by Tracey Ward
“I’m gonna try, yeah. I’m finished with the stage.” I smile ruefully. “It’s good to go before it’s finished with you. No one wants to be a has been.”
“You’re far from a has been.”
“And that’s why it’s a good time to get out.” I pause, studying her as she continues to pull at her own hands. “Are you alright?”
She forces a smile, dropping her hands. “Sure. Of course.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nervous is all. I have… I have an audition with Ralph tomorrow. To sing.”
“To replace me.”
“No one can replace you.”
I gin softly. “You can. You’re talented, Elisha. The stage will be yours, I’m sure of it.”
“The other girls, though…”
I take a step closer to her, lowering my voice and my brow. “What about the other girls?”
Her eyes shift to the side as though she’s worried someone will hear us. “They don’t like me.”
“Don’t be fooled; they don’t like each other either.”
“They aren’t quiet about not liking me.”
“I’ll tell you something, most of them don’t like me. Doesn’t change the fact that they have to listen to me, and it will be no different with you.”
“Yes, it will.”
I nod in understanding, seeing what she’s getting at. There are no black girls in the chorus. She’s been the only one and now if she lands my job singing center stage and running the show up there, it will unheard of for this club. Not everyone will like it. Not everyone will tolerate it.
“Mickey has been trying to help me,” she explains quietly, “but there’s only so much he can do. He’s not always around. Especially since the accident. He’s been down in the casino a lot since then.”
“Is it something you want? That spot on stage?”
“Yes,” she answers firmly, loudly.
“Good. Then take it. Take it and don’t give a damn what those girls think or say or do, because they can’t hold a candle to you up there. You’ll make your mark on this town and then you’ll be untouchable. Give Ralph a reason to protect you, and he will. That’s what he’s done for me.”
“You really think it’s worth it?”
I take her hand and squeeze it once in mine. “Anything you want badly enough is worth it. It’s worth everything.”
I head for the backdoor just as the orchestra kicks into warm ups, drowning the building in brass tones and heavy drumbeats. I’ll miss that – the chaotic song signaling the start of the night. As I open the backdoor, I drink it in with my ears and I let it nestle in my blood so I can take it with me and always remember it with a smile on my face.
“Hello, Adrian.”
Tommy. He’s standing in the fading light with a cigarette in his hand and a grim set to his mouth that makes my heart clench in my chest.
“Hello,” I reply hesitantly.
“Come to join me for a smoke?”
“No, I was looking for Eddie. He’s not here so I’ll—“
“Come to join me for a smoke,” he commands, his voice dropping an octave, making me shiver.
I’m frozen halfway out the door. I could turn and head back inside, and judging by the angry look in his eyes, that’s exactly what I should do.
“No, thank you,” I tell him stiffly. “I’m not dressed for the cold. I should get back inside and warm up for the show.”
“Oh yeah, your grand finale,” he muses. He tosses his cigarette, taking a slow step toward me. “I heard you’re leaving us.”
“I am,” I reply, proud of the strength in my voice.
“Heard it’s over a guy.”
“You talked to Ralph.”
“Ralph talked to me,” he corrects, taking another step closer. “He congratulated me. Told me to take good care of you.”
I fight the urge to turn and run even as every muscle in my body is screaming at me that that is exactly what I should do. This isn’t Tommy coming toward me. This is the devil. The demon inside him.
“He misunderstood me.”
“I think I misunderstood you. Or did you lie to me, Adrian? When I was inside you and you moaned and begged me for more, did you lie to me?”
I shake my head. “It was one time, Tommy. It was a mistake and I never begged you for anything.”
His eyes flash hot and angry. “You will now.”
I make a break for it. I’m wearing heels, I’m in a tight dress cutting my breaths in half and pinning my legs together down to the knee, and I know I’ll never make it away from him and this moment no matter how fast I run, but I do it anyway. I do it because I’m scared. Because even though I’ve gotten comfortable, I never got complacent. I’ve always known where I was and who I was with, and it’s more surprising that this moment took this long to get here than it is that it’s finally here.
