Toxic Game (bxb)

Chapter 7

The dark-haired took deep breaths, in and out. His broad shoulders followed the rhythm of the punches that Alarico threw against invisible enemies. After a few minutes he changed from shadow-boxing to sit ups, followed by push ups and finally squats.

For him exercise was the essence for a clear mind. Alarico was not blessed with the figure of a poorly paid, overworked, self-regarding fitness model for nothing. He had worked off every single gram of body fat from his broad ribs with incredible endurance and hard work. Which could perhaps be broken down to two reasons.

On the one hand he needed the lavishly released adrenalin and dopamine to think. Every minute that he somehow floated in this strange mental elevation in between shallow breaths and frantic heartbeat, was a minute of rare lucidity and calmness. Alaric was never the brightest. He never graduated from school, had gotten more bad marks and following bashings than he could count, overshadowed by his brother his who was capable to balance a carefree life and extraordinary achievements effortlessly. Alarico had been a man of practice ever since. He was able to adapt easily to distinct patterns of behaviour enabling him to read his opponents like an open book. He had not been lazy or hedonistic one damn second of his useless life. But unfortunately, Lorenzo Este was no theorist either. His brother was clever enough to put everything he learned into practice and that with utmost perfection. He was colder and more calculating than Alarico. Somehow, Alarico had always been the black sheep of the Este family in a way.

On the other hand, there might have been few instances where he made decisions hot-headedly but every human was being driven by rudimentary emotions at the end of the day. And precisely because Alaric had never learned to face up to his difficult subconsciousness, he himself was his worst enemy. It was no secret that he dealt with all of his underlings and in-prisoned brutal and unmercifully but sports offered him the possibility to punish himself in a strange, perverse way bringing his emotions to heel.

In this case his intensive training, he started when Benito left for butler duty two hours ago, served the first purpose.

Alarico had to think hard over everything that went on in his head lately.

Benito wished that he was not only successful in presenting Lorenzo as Salvatore's murderer but also in murdering him.

The murder itself was not necessarily the problem. Alarico had killed a lot in his 28 years of living. After having to quit school, he had started a short doctrine by Roman the old and quiet torturatore, the torturer. At 17 he had been introduced to the world of pain, humiliation and death and strode through it with sweet intimacy until now. For the first time in his life there had been a task he was able to complete perfectly without much preparation and thought. The only task that Lorenzo never strove to overtake. Never had he ever asked at which price he had sold his soul back then. He had simply been glad that he had found his place. And the duty as a torturatore brought him respect and fear. The other family members knew what was taking place in the basement under the mansion, even if highly sensitive tempers might disapprove of it. And they feared both of the men who ruled within this subterrane walls. That had been Alarico's place, he had prevailed for more than a decade, there, in the darkness, in pain that was both foreign and familiar, in the firm conviction that he would be ruling over everything someday.

No, murdering was one of the very few things Alarico Este did with ease and accurate perfection.

It was the plan however that his twisted mind could not quite detangle due to its complexity and risks which all needed to be considered. He saw the brilliance in Benito's thoughts, but he did not see how the butler imagined them to ever be realized. He understood nothing of the filigrane mania of the Italian who heard and saw everything that happened within the famiglia and who would let all of them dance like puppets as he already did for him for a long time now. Ironically, Alarico already started to dance along silky strings himself.