by Taylor Hill
The only thing I wanted to do then was sleep and not because I was tired but because I couldn’t stand the thought of being awake anymore. And, as if some primitive self-protecting instinct kicked in, a black all-encompassing shadow passed over me then, pulling me under into a deep, formless sleep that was bereft of any dreams or comfort. It was dark when I next awoke, late, and I felt completely and utterly alone.
I paused to listen at the door to hear if Rebecca was in and when I was certain that the apartment was empty I stepped out into the hallway and made my way down to the living room. I checked the clock on the wall and felt even worse to see that it was only half past midnight. Now I regretted going to sleep so early, as it meant that I would have to sit up in darkness and silence, spending the rest of the night in solitude.
I turned on the TV and flicked through the channels, feeling listless and numb, barely interested in what I was watching, which was unsurprising because there was nothing much on anyway. When the long hand of the clock had travelled halfway around its face again, the buzzer rang and—reasoning that it could only be Rebecca calling this late, probably having lost her keys or something—I got up to buzz her in. If it had been anybody else I don’t think I would have answered at all.
Clearing my throat, I lifted the phone from the receiver, hoping that my voice wouldn’t sound too miserable. I didn’t feel like having to explain all the heartbreak and drama right now, especially not when Rebecca herself seemed so happy with life. It wouldn’t be fair to bring her down to my level.
“Hello?” I said, pretty much failing completely to keep the pain from my voice.
“Sandra, it’s me. Can I come in?”
I inhaled a sharp breath. It was Romeo.
He looked good. Fit and lithe and toned, with his jacket opened over a dark t-shirt and jeans, and his hair slicked back over his handsome brow. In comparison, I must have looked even worse in my grey sweatpants and tank top, my hair messed up and only the lightest touch of makeup from earlier on my face.
His expression was solemn as he stood in the doorway, his deep eyes peering in at me from the dim light outside. “Are you ok?” he said.
I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Gino, for one thing,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “well I’m about as ok as I could be, all things considered. I suppose you better come in.” I turned around and walked back to the living room, Romeo closing the door and following behind me.
“Lou told me you’re not speaking to him,” Romeo said, “you know that you’re all he has, right? You and Lisa?”
I turned around and looked at him levelly. “What about you?” I said, “Doesn’t he have you too? Or is it just business with you guys as well—the way it is with him and Gino?”
Romeo winced. “Gino…” he said. “You know, when I heard what Sal and those guys had done to him I wanted to go down to that nightclub and pound that greasy piece of shit into the ground.”
I raised an eyebrow. Wow, I thought. Weren’t those guys supposed to be his superiors or something? If the wrong people heard him saying that then even I knew the repercussions could be disastrous. I was both surprised and a little concerned for him. Nonetheless, I had to have my say—I’d been bottling it up for too long not to and, rightly or wrongly, I wanted him to feel some of the pain that I was going through. I needed him to.
“But you still hang around with them, right?” I said, “What is it, that the money’s too good? And by the way Romeo, you still haven’t answered my question—doesn’t Lou have you to rely on? Or is your relationship with him just business too?”
Romeo’s brow furrowed for a solitary second, as if the wave of emotion had been too powerful for him to subdue, before he did just that and made it disappear, leaving me wondering if it had ever been there in the first place—and whether I should feel guilty or not for having caused it.
“He can rely on me Sandy,” he said. “So can you. Whatever happens I promise you that much.” He looked at me then and his face seemed so pained now that I forgot all of my own hurt and anger in an instant. Once again, I had to fight the urge to just fling myself into his arms and let him know how I truly felt about him, for better or worse. But no, I couldn’t let myself do it. I had to stay strong.
“But I’m not going to be around here forever,” Romeo continued. “Like I said, I could get called away at any time without warning. If anything bad ever happens then Lou’s going to need you Sandy—you and Lisa have to be there for him.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I said, but there was no bite to my words anymore, in fact now my tone was soft and gentle. Now it was taking everything I had to resist throwing my arms around him right there and then and holding on for dear life—both to comfort Romeo and to give myself the comfort that I so desperately, achingly, craved from him.
“Romeo,” I said, “why do you even hang around with those guys if you hate them so much? What’s going on with you?”
He shook his head and suddenly I felt like there was a rift between us a thousand miles wide, one that neither of us would ever be able to cross, no matter how much we longed to.
“Sandy please,” he said, “it’s nothing. You can’t ever ask about my work, I told you that.”
“If you’re going to do something,” I said, ignoring his request, “then you need to tell me right now.”
“Nothing,” he said, “it’s nothing. But know this Sandy: together, we paid off Gino’s debts, me and Lou both, but mainly Lou, and you don’t know what lengths we had to go to to pull it off. In fact if you ask me, I think that guy would do anything for the old man. Deep down he’s got a heart the size of Lake Michigan—just like you do—and someday soon he’s going to need you to be there for him. When that time comes, you’re going to have to give it all you’ve got.”
