by Jackson Kane
God help me if I had anything in common with that psychopath, but I was wondering the same thing.
This was all so difficult to wrap my head around. We’d shared so much with each other. Over these past few weeks I felt like I was starting to get to know the real Dante, but here I was sitting as quiet as possible, hiding from what was obviously some kind of gang. I felt gross even thinking it, but Mitch was right.
Who was Dante, really?
“I didn’t trust you for years. You really think I was stupid enough to tell you my real name back then?”
“No. And that’s what I liked about you, you clever sonofabitch. You always knew how to play the long con.” Mitch paced around Dante in a wide arc, studying him.
The long con? Was Dante some kind of con man? That didn’t feel right. There had to be something else to this.
“So stuntman, how much did you tell your lady friend about us?” Mitch came full circle and stopped.
Lady friend? Was he talking about me?
I froze. How did they know I was here? Did they see me run into the car?
“Knowing you, probably not much if anything at all.” Mitch frowned. “Turns out you’re quite the secretive bastard.”
“She’s a client. I’m just getting her to where the studio needs her to be.”
“The studio needs you to fuck her in the back of a vintage nineteen-thirty-eight?” Mitch’s eyes flicked down Dante’s shirtless body. “Your hotdog stand’s open for business.”
“The car’s a nineteen-thirty-seven.” Dante zipped his pants.
“She in love with you yet?”
“They all think they are.” The dismissive tone in which Dante said that struck a somber chord in me. “At least for a little while.”
Don’t think the worst of him, I reminded myself. This was a crazy situation; Dante was probably doing what he thought he needed to just to keep us both safe.
“Ha! Aint that the truth!” Mitch clasped Dante on the shoulder and laughed uproariously. A darkness flickered across his mirthful demeanor, then like a lightening strike. Mitch backhanded Dante with the gun, dropping him to a knee.
“No!” I screamed, drawing Mitch’s sharp, serious gaze directly into the rearview mirror I was watching them through.
“I deserved that,” Dante cleared his throat, spitting out a disgusting, fleshy, red wad of blood.
“Who took you in when you had nowhere to go? I did. I fucking taught you everything you know. I made you into a fucking man!” Mitch screamed down at Dante, stabbing his gun into Dante’s shoulder, head and back. He looked completely unhinged. It was horrible to watch. “Then all of a sudden you abandon us, abandon me? In the middle of a job? I ought to put you in the fucking ground right fucking now!”
“I can’t make you rich if I’m dead.” Unconcerned about being shot, Dante batted Mitch’s gun away, then stood back up. Raising one hand up to show that he was unarmed Dante slowly pulled the wallet out of his back pocket. He handed a black metal card to Mitch and dropped everything else. “This will make you rich.”
What game was he playing? Run! Get out of there! It took everything from me not to close my eyes and scream.
“Hmm.” Mitch snatched the card away and flipped it over in his hands. He clicked his tongue, obviously irritated with his own curiosity. He thumbed the gun’s firing hammer back and forth between the ready and resting position while he considered Dante’s offer. “My thumb’s getting awfully tired. You going to tell me what this is?”
“The longest con in history.” Dante spoke with absolute conviction. He didn’t take an offensive stance or try to protect himself from another hit. He simply waited until he had Mitch’s undivided attention. “That key card will get you into the financial records mainframe at Lionhouse Studios. With that card, and the CEO, the billion—with a capital B—dollar payout I have planned would make that San Francisco job you blundered a little while back like chump change.”
What? A heist? No. Dante couldn’t be serious. That wasn’t the man I’d been getting to know these past few weeks. But what was a few weeks compared to nearly fifteen years? I felt sick. It was harder and harder to hold onto any hope whatsoever.
“And let me guess the card will only work for you.” Mitch snorted, shaking his head. He was clearly frustrated that none of this had gone the way he planned, but had cooled off enough to at least listen to Dante. I was just glad he stopped waving the pistol around like a madman.
“When my father died, I saw my opening and I took it.” Dante spat. Seeing the side of his bloody face already starting to swell made my insides cringe into knots.
