Sweet Hope

by Tillie Cole

  “And that’s who wants you dead?”

  I laughed without humor. “Probably, but that’s not who I know is fucking intent on it. If the feds did their jobs right, the dealers won’t know it was me that gave them up. They’ll be serving life now anyway.”

  “Then who…?” Ally trailed off.

  “Remo. Gio’s older cousin, the old Heighter leader. He was as close to Gio as Austin and Lev are to me, so he’s pissed. He had to move up state years ago when a beef with the Kings got outta hand. He needed to lay low for a while. That’s where he was when all the shit went down with the Heighter deal and Porter’s overdose. Gio told me I had to get out of town for a while, lay low too. So I went and stayed with Remo. He was real good to me. Helped me hide out undetected. But when Lev called me and said that Mamma had died, Lexi was suffering from anorexia and in hospital, and Austin had been arrested, I knew I had to come home. I should never have fucking run away like a pussy anyhow.

  “When I said I was going back home, Remo tried to stop me, he knew Gio needed me to keep the crew strong. I was the main reason most of our rivals left us alone. He knew they’d be vulnerable without me around. So I knocked him the fuck out to get away, came back to Tuscaloosa and handed myself in. I knew Remo would be after me. No one fucked with Remo. Then after I organized for Gio… to be taken down, Remo made sure I got a message inside that if I got out, I was as good as dead. I fucking ruined them all. They’d saved me from my papa, from that shit life, and now Remo was gonna make me pay for fucking everything up.”

  Ally winced as I mentioned Gio’s death, and maybe mine, but she ignored it and asked, “And Remo, he knows you’re out of prison now? He knows you’re in Seattle?” Her voice had gotten higher and higher the more she spoke.

  I shrugged. “He’ll know by now, no doubt. Some of the guards were easy to buy off. Someone will have sent word.”

  “Then you have to tell someone!” she half-shouted, her cheeks pale and her face panicked. “The police, someone.”

  I cupped her face to calm her down. “He ain’t got the money to get out here and he’s wanted by the feds. He won’t dare risk it. He doesn’t know where in Seattle I am, and he definitely doesn’t know about the exhibition and… Elpidio and all that shit.”

  “Christ, Axel…” Ally said, her voice cracking. “I… I’m so afraid for you…”

  My gut twisted at the pain in her voice. “Don’t be. I’ve gotten through tougher shit. People have wanted me dead for years. I’ve gotten real good at dodging bullets.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but Ally wasn’t biting.

  Taking the whiskey, I shoved it in her hands. “You better take a drink.”

  Doing as I said, Ally knocked a shit load of the amber liquid down her throat. But when she lowered the bottle, I could still see the concern in her expression.

  “Fuck, Ally,” I said and, taking her arms, pushed her down beside me and crushed my mouth to hers. Within seconds she’d melted under me and I pulled back. “Don’t over-think all this.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and her fingers wrapped around the long hair falling in front of my face. “You never get a break, do you? There’s always something that haunts you.”

  The sadness in her voice cut me deep. Swallowing back the lump that was clogging my throat, I said, “I did this all to myself, carina. I caused the war, this is the fallout. It’s karma.”

  “You deserve better,” she whispered. I could see how she much she believed that in her expression. I had no idea what I did to deserve her.

  I closed my eyes as her words sank in.

  “I got more than I deserve. One brother is married to a chick he loves more than life and he’s playing in the NFL. The other is heading to the NFL. I got a woman, and I’ll never understand it, who fucking wants to be with me. And I get to create what I love for a living. What more could I want?”

  “For people to trust you. For your brothers to know you’re a sculptor, for your brothers to accept you again… for you to be at peace, to be happy.”

  Shuddering a breath, I said, “I ain’t sure any of that will ever happen, and if it doesn’t, it’s fine. I got more than most folks got.”

  I could see Ally wanting to say more, but I really didn’t wanna talk about this shit no more. She could see it my expression.

  “Lay beside me,” she said, with an exasperated sigh.

