by Paula Cox
I nod and make to leave.
“And Aedan,” he says, when my hand is on the doorknob.
“Eh?” I don’t turn. Sometimes, it’s hard to look the old man in the eye.
“Don’t forget your real mission. With Bruno dead, the Italian mob will be thrown into disarray. This truce will make them soft. Of course, wait for my orders. But don’t, ever, forget why you’re really over there.”
“Yes, Boss,” I say, and leave the office.
As I drive to the bar, my thoughts return, as they have returned constantly these past couple of weeks, to Livia. I think of the way she looked in bed, breasts out, beckoning to me. I’ll be damned if I haven’t regretted leaving her there ten times a day since I left, but then, I’d leave her again if it came to it. Men don’t fuck too-drunk women. That’s just not something I could do. But those lips, the kisses, the way her body pressed against mine. Even as I drive, my cock gets harder than the gearstick. The other night, I woke up with my briefs covered in come, a goddamn wet dream, something I haven’t had since I was a teenager. I keep picturing her, bent over, my cock buried deep in her so all I can see are my pubes pressed against her beautifully-shaped ass. Every moment, the image comes to me, and I want it, bad.
I push the thoughts away, but then my mind settles on Dad, my mission, my real mission. Kill Bruno Russo…her father. I swallow, not wanting to think about that. But when Dad smiles at me, it feels good, almost like Mom is alive again and it’s her smiling at me, not him, and no matter how often I tell myself that that doesn’t make any sense, I can’t shake the thought.
After all, this is the only life I’ve ever known, the killing and the running and the fighting, and it was Dad who brought me into it, Mom who blessed that decision. If I can’t prove myself in this life, then what the hell am I, really?
I shake my head, forcing the thoughts far back in my mind, as I walk through the Italians’ bar. The men make their jokes, calling me Whitey and Peter Pan and all the rest of it, but I just ignore them. The way I see it, if we really got down to some proper fighting, they wouldn’t be so quick with the insults.
I feel like my heart drops out of my chest when I get to the back office and Livia isn’t sitting at the desk. I know she’s been in, though, because her handbag is on her chair. I glance up and down, listen, but I don’t see or hear her. Maybe she left when she heard I was coming by, I think, and my heart drops another few inches, tugging my cock down with it. Damn, but she’s beautiful. A real beautiful fucking lady.
I knock on the door. At once, Bruno throws it open.
His smile is comfortable, his thumbs tucked into his waistband. “What took you so long?” he asks.
“I had some business,” I say, which is life-speak for Don’t ask questions.
“Okay. Shall we get going?”
“Sure.” We make for the door. “Mr. Russo…Bruno.”
“Yes?”
“Where’s Livia?”
He grins at me. “She had to run an errand,” he says. “I made the mistake of telling her you were coming by and it frightened her. She’s a shy girl, when you scratch a little. Don’t take it personally.”
“Oh, no, I mean. I won’t.”
But my heartbeat is rampant and frantic. Dammit, I want her.
Now, when I walk through the bar, the Italians are silent. A few throw looks at us, but none are brave enough to openly challenge Bruno. We walk into the street and Bruno leads us to a big, window-tinted car. We climb into the back, and it seems only seconds pass until we’re climbing out into a fancy country-club-style place, Bruno walking confidently through large double doors held open by attendants.
I walk behind him, feeling like Charlie in the factory, completely out of place in my scruffy jeans and t-shirt. But when I catch up with Bruno, nobody so much as looks at me. Several people we pass nod respectfully at him.
Bruno goes to the front desk. “Two,” he says.
The man nods, and then we’re whisked through to the bar, where we sit for a half-minute, and then to the course. Bruno gestures at a golf cart, which has two golf bags on the back, several clubs sticking out of each one. “You can drive,” he says.
“Sure.” I’m feeling a distinct sense of unreality as I climb into the driver’s seat and get the little battery going. I drive us—the cart making a constant zzzzzzzz noise—to the first hole. We climb out and Bruno marches to the green.
“So,” he says, sorting through his golf bag, “have you played much golf?”
“Never,” I admit, having to return to the cart for my bag.
He grins at me, and without meaning to I compare the grin with Dad’s. It’s like comparing night and day. Dad’s grins are always wolfish, as though there’s a second meaning lurking beneath his lips. When Bruno grins, it’s as though he’s just a happy man on a sunny day playing golf, nothing more. Maybe, I think, that’s what he is. For now, at least.
“Never?” He chuckles. “You expect me to allow you to court my daughter when you don’t know how to golf?”
“Uh…” I panic, glancing around the scenery, the sun-dappled greens, the people carting between holes. “I…uh…”
Bruno takes a club from the bag, lays it aside, and strides over to me. He pats me on the back. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Her mother is the one who despises Irishmen. Me, I’m more of a live and let live kind of man.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Russo—Bruno—but I find that difficult to believe.”
He goes to the tee, places his ball down, and takes a few slow practice swings. “Why’s that?”
