* * * *
CARSON
It was already hard enough to process being seen as intellectually defective after my diagnosis with savant syndrome. But everything truly collapsed the day they uncovered the bipolar disorder. I was ten. Just ten. And I watched my father's world fracture—no, shatter—at the revelation. His expression didn't need words; I could feel the weight of his disappointment crush something inside me.
From that moment, I was no longer a child. I was an anomaly. A spectacle. A thing to be paraded around for strangers who gawked at my "gifts," their fascination laced with pity. I was expected to perform, to astonish, to justify my existence. I was forced to mask—forced to become my brother, the golden one, the chosen one. He was beloved. I was invisible. All because I had green eyes. A genetic curse passed down from a grandfather I never met, but who managed to haunt me anyway.
I despise them for what they did. For what they didn't do.
My mother—cowardly, quiet—refused to protect me. She never raised her voice against the man who saw me as broken, who flinched when I entered the room, who called me "defective" with the same tone others use to curse. My father hated me, not just because I was different, but because he was weak. He inherited his own father's hate and passed it down like an heirloom. And my twin—God, my twin—stood there when I was abducted. Silent. Watching. No scream. No struggle. Just a weak, empty apology that still echoes in my nightmares.
But I survived that darkness.
You don't walk through that kind of hell and come out untouched. You don't stay soft. I didn't grow up with lullabies and bedtime stories—I grew up with broken bones, with the sound of doors slamming and gasping sobs muffled by pillows. I learned to lie with my face just to get through breakfast. I learned silence was safer than truth. I learned that love, when offered, usually came with a leash or a noose.
I didn't have a childhood. I had cages. I had hands that hurt. I had eyes that measured my worth in obedience and usefulness. I had mouths that told me I was lucky, while they stole every ounce of innocence I had left.
But I learned.
I learned to endure. To flinch on the inside but never show it. I learned to walk through fire without screaming. And maybe that makes me hard. Maybe it makes me dangerous. But if you knew even half of what I went through, you'd understand.
I didn't become a villain because I wanted to hurt people. I became a villain because no one ever left me another choice. When the world decides you are less than nothing, you either vanish—or you become something terrifying enough that no one dares to erase you again.
I chose the latter.
When I was "rescued"—if you can even call it that—I wasn't returned to some warm homecoming. There were no open arms. No relief. No redemption. I wasn't the child they lost; I was something else. Something ruined.
Tony took me away. Not home. Not safe. To Italy. I was passed off again, this time to a man dressed in sanctity—Father Francisse. A leader of the archdiocese of Florence. Respected. Revered. Rotten.
He didn't touch us with fists at first. No. His weapon was belief. Control. Obedience. We were never children. We were assets. Resources. Products. Each of us selected because we had a "use." Because we had scars.
He trained us—broke us—until we forgot how to be anything but what he needed. Twelve of us. "The Twelve Disciples." A mockery of something sacred. He turned faith into a weapon and carved it into our bones.
Alex was the oldest. He was cold. Precise. A doctor, yes—but the kind who healed no one. He was a surgeon of death. His hands bled for the mafia, not for mercy. His sister Leona followed him, craving strength, craving relevance. But she never belonged. She thought she could prove herself. Alex hated her for trying.
Then there were Marco, Diego, and Dante—the fools. The ones who laughed as they learned to lace meals with slow poisons. Their gifts wasted on death disguised as dinner. They were kids, pretending to be killers. But they got good at pretending.
The rest… shadows. Faces I've forgotten. Names I chose to lose. Not out of mercy. Out of survival.
And me?
I was the outlier. The freak. Father Francisse called me Judas. Said betrayal was my purpose. That I was meant to undo something sacred. But I didn't betray them. I never did. Not even when I wanted to. Not even when I should have.
I was trained to fix weapons, to make death more efficient. I learned code. Wrote viruses. Rewired pain into obedience. I was a mechanic of carnage. Not a soldier. Not a son. Just another cog in the cathedral of blood.
The tattoos came later. Father called them "divine markings." Said they depicted our future. My back became his canvas—a tiger, fierce and silent. It covered lthe old scars. But it didn't erase them. Nothing ever does.
I thought about escaping. But where would I run? We were all too broken to flee. Too shattered to survive outside the cage.
So I stayed.
But I never became what he wanted. I didn't disappear. I didn't betray. I didn't belong to him.
I was not Judas.
