by Mary Madison
I ran my trembling fingers over it, enjoying how smooth the paint was against the scratchy, pitted-rock exterior. I vividly remembered having put it there all those years ago, while Desmond had held the flashlight so I could work.
More than that, I could remember how I'd felt while I was carefully applying the brushstrokes. Like I should have been writing those letters out of friendship, and I was, I knew that, but it had been something more, too, hadn't it? A phantom of a feeling that was more adult somehow, undeniable but still just out of reach, too big to be defined by the shy and limited vocabulary of youth? Something I hadn't been willing to admit to myself back then, even if it felt so overwhelmingly, obviously, ridiculously true now?
Yes, I felt it. Yes, I knew its name now—understood it, welcomed it. But even now, I hadn't said it.
First, there was the shock of getting together again after so long, and then every shock that had come in rapid succession following it—the violence, the dread, the mounting horrors of the gang war. I had found a million different ways to tell Desmond and show him how much he meant to me, how much I wanted us to have a future together.
All the ways except the one which mattered most.
And what if tonight was our last night in each other's arms? What if Desmond succumbed to his wounds after all? What if Junior and Peter caught up to us, or the Azzarellos found us and shot Desmond just for being a Biros?
No, I couldn't let myself be robbed of this chance. Not after those years we had spent apart, the years we'd never get back even if we survived all of this.
It was now or never.
I took Desmond's face in my hands, bringing it so close to mine that our noses were almost touching. I took a deep breath and said the words I had never said to another man.
“I love you.”
His eyes widened, and the moonlight danced in them as though they were a pair of lakes, dark and deep and rippling. Some of the color returned to his cheeks, and he smiled through the pain. “I love you, too, Chels. I always have. I always, always will.”
There was no knowing whether he moved his face forward first or I did—the momentum was simultaneous and relentless like the planchette of a Ouija board, moved by the ectoplasmic mystery of collective willpower or the unseen fingers of the spirits in the name of destiny itself. Either way, our lips met, and the love we felt for each other sizzled and sparked in electrified arcs between us, back and forth and back again.
It was the most powerful and moving force I had ever felt. I was entirely in its grip, blissfully helpless, eager for it to carry me wherever it would. Unfortunately, it only lasted for a few precious seconds before it was interrupted by the slow, smarmy sound of sarcastic applause. We turned to look at the source... and saw Junior standing on the rocks just a few feet away, holding a handgun and clapping it against his other gloved hand.
“Beautiful,” he drawled. “Truly touching, absolutely. My insides are all warm and squishy for the both of you, honest. Now come on out of there and put your fucking hands up. It's time to put an end to this shit once and for all.”
Chapter Four
Chapter Four—Desmond
The edges of my consciousness kept fading to a dull gray, and it took all my strength and concentration to keep snapping back into clarity a few moments at a time.
Despite the blood transfusion Ernesto had given me, I was still weaker than I'd ever been in my life. I flexed the muscles in my arms, but I couldn't break free of the duct tape that was wrapped around my wrists, securing them behind my back, not that I could have anyway, even under the best of circumstances.
Chelsea was in the seat next to mine, also trussed up with tape. I wanted to reassure her that I'd get us out of this, but the truth was, I didn't have the first idea how I could possibly do that. I'd been turning things over and over in my admittedly foggy head, and the way I saw it, we were terminally screwed from just about every angle. Our chances of ever seeing another sunrise were slim to none.
I'd never known anyone more dangerous or deadly than my oldest brother.
I had seen him do things to people that gave me nightmares for years after—and worse, I had seen that terrible look in his eyes, the one that told me nothing he'd done could possibly compare to the things he didn't do, the secret atrocities he kept locked away in the morbid and moldering charnel house of his broken brain.
Had I really thought he would never use his gift for carnage against me? How had I been so blind to his true, sick, rabid nature for so much of my life?
And would that blindness now cost me my life and the life of the only real love I'd ever had?
