by Alexa Hart
Just like that, I had felt released from it all. I could live a different life. I could live any life I wanted.
I was certain Max would also feel emancipated by this. Immediately I imagined our new life together, where we had our love on our own terms.
It had never occurred to me that Max would not feel as free. It had never occurred to me that he saw a certain familial honor in becoming a part of the business. It had never occurred to me that without his dead father to crawl out of the grave and give him the same permission as my own had, he would never feel anything less than permanently chained to the life he had always known.
We argued, we cried, we cajoled each other. Both of us were certain in our individual hearts that we would somehow come to agree on the subject, and the turmoil would pass. It had to pass, didn’t it? You couldn’t love someone as much as we loved each other and not make it through something like this.
We would make it. We would figure it out.
Only we hadn’t figured out anything.
“Don’t do this, Nat. Please. Don’t. Do. This. You love me. I love you. This isn’t how we fix things. This isn’t the way,” he had pled in a quiet, husky voice – his tears now actually falling from his eyes.
I had frozen for a split second. How badly I had wanted to fix things. How ruthlessly I had torn myself apart going back and forth with this decision. But there was one thing that I could not let go.
“Quit the business, Max,” I had begged him, our faces still together, both of us crying openly now.
Max had stepped back from me, just enough that we could look each other straight in the face. He was shaking his head and his eyes were imploring me for mercy. “Natalia... I can’t. You know I CAN’T. You know better than anyone!”
My heart had sunk, though I had no reason to believe that his answer would be any different than it had been all along. I pulled completely away then, also shaking my head, though thoroughly unaware of it.
“I do understand. And I don’t want that life,” I was forcing out the words, and making myself hold eye contact. If I were expected to understand him, he was going to fucking understand me – for the last time.
I knew there was more. I knew he wanted to say so many things. I knew he would speak until sunrise if I gave him the chance to. And I knew I would cave were that to happen. He would convince me to stay because deep down I did not actually want to leave him. Instead, I had turned and sprinted into my house, locking the door behind me and fleeing to my bedroom where I cried for hours, knowing I couldn’t possibly love anyone – want anyone – the way I did Maximo.
And simultaneously I had known that there were some things our love just could not fix.
It shot through me so fast – that memory. That was the night it had ended – rocky at first, and then smooth and straight like an open highway. I drove away three days later – literally and figuratively – and I wasn’t coming back. If Max wanted all of that – the neighborhood, the business, the tradition, the crime – he could have it. But he would not also have me.
And now, here he was, looking sheepish and beautiful – and so very much like a man. If I thought Dario had grown up, it was nothing in comparison to the transformation of Maximo. He had always been muscular – obsessed with lifting weights, staying fit, eating healthy – but now he was positively huge. His shoulders sat wide and strong, and his sweats clung to bulge after bulge of solid man. I knew the skin beneath was covered – nearly blacked out – by tattoos. I knew what every single one meant to him – Max Fanucci did not go under the needle without a specific purpose – and I knew instantly that my fingers still longed to trace the art slowly and sweetly as I had so loved to do before...
“Natalia?” He spoke again, and I knew I must say something. But this man before me – shaggy light brown hair that I had always played with absently now trimmed down to a more manageable, mature length, the patchy goatee replaced by a completely filled in and well-kept beard, and those eyes – glowing, alive, and still so intense – this man before me had rendered me speechless.
How could I have spent the last six years avoiding him at all costs – trying to forget him with every last ounce of strength I had and putting an entire country between us – only to see him now and immediately want him more than ever?
“Max,” I breathed, frozen in place. For a moment I thought neither of us would ever move or speak again, and then he was walking to the gazebo, smiling nervously and peering at me like I might not quite be real.
We hugged – semi-awkwardly – and I smelled the fresh sweat covering his body. He was so big... I struggled getting my arms around him. Max had always been the neighborhood “dreamboat”, but now he was something much more powerful. Much more heart stopping. I squeezed my eyes closed tightly, willing myself to stay impassive, and pulled back with my best pasted-on smile gracing my face.
