by Hamel, B. B.
Steven
Colleen stared out the tinted window at the rain-slicked Philly streets and said nothing as the car crawled into the Point Breeze neighborhood.
Bringing her here was a risk, but it was a risk I had to take. She stared as I crawled along the block, her eyes staring at the brick fronted buildings, her hands folded in her lap, her fingers making nervous claws against her palms.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Not much,” she said. “Run down homes. Garbage on the curb.”
I smiled. “No, I mean—”
“I know what you meant,” she said. “I’m thinking, okay?”
I let out a little breath but let her think. I kept driving, circling around the block before moving on to the next one. She stared, didn’t move, didn’t blink, and the only way I knew she was alive and thinking was the breaths pulling into her chest. She wore a black tank top and dark blue jeans. Her hair was up in a bun, and she had a gray plain hat pulled down low over her face. I thought she was trying to hide, but I didn’t bother asking about it.
“There,” she said after I circled the next block twice.
I slowed, despite the taxi driving too close behind me. The guy honked and I ignored him, though the noise made Colleen flinch.
“Which one?” I asked.
“The one without flowers in its box,” she said. “Red door. Black railing.”
I nodded and looked at the number. “2244 Earp,” I said. “Write it down.”
She gave me a look then grudgingly opened the glove box. She took out a plain white notepad and a pen then scratched the number and the street down. She clicked the pen a few times and held it between her teeth as the taxi got impatient and honked again. I drove on and made a right at the stop sign onto 22nd as the cab blew past me, throwing his middle finger out the window.
“That’s one,” I said. “What’s next?”
“Keep going. Left on Latona.”
I followed her directions. There weren’t many people out in the rain, though I caught a few guys sitting out on small porches under overhangs. There were few trees in the Point Breeze neighborhood. The city had forgotten all about it a long time ago and left it for the gangs to run. Some houses were nice and kept up, the outsides clean and modern, though some were ramshackle and possibly abandoned. There were cars along the curbs, but it wasn’t packed like the nicer parts of the city.
I rolled along Latona, past what looked like it might have been some kind of church or maybe a factory with a CCTV camera outside. Colleen stopped me midway along the block.
“There,” she said. “Red door, gold handle. Looks new.”
“2224,” I read. “Write it down.”
She grunted, wrote it down, and I kept driving.
We moved through the neighborhood like that for a while. I drove, she gave directions, and occasionally had me stop. She’d point out a house, write down the address, then we’d move on.
She started adding businesses to her list. There was a drycleaner, a laundromat. There was a little bar and a beer distributor. At one point, she stopped outside of a daycare.
“This too?” I asked.
She shrugged. “People need help with their kids,” she said.
I grunted in reply. We rolled up next to a park after two hours of combing through the streets, and she handed over her little list. Twenty addresses were written down in no particular order.
“There’s more,” she said, leaning back and closing her eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest as the rain pattered against the windshield. I looked out at the empty park, at the quiet, dead playground, and wondered how many kids went there on a normal day.
“How many more?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Ten maybe, another twenty. I don’t remember them all.”
“That’s okay. This is a lot.” I stared down at the list. “This is a lot more than most of us get.”
She made a face. “You say that like what you’re doing is normal.”
“In my line of work, it is.” I folded the paper up and slipped it into my jacket pocket. I patted it flat and leaned back against the headrest.
“Your line of work,” she said. “Can you really call it work?”
I made a face and shrugged. “I think so,” I said. “It’s a job, even if it’s not a normal job. I have people that depend on me, and I have to pay them. And I have to make a profit for myself.”
“You steal. You kill.”
“Sure. So do big corporations. I just do my stealing and killing out on the streets.”
“How noble.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re so above it all then, aren’t you?”
“I don’t think I am,” I said.
I watched as a woman hurried down the sidewalk, the hood of her brown sweatshirt up over her head. She had on black slacks and a bit of red was poking out from underneath the brown sweatshirt, so I figured she was on her way home from work. A cigarette glowed in her mouth.
“But you’re acting like coming in here and killing the Club soldiers is no big deal.”
“They know what they signed up for.”
“You’re still killing them.” She unfolded her arms and leaned forward to run a hand down the leather along the dashboard.
“Sure, I’m killing them,” I said. “Like they killed some of the Russians, who killed some of the Irish, who killed some other gangs who knows how long ago. When you join a mafia, little Colleen, you accept some of the risk.”
“Not all of them do,” she said, her voice low and quiet.
I tilted my head. “What do you mean by that?”
“Some of these guys are just stupid kids,” she said. “They don’t know any better life. I mean, to some of these Club guys, it’s either construction, dock work, or selling drugs. What do you think they choose?”
“Construction,” I said with a smile.
She gave me a look. “It’s not really a choice, not when you’ve got six siblings, your dad’s a drunk, your mom’s working all the time, and they need food on the table.”
