by Zahra Girard
But then, to me, the idea that I’d one day be talking about emotions with a woman is ridiculous, too, so I decide to just keep going.
“It’s not ideal, yeah, but I don’t think there’s ever going to be an ideal time for what I need to tell you. Besides, life is going to be complicated for a while. For both of us.”
I hold up my still-handcuffed hands for emphasis.
There’s a period where she hesitates, where this look of doubt crosses her face and I start to think that she’ll tell me to go to hell. Which she’d have every right to do, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that happen. So before she can even open her mouth to protest, I keep going.
“I love you. I still love you. You’re the most incredible, beautiful, maddening fucking woman to ever come into my life and you’ve flipped everything about me on it’s fucking head. You deserve to know the truth, so fucking relax and let the painkillers get to work and just listen, alright?”
She nods.
“When you came to me earlier, angry as hell, you brought up the woman and the kid that died. They’re why I’m here. We — Nico and I — killed them.”
A dark look flickers across her face. Even though she doesn’t say anything, it feels like she’s on the verge of telling me to get out.
“It was over a year ago. We were staking out the home of the head of a rival family. Some piece of shit named Aleksandr Petrossian. He was the boss of an Armenian group that was trying to move in on our territory and we had to send them a message. They shipped people — women, kids — out to Eastern Europe as slaves to do god knows what and they brought in smack from Afghanistan. Real, filthy pieces of shit.”
I shut my eyes. I remember everything about that part of my life no matter how hard I try and forget. It’s like I’m not even here in the ambulance anymore.
“We learned everything about him; where he liked to eat, where he shopped, what kind of gun he kept on him, when his wife would head out each morning to go to visit friends and run errands, fuck, we even dug through his trash and learned who his goddamned cable provider was. We dug into his life, we learned his routine, and so we figured out our plan: we were going to bomb his car.”
I can still recall Nico as he was explaining the plan to me. It was his job, his operation, because he was my older brother and he was the more responsible between us. If it’d been up to me, we would’ve raided the place, shot them all, and been done with it.
But Nico wanted to be sure and precise and he didn’t want anyone to get hurt who didn’t have to be hurt.
He always cared about that stuff more than me.
“What happened?” Stephanie says.
It’s then I realize I’ve been quiet for a while. The only sound until she spoke was the whirr of the ambulance’s engine as we speed down the road.
“We broke into his garage — he had this big detached structure where he kept his cars — and it took an hour just getting in there without tipping off his security. Nico set the bomb, we got out, and we waited.”
I can still remember the way the air smelled that morning, still remember how the coffee that we’d picked up from the corner convenience store tasted — like over-roasted dirt — and still remember the feeling of satisfaction we both felt in anticipation of pulling off the job.
We’d wait, watch, and then, once we heard the bomb go off and knew the job was done, we’d go celebrate.
“That morning, for God knows what reason, his wife decided she needed to use his car,” I say. “We could smell it blocks away. Burning rubber and charred skin. Nico took it hard. He just sunk into this dark hole. The last Sunday that I saw him, we’d had a few beers and he told me to get out of this life, to find something good to live for before I end up getting pulled down too. Then, he killed himself.”
I choke up a second. Finding my brother in that condition, laying face-down with a bullet-shaped hole in the back of his head, is something I’ll never get over.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she says. Her words are a little slurred from the drugs, and she’s beat to all hell, but she still reaches out to give my hand a squeeze and damn it, if that doesn’t ease the pain a little. “Thank you for telling me.”
“The truth is, I liked what I did. Part of me still does and always will. I can’t change that. When I came out here to start over, I thought this was all a load of horseshit and that I’d be back to my old line of work after a year or so. But then, you came along,” I can’t hold back the smile, even though smiling hurts like hell. “You really fucked up my plans, bella.”
She laughs. Then winces sharply and I grip her hand tighter until the pained expression passes off her face.
“This whole thing is a mess,” she says, then stops again as the ambulance slows to an abrupt stop. “I mean, I can’t really thank you. ‘Thanks for killing all those people’ just sounds too messed up. But… I am grateful to have you in my life.”
The back doors to the ambulance open and there’s a pair of unfamiliar cops and the two paramedics waiting for us right outside.
The paramedics hop in and gingerly haul Stephanie out of the back of the ambulance, while the cops try to yank me around by my handcuffs like I’m some kind of dog on a leash.
I struggle against them, literally dragging them along while I try and keep pace with Stephanie’s gurney.
I know what’s coming after this, I know where they’re taking me, and there’s no way in hell I’m going without hearing what I need from Stephanie.
I shake off the cops and catch up to her and take hold of her hand again.
“Promise me you won’t skip town without saying goodbye.”
She smiles at me, the kind of bright smile that’s enough to light up my whole fucking world. “I’m not really in the condition to be going anywhere, am I?”
“No, you’re kind of a mess, bella.”
That smile somehow gets wider and more beautiful. “Then, you promise to stay out of trouble, and I’ll promise to stick around a while, ok?”
