by Zahra Girard
There’s a glint in his eye and his voice is shaking with barely-restrained emotion.
“I’d look back and there’d be this voice deep in my soul that told me that I’d made a mistake, that I was a fool for even trying to start over. But now, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel that way. For the first time in my life, I’m looking forward to a future. With you.”
I barely hear his last words, my heartbeat is throbbing in my ears and everything feels so raw and, when he stops talking, I am scrambling for something to saw in return.
We clink glasses in our toast, and as the wine slips between my lips and I look at the passionate, fiery man sitting across from me, my heart starts stirring and my lips start moving.
“I… I feel the same way, Luca,” I clear my throat. It’s scratchy and tense, like it’s trying to close up with the emotions that are swelling through me right now. My head is swimming and the way he’s looking at me — so unguarded, so raw — that I find myself just babbling. “I hate so much about my life right now. There’s so much that feels like I’ve failed, like everything I do is pointless and I should just stop trying. But you make me feel brave. You give me hope. And…”
I stop.
He’s looking at me, looking into me, and I shut my eyes and look into myself, trying to sort out my feelings.
“I think I love you.”
It feels so weird saying that out loud, but so right, too.
I’ve spent so much of this past year being guarded and on edge, but with him, I can be unguarded. I can let out these feelings.
It is liberating and powerful.
His smile gets wider.
The way he looks at me makes me feel like I’m a queen. Like I’m untouchable.
“I love you too, Stephanie.”
I come to his side of the table and I kneel down and I grab him behind the head and I kiss him. With every bit of my heart and soul, I kiss this man who has brought so much change and strength to my life.
“I love you,” I say again.
He starts to talk — and even though I can’t get enough of hearing him say those three magic words — there’s no way in hell I’m going to stop kissing him. My lips meet his again, and I lose myself in his touch, in his embrace.
I climb into his lap. A low growl rises in his chest and his hands grip my back, pulling me into him.
A throat clears itself behind us.
The chef’s here.
We pause for a second.
Luca’s eyes dart over my shoulder and he waves his hand in a polite dismissive gesture.
“Five more minutes,” he says. “Make that ten, actually.”
We don’t wait for the chef to leave. I shut my eyes and give myself over to him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Luca
I love her with a fierceness that surprises the hell out of me..
I’m dreaming about living life with a regular woman.
I’m on top of the fucking world and later tonight, I’ll be putting a body under it.
Dinner goes by in this haze, like some drug-induced vision, with an angel across from me and my mind dwelling on the body in my trunk.
I killed a man earlier tonight. Spilled every bit of his blood out on the plastic-covered concrete floor of her shop. I mopped it up with bleach and whatever remains of that Russian piece of shit is in my trunk.
And now I’m pouring my heart out to a woman whose awakened parts of me I didn’t even know I had.
Vengeance. Peace. Violence. Contentment. Wrath. Happiness.
Love.
I don’t regret a thing that I’ve done. I’d kill a hundred more men to keep her safe.
What I regret is that I’m going to lie to her.
She can never know what I’ve done, because I know that, good person that she is, she’ll run away. She’s one of those lucky innocents in the world.
For now, I focus on enjoying the food and enjoying her company.
The Chef more than earns his money tonight. He brings us seven courses, each better than the last, and wine customized to go with each course. I haven’t eaten like this in years — not since my nonna cooked the full Feast of Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve.
We push back our plates as we finish our final course, dessert, a Tahitian vanilla ice cream inside a clear, edible sphere of hand-blown sugar, filled with herbs and edible flowers and cherrywood smoke.
It’s the kind of thing that’s normally way too fancy for me — I work at a hardware store and hit people for a living — but I want tonight to be a night about her.
I want her to know just how much she means to me.
I want her to feel that she deserves the best things in life and that I’ll do whatever it takes to give them to her.
The night air between us is filled with heat and smiles and sex and desire and I still have butterflies in my stomach from telling her that I love her.
Those are words I never imagined would come out of my mouth. But now that I’ve said them, it feels fucking great.
“Do you want to get out of here?” Stephanie says while dabbing her face with her napkin. There’s a note in her voice that I haven’t heard before. It’s trembling, nervous, but excited.
“What do you think?” I say, grinning.
I get up and offer her my hand and lead her from the restaurant. The parking lot’s empty, except for the few cars belonging to the staff and my own car. It’s way past closing time and the only reason they didn’t kick us out is the fat wad of cash I forked over when making the reservation.
Not even the limo’s here — I sent him home long ago, once I realized it was going to be a long, long time before Stephanie and I finished and, once we were done, we probably wouldn’t make it back to my place before we needed some privacy.
We get in my car and I fire up the engine. The two hundred and fifty horses beneath the hood roar to life and I pull us out of the parking lot. I drive careful — there’s a plastic-wrapped body in my trunk and there’s no way in hell I want it thumping around and raising questions.