“I just…a man in your position can’t afford to be that kind of man, surely?”
“Not openly,” Bruno agrees, as his golf club cuts through the air, “but it’s just us, isn’t it?”
“I’m just a hitter,” I say quietly, unwilling to get too close because, one day soon, I may have to kill this man. “You’re the boss.”
“You’re more than a hitter,” Bruno says. “You must be, or else Patty wouldn’t have sent you to negotiate. And, I’ve done a little research on you these past couple of weeks. You come from nowhere, Aedan, born to a nameless mother, and you’ve risen higher and faster than any man in any organization in the entire city. You’ve clocked at least fifty bodies, if my research is correct, and all of them were clean, efficient kills on men who deserved it: killers and rapists and the like. You’re a most unusual man.”
“Thank you, sir,” I mutter.
“I don’t see why a man as efficient as you shouldn’t be allowed to see my daughter every now and then.” He smiles at me. “The hard part would be to convince her to see you with my wife chewing her ear off, son.”
He aims, strikes, and the golf ball flies into the air. “Acceptable,” he murmurs, and then steps back. “Your turn.”
I give it my best shot, but I’ll be damned if hitting a tiny ball across a field isn’t halfway as easy as hitting a man in the face. I just manage to hit the ball, but it goes flying off to the left, landing deep in a mulchy area of the course. I turn to Bruno, a smile on my face, and he grins right back at me.
“So, we’ve found your weakness,” he says.
“Seems so.”
We cart to our balls, finish the hole, and then go onto the next one. As we play, we talk, and as we talk, I find myself admiring and respecting this man and thinking about his daughter, things which I definitely should not be doing, considering the circumstances. I try and imagine myself standing over Bruno with a razor or a bat or a gun, but I can’t. I’m a killer, but like Bruno said, I only ever kill men who deserve it. Maybe Bruno deserves it. Sure, maybe he does, but he’s acting toward me with a damn sight more friendliness than Dad ever has—
Don’t you dare think that! Mom screams in my mind. He’s your family! Loyalty, Aedan!
“Are you okay?” Bruno asks, as I pull the cart to a stop at hole nine. We’ve been at it now for hours and both of us are drenched in sweat, but Bruno doesn’t seem to mind.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Just wondering, is all.”
“Wondering about that?” he asks, as he sets up his ball.
I’ve said too much.
“Just…wondering why you’d want to play golf with me.”
“Ha, I’ve already explained. Maybe you didn’t get it. My daughter likes you, Aedan. I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m not the most skilled man in the world when it comes to reading my daughter. But even I saw the way she looked at you when you first came to the bar.”
“When she tried to stab me, you mean,” I say, arching an eyebrow.
He laughs wholeheartedly, tapping the green with his club. “Yes, when she tried to stab you. Believe it or not, in our family, that’s a good sign!”
He hits his ball and it goes flying, veering way off course, into a thick scattering of trees. “Dammit,” he mutters. “Could cheat, lay another ball out, but…no, we have to collect it.”
“Nobody will judge,” I say, not thrilled about the idea of stalking through the mini-forest.
“Oh, I know—but I’ll judge myself. Come on, take your shot and then we’re going on a trek.”
I take my shot, and by a weird quirk of luck, it flies into the exact same group of trees.
“You did that on purpose,” Bruno says.
“I wouldn’t even know where to start doing that on purpose,” I respond, climbing into the cart.
“You’re a liar, Aedan,” Bruno says cheerfully. “You’re trying to let me win.”
“Believe me, I’m not.”
“I think I’ll have one of my boys take you out,” he comments, grinning, as I drive us toward the trees.
“You could try,” I shoot back.
“Try? You are that confident in your abilities?”
“I am,” I say. It’s about the only damn thing I’m one-hundred percent on.
I stop just shy of the trees. The trunks are close together, too close for the golf cart to navigate.
“Sir, Mr. Russo—Bruno, why don’t we just use new balls? Who cares?”
“I care, boy,” Bruno says, hopping from the cart. “If you don’t have pride or respect, what the hell do you have?”
“In golf?” I ask uncertainly.
“In golf—in everything. Come on. Stop whining.”
“Fair enough.”
We squeeze between the trees, walk over twigs and discarded cans of beer, and finally come to a small clearing. I search the underbrush, but I can’t see the balls anywhere. Then I glance up, and time seems to pause.
Three men, Mexican, Cartel, stand on the other side of the clearing. All of them hold guns, and all of their guns are pointed at us. No, not us. At Bruno.
“Now, where is that ball?”
I charge across the forest floor, straight at Bruno, and leap into the air. When I land on him, he curses in Italian, and when the gunshots fill the air, he curses even louder, screaming fica and cagna over and over.
Chapter Eight
Aedan
As I shield the man I’m supposed to be working up to killing, Dad’s voice hisses in my mind: Let them kill him, you fool. This is brilliant. We won’t even have to do anything. Just let them kill him, Aedan! Don’t protect him. No—what are you doing?