“Deal.”
I bend over and give her a quick kiss on the on the small part of her face that isn’t bruised or injured.
The cops catch back up to me and start to yank me back towards the direction of the parking lot, but I manage to hold my ground and watch while the paramedics wheel her into the hospital. Those last few seconds make what I know is coming after this easier to face.
Another set of hands settles on my shoulders and a familiar voice makes me turn around.
“Come on, Luca, it’s time to go,” Officer Dillingham says, pulling me towards the direction of his waiting squad car.
I turn around. A second cop car’s pulled up beside the first and I spot Officer Fletcher sitting in the front seat. The asshole is grinning like a Cheshire cat and I bet he’s loving the hell out of this.
I nod and let him lead me to the waiting squad car and push me into the back. There’s an orange jumpsuit on the seat next to me and a set of keys for the handcuffs. I let myself loose and put on the jumpsuit, before putting the cuffs back on. The car starts up and Officer Dillingham pulls out of the parking lot and starts down the road with what I feel is a little more speed than usual.
Officer Fletcher turns around in his seat to look at me through the dividing glass and he’s still got that stupid grin on his face.
“You sure you ready for this? Not that I’m objecting to seeing you in that prison jumpsuit — hell, I think you’ll be the prettiest boy in your cell block — but we could give you a little more time. Fuck, for the amount you paid us, I’d happily walk into that ER and grab you a few bottles of Oxy, if you want.”
I shake my head. “I can’t have word of today getting out to the Family back east. I’m finishing this. So you put me in a cell with him, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Stephanie
From the second the hospital doors shut behind me, it’s like my body decides that now is the time for me
to realize just what a wringer I’ve been through ever since I came back to Arroyo Falls.
Holy shit, I feel awful.
Bruises and broken bones and cuts and scars — emotional and physical — suddenly spring to life and become these real things. Things that my body can afford to feel now that I don’t have to worry about being shot or raped or sold off.
I feel pain and I must’ve cried out, because all of a sudden one of the nurses is putting something incredible into my arm and I’m pretty sure if I could focus my thoughts I’d tell her ‘thank you, that feels amazing’, but it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open.
Eventually, even that is too much.
I shut down. My eyes close and I drift away.
I wake up after a while.
I’m in a little white room, with bandages all over me and an IV drip in my arm. There’s an extravagant bouquet of flowers in the little bedside table. Bright, beautiful orchids that smell like coconut and citrus.
Even though there’s no note, I know they have to be from Luca.
That makes me smile, even though smiling makes me hurt enough that I think I might throw up.
An hour passes, maybe two, and I spend the whole time laying there, reflecting.
I never thought I’d be here — and I don’t mean at the hospital with broken ribs and feeling like I was put through a meat grinder.
I might actually be free.
Soon enough, we might actually be free.
It might be the drugs, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around just how that’s going to work. It seems like just another lie — too big to even be believed.
How are we going to start over?
What are our lives going to look like?
Try as I might, I just can’t picture it.
The usual things, like going back to the hardware store, or taking boxing lessons, or even going back to Baltimore, they all seem tied up with too much baggage.
I burned a lot of bridges coming home. I abandoned a job and coworkers and it’s not like I can just saunter back like nothing happened.
Besides, what would I tell them?
And the hardware store? I doubt I’ll be able to go back there for a while without thinking of all the misery that place brought into my life.
This whole experience has left me feeling so drained. I need something to make me feel meaning again. Something to make me excited to get up in the morning.
Correction, I remind myself. We’ll both need something. I doubt Luca’s just going to go back to the gym after all this.
It’s confounding. Trying to find purpose and figure out a way forward when we now have our whole lives open in front of us.
So when a nurse comes in to check on me, I’m happy for the break, even though she’s carrying a tray of what I’m sure is awful food and some flavorless red jello.
There’s always jello.
She moves my bouquet aside, taking a second for a long, appreciative sniff of the orchids — they really do smell lovely, even from this far away — and then plops the tray down in front of me.
“Time to eat. You’ve been out for a long time and you need to get your strength back,” she says as she lifts the lid.
Sure enough: Jello.
It wiggles like it’s alive.
I’m not even shaking the plate, and it’s wiggling.
There’s a little meatloaf, too. And a bread roll, some steamed broccoli, and a lump of mashed potatoes with one pathetic little piece of chive in it. The potatoes have a weird sheen to them, like they’re artificial. It’s the kind of sheen you only see on hospital food or during the cleanup of an industrial spill.
I pick at the food while she checks my vitals.
“How long was I out?”
The meatloaf tastes like crap twice defrosted and warmed in the microwave. But I eat it anyways because I am suddenly starving.
The nurse checks her watch.
“About twenty, twenty-one hours. Give or take.”
Really?
I blink. I still feel exhausted. And in pain. It’s the dull, background kind of pain you feel when you’re on a the right-sized dose of some very effective painkillers — you’re aware that you should be hurting, there’s this impression that you might hurt because you got the crap kicked out of you, but you don’t really feel it other than this weird tugging sensation when you move something that shouldn’t be moved.