I was something else entirely.
A tiger.
That was the beginning—my descent into the chaos known as the Glory Organisation. We weren't heroes. We weren't even monsters. We were the shadows that slit throats in the name of justice. We stopped crime by becoming something worse. We murdered politicians under the guise of order. We dismantled empires while rotting from the inside. Every second of it—I hated it.
Every decision I made had blood trailing behind it. I watched the world not from above, but beneath it. Like a corpse in a shallow grave, staring up through the soil, witnessing the maggots of power devour whatever humanity was left. This world isn't broken. It's designed this way. Greed, hate, manipulation—all systemic, all holy in the eyes of those who call it home.
And I? I was forced to watch. Watch as lives were torn apart like paper. Watch as meaning dissolved into memory. It was like watching a movie at five times the speed—frames of pain flashing, blurring, before I could even scream.
Insanity? No.
Something worse.
Something more awake.
I lost my mind, piece by piece, every time I woke up alive.
Hope bled out.
Only vengeance remained.
That was my purpose:
Kill those who dragged me into this trench of existence.
Then kill myself.
Ever looked in the mirror and laughed?
Not a real laugh—
The kind that trembles at the edges, cracked and hollow, echoing down the corridors of a mind unraveling.
You tell yourself, every day, like a prayer you no longer believe:
I am not insane.
I am not insane.
I am not insane.
I am not insane.
I am not insane.
I am not insane.
I am not insane.
I am not insane.
I am not insane.
I AM NOT INSANE.
I AM NOT INSANE.
I AM NOT INSANE.
I AM NOT INSANE.
I AM NOT INSANE.
I AM NOT INSANE.
I AM NOT INSANE.
I AM NOT INSANE.
I AM NOT—
maybe I am.
And that terrifies me more than anything.
Because if I've lost it—how will I know when I've gone too far?
Then Kim Yoon Suk came.
Like a disease wearing a smile.
He walked in and devoured every heart in the room.
Even mine—what was left of it—twitched under his gaze.
People loved him. Worshipped him. Trusted him.
But I saw the same rot in his eyes that I saw in the mirror.
The same madness.
Only difference was—he wore it better.
And that's when I knew:
The final kill on my list…
would not go quietly.
He was older than me—barely. Grew up beside me like a brother, like a shadow. We fought, we bled, we survived. Until one day, he decided surviving wasn't enough.
Kim Yoon Suk killed Father.
Not just that—he convinced them it was justice.
He made the others clap for it. Like dogs. Six disciples dead. Slaughtered like lambs in their sleep, throats opened by the one they trusted most. Their ranks meant nothing. Strength meant nothing. They followed loyalty like a leash, and he walked them right into their graves.
We were next.
It started on a quiet evening. A call—"Dinner in Florence. Be there."
Sounded simple. Too simple.
I arrived last, as always. A suit on my back, the weight of a gun in my chest holster, and the heat from the kitchen sweat down my neck. Everyone was already seated. Fancy wine. Perfume masking secrets. And I—just another sinner with a plate of Alfredo. Simple. Easy to digest if I had to kill someone immediately after.
Then the doors slammed open.
Barefoot. Blood on his skin.
Kim.
Dragging Francisse like a goddamn dog carcass through a cathedral.
Shirtless, his chest inked with a dragon curling across his ribs, hissing across his heart. Immortality. That was his mark. Immortality through fear.
He smiled.
Like a child who found a toy he broke and wanted applause for it.
Then he placed Francisse's corpse in the host's seat, sat it upright, and turned to us like it was a casual Tuesday.
"Next is you unless you swear loyalty."
He pointed at us.
Just like that.
Then chaos. Guns out. Screams. Blood.
Six dead.
In one breath.
Their bodies dropped like marionettes with strings cut.
Only I and the rest were left.
"Tick tock, idiots. I'm hungry and angry,"
he hissed in Korean.
I laughed.
Not just a laugh—a crack.
Something inside me split wide open.
"You planned this for ages, huh?" I said in his tongue, the words tasting like venom.
"You should clap for yourself. You're the first man to make me laugh in years."
They stared at me—Alex, Diego, Marco, Leona, Dante—like I had grown another head.
But I wasn't insane.
I wasn't.
I was finally, perfectly awake.
I stood, raised my hands like a prophet addressing sheep, grinning wide enough to tear my face in half.
They looked at me like I was something to fear.
They were right.