“It’s been so long. How are you?” Came my words, calm and polite.
He seemed to hesitate for a split second, and I realized he had probably been about as well as I had been. How do you politely say, “Well, our breakup nearly fucking killed me.”? He quickly recovered himself and grinned. “Good. I’m good, Natalia.” He nodded, and I nodded back dumbly, then his face seemed to drop, and he said the only thing that anyone could say about it. “I’m so sorry about your father. He’s a good man.”
I was nodding again, suddenly aware that more than a lump was forming in my throat. Actual sobs were churning in there, begging to release. I couldn’t do this here. Not with Max. I couldn’t talk about Pop.
“He’s a great man,” I agreed, swallowing hard and staring at the ground. Max’s giant footprints traced back to the trail – our trail – and I felt dizzy from the wave of sentiment that washed across me. “I’ve missed you, Max.” I said it before I could realize what I was saying.
His eyes widened. He certainly hadn’t been expecting that – not out of me. Now pain seemed to edge every beautiful line of his face. He looked away from me, jaw flexing, thoughts going God knows where. When he looked back, I saw the glowing hazel fires had tears in them. “Yeah. I’ve missed you too.”
He looked directly into my eyes as he said this, and I suddenly wanted nothing more than for him to kiss me and hold me and forgive me for leaving him in this godforsaken place all alone. I wanted to put my hands on his face and tell him. Tell him that he’d been right. That we could have – should have – fixed this, because nothing after it had ever been even remotely close to what we had.
I wanted to tell him that he was everything to me then and still was even now.
I said none of this.
“Sure hasn’t gotten any warmer in the east, has it? I’m ruined for this kind of weather,” I offered lamely. Max was still staring into my eyes with that intensity he (and only he) possessed. I suddenly became terrified that he would kiss me if we stood here too much longer.
I motioned to Dario’s car and started walking slowly towards the parking lot. He followed silently, but didn’t leave the grass, allowing me to cross the lot on my own. I turned, unsure as to what we should do now. We stared at each other, the cold ripping through both of us, stunned and still ridiculously silent.
“Coffee,” Max finally called out.
“Coffee?”
“Get coffee with me tomorrow. We can catch up somewhere besides the frozen tundra. More west-coaster climate friendly,” he offered, a small laugh escaping him.
I smiled. “Coffee sounds good.”
“I’ll pick you up around four? You stayin’ at your Pop’s?”
We were so nonchalant - like we had never loved each other, like I hadn’t avoided this place for years, like Pop wasn’t at this very moment tucked into his own seething deathbed.
“Yeah. Pop’s. Four is fine,” I agreed, waving and climbing into Dario’s car like a robot.
Now we turn the key in the ignition. Foot on brake, we shift the gear into reverse. Good. Back up slowly... careful not to hit your ex-boyfriend.
That would look highly suspicious, and he knows some pretty rough motherfuckers...
I gave an awkward wave to Max as I drove away. He was still standing in the exact same spot – dazed and so fucking handsome it made my insides hurt.
Coffee with Maximo Fanucci. No big deal. Should be fine. It’s fine.
“I’m fine,” I spoke out loud to no one, white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel and driving away at a responsible, Natalia Angelone-ish speed.
Chapter 4
Maximo
The truck was loaded, and Dario was carefully re-attaching the lock to the loading dock entrance. I kept watch, pleased with the speed we had pulled this job off in.
Everything had been exactly as Johnny’s guy said it would be. Key under the stairs, alarms mysteriously not set at the end of the day, masks on, get in, take out the security cameras, get the product in the truck, relock the door and go. Johnny’s guy would get paid, and get paid well. And as long as our drop off went smoothly, so would we.
I liked to think of it as a sort of service to the over-taxed citizens of this country. They were being ripped off every day by corporation after corporation. The steep price of profit margins and CEO private plane funding was a ruthless punishment that only the middle class and the poor ever took the brunt of.