Doesn’t mean I welcome it with open arms.
I make it four steps inside before Tommy has ahold of me. He was waiting for me to run, and that right there tells me volumes about how this conversation is going to go. How we were always meant to be.
He drags me back outside and throws me back against the closed door, the handle landing painfully in my back and making my cry out. His hand clamps down hard over my mouth. He manages to use his large palm and long fingers to cover my nose as well and suddenly I’m sucking hard against his skin, hoping for air and getting panic and desperation instead.
I kick at him as I dig my fingernails deep into the flesh of his arm, clawing and yanking, fighting for freedom. For air.
He leans in close until his eyes fill my vision. Cold. Empty. “Stop,” he snarls. “I’ll let you breathe but you keep your damn mouth shut, you hear me?”
I nod frantically. When he releases my nose, keeping his hand clamped over my mouth, I breathe in deeply. I was without air for such a short period of time it feels ridiculous to be so grateful for its return, but it wasn’t the lack of oxygen that had me so scared. It was Tommy and how long he planned on making me go without. He’s an eye for an eye sort of guy and if he thinks I’ve been holding out on him in any way, he’ll gladly withhold from me.
“I’m gonna ask you some questions and you’re gonna answer me honestly. Crystal?” I try to remind him I can’t speak, but he pushes harder against my mouth until my teeth ache. “Yes or no questions. You don’t need words, sweetheart. First question – you two timin’ me?”
That is not a yes or no question. Simple answer is no because I’m not with Tommy. I can’t cheat on him because I was never his, but he doesn’t see things that way. In his eyes, yes, I’m two timing him. So which is it? My truth or his?
I nod my head stiffly.
He sighs, almost sounding relieved. “Good girl,” he mumbles more to himself than to me. “Are you sorry?”
I nod my head again because yes, in this moment, I’m sorry for everything that’s landed me here.
“Are you going to make it up to me?”
Rotten son of a bitch, I think scathingly. I know what my punishment will be and I won’t have the gentle numb of the laudanum to make it easy for me tonight. I breathe in hot and angry through my nose several times, my eyes holding his hard. He waits patiently until I nod once.
“Next question – what are we gonna do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
I scowl, my brows coming down in confusion.
He nods slowly in understanding of my expression. “It’s a yes or no, trust me,” I hear a distinct click echo through the ally before he lifts his free hand. It’s holding a gleaming, sharp switchblade. “But I already know what your answer is going to be.”
I shake my head wildly, my eyes going wide as they lock on the blade.
“You see,” he tells me calmly, “I knew that’s what you’d say. I know you, Aid. Inside and out.”
“Tommy,” I groan, my voice muffled by his palm.
“Shhhh,” he coos softly as he brings the blade closer to my
face.
I push back hard against the door, the knob digging into my spine so hard I’m sure I’ll be crippled if I survive this night, but still I try to disappear into it. I try to melt into the stone and wood behind me – anything to escape the crazy coming at me.
“I have to make sure,” he explains as the cold steel comes to rest on my temple next to my left eye. “You obviously can’t be trusted on your own, so I have to help you. I have to help keep them away from you.”
I whimper as the tip of the blade sinks into my skin at the height of my cheekbone. Warm blood trickles heavy and thick down my cheek as hot tears spill from my eyes.
“This is for both of us,” he whispers gently.
He sinks the blade in deeper.
I scream against his hand, clawing at him again. Kicking with everything I have. He leans into me, pressing me back with the weight of his body and shifting his hand so it’s covering my nose and mouth both again. My desperate breaths and screams die out, gagging in the back of my throat and collapsing beside a choked sob of pain as he slowly drags the blade down the side of my face. I snort and gag, still clawing at him but getting nowhere. He doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel anything and I feel everything and the world is going gray at the edges as I miss the air and the pain and panic take me over. I’ll pass out and he’ll carve me up, take what he wants, leave me broken, bleeding, and destroyed on the ground, and I’ll wake up wishing I’d died. I’ll be wondering if someone else already has.