It wasn’t fair—dropping all this on me now, it didn’t seem fair—and yet I knew it had to be said. If it was true that Lou had bailed out Gino yet again then I knew that Romeo was right, regardless of all the other stuff those two were into. Lou being connected hadn’t caused Gino’s accident but it had, paradoxically, saved him from further disaster and despite everything I believed in—despite how much I disapproved of his entire lifestyle—I had to admit that this time I owed him one.
“Before I go,” Romeo said finally, “I think I should mention—I heard Lisa told you about Sara…”
My heart sunk in an instant. “Who?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know exactly who he meant. Did we have to do this now, I wondered? Couldn’t we just leave it unsaid?
“My ex,” Romeo continued, oblivious to my distaste or maybe not, “she came down from New York a few days ago. I thought… I thought I should say something to you.”
I forced a smile, but it wasn’t easy. “Romeo,” I said, “we agreed to be just friends. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“I know but…”
“It’s fine, really,” I insisted, hoping now that he would leave soon—leave now—because I wouldn’t be able to hold the tears back for much longer.
“Are you sure?” Romeo asked, “Because Lou’s pretty mad about it. I thought maybe…”
“Romeo, it’s fine. I’ll talk to Lou. Now no offense or anything, but it’s getting late and I have class in the morning.”
Yeah right, as if I’d be going to class the next day. I’d be doing well just to pull myself out of bed, the way I was feeling.
“Sure,” Romeo said, “of course.” He moved to go before pausing and turning back to me. “Sandy, listen… if things had been different…”
My voice was quiet. “Don’t,” I said, “just don’t.” I turned away from him, feeling the tears beginning to well in my eyes and waiting until I could hear his footsteps as he walked away.
“Goodbye Sandra,” he said and when the apartment door opened I almost turned and called out to him, but it was too late—with a dull creak the door shut and he was alread
y gone.
He hated this place—had from the moment he’d first set foot in it. The smell of cheap sugary-flavored shots and chemicals from the smoke machine, barely masking the other smell of desperation and hopelessness, it made him want to wretch. But for Sal, Ferret and Eyeball—even to Lou—it was like a palace of dreams, the epitome of everything they wanted out of life; money, power, excess, and total domination over others. He’d sworn to himself that he would shut it down forever that first time they’d called him here. Now, he wasn’t sure he’d get the chance.
“I don’t get what we’re doing down here on the main floor?” Lana asked him, leaning over to whisper in his ear in the small, red-cushioned booth they now shared. “Doesn’t he usually talk business upstairs?”
“Sure,” Romeo answered, “but why the hell would Sal want to talk business in front of my girlfriend?”
“Because I’m not just your girlfriend,” Lana said, “Because I know an angle for you big strong men to make some money off, remember?”
She reached down to straighten out the hem of the slutty lime-green cocktail dress she was wearing and Romeo observed, not for the first time, that she may have been getting more enjoyment from slumming it like this than was professionally required.
“And I told you it was the worst idea I’d heard yet from you FBI hacks,” Romeo replied.
“Yeah, well us hacks are the ones at the wheel here and besides, you owe me one. Now let’s just watch the show. I think I’m actually starting to enjoy this.”
Romeo frowned, taking a slow, labored sip of his ginger ale. His mouth was dry, his jaw tense, and the piquant liquid stung his gums a little as he drank. He looked up towards the VIP balcony. Sal was up there somewhere, he knew, and the fact that he’d left them waiting so long downstairs probably didn’t bode well for their coming meeting. Sal may have been a boorish jackass, but he had a kind of cunning intelligence to him that was bolstered even further by Eyeball’s helpful and sometimes even alarmingly astute interjections. All three of them were up there now and Romeo was certain that they would be talking about him and his girl. Damn it Lana, he thought, why did you have to go and fuck everything up like this?
But he couldn’t blame it all on her, not completely. The fact that Sal and the guys had found out about his “girlfriend” had been more his fault than hers, especially since he was the one who’d asked her to meet him so close to the Orange Grove that day—a risky move when he’d already known that Sal and the others were on their way. But at that point there was nothing he could do, Lou had already held those animals back for as long as possible and if they couldn’t get the money to Gino before Sal got to him first then the gangster Capo would show no mercy in exacting his retribution. Hell, Sal would even expect Lou to take part and Romeo knew that his friend didn’t have it in him. And if Lou defied Sal’s orders then he too would be met with the full brunt of their lust to violence. In the end, the meeting with Lana was a risk that he’d had no other choice but to take.
After Valentine’s Day—after that beautiful, impossible night with Sandy—Romeo had had to face up to some painful truths. There were two incontrovertible things that he knew. The first was that he was falling in love with Sandra Guilianno. The second was that the closer he let himself get to her then the more pain it would inevitably cause. And if there was one thing he wanted even more than just to be with her, it was the burning desire to protect her from harm—emotional or otherwise.
Maybe it was no wonder that he’d been so hurt when she said that she agreed about staying just friends (though somehow a part of him just couldn’t believe that), even though he’d known that it was really for the best. After that he’d reaffirmed his commitment to the mission. If he couldn’t be with Sandy, he could at least honor his promise to her that he would look out for her brother and that would mean taking down those other soul-sucking vampires and—eventually—coming clean to Lou about the whole operation and hoping he could be persuaded to do the right thing too. Virtually everything about the life of Romeo Mancini was a lie, but his friendship with Lou was not. He only hoped the other man could grow to understand.
