by Sienna Mynx
“That’s enough!”
“You take me to him now…” The gun dropped from the inside of her dress and between her legs to noisily hit the floor. Both the priest and the nun drew back stunned. Harmony quickly picked up the weapon but aimed it to the floor. “Please. I’m not here to cause trouble, but Romano’s men are coming and I will do anything to keep them from taking him.”
“Father?” The nun said alarmed.
The young priest’s face twisted with conflict. She didn’t care if she had to turn the gun on them both. She intended to collect her brother.
“Come with me.”
“Thank you.”
Quickly he led her down the hall, and it veered toward a narrow stairwell. Harmony braced her hand to the wall unsure of her steps in the darkness. She held tight to the gun. What if it was an ambush and Vinnie’s men were already below? What if she walked into a scene where she’d have to fire the gun at another human being? Even now her heart was his. She’d never be able to shoot him.
They reached the lower level in darkness. The nervous priest pulled a string to the center of the room and a bulb blinked on, chasing shadows to the corners. “He’s in there. I want you both out of here. Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes.”
Harmony hurried to the door. She sucked a deep breath and waited for the priest to unlock it. She entered. Willie sat on a cot pushed to the wall. He had a haggard look on his unshaven face and he wore the same clothes she’d last seen him in. He shot up to his feet startled over her sudden appearance. And she was by his as well. He looked frightened, and thin. His eyes were the only sign of vitality, they burned bright white and stretched with shock. The small room had a cot and a chamber pot. She saw a table with a few books and magazines. There was nothing else. How long had he been in the dungeon? And with the door locked, was he a hostage or there willingly?
“Willie!” she sighed, nearly dropping with fatigue and relief. She forced her body to move and rushed him. Her arms went around his neck and she buried her face there. “You’re alive. I thought I wouldn’t get here in time. I was so scared.”
Ten
The night of reckoning…
St. Nicholas Avenue was unusually quiet, absent of the stream of cars and taxis driving in and out of Manhattan. Word had spread of the trouble brewing between him and Mickey Collins. Romano suspected many had called the night short. He parked in front of St. Mary’s and glanced up to see Antonio parked behind him. When he opened the door Antonio was already out of his car walking straight toward him.
“I’ll stay out here. Let you talk to the boy alone. Might work better if we don’t ambush him.”
Romano nodded that he agreed. He turned for the walkway then froze. Parked two blocks down he saw a black and tan Packard. It looked like Mabel’s.
“Something wrong?” Antonio asked.
He studied the car for a minute. He would have sworn it was hers if not for the smashed in headlight. He dismissed the nagging feeling of familiarity. There were plenty Packard’s like it on the road. Besides what would Mabel be doing there this time of night?
“No. Nothing’s wrong. Wait here, shouldn’t take me long.”
“Mony? They told me Romano had you. Thank God you’re safe.”
To have him in her arms again made all the anguish of the past weeks intensely real. For a long pause she couldn’t speak. She squeezed her eyes shut and held him. “Mony?” he said with a ring of alarm in his voice. Gently he pushed her off him and scanned her face. “Who did this?”
Too many emotions had a hold of her at once. She stepped back trying to calm herself. She wanted to strike him, hug him, and run from the church, wielding the gun toward anyone that threatened to hurt him.
“Answer me! Did Vinnie Romano hurt you? I’ll kill the bastard!”
“No!” She shouted back through her tears. “You care now? After scaring the hell out of me for weeks? Now you care? He didn’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry…”
“You should be.”
“Let me explain.”
“Yes. Explain. Explain how could you do this? Do you know what’s happened, what we’ve been through looking for you? Milo is dead.”
Willie shook his head in disbelief. “That’s not true.”
“It is Willie. He’s dead.”
Willie dropped down on the cot. He wouldn’t look her in the eye. He stared straight ahead processing the news. “It’s my fault if he’s dead. All my fault.”
“Why are you here? Locked in the basement of a church? This church? How did you know that Romano had me? Who put you in here? Milo?”
Willie shook his head sadly. “He told me no one would get hurt. He said, we just had to settle the score, set things right for a change, and then it’ll be over.”
“Who? Who said that?”
Willie dropped his head and refused to answer.
“Okay, forget it. We can talk about it later. We need to go.” Harmony glanced back. She heard voices and feet approaching. “Now.”
“There’s nowhere to go. Antonio will find me.”
“Antonio?” Harmony paused. “What does Antonio have to do with this?”
Willie’s gaze finally lifted and focused on her. Harmony stared on trying to make sense of the fear and regret reflecting in her brother’s eyes. The door behind her opened. She raised the gun and swung it toward the visitor. Vinnie entered. In a trench coat, black gloves and with a fedora low to his head, his presence filled the room and Harmony wavered over pointing the gun in his direction. Their eyes met. Vinnie froze.
“Get up Willie! Now!” She ordered. Her brother stood. Vinnie’s gaze switched from her gun to her face, then to her brother.
“You get out of our way. Or I will shoot you,” she said in a voice even and exact.
