Trophy

It was the beauty that made Frank hate it. He’d always been raised with the belief, the inference, that evil loved the gauche, the ugly, the obscene. It had no right to beauty.

But for every inch the sun rose, dripping fresh light onto the estate, it looked more lovely. Tasteful. Elegant. Bought and paid for, no doubt, by someone else, probably a good person, a family man.

But the monsters inside enjoyed it all the same. They got to savor the works of the decent. Their own works inflicted suffering on all around them.

He lay flat on his stomach in the scrubby South California vegetation, hidden by high bushes, motionless save for the stray small adjustment on the binoculars he looked through. All his energy was reserved for hate. None was permitted to flow into his inanimate body.

He looked over the whole thing, just to relish the hatred. The high-elevation neighborhood that gave the monsters privacy and peace before they even approached their homestead. The narrow side street leading to a cul-de-sac where an iron gate managed to be beautiful despite the antithesis to judgment it represented. Through the gate was a long driveway, paved and neatly symmetrical, running the length of the estate from its very edge to the palatial manor.

An orange grove decorated the pathway between the perimeter and the core. For the most part, the oranges lay littered on the ground, slowly rotting. Only good for the smell that he doubted made it inside the mansion’s air-conditioned interior. It was the least of their sins, but Frank didn’t think they could conceive of pushing beyond their little orchard’s beauty. They wouldn’t let anyone into their sanctum to fill a simple basket with sweet fruit. They wouldn’t…

Frank bit his teeth. He was letting himself get distracted. You could overdose on hatred. What was important wasn’t the house, the resources, it was the people. He’d focus on them. The house could stand for a hundred years so long as he got his hand on the people. That was what mattered.

Movement. He shuffled his magnified gaze to the front door. Belladonna Belucci emerged, wearing a long sun robe over a white bikini. She was only wearing two other things: flip-flops and diamonds.

The trophy wife was a perfect beauty. She was five foot ten, but too generously proportioned to seem gawky. Not like some stretched out WNBA player. More like a goddess, a creation of white marble. Her firm breasts stood out straight from her chest, the creamy flesh almost translucent. The hard bullets of her nipples were plainly defined against her tight-fitting top. After the grand opulence of her chest, her body narrowed into a tiny waist, which then flared out into hips that formed the bottom half of the hourglass, well-matching her jiggling bosom.

Her thighs did not seem thick or slender, but richly curved, holding onto the sumptuousness of her hips but, impossibly, surrendering and not surrendering to symmetry as they tapered down to beautifully sculped calves, dainty feet, puckishly painted toenails. And at her statuesque height, there was ample space for all that Amazonian flesh to swell and flow while still retaining a naturalism no silicone-inflated porn star could hope to match.

Belladonna ‘Bella’ Belucci. The don’s plaything, imported virgin-fresh direct from Sicily. Frank sneered. He had a flavor of hatred for her that he was not used to. True, she was no criminal, had no involvement in the don’s affairs. But wasn’t she complicit? Giving comfort and succor for whatever qualms he felt. Enjoying the fruits of his disgusting labor. And looking so good, so sensual, that she could do anything in this world and yet she settled for the life any cheap whore would aspire to.

A kept woman.

A happy little slave.

Frank watched her, his lips forming a scowl that actually irritated his usually carefully composed features. He was used to hatred, anger. The complicated mixture of feelings that Bella brought about were more irksome than his most despised enemy. He was a well-honed machine—fury was his oil—what Bella inspired was a fuel he was not meant to run on.

He moved his slate-colored eyes off of her and looked over the huge mansion, burrowing into its windows, seeking out any sign of life. There was nothing to surveil except the beauty that had just emerged.

The fact that he wasn’t watching her vexed him; Frank knew it would goad him more to look at her. But eventually, he couldn’t help it. He returned the binoculars to Bella, a mile away, and allowed the surrealism of the scene to take him.

A tiny, distant figure, exploded into view so that she seemed to be standing right next to him. Only he couldn’t hear her, couldn’t smell her… most certainly couldn’t touch her. Something animal in Frank despised the contrivance. She had laid down by the pool, as he knew her morning routine would dictate—beauty on top of beauty, her lush body beside the jeweled blue water that was encased in a framework of statures and scrollwork so that it looked more like a gothic fountain than a swimming pool.

And when she dove into it at the end of her restful tanning session, to wake her body up and fully commit herself to the day, what a picture she would make: a moving target.

But for now she was still, frustratingly still, a challenge to Frank’s vigil. It was like an optical illusion he couldn’t figure out. She was right there, seemingly, and yet…

But he didn’t want her; didn’t even care about her. He wanted the don. And no matter how many times he laid here, how many times he watched, that would not change. 

***

It had developed into a lovely day, the kind Thoreau might have loved as he loved Walden Pond. The trail Frank had forged through the bush to this observation point had become, with day after day of surveillance, something like an elongated boyer. Dense and wild, but no longer restrictive.

Offering no inconvenience after Frank had used the passage so many times.

Allowing him to actually pass through the sun soaked vista that so many only got to see, if that.

It gave a sylvan tranquility that even Frank was moved to note, but which only flamed his anger more.

What right did these criminals have to enjoy such natural beauty when his family was denied so much? They didn't get to have an ordinary life, the simple pleasures of growing up and growing old, while monsters were allowed luxuries beyond belief.

He emerged from the woods into the clearing where he'd left his car, miles from his foot destination and miles from the highway. Coming up to the vehicle, he set his hands against the top of the hardbody and shoved the car on its shocks. It was one of many precautions he took every day. The car was precision engineered, every pound of weight accounted for. The way it shifted told him that the weight was no longer what it had been—off by hundreds of pounds

He threw open the backdoor and a man charged out from his hiding place. Frank slammed the door shut again, ramming it into the man. Driving him back into the backseat.

He flung the door open again and grabbed the man by the hair to haul his head out into the open. Closed the door on him again. Then, as he laid there holding his head, Frank patted him down. He took away his phone and his gun.

The gun was a piece of shit. He tossed it away. The phone he opened up, checking its history to find no calls had been made that morning.

“What was the plan?” Frank asked as he went through the phone, seeing if he recognized anyone in the contacts. “Wait for me to get on the highway, then put a gun to my head and make me drive to your boss?”

“Fuck you!”

“I just would've driven us off the road. So how long have you been following me?”

“Fuck you!”

“No one knows how to make small talk anymore,” Frank rued, before slamming the door again.

“Ahh! Fuck!”

“I'm getting tired of that word.”

“Okay, okay, fu—shit. I saw you at the red light on rodeo. Thought I'd just won the lottery. The fucking Punisher… psycho who keeps fucking up every criminal he finds. You know how big the bounty is on you, man?”

“Did you tell anyone about me?”

“No! Fuck! You have my phone, man, I didn't call anyone!”

“What if there was someone with you? Someone you sent to get help?”

“I thought I'd get all the money for myself! Look, man, I haven't done shit to you. Sure, I tried a little something, but so what? Nothing happened. You're fine, man, fine.”

“I am fine,” Frank said, and closed the door again. Over and over again.

For the first time that morning, he didn't feel so angry.