We dabbled in a few areas, but the majority of the business was based on the re-distribution of product to various stores as far north as Maine, and as far south as North Carolina. Did the product belong to us originally? No. Would the average hard-working American get a much fairer deal on these products at our stores? Absolutely.
For the most part, things ran smoothly. Get an inside guy, get the info you need, get the product, get it to the appropriate store. Take your cut for the operation itself, and collect royalties from any future sales. The store owners' hands remained “clean”, and our pockets remained full. Everybody making money. Everybody happy.
Well – minus the corporations who lost their products in mass quantities occasionally, everybody was happy. The cops knew full well this was happening. Many of them took a cut to stay quiet, and we didn’t leave enough of a shit trail for the clean cops to ever be able to prove anything anyway.
Ebb and flow – product in, product out – big money for moderate risk. Rarely ever did anything turn violent (“Max, ya gotta understand – ”), and as long as no one got it into their head that maybe they deserved a bigger say in the way things were run or a more substantial piece of the carefully divided pie, the business – locally and regionally – was mostly just that. A group of businessmen. Most of us friends. Many of us family.
It did happen, unfortunately. Even in a tight underground set-up like ours, there was always some power-hungry idiot popping up out of nowhere. Usually it was the exact type of guy that you’d expect it to come from. He’d demand more, remind the bosses of all the dirt he had on the entire operation, and unfailingly think that somehow this threat would work in his favor.
It most certainly did not work in his favor. Not even once.
My father had been somewhat of the enforcer in his day. Pop Angelone was the friendly face of the business, and Rafaele Fanucci was its fist. Both men had agreed to run things together, finding it worked much better that way – that they complemented each other’s strengths and thereby protected the business’s weaknesses. Both had desired a peaceful, smooth operation. However, neither were afraid to take out anyone who posed a hazard to this vision. Problematic associates were handled quick and fast, and the business moved on.
The main problem these days was manpower. There weren’t enough of us anymore. The boomers were dying out, and their successors came in much smaller numbers. Dario and I had basically been handed a box with no bottom, and told to keep everything safe inside.
So, we worked harder. We did the jobs, made the drives, settled the deals, paid the appropriate associates – we performed all of the tasks that would have normally been spread amongst ten men in our fathers’ day. We held together what our fathers and grandfathers had built with blind dedication and waning energy.
I fucking hated it. And after Frank had died, it no longer seemed so much like the Robin Hood spectacular thrill story that I had previously tried to view it as. Frank had been incredibly late with a very pricey delivery. It had caused a lot of threats and ill-will amongst business associates, fueling fires of dissention that would take months to put out. Frank had to be shown that he absolutely could not ever allow this to happen again.
But Frank didn’t have to die.
“He shouldn’t have even been put in charge of a job, you know? He was half-senile. He needed a rocking chair and a tobacco pipe,” I said aloud, startling myself and Dario both.
“Frank?” He asked quietly.
“Yeah. Frank. It wasn’t right from the get-go on that job. Wasn’t his fault. Old men are old men,” I was rambling, driving down the interstate through the dark night without really seeing anything.
“It wasn’t right. But it also wasn’t your fault, Max. You gotta let it go, man. Frank would want you to let it go.” Dario’s voice seemed distant, and though the words were meant to comfort me, they were powerless to actually do so.
He’ll see. The first time someone drops dead in front of his face, he’ll see. And he’ll know – you don’t let it go, cuz it never lets go of you. You’ll see that someday, Dario.
We were making our trade at the docks tonight. This particular store owner preferred waterway transfer of goods, and it wasn’t actually the worst idea in the world. Less patrol on the water.
Dario spotted our guys immediately. Not a lot of talking at these meetings. You did what you came to do – the details had already been handled.
The goods were loaded and money was exchanging hands when one of their guys, a short little asshole that I had never seen before, smirked at me openly while lighting his cigarette.
