VENDETTA

Part III

By Tobias Christopher

Ten years ago, Frank Castle lost his family to a horrific act of mob violence and was left for dead. He recovered and went on a violent vendetta against crime to avenge those he lost. Today, Frank Castle is known as The Punisher.

Two days ago, Frank discovered that he had a long lost son who had been taken in and raised by mob boss Don Martoni, who hated Frank with a passion. Martoni offered Frank a deal: Wipe out the rival Ritoli family in exchange for the boy.

As Frank rubs out the Ritoli family, his mind keeps going back to what he lost all those years ago, and what he stands to gain if he succeeds…

One week before the event that changed Frank Castle’s life forever…

“Mom says you’re going away,”

Frank Castle was sitting with his young son David on the fishing dock. The boy looked up at his father with sadness in his eyes.

“It’s just for a few months,” Frank told the boy as he held onto his fishing line. “I’m just going to do a quick tour of duty. While I’m gone, you’re the man of the house. I want you to look after your Mom and sister. Be strong and watch out for them.”

Frank reached down into his shirt and pulled out his dog tags from the War. He removed them from his neck and placed them around David’s. “I want you to hold onto these for me until I get back.”

David reached over and hugged his father. “When are you going?”

“In two weeks,” Frank told him. “When I get back, we’ll go on that camping trip I promised. Just you and me. I’ll show you to how work a hunting rifle. Just don’t tell your mom. You know how she feels about guns.”

Present Day
The Golden Bell Casino
9:00

Frank Castle was doing surveillance on the last surviving child of Vic Ritoli. Well, surviving in the sense that Ritoli’s good son Tim had fled the country after faking his death. Now Frank was after the oldest Ritoli boy, James. After him, he’d just have to take out the two bodyguards, a few guard dogs and then it was on to the main man himself, Vic Ritoli, the city’s most notorious mobster and drug runner.

Then Frank would go on to reclaim the son he never knew. But that was a problem in itself. How could Frank raise a child with this lifestyle? Not unless he laid his guns down and stopped his crusade against crime.

But could he do that? Just give up the darkness and the vengeance so easily? Just for the sake of his flesh and blood? For that innocent child whose eyes held a life without pain or fear? Frank shook it off and put his focus back on the casino. He’d have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

There was a party going on at the casino tonight, obviously for all the clients that Ritoli needed to keep his operation moving smoothly; his connections that supplied him with his drugs, guns, and other illegal materials. There had to be at least two dozen lowlifes in attendance, including Ritoli’s son, not to mention at least a half dozen dirty cops whose job it was to make sure nothing was ever pinned on Ritoli.

Frank packed as much arsenal as he could onto his body, enough so he could still move about freely, including several grenades, lightweight guns and explosives. As he walked through the parking lot he noticed all the nice, expensive cars being parked by the valets. He saw a nice expensive Italian black and blue sports car with all the features. Some dealer must have had to spill a lot of innocent blood to get one of those.

Frank approached the front door, intending to just walk in and start shooting anything that moved, but was stopped by a young punk in a burgundy vest. Frank recognized the young punk instantly as the one that got away. A few months ago, he was pushing his junk onto middle schoolers and Frank was about to beat some sense into him, but had been distracted by a bigger prize on the run from the police, a serial rapist, when he had to let the dealer go and never saw him again up until this point.

“Where you do think you’re going, dude?” the young man asked then almost swallowed his tongue when he saw the skull on Frank’s shirt. “Oh, shit.”

The young man tried to compose himself. He’d gotten his foot in the door with the Ritoli’s by taking the job of door greeter for the party and wasn’t about to let his new bosses down. He hoped to work his way up to dealing out some of the powerful cocaine that the Ritoli family was infamous for in the underworld.

“You- you can’t go in,” the young man told him with nervousness in his voice. “This party’s by invite only.”

“Oh, okay,” Frank calmly said as he adjusted the collar on the young man’s burgundy vest. “I’d hate to be a party crasher.”

“Everything’s under control,” Matthew said as he approached James, who was sipping a martini as he watched the party from a room upstairs.

“Just make sure everything goes smoothly, I don’t want any mistakes,” James said nervously. Frank had taken out his brothers and his best friend Pete. He’d have his payback. It was just a matter of time. “These people are more important to my father than I am.”

