Chapter 2: A Mountain of Corpse 2
Before we go back on the shooting scene—and yeah, trust me, it's still going, bullets flying, blood spraying, me half-dead but still kicking—let me roll this shit back. My so-called "death scene" can wait a minute.
Because you're probably asking the same thing I am: How the hell did I get entangled in this mess?
Well, strap in.
---
I didn't come from much. Didn't come from anything, actually. No mother, no father, no sweet bedtime stories or warm bowls of soup. Just the streets. Cold alleys, dumpsters, and a whole lotta rats—four-legged and two. I was a stray mutt digging through garbage, waiting for some bigger mutt to kick me in the teeth and steal whatever scraps I'd found.
I don't even remember my parents. Maybe they dumped me, maybe they croaked, maybe they just never gave a shit. Doesn't matter. All I know is I grew up watching people's shoes walk by while I shivered in the gutter. If I was lucky, I found some crust of bread. If I wasn't, I got my nose broken trying to take it.
You learn fast on the street: nobody's coming to save you. Not the cops, not the church, not whatever god people keep praying to. You eat or you starve. You swing or you bleed.
I swung.
By the time I was ten, I had a mean right hook and the kind of eyes that made grown men check their wallets. By twelve, I could pick a pocket clean. By fifteen, I'd put a knife in some asshole who thought he could drag me into an alley and use me like trash. He never walked out of that alley.
I guess that's when the Atalieres noticed me.
---
Picture this: a black Cadillac rolling up slow in the rain, chrome shining under busted streetlamps. The window rolls down, and inside? A man in a perfect suit with eyes like ice and a smile that promised either money or murder. That was Don Vittorio Ataliere. The man himself.
He watched me beat two older kids bloody over a loaf of bread. Didn't say a word at first, just lit a cigar and puffed smoke rings while I stood there panting, knuckles split and dripping. Then he said, real casual-like:
"The boy fights like a starving wolf. Wolves belong in packs."
Next thing I know, I'm in the Cadillac, bread still clutched in my hand, and my life on the street was over.
---
The Ataliere family… they weren't saints. Hell, they were devils dressed in silk. But compared to the streets? They were paradise. For the first time, I had meals, a roof, clothes that didn't smell like piss. They gave me a bed. They gave me a name. They gave me something like a family.
Of course, there was a price.
You don't eat for free in the Ataliere family. You don't get warm beds for nothing. You bleed for them, kill for them, bury bodies for them. By sixteen, I was running packages. By eighteen, I was breaking kneecaps. By twenty, I was holding a gun steady enough to take the light out of a man's eyes without flinching.
And by twenty-five? I was their wolf. Their attack dog. The guy they sent when they wanted someone not just dead, but erased.
I had brothers, too. Not blood, but better than blood. Guys like Carlo, with his loud laugh and his uglier nose. Mikey, always humming Sinatra while he cleaned his shotgun. Enzo, who swore he'd retire and open a restaurant but never made it that far.
We fought together. Bled together. And one by one, I watched them drop.
Some got clipped in turf wars. Some got sloppy and caught by the cops. Some just pissed off the wrong people. Doesn't matter how tough you are—the street always collects its debt.
By thirty, I was standing alone at funerals, wearing a suit that smelled like mothballs, listening to mothers cry over sons who'd never make it home again. My so-called family was full of ghosts.
And me? I kept living.
Sometimes I wondered why.
---
That's where the joke comes in. The part no one would ever believe.
One night, I was sitting in my shitty apartment, drinking cheap whiskey, trying to drown out the silence. Silence is the worst. You can dodge bullets, you can fight a dozen men, but silence? That's when the ghosts talk.
I flipped on my beat-up old console, looking for something to kill time. Could've played shooters, or war games, or any of that macho crap. But no—life had enough of that already.
Instead, I stumbled into it.
An otome game.
Yeah. You heard me.
One of those sparkly-ass, reverse harem dating games where you play as some wide-eyed girl and every dude in the kingdom wants to sweep you off your feet. Princes with perfect hair. Knights with tragic backstories. A doctor with a kind smile. The whole package.
I don't even remember why I clicked it. Maybe I was drunk. Maybe I wanted a laugh.
But then… I kept playing.
And playing.
And next thing I knew, I was invested. Like, really invested. I was yelling at the screen when some fake prince treated me like shit. I was picking dialogue options like my life depended on it. I was—Christ help me—crying when one of the routes gave me a happy ending.
I'd spend nights after bloody jobs sitting in my chair, bandages wrapped around me, controller in hand, trying to get the best ending with some fictional bastard who smelled like roses and honor.
It was pathetic. It was insane. And it was the only thing keeping me from blowing my brains out.
Because for those hours, I wasn't Jimmy Bellic, mafia hitman, butcher of the East Side. I was someone else. Someone who got to be loved, cared for, chosen.
And yeah, I laughed at myself plenty. Big bad wolf of the Ataliere family, wiping tears over a cartoon prince. If the guys had ever found out, I'd never hear the end of it.
But they were all dead.
So it was just me. Me and that stupid game.
---
And that's how the pieces line up. That's how you end up with a guy like me, thirty-something, bodycount higher than a warzone, sitting on a throne of corpses one night, asking himself how the hell life twisted him into this shape.
An orphan raised by killers. A wolf taught to bite. A man who lost every brother he ever had. And the only thing that kept the loneliness from eating him alive? A goddamn reverse harem otome game.
Funny, right? Tragic, sure. But funny in the way a bad joke is funny when you're drunk enough to laugh.
So now, here I am, mid-gunfight, bleeding out, surrounded by enemies, and telling you all this like it's some bedtime story. Because before I die—and make no mistake, that's where this road's headed—I want it clear: I didn't just wake up one day and choose this mess.
This mess chose me.
And now? Now the only thing left is to see how it all ends.
So let's get back to the shooting, shall we?