The King of Swords (max mingus) by Nick Stone

couldn't understand but loved anyway.
    It all ended very suddenly one afternoon when a group of armed men came to the house in a long black car. They'd knocked on the door, yelling for his dad to come out or else they'd burn it down. His dad had gone to the door and they'd grabbed him and dragged him into the middle of the street where they'd forced him to lie face down on the ground. One man put his foot on his dad's head, while another patted him back down and then drew an X on his shirt in red pen and shot him in the spot. Carmine had run out of the house screaming. He'd tried to grab his dad's arms to pick him up off the ground, but he was convulsing, arms and legs slapping at the asphalt like an epileptic swimmer's as foamy blood pumped out from under him. Carmine remembered how his dad had tried to say something, but couldn't get any words out because of the blood filling up his mouth. As Carmine became schooled in the ways of the street and learned about guns, he discovered that one of the most painful places to get shot is through the heart because, in its final panicked moments the brain diverts the blood flow to the open wound to close and heal it, causing brief but absolute agony for the dying victim. His father's convulsions stopped, until the only sign he was still alive was a twitch in the left side of his face, a violent tugging which Carmine had thought at the time was an invisible angel, trying one last time to pull his dad up on his feet before it was too late. The men bundled Carmine into their car and drove off.
    On the way a storm broke. There was nothing like those Haitian storms. They sounded like all the wars in heaven had broken out on earth; lightning lashed at the landscape and thunder roared and boomed, followed by a deluge of rain. His father's killers had pulled over and stopped until it passed. Carmine had looked out of the window, trying to see if the rain would carry his dad's body into the sea. He saw nothing. He concluded his dad had been a good person.
    They drove him to his mother's house. She was waiting for him at the doorway and led him to the bathroom. There was a large round grey metal tub in the middle. It was filled with hot water doused with Dettol. She'd never washed him before, it had always been his dad. Carmine's clothes were covered in blood and when she asked him to take them off he told her he wanted to keep them on. His mother produced her stick and said, 'Do as I say because there's no one else here for you now. It's just me and you for as long as I say so. Now, take off your clothes and get in the bath.'
    And so, realizing he had no choice but to surrender for the time being, he did as he was told without further protest or hint of complaint. That was the beginning of their relationship, which had then evolved into one of tyrant and subject, mistress and slave, one growing ever more powerful as the other grew slowly weaker and more insignificant. Or so he let it appear.
    They left Haiti for Miami when he was about eight or nine. Memories of his father moved to the back of his mind, to a place he retreated to when things with his mother got real bad. He replayed them there and thought of what might have been and how different his life could have turned out if those men hadn't come and killed his dad; men he knew his mother had sent. He created a fantasy world, a padded panic room he could run to when the humiliation of the real one and the reality of his place in it got too much. In that world he was with his father and Lucita. He himself was still six years old, with everything in front of him and everything to live for. He often thought about Lucita and wondered what had happened to her. He couldn't remember if she'd been there in the road with his father, or if she'd stayed in the house. Had the men killed her too?
    It had long bothered him, the not knowing-not just about her, but about his father too. He didn't know where he was from originally, what he'd done before