But it’s like my body goes into autopilot, as it always does when death comes knocking. Aedan O’Rourke sinks down somewhere deep and in his place the hitman rises, cold and efficient with nothing but survival on his mind. I roll over, grab for my gun, and aim. In the time it takes for me to do that—a second at the most—a stray bullet catches Bruno in the leg. He lets out a scream, clawing at his waistband for his own gun, as blood gushes out of the wound, staining his pants and turning the earth copper. I aim, shoot, shoot, shoot.
These Cartel men, they’re fearless and mean and tough, but most of them aren’t trained for shit. They pepper the air above us with bullets, fling a stray at Bruno, and bullets pound into the trees around us, but their aim is shit.
Mine isn’t.
Three bullets, and each one of them catches its mark. One man, a huge bastard with a skull bandana around his mouth and wearing a colorful tracksuit, loses the top half of his head and slumps to the ground as though all the bones have been stolen from his body. The second man, skinnier, looking like a little kid with an old man’s bearded face, is flung backward as the bullet smashes into his ribcage. The third stumbles, cries out, as the bullet takes out his kneecap.
I aim my gun at him, approaching the men, roaring: “Put it the fuck down! Now!” All the while, I’m thinking about Bruno behind me, thinking I should be happy that he caught a bullet but knowing I can’t be, not when he was so decent to me today, and not when he’s Livia’s dad. Livia.
The man crawls backward, grinning up at me. “Idiota! Idiota!”
He aims his gun at me. I don’t hesitate, just fire, tearing his jaw free from his face and sending him crumpled and blood-soaked into the earth. I’m about to put my gun into my waistband when a tree just to my right explodes in fragments of shrapnel bark. I spin, aim, and a man wearing a bulletproof vest wielding a double-barreled shotgun aims at me. I duck, aim, shoot—and his head flings backward, blood and bone flying into the air.
I charge at Bruno and kneel next to him.
“It’s not fatal,” I say, looking at the little circle of pulsing blood. He grits his teeth, and nods. “I’m going to stop the bleeding,” I tell him, and he nods again.
I take off my belt and wrap it around his leg just above the wound, pick up a nearby stick, wedge it between the belt loops, and twist until it’s tight around his leg. Then I take his belt off, muttering, “Mean nothing by it,” and tie it around the contraption, holding it in place. I bend down, take Bruno’s arm, and haul him to his feet.
“Damn Mexicans,” Bruno snaps. “Coming at a man when he’s trying to enjoy a goddamn game of golf. What sort of animals are these?”
I glance around, searching the greenery. At the sound of gunshots, the course has emptied. A fat, podgy security man stands far away, near the bar, but he’s way too far to do anything if the—
Five Mexicans come charging out of the forest behind me, all wielding guns. Where the fuck are these bastards coming from?
I fling Bruno into the golf cart, ignoring his yelp of pain, and then run around to the driver’s side. The Mexicans lift their guns and start firing, but by that time, I’m already whizzing toward the bar, wishing this stupid electric battery was a muscle-car engine. Several bullets smack into the plastic shell of the cart, thudding in a series of dud-dud-duds. I veer left and right, zigzagging and lurching, as the Mexicans fire at us.
“Stupid, bloody animals!” Bruno roars. “Fica! Fica! Fica!”
I screech to a halt just outside the bar and then twist in the seat, gun at the ready. The Mexicans are retreating into the forest, screaming at us in Spanish, brandishing their guns. I don’t make out any of their words apart from one, which they scream over and over: “Carlos! Carlos! Carlos!” Loyal soldiers screaming their general’s name.
Bruno limps from the car and takes out his cell, speaking quickly in Italian. Then he hangs up and limps over to me. I offer him my arm, and together we walk into the bar. Apart from the security, it’s empty, and the security—donut dust on his lapel—looks like he doesn’t want a thing to do with us. I wave him off, and he’s all too happy to back away.
“My troops are on the way,” he says. “It was my fault, thinking I could come out in the open like this, but…”
“Two weeks is a long time in our life,” I finish for him.
He nods, and then winces. “Exactly. Take me round back, Aedan. That’s where the car’s going to be.”
“Alright.”
Propping him up, I carry him to the back of the building, out through a fire door and into an alleyway, the stench of overflowing trashcans mixing with his blood. He lulls in my arms, leaning into me, and it seems I’m destined to spend my life carrying Russos around; I take him to one of the cleaner sections of the di
rty alleyway and sit him down.
He looks up at me with half-lidded eyes. I just saved his life, I think. I just saved the life of a man I’m supposed to kill.
“Thank you, son,” Bruno says, leaning his head back against the wall. “You did well. Very well. I won’t forget it.”
“Thank you,” I say, and it’s like hearing another man’s voice. I sound grateful, genuinely grateful, as though this is not the man I’m supposed to kill, as though I’m not Patty’s son, as though a lifetime of desiring Dad’s approval is not stacked upon my shoulders.