by Amy Rachiele
“I was shooting at this fucker!” he spits in my direction, contempt coating his words. “I made a deal. We both wanted the same things.”
“So tell me about it. Who is we?”
“I’m not telling you fuckers anything.” The guy seems to be steeling his resolve because he purses his lips like he’s trying to keep from opening them. Vito runs the knife across the delicate area under his neck, indicating he’s going to slash it. The guy’s bruised eyes go wide.
“I think you should tell me or you’ll end up just like your brother, bones in a hole.”
The man closes his eyes and shakes his head infinitesimally; fear is making him falter. Deep down this brutish guy is scared.
“I was following blondie over there.” He nods to me. “I didn’t want the bitch. I noticed someone else following them. A skinny kid. He was watching everything they did.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know…” He is wavering. “I think his name was Gus.”
My face twists in question. “Who the fuck is this Gus?”
Vito stands and his jaw goes hard.
“Where was he taking her?” Vito kicks him. “Now!”
“He talked about going far away with her. He said they were soul mates or some sissy shit like that. Up the highway, north I think.” The man’s head hangs like he just gave away government secrets. Vito’s mind is working.
“Come on. It’s all I know. Let me go,” he whines, completely spent and hurting.
Vito startles me by smashing the guy on the head, knocking him out. He puts the knife away and tugs a small roll of duct tape out of his pocket. Ripping off a piece, he fastens it to the thug’s mouth. He leans down and gathers the guy up, hoisting him over his shoulder.
“Your car’s over there. Move.”
I move automatically, doing what Vito is ordering me to.
“We’re gonna leave this guy for the cops.”
“Who’s Gus?” I ask while opening the trunk. Vito lays the guy down in it. I slam it closed.
“Her stalker.”
“What?” I stop, frozen in my tracks. “Alessandra has a stalker?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
I am taken aback. Why didn’t she tell me?
“No. She mentioned something happened with her mother…” I trail off as everything starts falling into place. The guy I saw outside the dorm, at the football game. The dressing room where Alessandra swore someone was messing with her. It wasn’t this guy in the trunk. It was someone else. It had to be this Gus that took Alessandra.
“Get in.” Vito slips in the driver’s seat of my car, and I slam the passenger door shut. I knew there was something going on with Alessandra but I never pieced together stalker. I’m not sure what I thought.
Vito drives us toward the front of my building just far enough away not to be seen. He gets out, pops the trunk, and I watch in the side mirror as he lays the guy in the grass, bound and duct taped, ready to be found.
Vito gets back in the car, taking an access road that leads off campus, avoiding the all of the police cars.
“How are we going to find her?” Helplessness overtakes me, and I punch the dashboard.
“Gus is going to take her somewhere remote.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know how he thinks. He’s…in the ‘family.’”
“So, let me get this straight. Alessandra’s stalker is in the Mafia. She knows him?” I can’t believe it even when I say it. “Do you know how fucked up that is?”
“We grew up with him.”
“And you didn’t know he was capable of this?”
“We’re all capable of anything. None of us knew he was the one stalking her. Don’t you think I would have fucking killed him if I did?” Vito’s words stun me.
Yes. I trust that he would have.
Vito drives us onto the highway and we’re both quiet. We’re both thinking the same thing. What if we’re too late? This guy must really be a deranged whacko. The fact that he has been raised like Antonio and Vito makes him that much more unpredictable and inevitably lethal.
“I really don’t see how going in a general direction is going to help us find her.”
Vito takes his phone out and fiddles with it while his driving. Over its speaker, there is a lot of talking and what sounds gibberish to me. Then I understand what it is.
“You hacked the police scanner?”
“Yup.”
I listen intently, trying to make out what they’re saying.
Female: Beige sedan reported driving to endanger off Highway Seventy-five near Vine.
“Plug that into your phone.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and type into the GPS. The graphics on my screen spin and zoom in.
“We’re ten minutes away.”
Vito accelerates with a mission, having a clear destination. I hope it’s their car they’re talking about. The anticipation of finding Alessandra and seeing her safe is enough to make my heart burst from my chest.
The thought of her dead is enough to send me over the edge.
Alessandra
I’m lying crumpled on my side. His breath is on my cheek. Gus is hovering over me, staring. He uses his hand to swipe my long hair away, revealing more of my face. I stay as still and listless as possible, which is hard because all the different areas of my body smart with pain.
Just go away.
Just go away.
His jacket brushes my arm; he’s getting much closer. I think he is going to feel for a pulse when he leans in and bites down hard on the tender flesh of my face.
“Ow!” I scream, flinging my arm out to push him away. I rub my face where he bit it and blood seeps out onto my hand. I scramble away, my butt scraping the ground. “Get away from me!”
Gus stands, coming toward me. He seems like the tallest man I’ve ever seen and I feel as insignificant as an ant. He can overpower me in seconds. He’s not a broad guy, he’s skinny, but that doesn’t matter, he’s strong.
The roughness of a rock is under my hand. I grab it and throw it at his leg. The power behind it was so weak, he laughs at me. The earth beneath me is so choppy that I tip over and he laughs at me again.