“Do we have a problem?” I asked him directly, sensing his menacing stare had more behind it. Dario instinctively stepped close to me, ready to talk anyone and everyone out of any stupid thing that they were about to do.
Or say.
The little guy (kid – he's just a fucking kid) looked at me, no longer smiling, and let out a huge cloud of smoke. “I was just thinkin’. Apparently, you’re the boss-man now, right? The big ol’ boss-man? It’s a shame we got ourselves a new leader who has to shoot little old men to prove how big his balls are.” He smiled again then, and winked at me.
I didn’t exactly see red so much as I became it. The mouthy little fucker took a fist to the mouth before he could even realize one was coming. His body swayed a bit, as though he were unsure of whether or not it was just best to go down now, and I decided to make the decision for him with another shot to the nose.
This hit caused a substantial spray of blood, and Dario was on me, pulling me back while the kid went down – out cold now. “We’re leaving, Max. We are leaving now,” Dario spoke firmly, dragging me by my arm. He couldn’t have actually pulled me anywhere on his best day if I hadn’t let him. But I knew this would get uglier, and I also knew Dario was generally the much more level-headed one when it came to these types of situations. We ran jobs together for a reason.
“You get your boy under control, you got it? You teach your boy to keep his goddamn mouth SHUT! Show some fucking RESPECT!” I yelled at the oldest of the small group. I knew his face and his name – though I couldn’t remember it for anything right now – and he certainly knew mine. He was nodding – scared – while they dragged the asshole away, a very faint line of blood trailing across the dock.
We drove in silence for a while – Dario behind the wheel this time.
“I didn’t fucking kill Frankie,” I said suddenly, digging my fingers into the arm rest.
“I know,” Dario replied, still looking straight ahead and letting me have my time. Nearly three decades of friendship taught you how a person worked – taught you what a person needed when shit got messy.
Dario
knew I simply needed to be left alone.
“That kid is gonna be fine, Dar. His nose might be broken, but the motherfucker is fine,” I spoke again, as close to an apology for my outburst as would ever come out of my mouth.
“I know,” Dario said again, and I thought I saw the hints of a smile starting to cross his face. “Try to get some sleep. The sun is already starting to come up.”
I turned my head to stare out the window. There was the faintest hint of yellow breaking across the horizon. It was just enough light to illuminate the dark blue sky above it and remind me of Natalia’s sparkling sapphire eyes...
They were so blue. Natalia’s eyes were so blue that it seemed almost an insult to use such a plain term to describe them. She had the same dark hair as Dario and her father, but her eyes came from her mother. Those eyes had fascinated me for so long that I hardly knew any other color existed. I certainly didn’t care that any other color existed.
We were having our celebration picnic in the only place that it made sense to – the picturesque neighborhood park – and I had brought us a sad assortment of poorly packed deli foods, some (supposedly) fresh fruit, and a token bottle of strawberry wine, which had been Nat’s favorite as an unruly teenager. She had laughed so hard when I pulled it out of the bag that she cried, and I had laughed with her, mesmerized by that sound and those lips, and unsure how I had ever gotten this lucky. I knew I didn’t deserve her.
“To my beautiful, college graduate girlfriend – may you always be so wise as to love this dumbass boyfriend of yours!” I had nearly shouted it, not caring who heard, and pulled her to me, kissing her firmly – slowly – the way she liked it.
She had pulled away eventually, giggling and happy. I could feel how much she loved me when we were together. It was a tangible force that had been undeniable to both of us since we were fifteen.
And now we were twenty-one. Adults. Graduates – though her degree was by far more impressive than mine. Now Nat had decided she wanted to go to grad school – pursue her master’s degree. I was so proud of her, so in love with her, and so oblivious to any change in her thoughts. I was a complete blind idiot for Natalia. She had mentioned quite a few east coast schools – all within driving distance. Another had come up briefly in conversation – this one on the west coast, and we didn’t discuss it very long or very seriously.