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“So that’s how it is, huh? You’re supposed to be this big boss motherfucker. Your clan and your honor and all that bullshit, and you’re gonna do it like this? Kill a man without giving him a chance to fight back?” he spat.
“A chance to fight back like Fawn had? Like my baby had?” I yelled, my voice sounding monstrous even to my own ears.
He went quiet and something in his face changed. Then he said, “Look, Petran, I didn’t mean for that to happen. But we got a good thing here. You have to think about the other clans, the Peruvians, the Sicilians, everybody! I handle all their money. You’re gonna have a lot to explain if you do this.”
Almost dizzy with anticipation of what I was about to do, anger at what he’d done, I stepped closer as he spoke, and when I stuck my hand in my pocket, he stopped, face going alert with curiosity and wariness. I pulled the small needle-nose pliers from my pocket, not trying to hide them.
He swallowed nervously, and his eyes went wide.
“I’ll leave you alone. I swear, you will never see me again.”
“The first true thing you’ve said,” I said.
And then I stepped closer, the pliers tight in my grip.
* * *
Vasile
“I’m sorry,” David said.
He was fading, and so was I. These last hours had been taxing for both of us.
He turned the eye that he could still open toward me.
“You stole her from me,” he said on a thick, slurred voice. “She was mine. And then she wasn’t, because you took her!”
I ignored him and instead ripped the remnants of his bloody shirt off his body, exposing his arm. My gaze zeroed in on the fat, juicy vein that sat in the crook of his elbow.
“That mark on her arm, the one that you put there. She touches it sometimes. I don’t even think she realizes she’s doing it, but I see it. She touches it and then gets this look in her eye.”
“She did that herself! I fucking saved her…” He cut off on a deep cough, the blood he brought up dribbling out of his mouth and onto his chest. I ignored him though, instead focused on that vein, thought I could hear the blood rushing through it, felt my lungs squeeze tight with the excitement of the thought of opening it.
“You remember what you told her? That she could only die when you said so?”
He gurgled and said something indecipherable.
“Answer me!” I yelled.
“Yes,” he pushed out through swollen lips.
“That wasn’t true. You took from us, took from her, but she’s still here. Will be long after you’re not even a memory.”
I wrapped the pliers, now slick with David’s blood and my sweat around that vein. Then I clipped, watched as the blood gushed from the wound, fast at first and then slower, and then even slower until it was just a trickle.
He went limp and I waited. Watched the blood drip, drip, drip out of him.
A long time later, I left.
* * *
Vasile
“You drive,” I said to Sorin.
I was so exhausted I could barely move, but I felt something that approached peace. I’d never heal, would never forget, but he no longer breathed. And if I’d never given Fawn anything but suffering, at least I could say I’d given her that. Small, but maybe it would help me make amends for so profoundly failing her, failing both of them.
The ride home was a blur as was the walk up the stairs. I stripped and went straight to the second bathroom, not wanting to bring my filth to her. And then, more tired than I could ever recall being, I stumbled into the bedroom. She jolted and then turned to me. I stumbled and kneeled next to the bed, my head next to her. She reached out to me, and I clasped her hand in mine, feeling that rightness, relief, that I always did with her. It was different now, but it was there nonetheless, and I prayed that at least some of it would survive.
