Dominic
When I reach the bottom of the bridge, I make a right, speeding past the stop sign like it was never there. As I finish my turn, I see the house Tommy and I always go to when we want to speak in private—when it needs to be just the two of us in a place that we know isn’t bugged and doesn’t have people constantly watching us. Only the two of us know about the abandoned, burned-out house in E. St. Louis that the city refuses to demolish for whatever reason, so when I see it, and I see a light on inside, a small light that can only be there if someone brought it with them, I know I was right. My gut led me in the right direction, and now that I see that light, my foot has a mind of its own, and it seems to shove itself onto the gas pedal until there’s no more room left between the pedal and the floor.
The engine blares and screams as if it can feel my pain and it wants the whole world to hear about it, and in two seconds flat, I’m screeching to a stop and jumping out of the car without even turning it off. I have two guns and a small knife I’ve started habitually carrying, and I can feel the weight of all of them as I rush towards the front door that’s barely there.
I can hardly think. I can barely see straight. My body is moving all on its own, forcing me towards the house, but still holding on to hope that I might be wrong. Maybe Tommy got caught in a traffic jam, maybe there’s someone else in inside,maybe, maybe, maybe. But the maybes don’t change what I see when I reach the door.
My rational thoughts seem to be being bogged down by the blinding rage, and it swirls around in my head in incomplete sentences.
Tommy, standing up. Holding a gun. Nine millimeter pistol. Tommy “Two Nines.”
Standing in front of Alannah. My Alannah. On the floor. Tied up with plastic zip ties around her wrists, and looped through the ones on her ankles. Alannah. Tied up. Again. Abram Baskov all over again.
But it’s not Abram. It’s Tommy. Tommy “Two Nines.” My best friend. Judas. Backstabber. Snake.
Dead man.
“Dominic,” I hear Alannah say in a voice that doesn’t sound like her own. It’s been worn ragged by fear.
“Shut up,” Tommy says to her, while still looking at me. Then he speaks to me. “Guess I should’ve known you’d figure to look here. That’s a mistake on my part.”
I want to speak, but the words are smothered in my hate and being weighed down—pushed deep into my belly, and I can’t seem to control them. I’ve never felt rage like this before. I have no fear, no worry, no compassion, no love. Only hate. Only rage.
“I didn’t mean for it to be this way, Dominic,” I hear Tommy speaking again. He hasn’t moved, choosing to stay planted in front of Alannah, holding his weapon at his side, ready to use it if I make him.
And I will make him.
“I didn’t mean for all of this to happen,” he continues. “I admit that I fucked up. I do. I made a huge mistake by letting myself get dragged into all of this, and I went too far, and lost my cool tonight. I can’t believe we’re all actually standing here right now. We were just at Maggiano’s together a couple of hours ago. Now look at us. It’s pretty surreal. But it is what it is, and I can’t take it back. So, where do we go from here, Dominic?”
I see Alannah pleading with me with her eyes. She wants me to kill him. She wants me to save her from this hell she’s stuck in. The hell Tommy put her in.
“Where do we go from here?” I finally manage to say as I begin to regain feeling in my body. “Wedon’t go anywhere.Youwill never go anywhere again. You’ve betrayed your best friend, and the boss of the Family. You will die tonight.”
“I didn’t want this, Dominic. I really didn’t. But I can’t change it now.”
“If you didn’t want it, then why are we here? Why’d you do this?”
“Because you’re not supposed to be the boss, Dominic,” he snips. “You’re too young, and too inexperienced, and she makes you soft! When people see you as the boss, they think we’re weak. When they see you two together, they think we’re weak. You’re a savvy business man, a casino owner, not a fucking boss in La Cosa Nostra. Leo went against everything we stand for when he chose you to replace him. There’s never been a boss in his fucking twenties, it’s not how This Thing of Ours is supposed to work.”
“So you decided to do what?” I ask, shifting my feel slightly to better position myself for what’s to come. “You wanted to start a war between us and the Chicago Outfit? You thought that would get me removed? You wanted Victor-fucking-Fronzo to kill me? You betrayed me for Victor?”
“I didn’t betray you for Victor. Victor was just a pawn in the game we were playing to get you out. Now that I’m standing here, I’m not even sure what we were thinking. Taking that truck was a terrible idea, and I never meant to hurt Raphy or Dan. I never meant for that to happen, I swear, but the plan was already in motion and there was no going back. If I didn’t kill Raphy, he was gonna kill me, and I only tried to kill Dan because he saw my face. But the entire idea of fucking with Victor’s truck and money after Jimmy stole it, was just plain idiotic, I admit it. I thought I saw an opportunity that could get you out without having to kill you, but I was wrong. I don’t know how we were expecting it to work out, I just know we didn’t want you to be the boss. It was in everybody’s best interest—mine, the Family’s, yours, Alannah’s. We’d all be better off. I guess I figured that by the time the thing with Victor was over, the Family or the Commission would vote you out for not being able to handle it. I thought they’d be able to see you weren’t ready, and I figured, to preserve the peace between the families, they’d vote you out or something. Come to think of it, it wasn’t a very good plan. We were really stupid.”
“You keep sayingwe,” I butt in. “Who the fuck iswe?”
Tommy glares at me, shaking his head. “You couldn’t take it if I told you. Believe it or not, Dominic, I love you,mioamico. I know I hurt you by doing this, but there’s a deeper pain out there, and my love for you wants to protect you from it.”
“Your love for me? You don’t have love for me. You stabbed me right in the back. You know if I don’t do my job well as boss of this family, the Commission doesn’tvote me out. The vote would be to have me clipped. You were trying to get me killed.”
“That’s not what I wanted.”
“But it’s what you were ready to accept. You and whoever you were working with. Now, who is it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Then I’ll fucking beat it out of you.”
Before the words can finish spewing from my mouth, I reach into my waist band and pull out my gun, holding it at my side. Tommy responds by lifting his from his side and aiming at me.