“I can't believe you guys thought I didn't know about your dumb little love nest,” Junior chortled from the driver's seat as he cruised down Lake Shore Drive.
The lights of the skyline twinkled across his craggy face, making it appear strangely ethereal, as though fairy lights were dancing in patterns on his rugged skin. “You think Peter and I didn't know you two went down there together every couple of weeks when you were kids? We followed you a couple of those nights, sure. You had no fucking idea, did you? Yeah, we used to laugh about it sometimes, how moony you two would get for each other. There were a few times when Peter wanted to tell Dad, but I always talked him out of it.”
“Oh? Why is that?” I wasn't particularly interested, but I wanted to keep him talking. It was a long shot, but maybe I could get him to slip up, start getting sentimental about our past so I could use that to make him rethink this.
“Well, first of all, Dad wasn't exactly gonna reward one of his sons for being a rat, now was he?” Junior glanced in the rearview mirror, giving me a toothy grin. “I figure I probably saved him one hell of a beating there, don't you? Besides... I dunno, man, something in me just always felt like it'd be a bad idea to tip our hand. Like maybe it was a secret worth keeping, like it could come in handy someday if I played it smart.”
He chuckled mirthlessly, then started singing a snatch from an old Elton John song in a flat and toneless voice, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel in time to the music: “Then the years went by, and rock sure died... Suzie up an' left us for a foreign guy...” His eyes flicked up to the rearview, glancing at Chelsea nervously. He was trying to play it cool, but he wasn’t feeling good about the prospect of murdering me. Not one bit.
“It's not too late to stop this, Junior,” I said loudly, trying to make eye contact with him in the mirror. “Whatever you've got in your head, whatever you're planning to do, you haven't done it yet. We're brothers. I know that still means something to you, even after everything that's happened. We can still walk this back. We can fix this if we just pull over and talk it out.”
“Anyway, damned if it didn't come in handy after all,” Junior went on as though he hadn't heard me. His eyes were firmly fixed on the road ahead now.
I doubted he'd risk meeting my gaze again until we reached our destination, and based on the route we were taking, I had a rotten feeling I knew exactly where that would be.
“When I heard you two had killed Whitey and run off, I remembered that shitty pile of rocks you used to cuddle in and figured I'd have one of my guys stake it out just in case you got all sappy and decided to come back. And here you are. Not bad, right?” He tapped his temple sagely. “And I didn't even need to go to no fancy-pants college like you brainiacs to figure that one out. I did it all on my own. Dad would've been proud.”
“Would he?” I scoffed. “You killed our father, and you have the fucking gall to say he'd be proud of you for doing it? For trying to kill me too? Seriously, Junior, what the hell is wrong with you? Are you that goddamn delusional?”
“Our father was old and sick,” Junior snarled, his eyes black and blazing. He was beginning to drive more erratically now, his temper overtaking him. Good. “He was senile. He was a pathetic shell of his former self, crapping into a bucket, pissing into a bag, didn't know where the fuck he was or what he was saying most of the time. That was no kind of life fo
r a man like that... a warrior like our dad, a born leader. He survived all those years, all those guys tryin' to take what he built away from him, just to waste away, mumbling to himself in a puddle of his own fluids? If he'd been in his right mind, yeah, Des, you're damn right he'd have been proud of me for ending all that for him.”
“Wow, you're a real hero,” I grunted. “Funny how you didn't decide Dad needed to be euthanized until he said he was passing you over and putting me in the big chair. That really seemed to hasten your medical prognosis where he was concerned.”
Junior's upper lip curled in contempt. There was no pretense now, no false flippancy. A red and ungovernable rage possessed him, and it was showing more and more in his body language and the way he was driving—faster, more jagged and aggressive, as though he were trying to outrun a pack of demons snapping and clawing at his heels.
If he got into an accident, would that improve our chances of survival, I wondered? Or would it make us more likely to be gravely injured or killed since we were taped up and couldn't move to save ourselves or get away from the wreckage?
I didn't know.