The nurse sees me testing out my body, trying to find out what bits are broken, and she gently pushes me back flat against the bed.
“You really shouldn’t be moving right now. Trust me, when the pain meds start to fade, you’ll understand why. Speaking of which…”
She checks over my IV and then hits a small button on my night stand and beautiful warmth flows in through my arm and my whole body feels like I’m floating on some cloud.
“Thanks,” I say. Though with how doped up I am, it sounds like I’m saying ‘tanks’, only with an exaggerated German accent, like I’m the head of some Panzer division.
Hearing my own voice like that makes me giggle.
“Here,” she says, picking up the TV remote and flipping it on. “There’s no better excuse to catch up on your TV than bed confinement. Just relax for a while, dear. And if you feel pain coming back, just hit the button here, alright?”
I nod, then stare at the TV.
I’m watching some reality cooking show, where professional chefs have to cook recipes based on real-time audience suggestions over twitter. It’s weird as heck, but works, mainly because Gordon Ramsay is hosting and lacing both the audience suggestions and his critiques of the chef’s food with his usual over-the-top soul-crushing profanity.
Actually, high as I am, it’s brilliant.
I zone out for a bit while, listening to the dulcet sounds of Gordon Ramsay’s screams.
Sometime after one of the chefs starts to cry over Ramsay’s critique of his Japanese-Turkish fusion spam roast, the bumper for the late-night news comes on.
Violence today at the county jail. Inter-gang conflict claims the life of several high-profile prisoners including two from yesterday’s major organized crime bust.
The bumper cuts to show a couple guys being wheeled out on gurneys and body bags being zipped closed around them and I swear one of them looks like Luca.
I fixate on it. I can’t get it out of my head.
He’s in that jail, he’s betrayed his Family for me, there’s no one in there on his side. It’s him.
I sit up. Fast.
It hurts. Even through the painkillers, it’s enough to make me gasp.
I have to find out what happened. I can’t wait two hours for some newscaster with a name like Damon Wood or Mark Stone or Lester Steele to tell me the man I love is dead, just before he segues into a piece about the latest dangerous teen craze that every parent should know about.
I stand up.
It’s a bad idea, but I do it.
I grab hold of the IV drip and I smack the button a couple times because my body is crying out that standing isn’t just a regular bad idea, it’s a very bad idea.
One foot in front of the other, putting extra care into every step, I start moving forward.
I have to find a phone. Something.
I’ll call my dad. Or Bryan. Or the police.
I get outside my room and grab ahold of the first nurse I see.
“Where is the telephone,” I try to mumble, but it comes out sounding like ‘warbles the tall bone” so I just start miming with my free hand like I’m using a phone and hope that she figures it out.
The nurse gives me a look of such surprise and pity that I’m taken aback for a second.
“What are you doing out of bed?” is all she says, completely ignoring my slurred mumbling and my miming.
“Telephone,” I say again, but she doesn’t listen and she takes hold of me by the shoulder and leads me back to my room.
It’s then I’m aware of just how weak I am.
I try
and struggle against her, because I need to know what happened to Luca, but I might as well be trying to move a brick wall.
“Let me get you a sedative, something to help you sleep. You really need your rest.”
The nurse pops out of the room for what seems like a second and returns with a syringe, which she sticks into my IV port.
Sleep takes over, and I slip into it with my mind and my heart certain that I’ve lost my chance to know Luca as the kind of man I know he could be.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Stephanie
I smell pasta.
Good pasta.
Really, really good pasta.
And a rich sauce. Something meaty and earthy and deep. The kind of smell you only get after hours upon hours of simmering.
My mouth is watering.
My eyelids hurt, but I open them. I blink the sleep out of my eyes and the fog out of my brain and try to gather my surroundings.
There’s a silver-lidded tray that is definitely not hospital-issue on the table beside my bed.
I stare at it a second while my eyes regain focus.
Then, I see him.
Smiling, quiet and relaxed, yet so cocky it’s almost deafening.
He’s in street clothes, which, for him is still a high-end designer button-up, suit jacket, and slacks. For him, casual is not wearing a tie.
“How did you get here?” I manage to croak out.
He leans down and gives me a kiss on the cheek.
“Good to see you too, bella,” he whispers. “I came in through the door, that’s how.”
I glare at him. “You know what I mean.”
He kisses me again. On the lips.
I’m less angry, now.
“I came to bring you a bit of a ‘Get Well’ present.”
Then, he takes the lid off the tray and sets a plate of pasta before me. It’s beautiful.
“Ragu alla bolognesse,” he says. “It’s my nonna’s recipe.”
My mouth starts watering and I’m still so doped up that the drool is dribbling out of the corners of my mouth.
“What’s in it?”
“You’ll have to ask my nonna — when you meet her. Until then, it’s secret. She’ll kill you, and me, if I tell you without permission. I’m serious. She’s done it before.”