  Slumping down to her left, I cracked a hint of a grin when she lifted my arm around her shoulders and cuddled in.

  “Crazy night, huh?” she said, her finger tracing down the rosary tattoo on my chest.

  “You could say that.”

  “They’ll come round,” she said, keeping that positivity she just seemed to exude.

  I stayed silent. I wasn’t so convinced.

  “Axel?” Ally said quietly.

  “Mmm?”

  “Will you now tell me how you begin sculpting? You know, in prison? I’d love to hear more about the creative side of you.”

  Warmth filled my chest as I thought back to the first day I walked into the prison classroom. Some guy was there to teach us art. The warden, fuck, and the state, hoping it would help us cons deal with our anger.

  Ally shifted in my arms to rest her chin on her fist as it lay on my chest. Her eyes were filled with anticipation and excitement. I was about to open up to her about my art. And I would finally talk about it. It was a while since I’d seen that look in her eyes. When I was just Elpidio to her it was there all the time. Now she knew I was Axel, most of the time she looked worried or, worse, sad.

  “You really wanna know all this boring stuff?” I asked.

  Ally nodded against her fist. “Nothing is boring when it comes to your sculptures. Finding out how an artist began his journey is always the most interesting thing to me. How he found the spark that unleashed his passion.”

  “Okay,” I said jokingly, like she was weird.

  Ally nudged me, laughing. “I know I’m a geek, but I wanna know all the same.”

  Her free hand reached for my hand which was casually lying on my stomach. She threaded her fingers through mine. As I looked down, Ally beamed a huge smile.

  “How I got started…” I said, and taking a deep breath, I began. “I’d just been shanked and was in the infirmary recovering.” I shook my head at the memory. “Shit, I was in there for what felt like forever; a ton of guards and psychologists coming in day and night trying to get me to talk, to rat on my old crew, but I wouldn’t. First rule of surviving in that place was to keep your damn mouth shut. So I did. I didn’t talk to no one, was constantly alone with my thoughts. It was laid up unable to move where really started questioning shit. You know, what I’d done in my life, all the wrongs, not many rights… and my family, what I’d done to the only three people who’d ever really gave a shit about me—unconditionally. But the more I thought about my past, the more the guilt flooded in and started tearing me apart.”

  Ally squeezed my hand, as though in encouragement. I kept going. “I couldn’t cope with seeing the fucking light, I suppose. It was the first time in my life I’d been forced to lay there and think. It’s real easy not to feel a damn bit guilty about choices you’ve made when you’re always on the move; hustling, dealing snow, you know, the usual.”

  Ally cast me a wry grin at that. She looked so damn perfect staring at me right now, her perfect face placed on her fist, her face open and accepting of everything I was saying. She was a fucking dream come true.

  “Keep going,” she urged, and I lifted our joined hands to kiss at her soft skin.

  Staring down at her fingers, I continued. “The more I thought about everything I’d done, the more angry I became. Real angry, Ally. I couldn’t deal with all the memories. They started giving me damn nightmares, still do. The guilt, it was unbearable.

  “When I was physically getting better, one of the nurses who was real good to me, asked me about my tattoos. She asked me who designed them, and I told her it was me.” Ally’s eyes r
an over my tattoos and her gaze darted to meet mine.

  “You designed all these yourself?”

  I nodded and Ally’s mouth dropped open. “They’re so beautiful, so intricate.”

  I could actually feel my cheeks burning at her praise. “I designed most of Austin’s too.”

  Ally shook her head and smiled. “So you can draw?”

  I shrugged again and Ally leaned up to kiss my lips, whispering against my mouth, “You amaze me, every single day there is something new.”

  Pulling back, she re-took her place with her hand on her fist, her dark hair now brushed over to one side, falling over her shoulder. And that was the shot. That, right there, was the image. This was her at her most beautiful.

  “Axel, you were saying the nurse talked to you about your tattoos?”

