***
I limped my way through house and found a bedroom. I took my time peeling off the suit that clung to my body by sweat and dried blood. My entire torso was black and blue. My face was swollen and filled with tiny cuts and knuckle impressions. When the pain became too much, I started to laugh. I laughed and laughed as the clothes came off. I laughed harder as the hot water pelted my bruised skin. It all seemed like a joke. I half expected for Lougotti to limp his way into the bathroom and finish the job he had started and failed at. I could picture Lougotti’s hired thugs recovering from my fatal bullet and dragging me back into the room and beat me until I stopped laughing and cried instead.
Somewhere in the mist of my hysterical laughter, I finally started crying. I sank to my butt as the water continued to pelt against me. It hurt as the cuts opened as the water hit it. I cried for different reasons.
I had sealed my fate so many times. I had sealed it when I betrayed Katie and hid from the pain and let it kill her instead. I had sealed it when I raped Lulina. I had sealed it when I fell in love with Dominique. I had sealed it when I killed her father and his men.
I had yet again committed another sin in the life of organized crime and my running room had ended.
I knew my running room had ended when I fell, naked and still dripping wet from the shower, in front of the toilet and coughed, hacking and gagging until I threw up. There was blood, plenty of it.
Internal bleeding…
I was running on borrowed time now. My stomach ached and felt like a pound of broken glass was there. Somewhere inside me had been broken and caused bleeding. Going to the hospital seemed too out of the question, and, for unknown reason, I knew it wouldn’t matter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
You’re dead and no one was nice enough to tell you…
Ally was hesitant, or maybe scared that on the other side of the door was Zander for another night of bliss that she had not wanted but got anyway.
“Who is it?”
I leaned my head against the wall and it felt good as the cold surface touched my burning skin.
I fought the pain in my chest and stomach to answer. “It’s me, Ally.”
The words were no higher than a whisper and hurt like hell. I held tightly to my stomach as it ached and burned. Standing seemed too hard but I was still running on borrowed time and strength.
She opened the door. She was still the young, beautiful girl she had always been. Far more beautiful than I realized, and I soon found myself hating myself for not realizing just how wonderful she was all the times I had snuck into her apartment when her parents had gone to work.
Dominique had been pure platinum, but here was gold right here…
One look at me and tears bordered her eyes. She threw herself from the doorway and pulled into me a hug. The hug felt like someone was wrapping barb wire around my insides. I took it anyway; it felt so good to have something soft pressed against me – eventhought that something soft was crushing the already broken pieces inside of me.
“Tristan, oh my God,” she sobbed into my chest, “What happened?”
I suppressed a violent cough and tasted blood. “I fell.”
Ally eyed the bag in my hands. “You’re leaving?”
By now she needed the truth but I elected not to share it. After all, she had been right to a certain point. I nodded ‘yes.’ I swayed slightly before resting the rest of my weight on the wall. Ally cried more as she came to the realization that was something was horribly wrong.
“We need to get you to a hospital, Tristan.”
I touched her cheek. “You can’t save me, you never could.”
She touched my hips and stepped into me and I allowed it. “You never allowed me to try to save you.”
“There just wasn’t anything to save, sweetheart.” I pushed the bag in her hands. Inside was over a hundred grand that I had gotten from my deposit box my father had set aside for me. “For the baby.”
Ally took a conscious step back and more tears threaten to fall but she held it in, and instead, she looked with me a dark, angry scrowl. “Why weren’t you here for me?!” She glared down the hall towards were Zander’s apartment. “I screamed for you, Tristan. He said you were coming.”
I grabbed her chin and pulled her face towards me. “I’m here now and he won’t ever hurt you again.”
“Why? Where is he?”
I understood that Zander had hurt Ally and that she had every right to hate him, but I stilled loved him like a brother. I was still tender when I replied, “He’s gone.”
“Dead,” she spat coldly, “did you kill him?” She watched as I nodded. “For me?”
I touched her stomach. “Whether you keep it or not, the money is for you, okay?”
The conversation had reached its end. I turned and made for my own apartment but Ally held tightly to my hips. “Don’t leave,” she cried and I felt her tears on her cheeks pressing against my own as she kissed me.
“Let me get you help.” She tried to deepen the kiss but I gently pushed her away.
“You can’t save me, Ally.”
“I love you, Tristan.”
“I have a kid on the way, too,” I blurted out and regretted it.
Ally stared at me unbelievably, blinking slowly as my words painted a picture that she just didn’t want to see. “Do you love her?”