It makes me angry that he is enjoying torturing me. It makes me furious that he has ripped my life away from me. That he is the cause. He has taken away my time to mourn my mother and fucked it up in such a way that it’s massacring my insides. Tears flow down my cheeks stinging the wound.
“Tell me why,” I plead. “Why are you doing this?” I slip down onto my back in the dirt, not able to hold myself up anymore. Gus’s eyes drift over me and he bends down. I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for whatever he’s going to do.
Gus straddles me and grabs my shoulders.
“Because I love you,” he says. A large gash from where I hit him in the car blocks one of his eyes but the look in the other is unhinged. I rally any energy I have left.
“Stop it!” I hit his chest and thrust my legs out. I focus on kicking him in the nuts but it’s no use. He’s holding me down. He’s moving like he wants to try to kiss me.
Thundering pounds in my chest, I turn my face away and squeeze my eyes shut. He’s going to kill me.
Bang!
Troy
“Alessandra!” I yell her name. I can’t believe my eyes. I run to her. She’s buried under a psychopath—limp limbs and red everywhere. I grab the body and push it off of her. It flops easily, the life that was in it gone. She coughs, crying. She is soaked with blood on her chest and face. “Honey, look at me.” I rub my hand in her hair. “You’re going to be okay.”
Vito lowers himself on the other side of her.
“San?” He reaches for her hand and picks it up, holding it in his own. “Can you talk?”
She nods, not saying anything. Moaning, she turns in on herself into the fetal position. She pulls her knees up, and I notice her one shoe.
“We have to get out of here,” Vito announce
s, yanking me out of my stunned state. He stretches to pick her up.
The scene is surreal and ugly. It’s hard to wrap my brain around someone doing this to her. A dead body lies only a foot away, and I don’t have any sympathy or remorse for it. This guy is gone and he fucking deserved exactly what he got. Vito has taken care of it.
“No. I’ll carry her.” As I lift her body I notice the rips in her clothes and the cuts all over her exposed skin. It breaks my heart to see her this way. I walk with her to the car being very careful. Her head is tucked under my neck and I want to hold her forever. Vito leads the way and I watch as he reaches down and picks up a bloodied high heel.
“She didn’t go down without a fight,” he mumbles, waving the shoe in his hand. At his words, I squeeze her to me.
At the car, I lay her down along the backseat. She covers her face with her arm. Her body shakes. I take off my jacket and lay it over her. I slip in beside her, resting her legs in my lap. Vito gets in, starts the car, and drives us away.
Chapter 13
Troy
Ammonia fills the hallways as I watch the janitor mop the linoleum floors of Memorial Hospital. I pass the gift shop then double back, thinking better of it. I should get some flowers. I pass through the glass door, walking up and down a thin aisle of blooms. I pick up a large vase of pink roses from the refrigerator case and take it to the register. A short older woman is working.
“Fifty-three dollars please.”
I count out three one dollar bills and hand her a fifty with it.
“Thank you.” The woman smiles at me. I can’t return it. I feel like complete shit.
I grab the vase and pull out my phone. 212B is the last text I’ve received. I take the elevator to the second floor and walk down the corridor looking for the room number. The door is closed so I knock.
The doorknob turns and the door opens. It’s Jake.
“Hey, man,” he says softly. He opens it wider to let me pass through. Lying in the hospital bed sleeping is Celia.
“Her parents just left. They’re checking into a hotel,” he informs me.
“Is she going to be all right?” My steps are heavy; it is an effort to lift my feet to approach her. Guilt is part of it. It’s my fault Celia was shot.
“Yeah. They got the bullet out, gave her a blood transfusion, and she’s been groggy and sleeping ever since. I think it’s the painkillers.”
I place the roses on the table beside her bed. She looks so tiny under all of the white sheets and blankets. I sit in the chair next to her and reach out to hold her hand. I wish this didn’t happen to her.
“How’s Alessandra?”
Answering is admitting the cold hard truth and it’s difficult to talk around the lump in my throat. These have been the best few weeks of my life. It ended as quickly as it started like the flick of a light switch or the shot of a gun.
I swallow hard and say, “I’m not sure…She left.”
Alessandra
Just once I’d like to tell the men in my life to fuck off. Really! I don’t need this shit! I love them but they are constantly doing stupid man stuff. They changed absolutely everything. I can’t even find a pan to cook hamburgers in. I huff and bend down, going to the back of the bottom cabinet.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m just trying to make burgers for dinner. Do you want cheese on yours?”
“That sounds good.” He’s yelling from the living room, sitting in a new recliner that he loves.
I wonder idly what Antonio did with all of our stuff. I peel the label off the brand new frying pan and set it on the stove. I have to really look at the knobs because I have no idea how to use this thing. It looks like it belongs in a restaurant, not a home in Palmetto. I turn the heat on and pour a drop of olive oil into the pan. I rummage in the refrigerator and toss a package of American cheese on our new kitchen table.
