by Alexa Hart
What if he changes his mind? He’s going to change his mind.
This was an emotionally charged time, and Max had made an emotionally charged decision. But if there was one thing I knew from my education and my career – from my patients themselves – it was that emotions changed. They weren’t forever.
Of course, he would love me forever, as I would him. But quitting his father’s business... That had never been an option before, and it was quite possible that it wasn’t really, deep down, an option now – even if he wanted it to be.
What if I stayed and he had a change of heart? What if I left my new life completely behind – the life that had taken me six years to build – only to realize that I’d done it only to end up stuck in the exact situation that I had so desperately wanted to avoid?
Leave. I had to leave. It was the only scenario that I knew I could trust. It was the only way to know that I would never be dressed in black and staring down at Max in a fancy wooden box, rose in hand, last words to a deaf corpse leaving my lips.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”
That was what I had whispered to Pop before I dropped his rose.
I wouldn’t be able to save Maximo either, and I refused to ever speak those words again.
Tears were sliding sorrowfully down my cheeks, hitting my pillow with tiny, delicate thuds.
I’m leaving tomorrow.
Chapter 14
Maximo
“I think you made the right decision, Maximo,” Elena Fanucci declared softly, putting her small, aging hand on top of mine.
The relief of having her approval, her blessing – though I hadn’t even known I needed it so badly – flooded me instantly. I felt years of inner conflict vaporizing as though I had never carried that weight at all.
“Would he have thought so?” I asked quietly, staring at the table now, thinking of Rafaele Fanucci in all of his intimidating renown.
“You know what I think, Maximo?” She said now, waiting for me to look up. “I think that your father was a good man. I think he was a good man who did some very bad things – and some very nice ones. But I think, even more, that you are not Rafaele. You are my Maximo. Il mio ragazzo. You can be whatever you want to be.”
She had no way of knowing that Natalia had said those exact words to me after my father’s funeral. Yet here was my mother, repeating them to me all of these years later.
You can be whatever you want to be.
It wasn’t so much déjà vu or fate as it was a calm feeling of being in the precise place at this moment in time that I was absolutely meant to be. I felt – for the first time ever – that I belonged in the reality which I was existing in.
I was Maximo Fanucci – the real Maximo Fanucci.
And it was okay.
“I’ll go to Natalia tomorrow morning. It’s only the second day since she buried Pop. I know she needs time. I’ll go to her tomorrow,” I said decisively, a new excitement rising up in my chest. I was going to have the life that I had always wanted.
I was going to have the life that I always wanted.
Ma smiled at me then, nodding and patting my hand. “Yes, Maximo. Yes. And she will listen, because she loves you. As sure as the sun rises in the east...,” Ma trailed off, overcome with sentiment and bursting into happy tears.
I smiled back at her.
Natalia would listen, because Natalia did love me.
There was absolutely no doubt about that.
I heard Dario’s frantic breathing over the phone before he said one word.
“Hello? Dar?” Instantly came the panic.
“Get here now! If you want any chance of stopping her, get here now! Her taxi is coming, Max – ten minutes – that's what she said. Ten minutes! I didn’t think she’d actually leave – not like this and not so soon – but she won’t listen to me, Max – she's leaving – get here now!”
I was already moving after the first “Get here now!”. I said nothing to my mother, grabbed no coat – simply yanked my keys off the table and ran out the door at a full sprint. I was turning the key when Dario finished talking, and threw my phone in the passenger’s seat.
No. NO. I will not lose you again, Natalia.
Suddenly, having bought my own home seemed like the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my entire life. If I still lived with my mother, I could have run to the Angelone house by now.
What if you don’t make it? You might not make it. What if she won’t talk to you?
But she had to – she absolutely had to hear me out. That girl loved me – she loved me – and there was no reason for us to part again. Not anymore.
Block by block flew by and I thought of life without Natalia –
“Wanna beer, Pop?” Nic called from the kitchen.
I swished my bottle around a little, responding much louder than I meant to, due to my state of inebriation, “Nah - I’m still good!”
The walls were the same shade of gray as when I’d moved in. I had never painted them. There hadn’t seemed to be any point. It was just Nic and I. Half the time he was at his mother’s. What the fuck did I need to paint the damn walls for? This wasn’t the Hilton.
The paint outside was peeling. I hadn’t ever gotten around to that either. It had turned out there was a hideous shade of orange underneath the pale blue, and it now peeked out in patches all across the two stories of despair that was the Fanucci home.
I’d sold Ma’s house the same year she died. I couldn’t stand looking at it, and even more-so, I couldn’t stand the fact that I could see the Angelone house right out my mother’s kitchen window. Although it wasn’t really the Angelone house anymore. Dario had moved somewhere up-coast, wanting – and needing – a fresh start. That had been the right decision for him, and I sometimes wished I’d done the same.