“How many guys like that do you know?”
“More than you’d think.” She took off her hat and reached up to take out the hair tie. She let her hair spill down her shoulders and shook it out before running her hands through it. “You ever think about why your soldiers work for you?”
“I know some of their reasons,” I said, which was true. I knew Luca’s father was in the family from way back when, and he grew up in it. I knew Simon joined because he came from a bad family and it was all he knew.
“But not all of them,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Not all of them. It’s not something we talk about.”
“Maybe you should.” She looked out the window. “Maybe you’d hesitate to throw their lives away.”
I felt a surge of anger run through me. “Why are you so convinced that’s what I’m doing?” I asked. “You really think I want any of my soldiers to get hurt?”
“I think you’re willing to do whatever it takes, and that’s what they’re there for,” she said. “They can get hurt, and you don’t care.”
I clenched my jaw and gripped the steering wheel. I had to take a few deep, calming breaths before I got myself under control.
“Two years ago,” I said, “we got into a war with the Russians.”
She looked at me, her blue eyes cold and flat, a little frown on her face. But she didn’t speak up to interrupt me, so I kept going.
“Things got bad,” I said. “Dante was fighting for his life while trying to protect a girl. Sort of like you, actually. We had this friend, this guy we came up with named Gino. Dante sort of took Gino in under his wing, taught him a lot, you know, became close. Dante put Gino in charge of watching the girl, partially to keep her safe, but mostly to keep Gino out of the line of fire.”
I stopped for a moment and remembered the first time we met Gino. He was so grateful when we saved him from these low life thug assholes that wanted to rob him. I rem
embered his awkward laugh, his bad singing voice, his love of motorcycles.
“What happened?” she asked, her face softening.
“Got killed,” I said. “Died when the Russians went after that girl. He died saving the girl and Dante. He was a fucking hero. But you know what? If I could go back, I’d save his life. I think about Gino every fucking day.” I turned to her and stared, my eyes going hard. “So don’t tell me I don’t care. I care about all my soldiers, and I want to make sure they get through this without getting hurt. But it’s either my boys or their boys, and I’m going to make damn sure it’s all them.”
She shook her head and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She looked away, back at the park, at the rain dripping from a nearby streetlight that was on and flickering, despite the time of day.
“That’s the problem right there,” she said. “All that us or them shit. That’s the sort of thing that’s going to get people killed.”
“Then people get killed,” I said. “If your uncle wanted to roll over and give me what I want, then nobody would die. But he’s not going to do that, and I’m not going to stop, so here we are, making this fucking list.”
She looked back at me. “I’m helping you,” she said. “Okay? I’m helping, but I’m not happy about it.”
“I didn’t ask you to be happy. I just asked you to do your job.”
She glared then leaned back in her seat. She crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t speak. I sat there looking at her body, feeling annoyed and frustrated. She had this idea about me, that I was some cold, unfeeling killer, and that was true to an extent. I’d grown calluses all over myself from years of fighting, years of living with danger and death.
But I wasn’t a monster. Not yet, at least.
I checked for traffic then pulled out again. I drove around the block and headed toward home. I took the long, scenic route, cutting down south street, jutting along the city, past tourists looking frustrated sitting just inside restaurants, staring at the rain.
“Don’t you miss it?” I asked as I turned left.
“Miss what?”
“The Club,” I said.
She shook her head. “Not at all.”
“Come on. How old were you when your father left?”
“Eight,” she said.
“So you remember it.”
She hesitated. “I remember some of it.”
“You have to miss it.”
She was quiet for a long moment and I thought she might be ignoring me. But as we rolled through a stop sign and passed a church on the right, she spoke up.
“I remember cookouts,” she said. “Big ones my uncle used to throw. Everyone would be there, the whole block shut down with bouncy castles and all that stuff. The kids would run wild and the adults would drink beer. I remember the other kids, you know, the other kids with parents in the Club. I’d spend so much time with them, like we were a family, you know? I had this friend name Shannon, but after my dad left, I wasn’t allowed to see her anymore.”
“I bet that hurt,” I said.
“I didn’t understand it back then. I was so mad, I blamed my dad, but that only made it worse. My mom was dead, my dad was grieving and barely holding it together, and my whole little eight-year-old world got ripped apart and all my friends were gone. They were really bad days.” She took a deep breath and leaned her forehead against the glass window for a second before sitting up straight. “I haven’t thought about the times before that in a while, though.”
“That feeling, about it being a family, that’s why guys join,” I said.
She gave me a look. “Come on.”
“It’s true,” I said. “There are a ton of ways to make money in this city. If all you want to do is rob some places and do some petty shit, there are plenty of little gangs that’ll take you. But if you want a real family, a real life, you join the Leone Family. It’s not an easy thing to join, but once you’re made, you’re made for life.”
“I don’t buy it,” she said.