“I had a really good time tonight,” she says.
There’s a smile on her face that just lights me up.
Fuck, I never would have guessed I’d enjoy this regular dating thing so much.
It’s harder, that’s for sure, but the rewards are worth it.
“Me too.”
“But I don’t want to go home with you right now.”
Normally, I’d be disappointed, but there’s something in her voice that tells me she’s got something in mind.
“Just tell me where you want to go, bella.”
“Turn here,” she says, once we’re much closer to town.
I follow her directions until we’re in some residential neighborhood in the quiet part of town. She has me pull up to the curb in front of some blue bungalow with worn siding, a cracked driveway, and a big tree growing in the front yard.
There’s even a treehouse hidden in the branches of the tree. It’s homey.
The living room light’s on, and, through the window, I can see the multicolored, shifting glare of the television.
“Stop here,” she says and undoes her seatbelt.
It seems like tonight’s going to end way differently than I thought. I’m ok with that. Yeah, I’d prefer to have her in my bed right now, but, even without that, tonight’s been great. The way she’s glowing — the way she looks relaxed and happy — it makes it all worth it.
She hops out, and then comes around to my side of the car, opening the door. With her free hand, she brushes her hair back from her face and it’s breathtaking how gorgeous she is.
Nervously, she’s bouncing from one foot to the other, like she’s got this pent-up energy that’s just dying to get out.
“You coming?” she says.
“What is this?”
“I had a great time with you tonight. Really. Meeting you has been the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time, and I want what’s between us
to be real, because I can see a future with you. I love you, Luca. And I’d like you to meet my father.”
I’m speechless a moment.
I’ve never done the meeting the family thing, except when I’ve been fooling around with some fellow mob guy’s sister or cousin and met them as part of the job. Usually they were paying me to kill someone and didn’t give a rats ass that I was fucking their relative, so I was more than happy to meet them because, hey, I love money.
But that’s nothing like this.
This is different.
I stand up and take her hand.
“Let’s do it.”
Stephanie squeezes my hand, hard.
“I’m happy, Luca,” she whispers in my ear.
I let her lead me up to the door. As we’re walking, I’m running over every little etiquette rule my nonna tried to drill into me when I was younger. I don’t remember much. Mostly I just remember her smacking me with the business end of a belt because I was such a disobedient little shit.
Stand up straight.
Don’t fucking swear.
Don’t stare at his daughter’s fucking amazing tits in front of him.
That last one’s going to be the most difficult of all.
Stephanie looks fucking hot in just her work clothes. Put her in a dress and she’s the kind of knockout that makes me worried I’m going to pass out because every drop of blood I’ve got is currently residing in my cock.
She knocks on the door.
While we’re waiting, she must pick up on some of the doubts I’m having, because she squeezes my hand again and looks up at me with her bright eyes.
“Don’t worry — he knows about you and he knows you’ll be stopping by.”
“So he stayed up for us?”
She shakes her head. “No. He just doesn’t sleep much.”
The door opens and I look down at an older man, probably in his early sixties, who seems decades older and far worse the wear. His complexion is grey, his eyes don’t have any of the same light as his daughters, and he moves like that hip of his was never fixed.
Seeing a man let himself go like this is almost a shame, really. No wonder Stephanie is stressed so often, she’s carrying the weight of her father around all the time.
The smile on his face at the sight of the two of us hardly touches his eyes.
“Welcome home, pumpkin,” he says as Stephanie wraps him in a hug.
“Hi dad,” she whispers, squeezing him tight enough to get a quiet ‘oomph’ out of the old man.
They embrace for a while and I stand there feeling like a mook, not knowing how to act. Eventually, they let go and he turns to me. “You must be Luca.”
I nod and hold out my hand. “Good to finally meet you, Mr. Turner.”
Despite looking well past his age, the old man’s gt a strong handshake. “Just call me James. It’s good to see you, too. Come inside, there’s cold beer in the fridge. Help yourself.”
Inside, the place looks like a tribute to better days. There’s mementos of love all over the place: family pictures, trinkets from vacations, and there’s a ‘Worlds Greatest Dad’ coffee mug sitting on the kitchen counter. But everything feels just a bit off, a bit in disrepair, like the love that used to light up everything in this house has faded.
I grab myself a beer and we sit down at the table.
Stephanie’s dad takes a chair at the head of the table and looks me over.
Now, I’ve been interrogated before. I know what it looks like. In my past life, even my employers put me through hell. I’d killed for them near a dozen times before they made me a full member of the Family, but even with the bodies I’d put under the ground, they had to know I wouldn’t break.
I’ve still got the scars from that night, when they tested my nerve and I spit right back in their face and told them their worst wouldn’t even make my nonna flinch.
I don’t break.
