crouching position and my heart clench like it always does even though I am mad at her.

" You never listen " I say

Her cage is dark and so I couldn't make out her form or how battered she probably looks now. I also know she intends to remain in the dark so I wouldn't have to see her. She stretched her hand and carried the dismantled plate of food.

" yummy! Did you make this?" she replies ignoring my question . It hurt me knowing I am the reason she is in there.

" Mum!" I say " I told you I didn't need the books any longer, why did you have to steal from him and do this to yourself"

" You lied Jaden. You needed them to study for the high school exam!"

" And you had to risk getting beaten up for that, I am never really going to go to school! I only wanted to sit for the exam not get into one! You didn't have to risk your life for something so meaningless!"

Silence followed.

"You should leave before your father finds out you're here"

" He's not my father!" I almost yell. I was about to say something else when the alarm on my phone went off. " Great" I mutter.

" What's wrong? Going to the shooting range again?" She asks. She knows better than anyone that whenever my alarm goes off, it means I have something horrible to do.

" No, I'm going to fuck an innocent girl"

I don't wait for her reply as I walk away from her cage and out of the underground dungeon.

I turned 18 today and in my father's mafia, there is always a ritual to test how mature you have become and to welcome you into the world of the mafia. Innocent girls captured from God knows where suffer the consequences of this ritual. They are thrown into a room with the boys who turn 18 on their birthday and brutally raped while the older men watch and laugh at the cries of the girls. Being the son of the mafia leader, I've always had the privilege of watching how it's done. And today. It is my turn.

As I walk into the giant room that was painted in red to match the evil things that were done here, I supress the urge to throw up. A couple of other boys who shared the date with me were already seated, their number scared me. Not because of what they would do but because of the equal number of girls that would lose their innocence brutally tonight.

I joined the boys on the last seat waiting with beating heart for my father to show up. Soon , men came around to blindfold us. It was part of the ritual. We are to blindly pick a girl whose innocence we had to ruin. The ritual was held for a lot of reasons, mostly to just watch helpless girls beg for their lives and laugh about it but it was also to teach us one thing and to follow the 6th rule " Show no mercy". We were taught to treat men and women alike.

It didn't take long before I heard the cries of young girls. It's time.

I don't know if I am ready for this but I was ready to do anything to get my mother out of there. My father had told me a day ago when I begged him to get my mother out of the dungeon " You'll turn 18 tomorrow, your mother's fate depends on how well you fuck a girl and make her feel pain all over. You don't give pleasure, you take it from them!." No one ever steals from my father and gets away with it, even his legally married wife and so , I knew this was the only chance I had to get her out of there.

But the moment the blindfold on my face was removed and I saw the person whose innocence I had to ruin, my heart fell to the ground.

"No!" I whisper.