“Just think about how good that felt at eight, then imagine how it would feel to a twenty-year-old guy with a shitty family life back home, no skills, and no ability to see the future. Getting that family…” I trailed off, remembering how it felt to join for the first time, back when Dante and I were made soldiers in Sergio’s crew. “It’s a real blessing.”
She was quiet the rest of the ride. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but she stared straight ahead, her hat in her hands. She spun it around absently and clicked the end a few times. I found a spot on my block, parked, and looked at her.
“Come on,” I said.
“Wait.” She looked out the window before turning to me, adjusting her body so her one leg curled underneath her. “What you said before, about family. Do you really think that’s true?”
“It’s true,” I said. “And I think that’s why you hate your uncle so much.”
She made a face. “He’s real family. It’s different.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Real family… you don’t choose that. It’s thrust on you, whether you like it or not. But your other family, the one you pick, that’s more important. You’re mad your father left that family, but you’re even more mad that they’re now turning on him. I can’t blame you for that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t tell me how I feel.”
“Tell me I’m wrong then,” I said.
“You’re wrong.”
I shrugged. “Fine. Think what you want.”
She turned back, facing forward, arms over her chest again. She sat like that for a second before letting out a frustrated breath. I watched her carefully, eyes moving along her body, unable to help myself.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said. “Not when I was a kid, and not now.”
“I know,” I said, leaning toward her. I reached out and brushed her hair from her shoulder and she frowned, eyes turned in my direction, but she didn’t flinch away. “But if you want a new family, a real family, I can give you that.”
“You want me to join your little gang?” she asked, surprise in her voice.
“Maybe not quite that far,” I said. “But when this is all through, there’s no reason you’ll have to leave.”
Her eyes went wide. “What, you want to keep me forever now?”
I tilted my head. “You’ve been such a good house guest.”
She laughed and I could hear the bitter confusion in her tone.
“I doubt that,” she said. “I don’t get you, Steven.”
“Good.” I smiled and pulled away. “Come on. I think it’s about to rain harder. Let’s get inside.”
I stepped out of the car and went around to her side. She looked at me through the window as I hesitated on the sidewalk, rain pelting my shoulders. But then she pushed open the door and got out. We hurried up the stoop and went into the house. I shut the door and locked it behind us.
12
Colleen
I felt filthy after taking Steven around the neighborhood and showing him every safe house and Club owned business I could spot. He sauntered into the kitchen and I stomped upstairs, not interested in talking to him any more than I had to. I went into my room, closed the door, and got into the shower.
It seemed like all I did was shower, but for some reason I kept feeling dirty around Steven. His words rang in my ears as I washed my face and hair, letting the soap and suds drip down my skin and pool at the bottom of the white tub.
He wanted to make me family.
I didn’t know what that meant or what he was implying. Maybe he wanted to keep me around as his little mistress, to use however he wanted, or maybe he was saying he wanted to marry me. Either way, I wasn’t interested in the bastard.
He could take his handsome smile, his expensive house, his perfect clothes, and shove them right up his ass.
Except I knew I was kidding myself. After I got out of the shower and toweled off, I wiped the steam from the mirror and sta
red at myself. I kept thinking about his tongue between my legs up on the roof deck. I kept thinking about the way he made me feel, like I was riding on a cloud, riding on heaven. His muscular body, his cocky smirk, his tongue and teeth and deft fingers, it all drove me insane, and I hated him for it.
I resented him for making me want him.
I got dressed, pulled on yoga pants, a sports bra, another clean tank top. I headed downstairs and was surprised to see him still dressed, sitting at the kitchen table in front of his laptop. He looked up at me and shut the lid.
“I have an errand to run,” he said.
“Got some club kids to kill?” I asked and immediately regretted it.
He winced. “No,” he said.
“Right. Sorry. That was uncalled for.”
He waved my apology off. “I’m leaving you here,” he said. “Alone, unsupervised. You can run away if you want.”
I stared at him, standing still on the threshold between the dining area and the kitchen. He looked back, head tilted, before coming around the table and stepping toward me. I moved away, pressing my back against the wall, and he stood in front of me, his eyes moving down my body in a slow wave.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“That’s fine.” He reached out and touched my hair, pushing it from my face. It was still wet from the shower and his fingers moved down my cheek toward my neck. He stopped there, leaving his large palm against my throat. “But I told you that I won’t lie to you.”
I bit my lip hard enough to keep me from making any stupid noises.
“It’s not like I have anywhere to go,” I said.
That made him smile. “Well. I’m glad you realized that.”
I pushed his hand away and went to move, but he grabbed my hips and pulled me back. I pushed at his chest but he held me there before grabbing my wrist and pinning me against the wall. I was breathing hard, staring at him, halfway between rage and desire.
“Get off me,” I said.
He hesitated, holding me tighter, then released me. I held my hands there for a moment before letting them fall back down.