“Stephanie tells me you own a gym across town,” he says. “Boxing, right?”
I nod.
The old man’s got his back up straight and he’s practically unblinking as he looks me over. That smiling, worn old man that greeted me at the door isn’t here anymore. This is a man that loves his daughter, and will protect her with everything he’s got.
Every tattoo, every scar on my body starts to tingle as he looks me over.
“How’s that going?”
I shrug. “Well enough. I’ve only been at it for eight months or so, but business is up and I make a decent living.”
“You’re new in town?”
“That’s right.”
“Tell me what you did before you got to Arroyo Falls.”
Arson. Assault. Armed Robbery. Murder.
I’m not the kind of man you want your daughter spending time with. If he knew the things I’ve done, he’d be reaching for the nearest weapon and praying there’s cops nearby.
But right now, I need the kind of lie that’s close enough to the truth he’ll believe it.
“I didn’t have a regular job. I did whatever work was available and, where I come from, that sometimes meant I was doing stuff that wasn’t really legal. But I wasn’t paid to ask questions and I had to help support my family; my dad died when I was eight years old, and it’s been on my older brother and me ever since.”
“I’m sorry, Luca,” Stephanie whispers and gives my leg a squeeze under the table.
I shrug.
I’ve never held hard feelings over my dad dying. He wasn’t exactly a good man and he was in the same business. He just wasn’t as good as either my brother or me, and he found the consequences of what happens when you slip up.
The only sign of sympathy from Stephanie’s dad is a short pause before he starts interrogating me again.
“What made you leave?”
I don’t hesitate.
“My brother. Nicolo.”
“How?”
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. And I keep mine on his. I don’t even fucking blink.
I love my brother. He’s the reason I’ve lived this long and he taught me everything I know. If I had a hero, it’d be him.
“It’s the last thing he asked of me before he died.”
“How did he die?”
I grit my teeth.
“What does it matter to you?”
His eyes move from me to Stephanie, who’s sitting quietly in her seat between us, obviously uncomfortable, but silent.
“She matters to me, Luca. She’s all I’ve got left. I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years, but if you think I’m going to let some thug just waltz into her life, you’re wrong.”
I start to stand, because I’ve about had enough. But Stephanie reaches out to me. As much as I hate this interrogation, it’s important to her. And I’d go through hell and back for her.
I reach inside myself and wrench out every reluctant syllable.
“My brother took his own life. I was at his place, we were having a few beers. It was a Sunday afternoon. Nico told me to leave town, to get far away. He wanted me to find somewhere good, to find someone or something to live for, and to grab hold of it and start over. Then he went into the other room and ate a bullet.”
It hurts. Every word, I take from that dark part in my soul where I’ve kept them hidden, where I’ve stored them away to dull the pain, and I pull it out right there at that table.
If I shut my eyes, I can still see the way he looked when I first found him; the way he was slumped in some unnatural heap on the floor. Blood everywhere, his hands gnarled around the gun, clutching it tighter than he’d held onto life.
He shot himself with the gun Don Gianni Durante gave him the day he became a made man.
Stephanie’s father looks me over again — scars, tattoos, sunken knuckles and all — with the kind of expression I used to get from detectives and rival family members. The kind of people who knew what’d I’d done and were looking for any excuse they could find to put me away or put me under the ground.
>
I can see that I’m never getting anywhere with him, that it’s useless to even try. Somehow, whether it’s just fatherly-protectiveness or something else, he’s suspicious of me. He knows I’m not telling the full truth.
He lets out a big sigh, and when he speaks up again, his voice is more icy and steely than I’d figured the old man had in him.
“I think I have a pretty good idea of the kind of man you are,” he says, rising up in his chair, balling his hands into fists and planting them hard against the table with a resonant thud. He leans towards me. “So I’m only going to say this once: Get the hell out of my house. Now. Or I’m calling the police.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Stephanie
What the hell is going on?
I feel like I’m about to witness a brawl.
I’ve never seen my dad like this.
My hands are clenched knuckle-white under the table and, even though I want to say something — to tell my dad to back off, to tell Luca to calm down, something — I can’t even find my voice.
I didn’t expect this. At all.
I knew my dad was going to be a little harsh on Luca. It’s been a long time since I’ve brought a boyfriend home and Luca looks nothing like anyone else I’ve dated. But this is going too far.
Hell, I didn’t think my dad even had it in him to be this stern.
But here he is, and now the room’s descended into silence.
The tension in the air is a living, breathing thing and I feel like any moment now it’s going to snap.
“Fine.”
That’s all Luca says.
I blink. Even my dad looks taken off guard.
We both watch, silent, as Luca gets up from the table, surprisingly calm, and heads to the door. Then I realize what the hell is happening and I’m up on my feet and running after him and I catch up to him on the front porch.
