I fucked my first woman when I was fourteen, shortly after Maria’s death. She was one of my father’s whores; he sent her to me after I dispatched two of the men who murdered Maria by castrating them in their own homes. I think my father was hoping the lure of sex would be enough to distract me from my path of vengeance.

Needless to say, his plan didn’t work out.

She came into my room wearing a tight black dress, her makeup perfectly done and her lush, full mouth painted a glossy red. When she began to strip in front of me, I reacted just like any teenage boy would—with instant, violent lust. But I wasn’t any teenage boy at that point. I was a killer; I had been one since I was eight.

I took the whore roughly that night, partly because I was too inexperienced to control myself, partly because I wanted to lash out at her, at my father, at the whole fucking world. I took my frustrations out on her flesh, leaving behind bruises and bite marks—and she came back for more the next night, this time without my father’s knowledge. We fucked like that for a month, with her stealing into my room every chance she got, teaching me what she liked… what she claimed many women liked. She didn’t want sweet and gentle in bed; she wanted pain and force. She wanted someone to make her feel alive.

And I found that I liked that. I liked hearing her scream and beg as I hurt her and made her come. The violence crawling under my skin had found another outlet, and it was one I used every chance I got.

It wasn’t enough, of course. The rage dwelling deep within me couldn’t be pacified so easily. Maria’s death changed something inside me. She had been the only pure, beautiful thing in my life, and she was gone. Her death accomplished more than my father’s training ever could: it killed any remaining conscience I might’ve possessed. I was no longer a boy reluctantly following in my father’s footsteps; I was a predator who craved blood and vengeance. Ignoring my father’s orders to let the matter drop, I hunted down Maria’s killers one by one and made them pay, drinking in their screams of agony, their pleas for mercy and for quicker death.

After that, there were retaliations and counter-retaliations. People died. My father’s men. His rival’s men. The violence kept escalating until my father decided to pacify his associates by removing me from the business. I was sent away, to Europe and Asia… and there I found dozens more women like the one who had introduced me to sex. Beautiful, willing women whose proclivities mirrored my own. I gave them their dark fantasies, and they gave me momentary pleasure—an arrangement that suited my life perfectly, especially after I came back to take up the reins of my father’s organization.

It wasn’t until nineteen months ago, during a business trip to Chicago, that I found her.