I didn't love the idea of risking Chelsea's life in something as unpredictable as a collision, but I didn't like her chances much more if we reached our final stop.
“I'll admit,” Junior grumbled, “I was kind of on the fence about it up to that point. I mean, this is Dad we're talking about, you know? I loved the old son of a bitch, and that's the truth. Fact is, I loved him a hell of a lot more than you ever did. I spent a lot more time with him. I did more to make him happy and keep his business running smoothly. It broke my heart, knowing what had to happen next. But there was no way around it. He'd lost his fucking marbles, that was clear from what he said about wanting you to take over. I wasn't gonna let that damn disease he had destroy the empire he'd spent his entire life building. No, not a chance. I had to kill Dad to preserve his real vision for this family, not that watered-down crap you were feeding him toward the end about billion-dollar mergers with a bunch of degenerate, white-collar scumbags.”
“And what about this?” I pressed on, hoping I could push a few more of his buttons. “You're about to kill me, his son, your own fucking brother. And Chelsea, who has nothing to do with this business, who's just an innocent girl who used to eat at our house all the time after school. You think he'd be proud of you for this too? Where's your warped, twisted logic for that one, huh?”
“Yeah, right, you know everything. Hey, Des, did you know we used to have an Uncle Simon?”
I blinked, feeling as shocked and stung as though I'd been slapped. “What?”
“Sure, you don't remember him?” Junior snickered. “I guess not. You were only about two or three years old. Guy used to come around for holidays, birthdays sometimes. Your first birthday, he got you, what was it... a stuffed elephant, You recall that? You had that thing around until you were, like, nine or ten.”
Yes, as a matter of fact, I did remember that plush elephant. I remembered my father would play with my toys to make me smile, but not that one—he studiously ignored it. He never used to like touching it, almost as though it carried some disease.
But I kept my mouth shut.
“So anyway,” Junior went on, “Uncle Simon was involved with the business. High up, even. He handled a lot of heavy stuff for Dad. But the problem was, see, Uncle Simon had a serious gambling problem. He got in over his head with the wrong people. And since he couldn't pay off his debts and he ran out of loan sharks who'd let him borrow, he started selling info to some of the other crews so they could rip off Dad's cargo deliveries.
“One night, things went too far during one of the stick-ups down at the docks, and a couple of our guys got killed. Broke Dad's heart, but he knew Uncle Simon was a fucking liability. Only one thing left to do, and that was make sure Uncle Simon didn't make it to any more goddamn birthdays, Des. You see what I'm getting at?”
I sat in stubborn silence, refusing to answer his question for him.
“If Dad was willing to kill a member of his own family over a couple of dead couriers and some stolen merchandise,” Junior said stonily, “then yeah, kid, I think he'd be fine with me plugging you to secure the future of the entire fucking Biros family. And your little girlfriend, too, if it comes to that. Hey look,” he added dourly, taking an exit off Lake Shore and pulling into a familiar parking lot, “we got here in one piece. Ain't that nice?”
Yeah. I'd been right about where we were headed. It was the warehouse. The one where, once someone was tied up with duct tape and dragged in by a member of the Biros clan, they never came out alive.
Junior shut off the engine, got out of the car, and opened the rear door with his gun leveled at us. “You two come on out now and walk ahead of me. We're going inside. You try anything clever like running or calling for help, I'll shoot you in the guts before I bring you inside, then let you bleed out and die slow instead of giving you a quick one-two through the head. You two are from Chicago. You both know that no one would come to your rescue if they heard you screaming, not in this neighborhood anyhow.”
He was right. We'd picked a warehouse at the seedy end of Rogers Park for that very reason. There were enough senseless violence and wanton gang activity up here to ensure that the residents minded their own business, as long as they were safe behind the locked doors of their low-income-housing complexes.
And once we got inside, forget about it. The walls were built from such thick concrete blocks that no one outside would hear a peep, even if an armored tank division was engaging in mortar testing.
