“The past beats inside me like a second heart.” - John Banville
Sion divides his life into two parts. There’s the before, and then the after. Before he betrayed the mob who’d taken him in. After he left with his mother for a different life in Wilmington. Before he’d escaped from a path so dark the parts of his life steeped in it are too chaotic for him for unpack. After he’d been able to become a different person, to salvage some of Owen and turn him into Sion, a new man.
tw: references to violence
A couple of weeks after a piece of paper had shaken the lawyers world, Sion was taking all of his frustrations out on a punching bag. He paid a decent price in order to have a whole room to himself at his local gym, the room ringed with mirrors, a small stack of weights in the corner. His too long brown hair pulled into a short ponytail at the back of his head, the lawyer seemed to have made it his mission to attack a ceiling-hung punching bag with all the savagery in his system. Sans punching gloves, Sion’s large fists sported only hand wraps, his body in gym shorts and sneakers. His thin tank top had long since molded to his body due to the amount of sweat he was putting out, and anger is what fueled him.
He didn’t even know if he was allowed to feel angry, but he was. Angry that his past was coming back to haunt him. Angry that he felt like he’d be looking over his shoulder all his life. Angry that his sacrifice, the murder of his loyalty and his pride to escape from the hell he lived in, had apparently been for nothing. Angry at the fact that maybe, when he’d warned the ones he trusted as family most, they’d told on him. And now his freedom and personal security were victim.
Owen Baker, the person that Sion James used to be, was wiry and strong. He was fiercely loyal, popular in his school despite all of the students poor backgrounds. He made decent grades, he would argue you to death, and he was an all around liked guy.
Then came the Bastiano Mob.
He’d always heard rumors in school about the mob with influence all around his derelict town, and had seen members doing their due diligence. Then one day, he helped a man who could’ve been his fathers age carry some grocery bags to his car. When someone tried to rush the other man Owen physically body blocked him, right before a bang sounded in the parking lot. Another man came from nowhere, polishing his gun off, and the man who’s grocery bags he’d carried asked if he’d like a job. Turns out the man he’d protected was Niccolo Bastiani, the brother of the head of the Bastiano mob, and his life hit a turning point.
The money was too good, to be frank, to turn down. Added to the protection Owen and his mom would receive, it was a no brainer to get involved, even while keeping it a secret from her. His grades dropped to high C’s, a far cry from the high marks he used to have before, and his public persona changed to the resident bad boy. Even though he started only as a runner, there was an ever slippery slope of violence that the job put him into. Owen saw things he’d never wanted to see, done things he never thought he would do. Hard work hardened his eyes, ruined his soul, and roughened his hands. Scars still littered his body now, marks that he always chalked up to a rough and tumble childhood when with his amours. Then he turned 20. He was in community college, trying to make something of his life, when he realized how much it was going to be lost. Owen wanted freedom dammit, and he was going to get it.
So he planned. He studied. He presented it to his head of the mob and his wish was granted, and Owen worked damn hard to get himself off. Fifteen people. F i f t e e n. Thats how many people he told. He heard about the bus on the radio, driving in a U-Haul with his mom in the passenger seat. And here he was, eight years later, beating the shit out of a punching bag.
It was Sion who lived with Owen’s past, Sion whose new life was now threatened by the things he’d done.
And it pissed him the hell off.
Something cut through the haze of Sion’s thought, the awareness that his fist was no longer connecting with anything. It was, in fact, stuck halfway inside of the bag. Using his other hand to anchor on the outside of the bag, Sion pulled bleeding knuckles from the destroyed exercise equipment. He stood, chest heaving, music pouring into his head from earbuds, and made a promise to himself. A promise that he would not let his past fuck with his future.
Exchanging the bag, Sion went back to town, muscles flexing as they attacked the leather again and again. Owen might exist in the before, but it was Sion who was in the after, and it was an after he didn’t care to give up any time soon.
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