His FBI superiors almost had everything they needed now—certainly they had enough to take down Sal and his two top soldiers—but they wanted to keep Romeo in and build as strong of a case as possible. He still hadn’t had any dealings with anybody else in the Falcone family, at least nobody higher than Sal anyway, and they were holding out for another couple of big catches before they called it quits and took it to the DA. He’d had to really go to the bat when it came to getting them to front the money for Gino and it had taken Lou a couple of seriously tense weeks of holding back Sal’s fury until the old man could pay. Lana, to her credit, had done her part and stood up for Romeo, arguing that if Sal and those guys decided to beat up Gino again it would, in his elderly state, amount to an attempted murder and there was no protocol for that. So either they put in the money to save him or the whole case would have to be pulled—there was simply no other choice.
As for Lou, Romeo told him he could probably get a loan from one of his mob uncles back home, but just had to wait for the cash to come through. On the day Sal decided that he’d waited long enough, Romeo had received an urgent text from Lou informing him that he and Sal’s crew were on their way to the café right that minute and they were going to force Lou to either collect the money or do something much, much worse. One frantic phone call later, Lana agreed to meet him in a diner en-route so she could hand him the cash. And from there it all would have gone off seamlessly if Sal and the guys hadn’t spotted his car and decided to come back for him.
Now circumstances necessitated that a love interest would have to be added to the story of Romeo Mancini and it certainly wasn’t the one that Romeo himself truly desired.
In Sal’s car, Lou had persuaded the Capo to let him and Romeo go into the café alone, insisting that they be allowed the opportunity to prove themselves to the other guys, a request that was certainly congruous with their obvious desire to make the grade and become official Mafiosi. Romeo had gone in with the cash stuffed in his pockets, down his pants, under his t-shirt and anywhere else he could keep Sal from seeing it from his place behind the wheel. Inside, they’d quickly told Gino the score and between them the three of them had transferred the money into an old medical bag that the old man had had lying around and then they returned outside to where Sal was waiting, parked up across the street.
Sal hadn’t been able to believe it and as Romeo watched him counting the money he could barely hide his disgust—the Capo seemed almost disappointed to have been paid with money instead of with blood. When the conversation turned to the subject of Romeo’s mystery companion, he further embellished the story he’d concocted en-route about an ex-girlfriend from New York and Lou, muttering simply “I’ve got to go,” had opened the car door and stormed away without waiting for permission. They’d barely spoken to each other since.
It had been pretty clear to Romeo from the beginning that Lou (not to mention Lisa too) had wanted to see him and Sandy end up as a serious item and, normally, that would have in itself acted as something of a deterrent, since Romeo hated it when other people tried to push his emotions in any particular direction. But with Sandy, it hadn’t made a difference. In fact, his growing friendship with her brother made it seem for him somehow even more enticing, almost as if Sandy, Lou and Lisa could be the family that he’d never had growing up. It was only a shame that it was all built on a house of lies—one that could come tumbling down any day now. And maybe even sooner than he’d thought…
He hadn’t heard much from Lou since then and it was Lisa herself who’d called him up to talk about Sandy. As to be expected, Sandy had been pretty distraught to hear about Gino’s involvement with Sal’s crew and not only was she blaming it on Lou, she was also even pissed at Lisa too for getting back with him. Even though he’d known that he should just stay away from her (especially now that he sensed th
e end so close at hand), Romeo had decided that he had to call over and make her see sense. Whatever way this case ended, they were all going to feel pretty betrayed by the lies his position had forced him to tell, and they would need to be there for each other when that time came. As well as that, he wanted to say goodbye to her, in case he never got a chance to say it again.
It had been a painful visit, but one that was probably for the best. At least Sandy had seemed like she understood how much Lou had really done for Gino after all and would soon forgive him. As for himself, when she found out the truth about him he felt certain that she might never forgive Romeo at all. That was something he would just have to learn to live with, even if it took him the rest of his life. But for now, he had other obligations to take care of.
A couple of days after seeing Sandy, he’d had a meeting with Lana—this time far across town from the Orange Grove, in a KFC out in the hinterlands of suburbia. Even still, he’d worn a baseball cap and sunglasses over a grey hoody—chosen because it was garb that Romeo Mancini would never wear—and Lana had snorted laughter into her hand when she’d seen him, accusing him of being paranoid as he sat down to join her.
“I think I have a right to be, wouldn’t you say?” he asked her, raising an eyebrow.
Sometimes he wondered if she ever truly grasped the gravity of what it was they were doing here. Those Mafia goons would torture and kill them both without batting an eyelid if they found out who they really were. Nonetheless, when he told Lana the story he’d made up about her being his girlfriend, she’d only laughed even harder.
“Oh man,” she said, “that’s classic. Did you tell them my name was Juliet too?”