“Don’t do it, Dominic,” he says, glaring at me. “I don’t know how this is gonna end, but I don’t plan on dying tonight. Not without a fight.”
“Good,” I reply as I drop my gun to the floor. It lands with athud, and Tommy looks baffled. So does Alannah. “I don’t want you to die without a fight. I want you to die fighting. I want your last breath to be squeezed out of you with my bare hands. I wanna feel your pulse getting weaker and weaker as your life extinguishes in front of me. I’m gonna be face to face with you when I pull your life from your body.”
Tommy stands there, still aiming his gun as I pull my jacket off, revealing the harness that houses my other gun. “You betrayed me. You shit on everything we’ve ever done together. All the years we spent making money, protecting each other, ready to die for one another. You shit on all of it, and you don’t even know why you did it. You will not be forgiven.” I glare at Tommy as I pull the harness off of my body and drop it on the floor, right on top of my other gun.
“And you made your biggest mistake of all when you took her,” I snarl as I pull the knife from my pocket. “You know there isn’t another thing in this world I’d be more willing to die for, or to kill for, than Alannah. You knew I’d kill you if you touched her, and you did it anyway. You broke the ultimate rule. You committed a cardinal sin. You crossed a line that there is no going back over. When you touched Alannah, you committed suicide. But I won’t kill you with a gun, that’s too quick of a death for you. I’m gonna kill you with my hands. You could shoot me like the coward you are, or you can hold on to the tiniest shred of honor by fighting for your life. But my decision is already made. This is the end for you, just like it was for Laura.” I drop the knife on the floor, and let it bounce away, then I glare at Tommy. If looks could kill, the head would’ve fallen off this snake already.
Tommy looks vexed. He furrows his brow as his eyes dart around the room nervously.
“What did you just say?”
“I told you a long time ago that the rules change when it comes to Alannah, but you didn’t listen. You took Alannah from me, so I took Laura from you.”
Tommy’s eyes bulge as he realizes what I’m saying. I see the tears making their presence known as the rage starts to overtake his rational thoughts.
“You motherfucker,” he says quietly, but his words are dripping with venom. “I’m gonna fucking tear your heart out. Then I’m gonna spend the rest of the night raping your little cunt girlfriend until she passes out from the pain, before I finally slit her throat and let her bleed to death right on top of your lifeless carcass.”
He drops his gun, but I wait a second longer, because we all know Tommy’s name. After another second, he pulls out his other gun and tosses it to the floor. When it lands, he starts to speak again, but it’s too late for words now.
Like my blood has been replaced by jet fuel, I run at Tommy faster than I thought humanly possible, and the collision feels and sounds like two giants just crashed into each other. Tommy goes flying backwards and I land on top of him, throwing punches the second our bodies hit the floor. I raise my fist in the air and bring it crashing down onto his face with every ounce of strength in my body. Tommy’s head bounces off the floor from the impact as I repeat the act over and over again, before Tommy finally manages to reach up and grab my face with his hands.
Although blood pours out of Tommy’s nose and mouth, he’s still Tommy, he’s still big and strong as fuck, and he squeezes my head like he has super powers. He brings his thumbs to my eyes, and I know that if I don’t get off of him now, I’ll literally never see Alannah again, so I quickly jump off.
I have to take a second to let my vision return to normal, and Tommy climbs to his feet while I struggle to see. I hear Alannah scream, warning me that Tommy’s coming, but my vision is still blurry, so I don’t see the punch coming. It hits me with a force that rocks me backwards, and the next punch is to my stomach, stealing the air from my lungs, then an elbow to the side of my head that sends me to the floor.
Alannah screams again, so I know Tommy’s about to be right on top of me in less than a second. So, I instinctively put my knee up just as he tries to get on me, and send him barreling over my head. He lands behind me and the two of us get up at the same time.