The party goers were having a nice time, mingling, drinking, gambling and getting high, when a loud sound was heard, like an engine roaring. Before anyone could say anything, an Italian black and blue sports car crashed through the doors of the casino.

The casino guards wasted no time opening fire on the car. They’d been warned that the Punisher was in town and were given strict orders to shoot to kill. They mercilessly shot at the driver behind the tinted windows.

After unloading several rounds of ammo, the door opened and a young man in a burgundy vest fell out, bleeding heavily, holding an object in his hands. One of the security guards picked up the small object and read the text inscribed on it.

“‘Front Towards Enemy’,” the man read. “What the fuck does that-”

BOOM!

Frank watched from the skylight over the room as the explosion took out roughly half the people there. It was a sight that Frank never tired of.

“Showtime,” Frank said to himself as took hold of the rope attached to the air vent and jumped through the skylight, landing in the middle of the room. The people who died in the explosion were the lucky ones compared to the hell that was coming as Frank immediately opened fire to hit the guards who were still fazed by what had just happened. After two of them fell, the rest returned fire at Frank, all of them too shaken to properly hit their target.

A stray bullet had hit the jukebox in the corner, filling the room with the sound of Johnny Cash’s ‘The Man Comes Around’ as Frank lifted his two .45s and fired at whoever was still moving, while the still standing security guards fired back.

He rolled behind the burned out car and reloaded his guns. After a few minutes of gunplay, Frank looked around; as always, he was the last man standing. He was hit in a few places, but it was nothing that couldn’t be patched up. The kevlar took most of the damage. He looked up toward James, who had seen the massacre. Frank just gave him a cold stare as he headed for the staircase.

“Make sure he suffers,” James told Matthew as he looked downstairs at all the carnage.

“What are you going to do?” Matthew asked as he loaded his gun.

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” James replied as he patted Matthew on the shoulder before making a run for it. “Good luck.”

Frank swept the room with gunfire once more, just to make sure everyone was dead. The Spice Girl’s ‘Wannabe’ was blasting from the jukebox as Frank noticed the young punk in the burgundy vest was still alive, but bleeding heavily. His right arm and both legs were gone and half his face was badly burned. He’d bleed to death in about an hour, maybe less, but until then, the punk was going to experience nothing short of intense pain and suffering.

Poor bastard, Frank thought to himself. Someone should end his misery.

Frank raised his .45 caliber automatic and fired, hitting the jukebox and ending the horrific sound that was coming out of it. He stepped past the young man on the way to the more important prey.

Matt Scotten hated working for the Ritoli family, but he felt he owed them. After his father was killed in a prison riot, the Ritoli’s gave his mother work as a prostitute and treated Matt like a bastard son, even giving him a good education in a poorly funded public school. But still, he was good with a gun and that made him a valuable asset to the mob. He could pick off a fly while it was in flight.

He waited in the supply closet for Frank to come by, then he’d take him by surprise. A single bullet to the temple was all he needed to take down the Punisher. Then he’d be a hero. He’d be Vic Ritoli’s number one son. He heard footsteps walk past and waited.

“Alright, motherfucker,” Matt said as he kicked open the door and held his gun out, at which point his wrist was grabbed by Frank and the gun taken away.

“If you’re going to hide in the closet, don’t leave the light on,” Frank told him. Matt swallowed hard and closed his eyes, expecting a gunshot in the head to end his life.

“Aren’t you going to kill me?” Matt asked as he kept his eyes closed.

Frank didn’t answer. He casually placed a hand grenade in Matt’s hand, pulled out the pin, and shoved him back into the closet before closing the door. As he walked away, a scream was heard, followed by an explosion, then the splatter of body parts hitting the wall and, finally, the calming silence of death.

“Oh shit,” James said as he heard the explosion as he fumbled around for his car keys. He was headed down the fire escape as Frank kicked open the door and saw the open window.

“What the hell, I need the target practice,” Frank said to himself as he jumped onto the fire escape and lined up his shot, hitting James in the knee, who was just a few feet from his car. James tried to crawl away as Frank walked toward him with his gun in hand.

“Don’t kill me man!” James pleaded. “I’ll give you anything you want!”

Frank grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him away. He’d grant the man this one request. He wouldn’t kill him.

“Tell me, James, how good are you with animals?” Frank asked.