“Smart,” Junior commented as we wriggled out of the car and walked toward the warehouse entrance. “See, this has gotta happen, but there's no reason it has to get ugly, you know? We've still all known each other since we were kids. We can keep this civilized and relatively painless.”
“Or you could let us go, Junior,” Chelsea pleaded. “Desmond is right. It's not too late. You don't have to do something you'll regret.”
“The fucked thing is,” Junior replied, “Desmond is the reason I do have to do something I'll regret. None of it had to be this way. When Dad died—”
“When you killed him,” I prodded.
“All Desmond had to do was roll over when I assumed control,” Junior went on, glowering at me. “All Desmond had to do was realize he was out of his depth and go back to doing what he did best—making the dirty businesses look clean and making the clean businesses run smoothly. Instead, he had to make a bunch of stupid speeches about our father's hopes and dreams and wishes and all that Hallmark phony baloney. And even then, all of this was salvageable, you know? I figured I could still get Desmond on my side by killing you and convincing him the Azzarellos did it. His childhood sweetheart, now his grown-up girlfriend, and his only chance at making his beloved Stavros deal happen. I was sure that if I took that away from him, he'd see red and want to join the fight without any more questions or problems. But you, you goddamn dumb bitch! You had to fuck everything up by fighting me off!”
I couldn't believe my ears. “You're telling me it was you, Junior? You were in her hotel room with a gun that night?”
“Yeah, dingus, it was me.” Junior shoved us both into the warehouse, and I collapsed forward onto my face.
A cloud of dust rose from the floor, filling my mouth and nostrils and making me cough. I still didn't have much control over my body.
“So nope, once again, you were determined to make that merger happen. You really backed me into a corner here, buddy roo. You've forced me to do something I never wanted to do, not in a million years.” Junior shoved Chelsea down onto the floor next to me. “But in the end, your deaths are gonna be good for this family, you know why?”
“Sure,” I growled contemptuously, “because you can show our dead bodies to the other capos and tell them the Azzarellos did it. Get them all riled up so they're ready to wipe out everyone who ever even shook hands with a fucking Azzarello, and maybe a couple of other crim
e families while you're at it. From that point on, everything you do is going to be justified in the eyes of your people, no matter how senseless and horrifying.”
Junior nodded, impressed, a faint smile pulling at his mouth. “I gotta say, Des, this is one hell of a waste. You may have been a bleeding heart and kind of a milquetoast, but you always had a good head on your shoulders, especially where tactics and strategy were concerned. You really coulda been useful to our organization, if you'd only learned how to show some loyalty.”
“You're about to kill your own damn brother,” I pointed out, “and you're chastising me about disloyalty? That's rich.”
Junior scowled, pointing his gun at my temple. “I hope your witty little remarks tickle you,” he spat, “because they'll be the last motherfucking words you ever say.”
But before he could pull the trigger, the door burst open again, and Peter stumbled in. I half expected him to make with some cute joke—Sorry I'm late to the party, hope yous guys didn't get started without me, that kind of thing—but his face contorted in confusion and dismay at the sight that greeted him. “Junior?” he exclaimed. “Des? Chelsea? What the fuck is going on in here?”
Junior's expression was surprised, too, and that was when I realized that I'd been mistaken. Peter hadn't been in on this, after all. Junior had kept him in the dark the entire time.
“Peter, what the hell are you doing here?” Junior demanded, lowering his gun. “You're supposed to be back at the house!”
“Yeah, but I saw that your car was headed here and figured you could use some backup.”
Junior's eyes practically popped out of his skull. “What do you mean, 'you saw my car was headed here?' How could you have 'seen' that?”
Peter flashed him an anxious grin. “Well, see, the thing is, Junior, with all this stuff that's been happening lately with the Azzarellos... I kinda put a tracker on your car.”
That was a bizarre revelation, but I couldn't focus on that right now. I had been slowly running my hands across the surface of the filthy floor, looking for something, anything, that might help us out of this situation.