“And you didn’t feel compelled to contact me at all in the last three fucking years to tell me what you were up to!” Mitch’s eye twitched. Skepticism was written across his face and seething anger boiled just below the surface.
I shuttered at what he might do if he didn’t believe Dante.
“They’re much smarter than you think. You honestly think they would’ve believed that I had really changed if they caught me calling you?” Dante wiped the side of his bloody face then leveled a hard glare on Mitch. “After all they found you when even the cops couldn’t. That’s where the little birdie came from, right?”
Wait, what? Was Dante implying that Lionhouse sent these lunatics here? That didn’t make any sense! They knew I was here. I’m one of their main stars! If I was hurt or…something worse they wouldn’t be able to make their movie! Wasn’t that the whole point of training me so hard in such a short amount of time?
Mitch snorted, amused. He put a hand on his hip and let everything Dante said sink in. Finally, he smiled and hugged Dante hard. “Clever sonofabitch. I knew there must’ve been a good reason for you to disappear. I fucking knew it!”
Dante hugged him back like an old friend. Was he really telling the truth? Was all of this some elaborate game to him? I was flooded with all the moments that we shared and felt light headed.
Was everything he ever told me a lie?
“If Lionhouse sent you, then we’re going to have to move fast.” Dante broke off the hug and glanced at the rest of the crew. “There’s a lot of planning left to do for this job. We should get going.”
“What’s the rush?” Mitch scoffed insulted. “Your family comes in to visit and you aren’t going to even show us around? You’re better than that. I raised you to have manners.” Mitch took a stern fatherly tone, then raised his gravely voice to make sure I heard him. It was terrifying how quickly and easily he shifted from moods. “It’d be rude to not at least introduce us to your friend. “Come on out and say hi, Autumn Moore,”
Hearing my name come out of Mitch’s mouth shook me to the core. I gasped at the sudden tapping on the back window of the car with the butt of a revolver, but otherwise stayed motionless.
That information shouldn’t be available online anywhere! Sarah, my public relations contact, censored the crap out of the training videos I posted on my channel, not that Dante was ever in any of them. Dante wasn’t even officially attached to this movie. There shouldn’t be any connection between Dante and me.
Maybe Lionhouse really did send them…
All the car’s windows suddenly darkened with bodies as the rest of his crew surrounded me. Some had their guns out, others didn’t, but they all tapped the car and all called my name. Despite their young age they all taunted me with the menacing demeanor of hardened criminals.
The only thing that kept me from fully freaking out was that the doors were all locked. I’d made sure of that when I got in the car, not that that would stop any of them for long. They were on the roof and the hood, windows cracked and doors rattled as they pounded. This was hard sleet in hell; it was my worst nightmare come to life. That’s when I noticed I had started to cry.
I was going to die.
“Enough!” Dante roared, tearing a Hispanic boy off the hood like he was a stuffed animal. “Get the fuck off my car.”
“You know the drill,” Mitch paused
raising a scrutinizing eyebrow at Dante. “She’s a witness; we have to kill her, Ja— Ah!” Mitch smiled as he waggled his finger goofily. “Jack. Dante. What do I even call you know? I mean you spend years cursing out one name, then you got to learn a whole different name for the same guy…but hey, that’s no excuse. Manners are important. That’s how we grow as people, right? Right!”
The rest of the crew stopped and reluctantly agreed in unison as if their teacher had just addressed the class. It finally struck me how young they were. They were all kids, not more than sixteen or seventeen years old, and all from different ethnicities. The diversity of the gang would almost be endearing if they weren’t trying to kill me.
“You heard the man, get the fuck off his car. We’re not animals. That’s a goddamn classic, and you little bastards will show it some respect.” Mitch glared at the kids until they obeyed.
Were all these kids runaways? Everything made a little more sense, in a horrifying brainwashing sort of way. It was frightening how emotionally manipulating Mitch was. How long did Dante have to live with this guy? No wonder he had trust issues.
“My apologies, I promise that won’t happen again.” Mitch pet the side of the car lovingly, then whistled loudly. “Anyhoo. Hector! Kill Dante’s girlfriend.”