The knife is dragging down my skin, heading for my jaw, and the warmth of my sticky blood trailing down my neck makes me sick inside. He’s cutting deep but clean. Long, precise, and full of purpose. I’ll scar for sure and the evil look in his eyes as he watches me bleed, weep, and struggle for breath tells me that he’s only getting started. This is not the last cut his blade will make on me tonight.
My hands abandon his arms. It’s a lost cause. I’m a lost cause. But I’ve never been a quitter and it’s not about me anymore. It’s about the tiny seed sitting inside me.
I slip my hands quickly and deftly inside his coat, reach for the gun I know is holstered there against him, and I pull it from its hiding place. He has only a heartbeat to realize what I’m doing, and it will be his last.
I shoot him in the chest.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The sound of the gun firing is deafening. I don’t hear Tommy’s body hit the ground or the knife clatter over the dirty pavement. I can’t even hear my own frantic breaths dragging long, cold gusts of air into my lungs. I’m a storm, a tornado tearing through the fields and pulling the oxygen from the air. Gravity from the weight of the world. I’m dizzy, spinning, faint, and wrathful. I stare down at the destruction at my feet. The hole I’ve dug through his chest, the life leaking out of him, but he’s already gone. His vacant eyes stare up at the night sky, his face forever locked in a surprised expression that the mortician will have one hell of a time covering up.
The gun feels achingly heavy in my hand, the metal biting into my shaking fingers. I toss it the ground next to the body, relieved to faintly hear the sound of it hit the ground in a discordant clatter.
“Put the gun in his hand.”
I jerk toward the head of the ally, my feet slipping on the wet ground and nearly tumbling me over. “Drew,” I breathe.
He walks slowly toward me, his sharp eyes surveying the scene. A gun rests in his hand, pointed at the ground. “The gun has to be in his hand, but first we have to use it to fire two shots into that wall,” he tells me, pointing to the building across the ally from me.
“Drew, I had to do it. He was going to—“
“I know what he was going to do,” he interrupts, his eyes locked on my face. His jaw clenches when he sees the blood on my neck. “Where’s the blood from?”
“He cut me.”
“Show me.”
I turn my head slowly so he can see the long line Tommy drug down my face. I can’t feel it for some reason. It hurt like hell when he was doing it, but right now I can’t feel it. I can’t feel much of anything.
Drew doesn’t react when he sees the cut. He steps closer, examines it without touching it, and steps away. He picks up Tommy’s gun, startles me nearly to death by firing two quick shots at the opposing wall, then he lifts his own gun and puts a bullet in Tommy’s forehead. Dead center. Right between the eyes.
He quickly kneels down and puts Tommy’s gun in his hand, forcing his finger around the trigger.
“You knew he was left handed,” I whisper in surprise.
“The devil is in the details.” He glances at me, his movement oddly twitchy. He looks straight down at my stomach. “Did he hit you?”
“No.”
“He didn’t cut you anywhere else?”
“He never touched my stomach.”
He nods, returning his eyes to where his hands work on Tommy’s corpse. “Good.”
“They’re gonna kill me, Drew.”
“Not if we’re careful.”
I laugh. It sounds hysterical even to my ears. “Careful nothing! I killed him. I killed Tommy ‘Two Thumbs’ Giordano. He’s Ralph Capone’s golden boy. A made man. No one walks away from something like this!”
Drew stands, coming to look into my eyes. “They do if they’re smart. Are you smart, Addy?”
“No.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Just kill me now, please,” I beg him. “Put one in my head the way you did to Tommy and I’ll go quickly. They won’t get their hands on me. If they get me in a room alone… They won’t be quick. They’ll be thorough.”
“It’s not going to happen. I won’t let it happen.”
“You can’t stop it,” I whimper miserably.
