Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
And now, holding a gun of my own, I realize something.
It doesn’t matter if you’re big and strong. Anyone can pull a trigger and everyone will die if you shoot them in the right spot.
It’s an intoxicating feeling. I want to be like those men standing on the other side of the door with the guns, not the feeble little girl crawling up and praying for safety. I never want to be that pathetic girl again in my life.
And if that means I have to let Peter boss me around, yell at me, grab my hips and arms and whatever, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever I have to if it means learning how to fight and how to survive.
When we’re finished, we lounge in the shade of a tree and drink water and eat lunch. “You did good today,” he says, looking at me from the corner of his eye. Sweat’s rolling down my brow and he’s practically glistening. “But guns are easy.”
“Point and shoot. Bang, bang.”
“Exactly. That’s why you’re learning them first. It’s a lot easier to squeeze a trigger than it is to punch someone.”
“But you’ll teach me that too?”
He concentrates on his hands. “The thing about fighting up close is everything is desperation.” He flexes his fingers into fists and I notice the small white scars on the knuckles, like ghosts of past brutalities. “The goal is to hurt them as fast as you can. Better to have a gun than to use your fists. Although guns are loud and sometimes you need to be quiet.”
“As I’m very aware at this point.” I rub my ears. We mostly wore hearing protection, but he made me shoot a few off without it and now I feel like I’m going deaf.
“At least you didn’t learn to shoot like I did.” He chews an olive and tosses the pit into the grass. “One morning when I was six years old, my father dragged me out of bed at dawn, took me into the back yard, shoved a .22 caliber pistol into my hands just like the one you’re using, and told me to shoot the target until I hit it ten times in a row. It took me all fucking day to hit that stupid target ten times in a row, and when I finally did it, all my father did was let me have something to eat. My arms ached, my hands were torn to pieces, and he didn’t give a damn. All he cared about were results.” He’s staring off into the distance, remembering.
I try to picture a little Peter with his little hands holding a gun that was probably too big, but it’s hard to see it. Six years old and already learning how to kill. Peter’s only ever been this big, strong man to me. It’s tough to see him as an innocent kid. It’s hard to imagine his past, his traumas and failures. The horrors that made him into what he is today.
I ask, “Was it hard, growing up in your family?”
“Hard is one word. It was okay when I was little, when nothing was expected of me, but things changed around the time my father began to teach me how to shoot. There were other lessons, like how to pick locks, how to steal without being caught, how to fight, how to climb, how to run, how to kill. Every day, my father taught me something more and expected me to master it by the time our next lesson rolled around. When I wasn’t perfect, he hurt me. When I was, he said I still wasn’t good enough. Over and over, for years, we went on like that. And you know what I got when it was all over?”
“What?” I whisper and find myself leaning closer to him. I want to put my hand on his arm but I’m afraid to touch him right now. I’m afraid I won’t want to take my hand away.
“I got to join the family business.” He smiles bitterly. “I was told in no uncertain terms that all my training would be put to use for the Calimeris crime family, and that my life was essentially forfeit. If I had dreams, I could forget them. If I had wishes and desires, I could squash them. The only thing I was allowed to want was whatever my father and uncle ordered me to do. And for a long time, that was enough. I numbed myself to anything else in the world and ignored my fear.”
“It’s not enough anymore, is it?”
“No, it’s not.” He leans his head back and looks at me. “What about you? Your sister seems to think you grew up in luxury.”
I push myself up and brush my hands on my pants. “She’s not all that wrong,” I admit as I walk a few feet away. I look at the gun lying in the grass still aimed down range at the target. I’m tempted to pick it up, load it, and start shooting, but hearing him share like that made me want to give him a piece of myself in exchange. “My mother shielded me from most of the bad stuff. I didn’t really know details about her life until after she died.”