I’ve been in bed for two weeks and I just want to cook a simple meal. Megan says to blame her for all of the changes. She told Antonio that the kitchen table would bring back bad memories for me. So he took that as get rid of everything, down to the toilet paper. It’s like living in a brand new house.
I fix the burgers and call out, “Dad, dinner’s ready!”
“I’m going to eat it in here.”
I roll my eyes. He likes that chair way too much.
I carry our dinner into the living room and Dad has the news on. I hand him his and sit on the floor in front of the TV.
“When are you going to move those?” Dad points to my stuffed animals lined up on the couch. They have all been sewn and re-stuffed.
“Soon,” I say, biting into my burger.
“The doc says you’re ready. You can drive now.”
“I know.” I keep eating my burger and it starts to taste like ash so I put it back on my plate.
“Do you want a new car?” Dad asks.
“Buying me stuff doesn’t make it go away!” I yell, and I immediately regret it.
“I know.” Dad pops the last bit of burger in his mouth. He chews, and I can tell he is going to keep on this conversation.
“Vito says you got a guy.”
I didn’t expect him to say that.
“I don’t have a guy, Dad.” I look down at the new rug.
“Oh.”
I get up, taking Dad’s dish from him and placing it under mine. I turn to head back to the kitchen when the doorbell rings.
“San? Can you get that?”
I walk past him mumbling, “Eventually, you’re going to have to get up out of that thing.”
“I may sleep in it tonight,” Dad jokes.
At the door, I move the curtain aside to check who is out there. I’m expecting Megan and it is a relief to see that it is her. I’m not ready to see everyone else. I am taking one step at a time.
This will be my first outing. I’ve only seen the inside of my newly refurbished house since I’ve been back. Megan is waving at me through the window smiling. I smile back but it is forced because I am uneasy about leaving. It’s just for coffee and I’ll be back in a little while but this feels like a giant step over a little pond.
I throw the locks open on the door, letting her in.
“Are you ready?” she asks and I find it a very loaded question.
I nod and go to the kitchen to grab my purse.
“Hello, Mr. Maranzano.” Megan goes to my dad and kisses him on the cheek.
“Hi, honey. How are you doin’? Are you keeping Tonio out of trouble?”
“Of course I am,” she responds, beaming.
“We’ll be back in a little while, Dad.”
“That’s fine. Have a good time.” I give Dad a hug before Megan and I head outside.
The air tastes familiar, like home, unlike inside my house. We go to our favorite spot, Café Nuovo. It’s not far away.
“They have this great new coffee cake square with cinnamon. You have to try it.”
“I’ll stick to my usual,” I tell her. I’ve had enough of new things.
The booth in the back is free so I head straight there, taking a seat with my back against the wall in perfect view of the door. I sip my cappuccino and rip the paper off my blueberry muffin. I lift it to my nose and I remember the smell. It makes my mouth water, which is a great thing because everything I’ve eaten for the last few weeks has tasted like ash.
Megan sits across from me with the new pastry she was raving about and her coffee. I bite off a piece of my muffin, savoring it in my mouth. This little muffin represents getting back to normal, being home, and becoming myself again. It’s a small step, but it’s better than nothing.
“He’s called me at least a hundred times,” Megan confides between chewing.
What does she want me to say? I’m doing the right thing. This life isn’t for Troy. He’ll never be safe with me around. He’s better than this. He’s entitled to have a life without me fucking it up for him. I’m so messed up between Gus and my mom’s p
assing. Why would he even want me?
“So, catch me up on the wedding.” I divert the conversation.
“Don’t do something you’ll regret,” Megan argues. “I appreciate that you feel you are putting him in danger. But that isn’t your choice to make. It’s his. Let him make the decision.”
“You don’t understand,” I choke out, ready to cry again like I have for the past two weeks.
“I understand more than you realize. Antonio gave me a choice. I chose him and all that comes with being with him.”
I hang my head. Nothing is simple.
“Well then, you know that our life is complex, and we never know what the next day will bring. Look at what just happened with…” I trail off because I can’t say Gus’s name aloud or my breathing becomes erratic and I practically suffocate with panic. “I’m broken,” I remark sadly.
“No. You are not!” Megan is angry. “You had a horrific thing happen to you at a vulnerable time in your life when your mother died. What happened to you was contemptible. You are going to get through this. We are all here for you.”
I take a final bite of my muffin that now tastes like cinders in my mouth.
“Just think about it,” she says and cleans up our table, tossing our trash into the nearby garbage bin. I stand, trailing behind Megan as we head toward her car.
The car idles at the curb by my house, and I lean over to give her a hug.
“Thank you.” I appreciate her support and I hope she knows it.
“We can do this again tomorrow, if you want? Baby steps,” Megan offers.
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Bye.”
I shut the car door and jog up the steps to my house. Megan waits for me to get inside. I wave to her over my shoulder when the door is open, giving her the okay to leave.
“I’m back.” I toss my purse on the fancy new side table in the hall.
“You weren’t gone long.” Dad twists around in his seat to look at me.
I walk to him and lean down to kiss his forehead.
“We were going to head to Canada but decided Café Nuovo was far enough,” I tease.