The gun greeted him first. However it was the sight of his woman holding it on him that rendered him speechless. The wild look of determined fire blazing in her heated glare drove the stake deeper in his heart from the words she spoke. Harmony? The side of her face was red and swollen. Her right blood-shot eye had a darkening bruise and was so puffy it had all but shut. The front of her dress had been ripped and he could see stains as if she was dragged through muck. Who the fuck would dare touch her? Hurt her? How was that even possible when he just saw her hours ago soaking in a tub and glowing with happiness? Car accident? Had to be. None of his men would dare lay a finger on her.
Panic, worry, and confusion slammed his heart repeatedly. He would have gone to her if she weren’t leveling the fucking gun on him. “What are you doing here?” he said, swinging his gaze left to her brother and clenching his hand in a fist to keep from acting. He didn’t need to scare her.
“Don’t!” she shouted releasing the safety on the gun. “Come any closer and I’ll shoot.”
The priest vanished. It was just him and her in that moment of threatening silence. He had forgotten all about her brother. His focus had become singular. “You’re hurt Doll. Talk to me.”
“Hurt?” she laughed with tears glistening in her eyes. “You have no idea how much this hurts Vinnie!” Her voice was shaky but strong. She kept the gun between them. “I trusted you. I gave you my heart, and all along you and your brother were abusing mine!”
“Who hit you?” he demanded, unable to get past her state. She sounded crazy, speaking of a conspiracy that didn’t exist. He’d address it later. First he wanted to know what happened to her. “Who dammit?”
The gun dropped a fraction and she shook all over as if unsure how to respond. Maybe she wavered over trusting him. Whatever it was it had proved to be fleeting. The gun rose again and a firm determined line thinned her lips. Her eyes narrowed on him when she spoke. “Your man Leftie decided to beat on me before he tried to rape me. But I fixed him good. Now let us out!”
“I’ll kill him. I swear it.” He walked toward her as if the gun meant nothing. He saw panic rise in her eyes. “Give me the gun. I’m not here to hurt your br
other. You know me, Songbird. You know my heart. I’ll kill them all but I’ll never hurt you.”
Harmony fired the gun over his shoulder as a warning and he stopped, shocked at the angry defiance blazing in her eyes. No sweet words would grant him access to her. In that moment he knew how deeply her distrust of him was. She fired the gun again at the wall and blew off chunks of brick and mortar. “It’s over. Do you hear me? I know you and Antonio had Willie all the time. I know you killed Milo, and if you don’t move away from the door I swear…”
“You’ll what?” he asked. “You’ll put a bullet in me? You’ll have to if you think I’ll let you go out there believing I could be responsible for this! Any of it!” he shouted.
“Shoot him Mony, he’s lying. He’ll kill us both.”
“Shut up!” Harmony’s voice rose higher than theirs. She gripped the gun with both hands to keep her aim steady. “Move Vinnie. It’s done. Don’t make me do this. Please don’t make me. Move dammit!”
“I can’t do that, Songbird. There’s something wrong here and I need to know what it is.” He put his hands up in surrender. “C’mon Doll what’s it going to be? Either you trust me or you don’t, but you draw a gun you have to use it. A man like me isn’t going to back away from it.”
“Maybe I can be of help.”
Harmony blinked away her tears and Romano’s head turned. They both froze when Antonio entered. He walked in with his gun trained on his brother. Now Romano stood with two guns drawn on him and his mind reeled as he tried to unlock the key to how it all unfolded.
“The day of reckoning can be postponed no longer, can it Vinnie?” Antonio chuckled.
It was Antonio all along? The sight of Antonio pointing his gun at Vinnie snapped clarity into Harmony’s panicked mind. She lowered the gun, not sure where to aim it. Her gaze switched from brother to brother. He sneered at his brother and extended his arm to point the gun dead center between Vinnie’s eyes.
“What the fuck is going on Antonio?” Vinnie asked through clenched teeth.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. What the fuck indeed. Watch your language Vinnie. Did you check the sign out front? Naughty, naughty,” Antonio laughed. No one in the room dared breathe. The wild glint of madness in Antonio’s eyes and echoing in his laughter held them all still. He touched his chest. “Oh don’t worry about me cursing big brother. My soul was damned long ago. Ain’t that right Lil Willie.” Antonio winked at her brother.
Harmony’s gaze swung to her brother who surprised her by snatching the gun from her hand. She stumbled back, shocked that he would. Willie raised the gun and pointed it at Vinnie too.
“Good boy,” Antonio nodded.
She stared into her brother’s eyes and it dawned on her. Something she’d never admitted to herself before. Right in her face was a truth she should have seen.
“Where’s Willie?” Harmony rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “Did you forget your key again?”
Lewis stalked through the tiny front room. She closed the door, awake and a bit concerned by his frosty mood. The pounding on the door had woken her with a start. She closed her robe to ward off the chill Lewis tracked in behind him. Frost and ice covered all the windows, in this type of weather, neither of them should be out. But out he went, and Willie was in tow. Now he’s back and as usual she’d spend the night worrying because her brother wasn’t home. Willie had been in the streets all day. It felt like the hour was closer to midnight. She didn’t understand why her brother often disappeared and why he and Lewis fought so much lately.