But after Nat left – again and for good – I had just stopped caring altogether. I wasn’t gonna love anyone like that again. I didn’t even want to. There were enough divorced neighborhood girls still around if I ever needed some “companionship”. And for the most part, I hadn’t wanted that either.
The business had basically moved with Dario, and fuck it anyway. That goddamn organization had stolen everything from me – everything that mattered. I had picked up a night shift at the local gas station, and it was just as fulfilling, if not more-so.
Sure, I wasn’t exactly proud of myself. And I knew a million times over that my father would spit in my face were he to see what had become of my life, but fuck him anyway. This was all his goddamn fault, in the bigger scheme of things.
I hadn’t really given Nic a much better example to follow, but I worked an honest job and brought home an honest paycheck – and Rafaele Fanucci couldn’t ever have said that even if he’d cared to. And he hadn’t cared to.
Besides, Nic seemed to look at my life and plan his accordingly opposite. He was already accepted into some big, showy ivy-leaguer school a few states away, and I knew that once he left, he wouldn’t be coming back.
Just like Nat.
I barely talked to Dario anymore – too painful – but the last I had heard from him, she was doing well. A doctor now – a psychiatrist. Married. She had children.
Sometimes I got drunk enough that I’d throw empty beer bottles at the wall and rant at her – though she was thousands of miles away. “You don’t love him like you loved me! You don’t!”
It never helped. Usually I ended up blubbering like a baby and hating myself more than I already had. Nic would nearly always sweep up the broken bottles while I slept off the booze. He never said a word about it. He didn’t remember Natalia. But he knew I couldn’t ever really live without her – not in any way that actually mattered.
The look in his eyes sometimes – those hazel eyes that were the mirror of my own – was so mournful. I had let him down. And worse, he knew that at this point in my life, I was incapable of ever being anything more than what he saw before him...
I realized I was crying. One more block to go, and I was
full blown crying like this was six years ago, and I already knew what was going to happen. I’d help her shut the trunk, she’d hug me, and she would leave.
Natalia was going to leave me again.
“No,” I said out loud now, to absolutely no one and simultaneously to the entire universe. My tires squealed as I rounded the corner onto Oak Street, surely alarming half the neighborhood. I could see it ahead – that classic yellow cab car pulled up to the Angelone curb. Some asshole was putting Nat’s suitcases into the trunk while she stood by watching – still and cold.
I took the first open spot I could find – a screeching sound ripping through the air as my brakes struggled to obey orders. And then I was running.
She saw me coming – I watched her face turn from stone to recognition, then surprise, and finally terror. She was shaking her head, unconsciously walking backwards when I reached her, and I defiantly grabbed her face between my hands.
“You were going to leave – just leave again without saying goodbye? You were going to just leave?” I shouted it – not meaning to, but unable to control myself. I knew I was still crying, and I knew I was acting like a psychopath, but I didn’t fucking care.
Not again.
“Max - Max, I have to – ” she was pleading with me, crying herself now and trying to push me off to no avail.
“You don’t have to! You don’t! I quit, Nat. I quit the business! It’s over! Done! You don’t have to leave me!” I knew I was also pleading, holding those frozen cheeks between my palms, knowing I was seconds away from possibly never seeing them again.
Her blue eyes were sparkling – the sunlight making her tears shine like glass – and she seemed to stop struggling for a moment. She looked away from me, saying so quietly that I almost couldn’t hear her, “You’ll change your mind. The business is your life.”
It burst through me then, the agonizing anguish that she truly believed what she had just said.
“YOU - YOU ARE MY LIFE!” I roared, pulling her to me and kissing her lips with a fire that exploded out of my heart, enraged and astounded that this girl could ever, ever really think she was second to anything else after all of this time.
She was kissing me back passionately – my lips on hers was something Natalia had never been able to stop herself from responding to – and sobbing so hard her body shook in my arms.
I pulled her back just far enough so that she had no choice but to look me straight in the face. Her eyes were wounded and swollen. She’d been crying for days. We’d both been suffering for years.
“I don’t have a life without you, do you hear me? Do you understand me? I am nothing – I want nothing – without you! You. Are. My. Life.” I kissed her again, then put my forehead against hers, trying to regain even an ounce of composure. “Fuck the business, Natalia. I hate it. I've always hated it. I've hated it since I was a fucking child. I won’t let it take you away from me again. That’s done. That’s over. Over.”
God, please hear what I’m saying, Nat. Please hear me.
Her voice trembled now and she struggled to speak. “But your father...”
“My father is dead, Nat. And I - I am not my father.”
She looked up at me then, and I saw – with complete ecstasy I saw – the first signs of hope spark in her eyes.
“But before...” she was still grasping, trying to find a reason...
“Before I was a kid, Nat! I thought I had something to prove! I thought I had to be what my father was! I was an idiot! I will never forgive myself for letting you go! Not ever, do you understand?” I waited, that whole split second before she spoke seeming like my entire life was hanging over the edge of a cliff and were I to fall... There was no coming back this time.
