Page 1 of Psychological War

Prologue

Zane

December

My nose was definitely broken.

For fuck's sake

My head was definitely going to explode any minute from whatever hit me.

And I was definitely going to kill Dimitri. He was the reason I was on this stupid mission to begin with. I was his enforcer, not everyone else’s. But here I was, barely standing, pressing my hand to my nose.

And the thing was, I couldn’t even tell who it was. I kept my distance, following this person, who had to be female from how small they were.

“Fuck,” I roared when something bashed into my kneecap. My body lunged forward, landing on my hands and knees. I couldn’t tell if I was angry with the fact I was getting my shit rocked this easily or that I hadn’t even tried to fight back yet.

Pushing up to sit on my knees, I didn’t have time to do anything before the crack of my skull. Everything was fading until the blackness took over.

***

Salem

I rested my baseball bat against my leg, kneeling down to the unconscious body. Pushing him over with my bat onto his back, I couldn’t help

the smile that spread across my face from that broken nose. I don’t know what he was thinking, trying to follow me, but he was stupid. Very stupid for thinking he could just follow me.

I didn’t wait for him to say anything or do anything before I hit him with my bat.

This fucker was huge. More than double my size.

Patting him down, I pulled out his wallet, and took out his license, reading; Zane Theodore Rivera, twenty-nine years old, June fourteenth, 260 pounds, six feet, six inches.

My eyes widened; this fuckerwashuge. Looking back down, I took in the blood coating his entire mouth and chin, a gash above his eyebrow bleeding down the side of his face. He had dark, sharp angler eyebrows, and a single teardrop tattoo under his left eye, along with a nose hoop on the left nostril. His hair was dirty blond, slicked back. The urge to run my fingers through it caught me off guard. But I couldn’t.

Shaking that thought off, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a card with a ghost on it. Tucking it into his hand, I stood up and walked away. Forcing myself to not turn back around and wait for him to wake up, I continued walking, blending into the night.

1

Salem

February

Another blow to my stomach had me almost doubling over with the amount of bile that rose in my throat. But I refused to let them see me break, nor did I allow myself to break. They

didn’t deserve it, and I wouldn’t let it happen.

They couldn’t break me.

I also couldn’t exactly double over due to the fact my legs were tied along with my arms. It would be rather difficult to bend over tied up like this.

“Where is Mario?” one of them yelled in my face. Not sure which one it was due to the amount of blood dripping into my eyes.

I barely had time to recover from the last punch before there was another one, causing me to feel a sharp pain in my kidney. The air left my lungs. I tried taking in a breath, but everything hurt. I couldn’t take in a full breath.

“Where the fuck is Mario?” another one yelled from further back. I really wanted to scream at them that they were all stupid and if they looked hard enough, they’d figure it out.

He was dead.