“More than my next borrowed breath.” I laughed at my answer and felt the sharp pain because of it. “I love her even though she killed me.”
The last part had been for me and my ears and my realization. Ally hadn’t heard because she stopped listening.
A nice, beautiful girl like Ally finding rage for the first time, and have it couple with hate, was a scary transformation to see.
Ally used the palm of her hands and shoved me back. The hit towards my already broken body spark fire and I was in a whole new kind of pain. I hit the ground, hard.
Ally stood over me, hate in her eyes, fire in her face.
“I hate you, Tristan.”
“I know and it’s okay,” I answered, but she wasn’t ready to be interrupted.
“Go to hell, Tristan.” She slammed the door in my face as I crawled on the ground, doing my best to get to my feet.
***
I sucked my chest in for a breath and barely received it. My eyes slid to the ceiling as I tried to breathe again, but wore myself out instead.
I reached for the phone and called Zander’s apartment and received no answers. It took two more times of me listening to the ringing on the end to realize all over again that he was dead.
My next call was to Dominique who picked up on the first ring.
She breathed into the line, waiting me out.
And I did the same for her.
There were battle lins drawn between us, and I was ready to wave the flag, but I wanted to do that on my own terms.
I was ready, “Dominique.”
She breathed again in my ear and I was evious. I tried to do the same and felt my chest swell at the deep, attempted breaths.
I found it best to stick with the safe, shallow breathing.
“Tristan,” she whispered, “where were you?”
Words were coming to my head to explain but my body only allowed a few to be given. “Your father took me. Our kid. He knew it was our kid and not my father’s.”
Dominique was silent for a moment as she digested the words.
I was using the past tense when I referred to her father. I was in her father’s hands, when both she and I knew, that was a death sentence because her father and my Papa were from the same worlds.
And the fact that I was calling her and father was not…
Dominique put the pieces together.
Still, like a good Crime boss, she had to be sure. Evil was brewing, but one had to be sure how the game was laid and how it needed to be played.
“Is he?” she asked.
Lying seemed listless so I didn’t do it. For once, I just wanted to tell the damn
ed truth no matter how it hurt, and no matter if people wanted to hear it or not. “Yea.”
“Do you know what this means for us, Tristan?” She was crying now but it was tears of rage. “This means my mother is not the only one you should worry about?”
I coughed and tasted blood again. “Yea, I know.”
I glanced at the small, meager bedroom that barely held a decent set of furniture and smiled. “You weren’t the one who told him?” I asked.
“No, Tristan.” She paused as another sob caught her. “My father was an old man, but I won’t fail where he did where it concerns your death.”
“I’m at my apartment if you want to send the boys over to come get me.”
Dominique continued to cry tears of rage on the other end. I listened to as much as I could before I finally hung up the phone. I wanted to listen to her voice no matter if she was crying, cussing or even screaming at me. I wanted to hear her because I could breathe when she was talking, and when I saw her, I felt so alive, eventhough she posed as death. I hung up the phone because holding to my ear just took too much strength. My life had ended right back to the rat hole I thought I had crawled out of.
Yet, I was still content with it all.
***
I awoke hours later in a dark room. More the taste of blood was in my mouth and my body was still burning. My chest felt tight like a tight band was wrapped around it. It took a few seconds to understand that I was still alive.
It took one minute to understand that I wasn’t alone in the room.
The man stood over me in the dark room.
The man was Ally’s father.
“You raped my daughter, didn’t you? She told me everything. How you dragged her from our house and brought her into your apartment and raped her. It’s your bastard kid that she’s carrying, isn’t it?”
The man shook with a suppressed anger.
I caught glimpse of the pistol in his hand.
Telling the truth would do nothing for a situation like this.
“I always wanted her,” I explained in a hoarse whisper, “I knew she would be alone.”
“She was just a little girl!” He was closer now but the gun was still at his side.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her. I thought she wanted me too.”
“She would never want a thug like you - a piece of trash.”
Ally’s father was on me in a second. The pistol slammed against my temple over and over again. I wished to lose consciousness but I did not. He grabbed me by the collar and dragged me from the bed and into the living room.
“Get up,” he shouted.
I tried but couldn’t.
He screamed again for me to get my ass up and face him like the man I thought I was but my body wouldn’t comply.
The situation was funny but not an ounce of reserved, shallowed breath would allow me to laugh this time.
