Chapter Text
First he was going to steal the piece of shit's ugly gold gun. Then he was going to empty its mag into him, reload, empty that mag into him, repeat until there was nothing left but a smug little pile of goo. Or maybe that would be over too quickly. Maybe he should take Harvey's Camaro for a spin on a nice, rough, unpaved road, with Harvey in tow at the end of a long chain. That could work…
“Hey, Leo.”
Leo was drawn out of his violent thoughts by some guy’s voice. He’d seen the guy around before but had never really spoken to him, except to bum a smoke. What was his name? Brad? Brock? B-something, anyway.
“What?”
“Someone wants to talk to you.”
“Yeah? Who?” Something was off about whatever his name was. He looked nervous. Leo didn't remember having any beefs with this guy. Nah, more likely B-guy knew he'd been roped into business that didn’t belong to him and wanted far away. Didn’t mean anything good about whoever wanted to talk to Leo. Not that that was surprising. Someone wanting to talk to you in the yard rarely shook out in any way positive.
“Don’t know, man. He’s over there. It's all I know.”
Leo looked the man over a bit more closely, trying to figure out what was up, but other than the jitters, B-guy looked legitimately clueless. Leo curled his lip, baring his teeth, and the guy skittered off. Heh… scaredy cat. He might as well go “over there” and find out who was asking after him. If there was one thing he’d learned over the past six months, it was that if trouble was looking for him, it would find him whether he ignored it or not. Better to answer its call now, when he was ready for it, than wait for it to shank him in the middle of the night.
Pushing away from the fence, he crossed the yard toward the fenced-in basketball court B-whatever had pointed out. His fists clenched, and his muscles tensed, bracing for whatever was coming, ready to sucker punch anyone stupid enough to jump him.
Then he saw whatever the hell the guys by the stairs were doing, and, try as he might, he couldn't look away. The guys said they were doing chiropractics, whatever the hell that was– seemingly oblivious to how it looked.
“Are you sure it isn’t just a way for him to get some close physical contact?” Leo asked one of the men skeptically.
“Wha— uh… what?” They looked over at the other two men and watched the “chiropractor” give the “patient” another buttward thrust.
“Well, you know, from where I’m standing it doesn’t look too good." Leo stretched his mouth in a grimace. "Looks to me like he’s trying to snap some other things into place.”
The guy waiting for his turn to bump pelvises with the “chiropractor” looked at Leo like he had tentacles growing out of his head. Leo shrugged and moved on. Whatever put pep in their steps in this hellhole was none of his business.
He was still thinking about the bizarre display as he walked through the gate into the basketball court.
The scrape of shoes on concrete caught his attention just a split second too late.
He started to duck and run, but the attackers were on him fast. Leo shouted and struggled, drawing the attention of inmates from other parts of the yard. Two guys were on him, each wrestling with one of his arms. He pulled, but they had strong grips. Pulling away from one just put him closer to the other.
“Let me go!” He braced his feet in front of him and tried to push them both back against the fence, hoping that would loosen their grips, but they were ready for it and didn't budge.
“There you are,” an unpleasantly familiar voice came from an even more unpleasantly familiar hulk striding up in front of him. “Time to play.”
Fear lanced through Leo, and Dragomir could sense it. The thug wasn't much taller than he was– after all, Leo wasn't exactly short– but the Serb easily had a hundred more pounds of muscle wrapped around him, and every fiber of it was savoring this moment. Yesterday’s encounter loomed large in Leo’s memory. Harvey sends his regards.
This was gonna suck.
He steeled himself for what came next, and Dragomir didn’t disappoint. The huge man planted a sledgehammer of a fist into Leo’s gut. Leo doubled over, feeling breakfast burn in his esophagus, but he couldn’t let them see him squirm. The goons holding his arms forced him back upright.
“What the fuck do you want??” Leo shouted, channeling his pain into anger.
“Is not about what I want,” Dragomir crowed in his rough, accented voice. “Is about what Harvey wants.”