“Where is he?”
“Leave it alone Mony, damn.” Lewis grumbled. He shed his coat and tossed it to the sofa. It would take an act of Christ around here to get him or Willie to hang up their things, instead of having her picking up after them. She swallowed her objection to his sloppy behavior, though her arms c folded tightly to the front of her chest and she frowned deeply at the clumps of dirt he tracked all over her freshly swept floor.
“Did you leave him out there? Alone? It’s the third night this week he hasn’t come home and I know you two were together. I’m not stupid.”
“Trust me Mony, he can handle himself. You keep wanting to baby him. He ain’t no fucking baby.” Lewis slurred a bit. He was either drunk on hooch or smoking those funny cigarettes that smelled bad and made her eyes burn when ever she caught him trying to smoke them in their home.
“I’m not babying him, he is a baby, he barely sixteen.”
“To hell with that! He’s no baby! Wait.” Lewis gave a cruel snort. “He ain’t a man, either. To be honest Mony I don’t know what the fuck he is…. but trust me he can take care of himself.”
“You been drinking? Have you lost your senses? He sixteen years old. I want him home, go out there and find him and bring him back.”
Lewis shot her a glare that stopped her cold. He leveled a finger at her when he spoke. “I’ll spare you the nasty details baby because I know you love the boy. But he’s not worth your prayers, or tears. Turn him loose before he breaks your fucking heart.” Lewis marched off to the bathroom and slammed the door. Harmony stood there stunned, unsure of the meaning of his unsolicited advice. How dare he tell her to cut ties with her blood? The man wouldn’t even put a ring on her finger. She was sick of it. She walked to the bathroom and threw the door open. Lewis blinked at her surprised, holding his penis aiming it toward the toilet in the middle of a piss.
“That’s enough Lewis Jamal! I don’t care how juiced you are, you go out there and find him. Bring him home!”
Lewis shook his penis and tucked it back into his pants. He went to the sink and ran water over it. “Give it a rest, will you? I’m tired baby. Sorry for earlier, but I’m in no mood to fight with you.”
“No!”
“You gonna have to, or better yet, stop getting in my face over it. Talk to him your damn self. See if he will tell you his secret.”
“Secret? What secret?”
“Nothing, forget it. Can a man take a shit in peace?”
“You’re queer,” Harmony said. “That’s the secret. That’s what you’ve been keeping from me. What you and Lewis kept from me?“
Willie averted his gaze. He stole a quick glance at Antonio, Vinnie, and then lowered his gaze to the floor. He looked everywhere but at her. Antonio kept his gun trained on his brother. She remembered Leftie’s nasty accusation. Said he often had to clean up the messes of the younger Romano. Paulette told her she often saw Antonio and Willie meeting together behind The Cotton. Milo warned her to let Willie go, that she couldn’t help him. How many people knew of this sickness her brother had? Why didn’t Lewis tell her the truth if Willie wouldn’t? Her heart felt as if it stopped beating and the tightness in her chest made it hard to concentrate on fact versus fiction. How low did the depths of her brother’s betrayal go? She glanced over to Vinnie who continued to stare at his brother and the gun in his face. He looked so coiled tight with tension she feared he’d strike despite the danger he faced.
Had he heard her? The nasty grin Antonio wore when their eyes met said no. Oh how she wanted to lunge for his throat. Her brother was young, impressionable, and confused and she knew Antonio Romano had exploited all three. “You both are queer,” she spat toward Antonio as if the truth tasted bad on her tongue.
Antonio laughed. The scar on his face stretched grotesquely under his wicked smile. He returned his attention to his brother. “Do you know what queer means Vinnie?”
Vinnie blinked out of whatever state he had slipped into. He frowned at Antonio then glanced over at Willie. She knew he didn’t get the meaning.
“Look at him Lil Will. He doesn’t know what it means. I told you he’d have to catch me with my dick in your ass before he got a clue. Ain’t that right brother? See his face. He gets it now. Oh yes he’s got it now.” Antonio pushed the gun into his brother’s face with a cold murderous look hardening his features. “I’ve been waiting for a long time for this. I’m sick of being invisible next to the great Vincenzio Ro
mano! It was like this in Sicily and nothing changed in America. You were the same as Papa! The same! I wanted to get out of here, Teek and I would leave and try Chicago, or Detroit. Do you remember when I asked you for the money? Remember what you said Vinnie? Told me to stay in my lane, that you had big plans for me and you. Fucking hypocrite. The only plans you ever made were for your own selfish purposes. You said you loved Annie, but you didn’t give a shit about any of us. Just wanted us all to stay in our lane. Not anymore!”
Vinnie’s eyes narrowed into slits of rage. Harmony held her breath and watched as his gloved hands clenched into tight balls of fury.