“Do you think I’ve never been through this before?” He takes hold of my shoulders and shakes me gently, getting my attention. “Calm down. Get your head and your story straight. You came out here with Tommy for a smoke and a fuck. Suddenly two guys come out of the shadows. One grabs you, the other goes for Tommy. The guy cuts you, you scream, Tommy pulls his piece, but they get the drop on him. He gets off two shots just as they shoot him. One in the chest, then one in the head. You’re crying and bleeding on the ground, screaming Tommy’s name. They leave you here.” He lets go of me, taking several steps back. He picks up Tommy’s blade, cleans it on a handkerchief from his pocket, then replaces it in Tommy’s pocket as though it were never used. “Repeat the story to me.”
I don’t hear him. I’m watching him put his hands in Tommy’s pocket and I wish he’d stop touching him. The jostling of the body rolls his head like a marionette with cut strings and his eyes roll like marbles in a jar, wild and loose.
“Addison!” Drew barks. My eyes snap to his where he’s now standing on the far side of the ally. “Repeat the story.”
I lick my lips nervously and take a deep breath. “I—I was out here with Tommy to have a smoke, then two guys—“
“And a fuck,” he insists harshly.
“Why does it have to be that?”
“Because you loved him. You loved him like he loved you. Everyone knows that.”
“No one knows that because it’s not true.”
“No, but they want it to be true so they’ll believe it.”
I blink long and hard. “We came out here together to have sex and suddenly two men jumped us. One grabbed me and he cut my face. Tommy fought with the other guy, he pulled his gun, but they were faster and one put a slug in his chest and dropped him to the ground, then he put one in his head. I was screaming his name and crying. They ran away.” I scowl, shaking my head. “Why would they leave me alive? What if I could identify them?”
“It all happened so fast, you didn’t see anything. Two guys, average in height, average build. They wore hats so you don’t even know hair color.”
“But still, they wouldn’t leave—“
Birdie raises his hand, pointing the open barrel of his gun straight at me. Then he fires.
M
y shoulder explodes in fire. I choke on a scream lodged in the back of my throat as it closes off and denies me air and my agony. I fall to my knees, doubling over in pain.
I’m vaguely aware of Birdy crouching in front of me. I feel the cold press of steel against my temple and I shiver violently, feeling bile rise in the back of my pinched throat.
“Calm,” he commands coolly. “I know you’re in pain, but stay calm. Stay clear. Tell me the story again.”
“Fuck you,” I gasp hoarsely.
“Addy, focus. If you can’t keep the story straight when you’re distracted by the pain, you’ll never be able to keep it straight when you’re scared shitless in a room with the Capones, and I may as well put this bullet in your head now like you wanted. Now tell me the story again. From the top.”
I cough and weeze, dying to get a clean breath, but the pain vibrating out of my shoulder won’t let me. “I c-came out here to fuck Tommy. He—we got jumped. Two guys. It was dark, I didn’t see anything. Average height. Average build.”
“What about accents?” Birdy demands.
I shake my head, closing my eyes against the pain and dizziness threatening to take me under. “They never said a word. They wore hats. I d-didn’t even get hair color. One grabbed me. He cut my f-face. The other went for Tommy. They fought. Tommy pulled his gun but the guy was too fast. The guy put a slug in Tommy’s chest, then another in his h-head when he was down.” I take a deep, shaking breath, lifting my head to meet Birdy’s eyes. “I was screaming his name. Crying for him, but he was gone.”
“Then what happened?”
“They shot me.”
“You went down, silent.”
“They thought I was dead,” I agree, catching on.
“What about the shots Tommy fired? When did those happen? Who were they directed at.”
My heart flies in my chest as my mind searches for the right answer. “I don’t know,” I whisper, terrified he’ll pull that trigger.
He surprises me when he lowers his gun from my forehead and replaces the steel with his lips, kissing my skin softly. “Perfect.”
“But I couldn’t answer.”
“You shouldn’t be able to. If your story is too detailed or too accurate it sounds fake. They’ll know it’s a lie.” His eyes fall on the side of my face where blood continues to pour, warm and thick. “You were being cut by a knife, you couldn’t have seen everything. But the parts that you do know, don’t falter from those. Stick to your story, you got it?”