Just the mention of that name sent Leo right back into the dark thoughts he’d been pulled from for this bullshit. “That piece of shit better be happy he’s on the outside!”
“He may be on the outside, but he still pays me good.” The glint of those beady little eyes tucked away in the man's huge, scarred face turned from amused to lethal. “Fact is, he pays me really good to kill you. And I don’t really like you, so it’s a win-win situation for me.”
Scratch that. This was really gonna suck.
Dragomir wound back and delivered a haymaker that would have flattened Leo if the goons hadn’t been holding him up. Instead of crumpling, he drew himself up and spat, “Fuck you, Dragomir!”
Another blow. This one snapped Leo’s jaw shut onto his tongue, filling his mouth with the taste of copper. Motherfucker, that shit pissed him off.
Dragomir had turned away, spreading his arms out like a pro-wrestler taking in the cheers and jeers of his audience. Bastard was eating this shit up. Leo'd be damned if he was going to be made a joke in front of the whole damn yard. He spat a mouthful of blood at the big man, achieving surprising range. The crimson gob splatted on the fabric stretched taut across the Serb's meaty calf. Dragomir turned, eyes blazing with murder.
“I swear I’m gonna kill you,” Leo snarled, tamping down his fear with another bucket-load of hatred.
The big man snorted in amusement and charged in hard, hitting Leo right in the solar plexus. Every ounce of air whooshed out of his lungs. His knees buckled, and again he was held up by the goons. The crowd went wild, but Leo couldn't hear them over the sound of his own failure to breathe.
Between every hit, Dragomir stepped back to survey his work, like a mechanic considering where to apply torque next. Dragomir chose Leo's balls. The pain made Leo black out for a moment.
This was going poorly. Very poorly. He had to get loose or this asshole was going to very publicly, very slowly beat him to death.
And everybody else was just watching. Leo knew he wasn't the cuddliest guy in the world, but wasn't anybody willing to help him? Where the fuck were the guards?
Dragomir stepped away again to face the crowd, giving Leo a chance to look at them, too. Men were densely clumped at the gate, egging the violence on… but more importantly… blocking the way in. Help couldn't get in if it wanted to. Leo felt the first talons of despair claw at his throat.
The huge man wheeled back and delivered an uppercut, breaking Leo's nose with a sickening crunch that jolted through his skull. His head snapped up and took his body with it, making him fall back onto the goons. He choked on the blood flowing back into his throat. They pushed him forward onto unsteady legs.
“Let me go.” Leo meant to sound threatening, but the words, mushed by a gimpy tongue, creeping past a crooked jaw, and bubbling through the blood in his mouth, just sounded weak.
They didn't let him go. He managed to get his legs to work enough to throw a kick at the goon on his left. That one's grip faltered for only a moment, but that was all he needed. He snaked his arm free and delivered a haymaker to the goon on his right.
The freedom lasted a heartbeat.
Dragomir's full girth smashed Leo into the fence. His fingers scrambled at the chainlinks, desperate to find purchase that would help him keep his balance. He saw another sledgehammer fist coming at his head and got his right arm up in the way. The impact jolted through his forearm instead of his skull, and he felt something shift in a painfully familiar way. The minion on his right, his bald head peeling in the sun, silently grabbed that arm and pulled it out straight just in time for Dragomir to drop his massive elbow onto Leo's shoulder. Something snapped sharply along his collarbone, and his arm went dead. Eyes glinting sadistically, the goon wrenched the injured limb and released it. Leo gasped, staggered, and fell.
Shit, shit, shit, not good. The ground was where he did not want to be in a fight, and, as Leo scrambled to get his feet under him, Dragomir immediately demonstrated why. The Serb stomped down as hard as he could on his knee– the same knee that still ached from the little love tap Harvey had given him with the Camaro some months back. It bent wrong, crumpled beneath him, and Leo screamed. He didn't mean to give Dragomir and their audience that satisfaction, but he couldn't help himself. It wasn't just the pain– though that was more than enough– it was the certainty that whatever just broke was going to make him easy prey for the rest of his prison stay. Perhaps the rest of his life.