We face each other, fists balled and raised to protect us. We’re two warriors ready to do battle, two boxers in the ring, and this is how one of us will die. We’ll fight to the death like this abandoned house is our Colosseum. It all ends now. No one will ever threaten Alannah and survive the night.
I don’t waste time letting him catch his breath. I fake to the right, then swing with my left. My fist lands on Tommy’s cheek, rocking his head sideways just as my right hand lands on the other side of his jaw. He stumbles back and I charge him again, like a linebacker for the Rams, slamming him against the wall. I use one hand to push his face against the wall as he struggles to wrap his hands around my throat, and I use my other hand to deliver vicious blows to his rib cage.
I punch Tommy in the stomach over and over again, until he can no longer stand upright. He struggles to breathe and hunches forward in pain, so I wrap my arms around his head and neck. Tommy tries to use his arms as best he can, but it’s no use. I have him bent over in a chokehold, and I squeeze with every muscle fiber that makes me human. I squeeze like my life depends on it, like Alannah’s life depends on it, like my best friend stabbed me in the back by hurting the woman I love. Images flash in my head of Tommy in this house alone with Alannah, threatening her, scaring her, hurting her, and it fuels me. My body tingles with the anger that only a person in love can ever feel, and the next thing I feel is Tommy’s body go limp in my arms.
He doesn’t struggle anymore. He drops to his knees, arms dangling at his sides, and still, I raise myself up onto my tippy toes and lift my arms as far up as I can get them. I’m rewarded with the sudden, jolting snap that echoes throughout the blackened house like a gunshot. I hear Alannah gasp as I let Tommy’s lifeless body drop to the floor like the guns I dropped earlier, his neck broken into two separate pieces. He’s gone.
I look down at him, and I feel a surprising sting starting up in my eyes. Tommy was my friend. He’s been with me a long time, and I chose him to be my underboss. I chose him because of our loyalty to each other, but in Our Thing, there really is no such thing as loyalty. La Cosa Nostra breathes life into us, and it snatches it out of us when it sees fit. It’s our guardian angel and our grim reaper. All you have to do is give it time, and eventually the good things in your life will be washed away. La Cosa Nostra is the destroyer of all things, and I never realized it until now.
“Dominic,” I hear Alannah shout from behind me, snapping me out of my daze.
I turn and run over to her, kissing her face all over like I can’t control myself. She has tears in her eyes, and I kiss them away. She’s safe now, and I’ll never leave her unprotected ever again.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I say as I kiss her wet cheeks. “I’m so sorry, baby. I never should’ve left you. I don’t know what I was thinking trusting anybody in this fucking business. I’m so sorry for not being here to protect you. I’ll never let it happen again. I love you so much. I’m sorry.”
It feels like I can’t say it enough. My heart hurts with the thought of Alannah being alone with Tommy as he did whatever the fuck he did. He only did it because I wasn’t around, so my absence almost got Alannah killed, and I can barely stand myself for it. I almost made the biggest mistake of my life.
“It’s okay, Dominic,” she whispers to me, still crying. “You came back and saved me. I’d be dead if you hadn’t shown up. You saved me.”
“I never should’ve left you,” I reply as I reach over and grab the knife I dropped earlier to cut off the plastic ties shackling Alannah. “I never should’ve left, and I’ll never leave again. I won’t make the same mistake twice. From now on, we’re together, because it’s obvious that the only people we can trust is us. It’s us against everybody now.”
Once Alannah is free, she wraps her arms around me and we embrace. In this moment, I have no regrets about what just happened to Tommy. I’ll never feel bad about it now, because the cost for hurting Alannah is death, no matter who’s paying.
“Now that you mention it,” Alannah says, pulling away from me to look over at Tommy’s lifeless body. “We can’t forget that he was working with someone else. He has a partner.”
“Yeah, and we still need to figure out who it is.”
“No we don’t,” she says, to my surprise. “He called them. He had a whole phone conversation right in front of me with whoever it is. I heard everything.”
“Holy shit. Okay, so who is it?”
