The dull, visceral roar of the motorcycle tore through the icy silence of the Florentine night. The orange lights of the streetlamps raced along the sides of the road like streaks of liquid fire, stretching and breaking across the asphalt still wet from the rain.
Cristian violently turned the handlebars, pressing himself against the fuel tank to cut through the freezing wind whipping his face, penetrating beneath his jacket. The tachometer climbed, the needle trembling toward the red zone. The rain soaked his blond hair sticking out from beneath his helmet, sliding along his clenched jaw, covered by that slight teenage beard that made him look older, harder, more unreachable than he really was.
A sigh filled with venom escaped his mouth. He began talking to himself, above the metallic roar of the engine, with a voice that cut through the night:
"Talent doesn't exist. Some people are simply born luckier. There are those who are born with the road already paved, clean, served to them on a silver platter, and then there are those who are born in the mud and have to take everything by biting, tearing it from other people's flesh with their fingernails. And what do they do? They call it 'talent' when I survive this shit."
He twisted the accelerator even further, until his wrist began to ache. The motorcycle made an aggressive lurch, devouring the meters of empty road.
"I am strong," Cristian continued, his voice rising in pitch, charged with a fierce and lucid anger. "And I'm also fantastic on the field, I know that better than anyone else! But I want to spend my life not giving this talent of mine to people who clearly don't deserve it. To people who look at me as if I were a trophy or a little monkey to make run after a ball. Because, let's be clear, they're the rejects! Not me. Not me, who keeps getting high just so I don't have to hear the noise in my head!"
He leaned into a hairpin turn. His knuckles whitened around the grips as the metal guardrail gleamed just a few centimeters from his knee. The slick asphalt made the rear wheel slip for a second; the motorcycle swerved, threatening to throw him off and send him crashing into the concrete. For one eternal instant it seemed like it was the end, that he was about to crash and settle every account.
But Cristian did not close his eyes. He clenched his jaw with desperate fury.
"Nothing!" he hissed through clenched teeth, his blue eyes wide open in the darkness. "I'm always fine! If I have to die, I want it, and if I have to live, I want it! Nobody chooses for me!"
With a jerk of his body and a feline snap of his arms, he straightened the handlebars at the last possible millisecond, tearing the motorcycle away from gravity and regaining its trajectory with frightening precision.
He took a breathless gasp, his chest rising and falling at frantic rhythms while the wind dried the sweat from his forehead.
"No," he murmured, his voice bending into a dark and obsessive determination. "I'm not leaving like this. I have to reach a dream. I want to open my motorcycle shop... my own place, where nobody can tell me what to do. For..."
He stopped. The name caught in his throat, burning like acid. In the rearview mirror, his own blue eyes — the same eyes as his brother's — stared back at him with ruthless coldness.
"For me," he said, emphasizing every syllable with pure hatred. "Always and only for me."
A few minutes later, the engine shut off with a metallic puff in the dark and deserted courtyard beneath the apartment blocks.
Cristian got off the motorcycle with slow, heavy movements, leaving the helmet hooked onto the handlebars. He walked with rigid steps toward the entrance door, carrying with him the acrid smell of gasoline, rain, stale blood and cigarette smoke.
When he crossed the threshold of the apartment, the dim, yellowish light of the hallway cut through the darkness of the entrance. There, sitting on the floor beside the worn-out sofa, was a five-year-old Cristiano. The child had messy blond hair, his knees pulled against his chest and two large blue eyes, innocent and tired, that lit up as soon as he saw the tall figure of his older brother.
"Hi, Big Brother," the little one said in a sweet, hopeful voice, stretching his little arms out slightly as if searching for contact.
Cristian did not stop. He did not even slow his pace. With a violent and cold shove of his arm, he pushed him aside, sending the child rolling across the floor.
"Fuck you," Cristian spat without even looking him in the eyes.
He stepped over his little brother's body and closed the bedroom door behind him, turning the key in the lock with a sharp metallic click.
He leaned his back against the wood of the door, slowly sliding down until his buttocks touched the cold floor. The darkness of the room swallowed him. He pulled the remaining packet from his pocket, squeezing it in his fist until his fingers trembled.
Then, in the suffocating silence of the room, Cristian began his monologue. His voice was a rasped whisper, poison distilled in the shadows:
"Yes, of course I am man enough," he murmured to himself, smiling with a bitterness that carved into his face. "Look at me. Everyone thinks I'm strong. Everyone sees the tall, handsome boy, the one with the muscles and the light eyes who knows how to earn respect with his fists. They see the 'talent.' But nobody knows what's underneath this skin. Nobody knows that every single day I wake up and feel like an empty shell."
He lowered his head between his knees, breathing the stale air of the room.
"My mother looks at me and sees a mistake. She doesn't need to say anything, I know it. She tells me through the way she slams the dishes onto the table, through the way she avoids me when I walk past her in the hallway. To her, I am a reject. A useless child who ruined her youth, a burden she never asked to carry. And you know what's funny? She's right."
Cristian let out a thin, dry laugh, devoid of any trace of happiness.
"She's right. I'm rotten. There's nothing good inside me. Everything I touch, I ruin, I break, I contaminate. I hit people because it's the only way I know how to keep myself from being crushed by the emptiness. I take this stuff because I need it to silence her voice in my head... that voice that keeps repeating that I'm worthless, that I'm nothing but a mistake made by nature."
He struggled to his feet, placing his hands against the walls in the darkness, until he reached the mirror above the dresser. In the half-light, his silhouette was nothing but an imposing shadow, with two points of blue light reflecting the little clarity filtering through the window.
"They say I have to be a role model for the child," he continued, raising a finger toward his own reflection. "They say: 'You're the older brother, take care of him.' But how can I save someone if I'm drowning first? If I look at him and see the same rotten blood flowing through my veins? I don't want him to love me. I don't want anyone to love me, because whoever loves me ends up destroying themselves."
He brought a hand to his face, pressing his fingers against his eyes until he saw sparks in the darkness.
"I'll be the bad guy. I'll be the monster everyone expects me to be. I'll open that shop, make my money, build my own life alone. Without friends, without family, without anyone I have to answer to. Because if the world made me a reject, I'll be the most dangerous reject they've ever seen. Yes... of course I am man enough to do all of this."