  Snapping back to the here-and-now, I said, “Yeah… erm… right, so, yeah, the nurse knew I could draw. She told the docs, the shrink, and the next thing I know they’ve enrolled me in an art program. At first I was pissed. I’d taken a business class and was doing okay. Aust was proud of that, so I wanted to keep going. But from that first day in that class, something within me just clicked.” I stared off to my tools hanging on my wall. “My whole life I’d been so busy dealing, working for the gang, that I hadn’t tried to find out what I could be good at. Ten seconds in that room and I knew I’d found my ‘thing’.”

  “Amazing…” Ally sighed. “A blessing in disguise.”

  “Yeah… I started drawing anything I could. I was okay at sketching, shit at painting, but when the teacher, a guy called Daryl, brought in clay, me and it, just fit.

  “Before long, I was making clay sculptures. Pouring all my anger out into those pieces.” I laughed, remembering the look on Daryl’s face when I’d finished the first proper piece. “Daryl kept driving me more and more, until a few months later, he asked the warden if he could teach me how to sculpt marble. I had no real interest in it. But then one day, he brought me in a book of marble statues. I opened it at a random page. The very first thing I saw was Antonio Canova’s—”

  “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss,” Ally interrupted, her face all animated and glowing.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, then frowned. “You like it too?”

  Passion flared in her dark eyes. “It’s my second favorite marble sculpture of all time.”

  My eyes narrowed when her face flushed with embarrassment. I wondered what her favorite was, but something in me stopped me from asking.

  “Anyway, when I saw that sculpture, I looked up the artist, an Italian. An Italian who worked with Carrara marble.” I dropped my gaze. The Italian flag and the Firenzian Fleur de Lys tattoos on my arm both caught my eye.

  As I stared at the green, white and red, a sense of pride flowed through my veins; the same sense I had on seeing the man who carved that sculpture was also Italian.

  “I felt a link to my heritage as I looked at that sculpture. But more than that, I understood everything the sculptor wanted to portray in his work. I didn’t know shit about the story of Cupid and Psyche, but from that one sculpture I knew they loved each other… desperately. I got so much from that one statue.

  “I told Daryl I wanted to try it and went from there. I had a ton of disasters over the next year. Daryl wanted me to use modern tools, but I refused. I’d become obsessed with Antonio Canova, so I insisted on only using the tools he used.”

  I huffed. “Turns out that was a good thing. It gave me an edge, a uniqueness against other modern sculptors today.”

  “But how did your work get noticed?” Ally asked, her face all impressed. I could feel the love for the art-form radiating from her smile.

  “Daryl had a friend who knew Vin Galanti. He took photos of my sculptures and sent them to his friend, who sent them on to Vin. Next thing I know I had a visitation request from Vin and that was it. He became my mentor, took my sculptures from Prison, stored them at his studio in New York… then I got word he was showing one at the Met. I fucking went apeshit. I never wanted my work shown. They were mine, they were my guilt, my past, everything.”

  “But Vin did it anyway,” Ally confirmed.

  I shook my head. “Yeah, the fucker did. And after that, everything changed. People knew who I was. At least they knew ‘Elpidio’s’ work, ‘Elpidio’s’ name was suddenly known in the art world.”

  “And ‘Elpidio’?” Ally asked. “He was your—”

  “Nonno… Mamma’s papa. I never met him, but…” That usual stab dragged through my stomach when I thought of my mamma. It was getting harder and harder to keep all the shit back that surrounded the woman who wanted nothing more than for me to succeed. Instead all I’d done was fail, over and over and over... I’d been an epic fuck-up as her son.

  “Querido? Are you okay?” Ally asked me softly. When I met her warm eyes, I knew that she understood who I was thinking about. But I still couldn’t go there yet… not even with Ally.

  Not yet.

  “My… Mamma used to talk about Nonno all the time. She loved him. She said he was a good hardworking man. I was using the Italian technique, I was using Carrara marble, so his name felt right to use. Fuck, my own papa’s name would only be a curse.”

  “Elpidio… It’s perfect, it really it is,” Ally murmured. I could suddenly see the way she was looking at me had changed.