Desperately, he reached for Dragomir's retreating foot with the hand that was still responding. His fingers found purchase on a knot of shoelaces and yanked hard. The big guy stumbled and landed on his ass.
Before Leo could press any sort of advantage, baldy reentered the fray. He kicked Leo's hand off of Dragomir's foot and stomped it into the cracked concrete. Something crunched. Panicking, Leo tried to pull his hand back, but the goon shifted his foot and deliberately bore down with all of his weight. Many more things crunched, forcing another unwilling scream from Leo.
Years of rulers striking his knuckles and teachers berating him in front of the class hadn't beaten the left-handedness out of him. This asshole might.
He pulled desperately to free his hand from the crushing pressure, but the bald-headed goon just smiled darkly and kept grinding his foot down.
Goon number two flew in with a kick to the side of Leo's head. The world turned sideways and inside-out. He reeled, trying to find anything that might help him, but he couldn't see right. It was hard to tell where anything was. He wanted to claw at the foot that was crushing his hand into the ground, but his free arm wouldn't respond.
“Fuck you Fuck You FUCK YOU!”
“You want more?” Dragomir, who’d had all the time in the world to get back to his feet, roared as his meaty foot crashed into Leo’s stomach.
This time, Leo's breakfast did more than just tickle his esophagus. It came back for seconds in spectacular fashion. Puking in front of a lot of people ranked high on his list of Things He Never Wanted to Do. It was right up there with skydiving and jumping naked into a pit of needles. He tried to express his irritation over this, say something to salve his pride, but all that came out was a weakened groan.
“Yeah! You like this?” Dragomir taunted, then knelt down and smeared Leo's face into his own puke, holding it there, “You going to die young, but you won't be leaving any pretty corpse!” The big man brayed laughter and spat in his face.
Leo's dignity was gone. His anger was still boiling away inside his chest, but it was steadily being torn apart by shards of panic, becoming impotent to overcome the pure damage his body was taking. Where were the fucking guards? He was dying! Out here in public! And nobody was lifting a fucking finger. Leo was used to people not giving a shit about him, but it was the guards’ fucking job to break up shit like this, wasn't it? Did Harvey pay them off, too?
The foot finally came off his smashed hand, allowing blood back into it, which brought a hot wave of fresh agony. He pulled it in toward his chest and curled his legs up as much as his fucked up knee would allow him to. Dragomir released his head just in time for baldy to stomp on it, making Leo's vision bloom with black flowers. His thoughts turned abruptly to Linda and her beautiful don't-fuck-with-me smile. Alex’s messy little head grinning at him after Leo let him win at hoops. Was he really going to never see those two again? Never grow old fighting the world by Linda's side? Never get to see Alex grow up? The pain of that thought hurt worse than everything else combined. He had to survive. Had to.
He curled his bruised body into a ball, using strength he couldn't spare to get his injured arm up over his head. It was all the fight he had left. They showered him with savage kicks and stomps to the ribs, kidneys, legs, head, everywhere. Protect the vitals as best you can. Survive.
Even so, he could feel his bones, his whole body breaking. Rough-soled shoes repeatedly stomped the meat and bones of his arm into his face. There were several cracking sensations, and the hurt was so ubiquitous that he couldn't tell which bones produced them. It was getting hard to breathe and impossible to keep holding his arm up in defense. The assholes immediately exploited the fresh new access to his face by stomping on it. Another kick connected with the back of his head, and the world lurched dizzyingly.
His grip on consciousness was growing tenuous. He couldn't see at all anymore. There was no longer any way to escape the fact that he was going to die, and he couldn't do a damned thing to stop it. Ever since he was abandoned, he'd told himself he'd never be this helpless again. But here he was– six-year-old little Lenny– at the mercy of his piece of shit father all over again.
He didn't know how many of his ribs were broken, just that they were. So he used the last of his strength reserves to power through the agony of expanding them around a big lungful of air, and screamed, voice thick with blood, pain, and desperation.
“Somebody please help me!”
The shriek of whistles was the last thing he heard before the pain and hopelessness took him.