Zander had died for something I had done, but here I was about to die for a sin he had committed. But I still felt responsible for Ally. I knew if it had not of been for me this would have never of happened.
The ending seemed right. Even the meager light from the window complied with the stage.
Ally’s father kicked me in the side but I barely felt it. My body had passed the point of feeling pain. I clawed at the ground trying to catch my breath but missed it all together. I wheezed and tried again and tasted and swallowed a mouth full of blood.
Ally’s father finally lost patience with me and put the gun in my face. “Look at me,” he commanded and I did. “I want to watch you die.”
I stared at him, made myself look at a face of a man who had failed to protect his daughter but was still doing his best to save the rest of the dignity that I had trampled through.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
The apology meant nothing but he had earned as much.
“Rot in hell you piece of trash.”
He lowered the gun to my chest and squeezed the trigger. The pop had sounded so easy, like car backfire out in the street but it had been closer than that. There was a fire that erupted in my chest. I opened my mouth and expected to see flames but did not. The fire continued where it was but got worse. Not dead yet but not far away from it. What he had just done dawned on both us and he sank into my sofa. He stared at me through eyes that were no longer angry but surprised.
“It’s okay,” I told him and clutched at my chest. I found blood on my hand and gulped.
So here was death. It was a gulp for breath of fresh air that would never come. The silent breaths of the man who hadn’t meant to do it but were driven by insanity of just protecting his family. I felt like consoling him, explaining to him that I understood it all.
I still continued to talk, unsure if any of my words actually touched his ears and that I was dreaming that I was talking.
“The money. Take the money. I want to make this right,” I said, out of breath at the same time.
He nodded in the darkness and got to his feet. Maybe he was going to go home and pull together his shattered family or to a bar where he would try to drink my blood away. Either way, it didn’t matter. Either way, I had done way too much damage to touch anything and make it better.
He left me there to bleed and I was happy he had done so. He ran into someone just outside my door. There was muffled talking then footsteps that were a crescendo and decrescendo – he was walking away and someone was walking towards me. I blinked in the darkness and saw Dominique’s face. Other faces were with her but I focused on her.
And the gun in her hand.
“Leave me,” she ordered the men. One tried to protest but she silenced him with a flick of her hand.
I tried to smile at her. I wanted to touch her, kiss her, but could not. There was so much I wanted to say to her but would never get the chance. Now, I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing. I wasn’t sure if I was alive, or a ghost watching as the events passed.
“Tristan,” she breathed my name.
“Tell him I understand,” I spoke and hurt like hell to do it. “Dominique, tell him its okay.”
She had come here to kill me. She had seen that I was far past death and now she was unsure of what to do.
Dominique said, “Pulling a trigger is easy. Living with it is the hard part. Nothing you can say will change that.”
The door swung open again, one the men poked his head in. “Finish that piece of shit.”
Dominique spurred heated words with him and he quickly closed the door again.
This was goodbye and we both knew it.
“I know what question you want to ask me, Tristan.”
I lifted my tired eyes and waited.
“I did love you. This life we live is not about love, it’s about business. Your father is business, and that’s what he will continue to be.”
She took a step back, her arm rising as she leveled the gun at me. “But how can someone love a man who raped her mother and killed her father?”
I pointed towards her stomach. “Please, don’t hurt the baby.”
“Oh I wont,” she said, “I plan on doing it a favor. He won’t know you as a brother, Tristan.”
She fired and the bullet hit the floor near my arm.
She said, “He won’t know you at all.”
She didn’t hesitate and pulled the trigger again. The bullet hit me square in the chest, inches away from Ally’s father’s shot.
I listened to the high pitched click of Dominique’s heels as she walked out of the apartment.
I tried for another attempt at breathing but the breath wouldn’t come.
And here was death again.
A gulp of air that would never come.
A child you would never kiss and love.
A life full of happy memories that you would never be apart of.
I was ready for it.
I blinked and saw nothing before my eyes – it was either too dark in my apartment to see, or that my eyes were closed, or I finally died but just didn’t
know…
… Either way…
… Either way…
I saw nothing but darkness…
… Either way…
I saw nothing but blackness…
No worth seeing again as it past before my eyes, but I still thought of my life from my first memory up until now…
I hated most of it…
like a few…
and loved even less of the life I had lived…
It didn’t matter now.
Nothing mattered…
All that seemed to matter at these last few precious moments was one more breath of air…
I waited for it…
waited…
and it never came…
Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) Page 27