  I drew my head back, and asked, “What?”

  Ally crawled over me and tucked her head into my neck. She looked like she wanted to say something to me, but for some reason she was holding it back.

  “You are so much more than anyone knows. You should give yourself way more credit than you do.”

  I didn’t say anything as we lay there. For a long time I thought Ally had fallen asleep until she said, “I’m going to do everything in my power to persuade your brothers to see the man you are today.”

  I stilled. “I don’t want them knowing about my sculptures.”

  Ally sighed. “I know. I won’t pretend to understand why, but I accept it… reluctantly. But I’m still gonna try everything else.”

  I felt my heart would burst through my chest as she said that. Ally’s cell beeped. In a flash she was across the room opening it up.

  Relief spread over her face.

  “Good news?” I asked.

  “It’s Rome. Molly’s gonna be okay. She’s gonna have a tough couple of months, but for now, she’s good.”

  Ally walked back to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. Looking back at me, she said, “I’m tired, but at the same time, I don’t think I can sleep.”

  “I got an idea then,” I said, and I watched as fire lit in Ally’s dark eyes.

  “Yeah?” she said and turned her body to crawl over me. After she’d kissed me, I held her head in my hands and whispered, “Play for me.”

  Ally reared back in surprise. “What?”

  Feeling like a damn pussy, I said, “Play the piano… for me.”

  Ally’s expression changed from surprised to embarrassed to wonder. “You want me to play the piano for you?”

  I threw her a single nod. Ally cast a glance to the piano, then back to me. “What do you want me to play?”

  “What you played me before… Kiss the Rain.”

  Her smile washed away any embarrassment I felt and she said, “You remembered the title?”

  Pulling her face in to press kisses all over her cheeks and neck, I whispered, “I remember everything, every single fucking thing from that night. Every single fucking thing…”

  Ally, surprising me to all hell, wrapped her hands around my neck and squeezed me in the biggest damn hug I’d ever felt… I never ever wanted to let her go.

  When she released me, Ally said, “You’re in every part of my heart, Mr. Carillo, in every single part…” before getting up from the bed, leaving me lying here like a dumbstruck fool.

  What does she mean by that… That I’m in all of her heart?

  Before I had a chance to think it over, I heard All
y sit at the piano and test out the keys like she did the last time. There she sat, naked, her tanned skin flushed, her dark hair falling to her waist.

  Eyes closed, her hands stretched over the keys. Then the opening chords to that song fucking sent an arrow through my heart. The image of my woman sweetly smiling at me with her chin on her fist, big brown eyes watching me, like no one had ever looked at me before, filled my mind.

  My hands itched to create.

  My heart raced for me to sketch.

  As Ally’s eyes closed and a happy smile spread on her lips, I picked up a pad of sketch paper and a pencil from my bedside table…

  And I started to draw… to draw the outline of the only sculpture I knew I would never tire of staring at.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ally

  “That’s it, guys. The only two things left for me to do is get the final text boards drawn up and to arrange for the cleaners to polish the gallery until it damn near sparkles!”

  I stood in the center of the art gallery with my team. I stared at the finished exhibition with a lump in my throat… it was simply stunning.

  Axel’s pieces exquisitely occupied the white open space; each one at a different height, each one lit perfectly with colored lighting or with subtle painted backdrops. It was a journey, a journey through the complex tortured emotions of a sculptor... a sculptor who had yet to see its beauty… yet to see his heart-aching creations on display for the all the world to see.

  As my team gathered around, a soft applause rang out as we all congratulated one another on a job well done. But a louder clap came from the rear. As we turned round Vin Galanti emerged through the black curtains with tears streaming down his face.

  He was back from New York in time for the opening night, now only in a few days’ time.

  “Vin!” I called, as he pushed through the dispersing group.

  Fixing his attention on me, he hurried toward me, hand over heart. “Ms. Lucia… I’m speechless…” he said, clearly in awe, then a huge smile spread on his face.

  “I’m real happy with it too. It’s my best work yet.”