Dante snapped a hand over Hector’s arm before he could pull the gun from the waistband of his puffy-crotched pants. “That’s a mistake.”
“Ow fuck!” The boy whined, squirming against Dante’s vice-like grip and dropping the lit cigarette from his mouth. The rest of the crew were quick to start shouting and aimed their guns at Dante.
“You are making it really hard to trust you, Jack. It’s like your first fucking day all over again.” Mitch pushed the revolver into Dante’s head, but Dante refused to release Hector’s arm. Disappointment washed over Mitch’s face. “No attachments outside the crew. That was rule numero uno, Buddy. Did Rhonda’s death teach you nothing?”
“Her name was Rhoda.” Dante grimaced through notes of bitterness and regret. “Greek for rose.”
“That’s what I fucking said.” Mitch growled, then got in Dante’s face. The gun pushed his head so far to the side that his ear almost touched his shoulder. “What? You think I don’t fucking know the members in my own fucking crew?” Then he abruptly calmed and tried to appeal to Dante. “I get it, I do. Shit, I made the rule against fucking unnecessary casualties. I’d rather die than hurt an innocent bystander or someone not in our way.
“I’m not the bad guy here, son.” Mitch lowered his gun, then instructed the rest of the crew to do the same. Dante released Hector. “I’m just the one that has to make the hard call. She’s seen us, heard us, and can identify us. I’m not doing this for me; I’m doing this for them; for my family. It’s her or all of us. And that includes you too.”
Mitch searched Dante’s face, then burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me? She doesn’t know any of it does she?”
“I’m not one to kiss and tell.” Dante cracked his neck and cleared his throat; his expression was darkened clouds before a lightning storm. Whatever this was Dante didn’t like it. And with a crew like this I could only imagine how hard this event must’ve been for him.
“Oh come on, I fucking love that story. Shit, that might even be my favorite story, and you know what? I don’t think the crew has even heard, well maybe Tonya. She’s been around the longest. Gather around everyone, it’s story time.” Mitch lightly slapped Dante in the chest, then pulled a glass flask of some kind of alcohol out of his pocket. It looked similar to the flask Dante had in his first aide kit. Mitch took a swig, handed it to Tonya, a Caucasian girl who looked to be the oldest of the group, then waived the rest of his crew over. They filed in against the driver’s side of the Plymouth, rocking the car’s weight.
“So there we were, pulling a bank job in San Bernardino, had to be twelve or thirteen years ago.” Mitch spread his arm out and really got into the story. “We were fucking on that day. Everything was falling into place perfectly. We had the right outfits, nailed the guard rotation, everything.”
“None of this is necessary.” Dante’s fists finally began to ball up. There was only so much of this he could take.
“No, no, no. It’s important. It was a big day in your life and it should be celebrated.” Mitch was genuinely insistent, the same way a parent might recount their child’s graduation. “Cowboy security guard was packing and wanted to play hero. It happens sometimes, but not often. Usually they just cower and call the cops, but not this grizzled, old fucker. He had the look of a real hard ass to him.
“Anyways while we’re cleaning out the vault, this fucker creeps up on us. Our backs were all turned; he had us dead to rights. From the reflection on a polished metal lockbox, Dante catches the guy going for his gun. Dante turns, draws and fires before the cowboy can get the shot off. It was fucking magnificent! Fastest damn draw I’d ever seen. I mean real show down at the OK Corral kind of impressive.” Mitch wore this enormous cheshire grin as he acted out the speedy draw with his own gun. The rest of his crew passed the flask around and cheered at parts.
“Did he smoke him?” One of the kids asked after a long, bitter sip of whatever was in that flask.
“Dante only clips the guy’s leg, but! He still gets the cowboy to drop his gun. Now this was all surprising as hell for me. You see when Dante first joined my crew, for as ballsy and clever as he was; he stayed a little too green for a little too long. To be honest I wasn’t sure if he was cut out to be one of us.