"I like this guy," Kim said. "He reminds me of me."
"Work for me. You can do whatever you want. Just work for me."
Oh, man.
What I did next still makes me laugh when I can't sleep.
I took the garlic bread.
Bit into it.
Slow. Calm.
Turned to the others.
"We walk out alive. I give you my answer next time we meet."
He didn't blink. Just sat on the corpse like a throne.
Raised five fingers.
Five minutes.
That was our grace.
We bolted. The crowd didn't move. Too stunned, or maybe just waiting for act two.
Helicopter above. Pilot loyal—thank whatever devil watches over lunatics.
Then Leona whispered,
"We've got tracking chips. We need to take them out."
She held up a scalpel like a crucifix.
I nodded. Pulled off my shirt. Bit into it to silence what was coming.
She hesitated. Of course she did. She was still human.
So I took the blade.
Steady hands. Cold eyes.
I found the point—near the carotid. One wrong twitch and I'd bleed out on that floor.
But I didn't care.
Maybe I wanted to die.
Maybe I just wanted to feel something that wasn't numb.
The metal slid in.
Burned.
I fished the chip out with trembling tweezers.
Blood poured like memory.
She stitched me up. Hands shaking.
I grinned like a devil dressed for Sunday mass.
"Who's next?" I asked, voice rough, eyes alight with something that should never be named.
No one spoke.
But in that silence—I heard it.
The sound of something breaking, permanently.
We stepped outside. The cold air slapped my face like a wake-up call I didn't need. I lit a cigarette with shaking fingers I pretended weren't shaking. Then—
a scream.
Close.
Raw.
The kind that only escapes someone who's just met death and realized it's wearing a human face.
Alex turned first, already reaching for the gun tucked in his waistband like we weren't supposed to be normal now. University students. Civilians. "Normal" was just a lie stitched over a corpse.
I smiled.
Finally, something that didn't taste like plastic.
We bolted across the street. People were already scattering like ants kicked from their hill. I saw her first—Elise—hands covered in blood, staring at a woman slumped against a brick wall like she was deciding whether to scream again or swallow it.
A man ran.
Knife in hand.
Stupid.
I was on him before Alex even drew.
I didn't think.
Didn't blink.
I tackled him to the concrete, a beautiful crunch as his head hit pavement. The knife skidded out of reach. He struggled beneath me.
"Who sent you?" I growled, my voice more animal than human.
He spat blood and something like a tooth.
Wrong answer.
I slammed his head again.
And again.
And again.
Until he stopped twitching.
Until the red wasn't just pooling—it was painting.
Alex pulled me off, yelling something, maybe my name, maybe a prayer.
I didn't care.
I felt alive.
Alive.
The woman was dead.
Throat sliced like a butcher's cut.
Elise stood there—unmoving, her eyes glassy, her breathing shallow.
I walked up to her, slowly.
"Hey," I said gently, too gently for someone who'd just turned a man's skull into jelly.
"You good?"
She looked at me like I was speaking another language.
Maybe I was.
"You killed him," she whispered.
I smiled, tilting my head.
"I kill a lot of people. You're gonna have to be more specific."
That earned a blink. A flicker of something behind her eyes. Recognition. Fear.
Or maybe respect.
Alex stood beside me, face pale, hands stained.
"This was a hit," he said under his breath.
"Someone knew we'd be here."
I was already moving.
The street was silent again.
Police sirens in the distance, slow and lazy. Too late, as always.
I picked up the knife the guy dropped, spinning it once in my hand before tucking it into my jacket.
"Let's go," I said.
No one moved.
I turned to Elise.
"You coming, or do you wanna stay here and wait for the cameras?"
She hesitated—
Then followed.
Back at the safehouse, the walls were peeling like old wounds.
Alex stitched the split on my cheek from the scuffle.
Elise sat in the corner like a broken ornament.
"You should've walked away," Alex muttered.
"You're spiraling."
I grinned, sipping whiskey this time. Wine was for liars.
"I was born spiraling," I said.
"You all just noticed late."
Elise finally spoke.
"I want in."
Both our heads turned to her.
"You don't even know what this is," I said, voice flat.
She stood.
Wiped the blood off her cheek with the back of her hand.
Eyes burning now.
"Then teach me."
I leaned back.
Let the silence hang like a noose.
Then I laughed.
"Welcome to hell, Elise.
You're gonna love the fire."
* * * *