A tiny, sad smile spread across her face, and a fresh burst of tears as she looked up and said, “And I will never forgive myself for leaving you.” Then she was kissing me, laughing with happy delirium, and I knew – for the very first time knew – she was staying. Natalia was staying.
The truth of it fell over us like our own private waterfall of joy.
We were together.
We were going to be together for the rest of our lives.
I picked her up then and ran – ran – for the house. She was giggling hysterically and we probably looked like two lunatics as I bounded to the door – but neither of us cared.
I was never quite sure how her bags got back into the house – the cab driver or Dario – because all I saw then was Natalia and our life together, beginning right in that moment. Absolutely nothing else mattered – not even the fact that half the neighborhood had come outside to witness the scene we had just made.
Five stairs or a thousand, we climbed them giddily, and I made love to her then, cradling her body in my arms with a newfound, ethereal bliss. She clung to me, drunk with happiness, and each kiss, each touch, each sound of elated paradise that we made was blanketed in the euphoric rapture of a new freedom – a fresh page in our lives where we could love without fear, and be whatever we wanted to be.
Epilogue
I sipped at my tea, grinning as Max’s voice boomed across the backyard.
“You got me! Lissie, your sister got me!”
He dramatically fell to the ground, the victim to one count of fairy dust sprinkling. Lissie was laughing so hard she was crying, and threw more glitter on her Pop just to make sure he was really done for. She was seven years old now, and she knew better than to take any chances. Sophia, only five, and feeling she wasn’t getting enough of the action, began to administer her own chubby fistfuls of sparkle onto her father, who was now moaning and rolling around in the grass. Sophia was supposed to be on Max’s team, but that didn’t seem to matter right now.
Ralph, our trusty Rottweiler, was lounging under the swing set, not concerned in the least by the events happening before him.
The funniest part was that from my vantage point I could see their big brother creeping up behind the bushes, ready to spring his own surprise attack of magical powers upon all three of them. I watched Nic’s smile grow wider with every stealth-ridden step he took towards them.
And then it was complete chaos. Squealing and sparkles and dragon-slaying filled the air of the neighborhood. I rubbed my round stomach gently, wondering how this little guy was going to feel about all of the commotion when he arrived in a few months.
What would he look like, this little man? Lissie was a carbon copy of her father, while Sophia took after me.
“Maybe you’ll look like both of us,” I whispered to him, feeling a tiny kick near my hand.
Who would this little guy be?
Happy tears sprang to my eyes then, because I already absolutely knew the answer.
He can be whatever he wants to be.
THE END
If you LOVED Maximo don’t miss
out on the super-hot bad boy Marcello!
I despise Marcello Morano.
He’s nothing but a filthy rich, mafia bad boy… (or so I’ve heard)
So why can’t I get him off my mind?...
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Marcello Sneak Peek
I despise Marcello Morano.
He’s nothing but a filthy rich, mafia bad boy… (or so I’ve heard)
So why can’t I get him off my mind?...
He’s mind-numbingly gorgeous, with off-the-charts sex appeal.
I feel something for Marcello that I’ve never felt before.
What is this…lust? No, it can’t be. I wouldn’t lust after a criminal… would I?
His lifestyle may be putting his precious daughter (my favorite student) in danger and I can’t just stand by and watch.
I couldn’t live with myself if anything ever happened to Gia.
But when I come face to face with Marcello Morano, my whole world gets flipped upside down.
Now, suddenly none of the rumors about his mafia involvement matter anymore.
It doesn’t matter that his dark past scares the hell out of me and h
is current reality may scare me even more.
It doesn’t even matter that I could be risking everything to be with him.
All that matters now is him. Just him and the secret I’m carrying as a memento from a passionate night in his arms.
But is Marcello’s dangerous lifestyle more than I can handle?
Chapter 1
Marcello
If I’m being honest with myself, I loved her from the second I first saw her. But she never knew she was being seen. How twisted is that? How twisted am I? I needed her and she had never even seen my face. If I had the chance… God, the things I would do to her, but I have to keep my distance. I can’t get her out of my head. I see nothing else… just… her…
Abby
I hated that goddamn clock. I was thoroughly convinced that the ancient round beast purposely moved slower than normal during the last fifteen minutes of the school day just to fuck with me. It was 3:11, and it had been 3:11 for at least seventy-five years. I loved my job and adored my students (most of them). There was just something about those last few minutes of being trapped in a room where the door was required to be shut “at all times, the only exceptions being recess and end of the day line-up", with twenty-five sets of restless eyes darting from you to the clock and back again, that had an unnerving, torture-tactic quality to it.
I stared listlessly at the gold name plate sitting silently on my desktop. Miss Abigail Greene. So formal. Why couldn’t it just say Abby Greene? Why couldn’t my students just call me Abby? Most of their bank accounts had more money in them than mine ever would. If anything, I should be formally addressing them as little Sirs and Madams.