“So being the good Dad I am, I knew I needed to step up and help him become a man.” Mitch broke his attention off from his crew and leveled the gun directly on me. I screamed, scurrying as far back into the passenger side of the car as possible, but he still had a clear shot. The only thing between us was a thin piece of glass. I’d never get out of the car in time and if I did there was nowhere for me to go. I was trapped. “It took a little convincing, but in the end Dante did the right thing for his family. One shot, nice and clean, right between the eyes. The cowboy didn’t feel a thing.”
“No. Please.” I whimpered. Staring down the long barrel of a gun put things into perspective. I wasn’t too proud to beg. I was in so far over my head. I was just a girl who made silly YouTube videos. I never signed up for any of this; I just wanted to help my mom.
I didn’t want to die.
“Mitch.” Dante stepped between the two of us. I closed my eyes, not bearing to watch. “I don’t care what you do with her, but we can’t kill a fucking celebrity. There’s no faster way to get the whole country looking for us than—”
The crack of a gunshot split the air and quieted everything, the birds, the insects, even the breeze. It was only when I gasped in air that I realized I was still alive. But when I opened my eyes, Dante was gone.
“No!” I screamed. Crying, I threw myself at the driver’s side window to see where Dante was. Touching my forehead to the glass I could just barely see Dante lying on the ground, a pool of blood spreading out beneath him.
Get up! You can’t be dead. You can’t be dead!
“No one tells me what I should and shouldn’t do.” Mitch growled. “She’s only a baby celebrity at most. No one’s going to be that torn up over her.”
Mitch leveled the gun on me again. This time he put it right up to the glass I was pressed against. There was no possible way for him to miss.
“Help him up.” Mitch decided against firing and lowered the smoking pistol. He took a bandana off Hector’s head. Dante grunted in pain when the three kids got him to his feet. Blood poured out of a hole in his leg.
Oh thank, God. I exhaled hard, my sobbing was now of relief. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Maybe Dante was a killer and a con man, but I didn’t want to see him hurt. I hated myself for caring about him as much as I did.
This was insane! There had to be a way out of this! I was shaking violently and was barely keeping myself together. I thought again of driving the still idling car
out of there, but with so many people holding guns standing just feet away I didn’t stand a chance.
“I love you like a son, Jack, please don’t make me kill you.” Mitch tied the bandanna around Dante’s thigh in a makeshift tourniquet. It stemmed the blood flow from the bullet wound just below it. “I need to know which side you’re really on. It’s time to chose. Which life do you belong to? Are you Jack or are you Dante?”
“Jack.” Steely eyed, Dante growled without hesitation. He looked pale from all the blood loss. I didn’t know if it was from the pain, but Dante was sterner in demeanor than even that first day of training. If I hadn’t watched this whole incident unfold, I wasn’t sure I’d have even recognized him now.
“Prove it.” Mitch put the loaded gun in Dante’s hand.
“Anyone can kill anyone,” Dante said more to himself than anyone else. He aimed the gun at me; his expression was cold and distant. Time froze as we stared at each other. How did it come to this?
“Please.” I pleaded with Dante through sore, red eyes. There had to be some of the man I loved still in there. Some of it had to be real, right?
“This isn’t enough.” Dante shook his head and stuffed the gun in his waistband. He untied the bandana around his leg. “You’re going to need real proof.”
Dante snatched the flask and the lit cigarette from Tonya. He took a pull from the glass flask, but didn’t swallow until he poured some of the alcohol on his wound. It kept him from crying out in pain.
“What are you up to?” A wry grin slowly crept across Mitch’s bony cheeks as he watched Dante with wary curiosity.
Dante stuffed the bandana in the flask, then he pulled long drags through the cigarette, getting the cherry tip hot enough to light the dangling end of the bandana. I didn’t realize what he was doing until the alcohol soaked bandana caught fire.
“Reminding everyone here exactly who I am.” Dante growled through gritted teeth, then threw the Molotov cocktail into the garage. The flaming flask sailed past the framed family photographs, stacks of paper flyers from thrill shows long since forgotten, reels of old camera footage, his father’s riding gear and countless other irreplaceable heirlooms and memories to crash into the metal cabinet with all the open containers.