Interlude
California
A run down apartment

Luvsemyung69: So, what do you do in your spare time, darling?
Angelic1: You’re really sweet : ) I’m a teen model. I was thinking about dropping out of high school and running away to California to model fulltime.
Luvsemyung69: U sound really interesting. And U say U R how old again?
Angelic1: 15. I just had some photos done. I don’t know if you’d like to see them. I’m not wearing very much 😉
Luvsemyung69: R U kidding? I’d luv too, lol!
Angelic1: Alright, here it comes. Get ready for a big surprise.

The 57-year-old man on the other end of the computer connection eagerly awaited the arrival of the pictures. When he saw what the girl looked like, he’d offer to take her in and get her alone, just like the others. And like the others, she wouldn’t go home, either.

When the man hit ‘download’, he saw a picture, but it wasn’t what he was hoping for. Instead of a scantily clad young girl, it was a laughing skull, dowloading a powerful virus onto his computer. Within two minutes, the virus not only locked him out of his computer so he couldn’t erase the evidence that would convict him, but cleaned out his online bank account, and sent an e-mail to the FBI with the conversation that had just taken place as well as the saved conversations with three other girls. Within twenty minutes, the Feds would be at his door and an investigation would be launched, which would connect him to three missing underage girls over the last few months.

In Washington, a 24-year-old man with reddish blonde hair smiled as he sat back in his chair. He took a long drink from the root beer bottle sitting by the monitor before sitting it back down. One more piece of scum would soon be off the street. The young man checked his bank account. Only a few hundred bucks had been added, but at least it was something. Just another day in the life of Chip Carter, master computer hacker.

End Interlude

The Ritoli Mansion
10:15 p.m.

Vic Ritoli had left the house twenty minutes ago after hearing the casino had been attacked. He took most of his guards with him to take out the Punisher in case he was still there. What they’d find would be hidden mines and trip wires, ensuring that only Ritoli and a lucky few men would return alive.

“Dogs aren’t mean by nature, at least not at first. That’s where man comes in. Man is far from dog’s best friend, especially when it comes to training guard dogs. Take Vic Ritoli’s dogs for instance. Doberman pinchers, starved for weeks and cruelly beaten and abused until they were turned into lethal killing machines. Add to that when they were finally fed, they were specially trained to only eat meat. Any kind of meat they could get their teeth into. Squirrels, birds, cats, man, it’s all food to them,” Frank said as he sat on the eight foot brick wall as the guard dogs approached. Sitting next to him was James, stripped down to his boxers, bound and gagged, barbeque sauce generously poured over his head. “Why, if one to were to walk in there without some sort of protective gear or food to distract them, you’d probably be torn to pieces.”

After a brief pause, Frank shoved James off the fence, where the dogs sank their sharpened teeth into him, ripping into his flesh. Frank headed around to the back of the property and climbed over the wall while the dogs were distracted. He shut off the security alarm before picking the lock on the back door. He got his .45 ready and made his way in, ready to shoot at anything that came at him.

The kitchen was dark as he made his way through. The faint sounds of muffled screams from the yard soon faded away into nothingness as Frank approached the living room. As soon as he stepped in, he heard a click and realized a gun was being held to his head.

“Don’t move,” Ritoli’s armed guard said as he held his gun toward Frank.

Thirty seconds later, after Frank had snapped the man’s neck, he made his way through the living room and looked at the pictures of Ritoli’s family. Him, his ex-wife and his sons and daughter at various ages, but one picture stood out from the rest. Frank picked it up to examine it more closely, seeing it was a picture of a bride and groom. More specially, Ritoli’s daughter…and Don Martoni’s brother.

“Son of a bitch,” Frank said. “They’re not dead–”

A kick to his stomach caused him to drop the photo, shattering it. Before Frank could think, another kick hit in the head, knocking him backwards, followed by several more kicks to the sides and chest. One more blow sent him onto his back.

Frank looked up and saw a blonde woman standing over him.

“Hello, Frank,” Anya said as she cracked her knuckles. “We meet at last.”

Before Frank could say anything, her boot came down on top of him, followed by nothing but darkness…

Frank woke up and realize two things: He was shirtless and tied to a chair, all of his weapons gone…and Vic Ritoli was standing in front of him, gun in hand. Around him were three armed guards and the woman who’d knocked him out.

“Frank Castle,” Ritoli said with a smile on his face. “Welcome to hell.”