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He laughed. “Fair enough. Guess I’ve got a soft spot.”
“She’s pregnant with my baby, Dante.”
His laughter faded. “Yeah, I hear you.”
“And you want to kill her.” I tilted my head. “Explain to me why I shouldn’t start killing your whole crew, one after the other?”
“Because you know it doesn’t end with me. I’m just the messenger. It’s the Don you gotta worry about. Plus, I actually still like you.”
I grunted and tapped my foot. A tiny piece of glass glittered nearby. I kicked it over toward him.
“Thanks,” he said, stooped and picked it up.
I pulled my gun and had it pressed against his head before he could stand.
He looked up at me, fingers clutching the glass.
“She’s pregnant with my kid,” I said. “That means however hard you’ve tried to bring Don Leone to the table, you’d better try twice as hard.”
“I hear you,” he said, and slowly straightened up.
A few weeks ago, I would’ve put a bullet in his head. It wouldn’t be so hard to kill him and get away before the cops showed. I knew they’d chalk it up to a mob hit and not bother looking very closely, if the Don let them look at it at all. I’d walk away from it unscathed and never think twice.
But Dante was as close to a friend as I had. Killing him would mean I’d be finished with the Leone family forever, and maybe I wasn’t ready to do that just yet.
Or maybe I wasn’t ready to deprive little baby Gino of his father.
I lowered the gun and put it away.
“Guess I’m going soft,” I said.
“Lucky for me.”
“Get your boss to sit down with her father,” I said. “I’ll get her father to do the same. If you don’t want this to escalate any further than it already has, then you’d better make that shit happen.”
Dante nodded. “I will.”
“Good.” I put my gun away and walked to the back door. “Don’t be stupid, Dante. Killing the girl won’t profit you.”
“I never wanted any of this, if that helps at all,” he said. “But you know how these things go. Once we pick a lane, it’s hard to shake out of it.”
“Institutionalism,” I said. “Fucks up even the mafia.” I pulled open the door and stepped out into the night.
I felt Dante’s eyes on me as I left, but I didn’t look back. I hopped his back fence and landed hard in the small alley behind his place. I walked past a tipped-over plastic trash can and out onto the main sidewalk. I shoved my hands in my pockets and kept my head down as I walked.
I kept thinking about what Dante said. About how Elise’s life was going to change, and mine might not. Everything about her was about to shift irrevocably and it was up to me to step up and do something about it.
Even if she didn’t want it, or didn’t know she wanted it.
That was my baby. I wasn’t going to let her go through this alone.
I’d be there for her. I’d be there for my child.
I wasn’t going to let her feel alone.23EliseI barely left that spare room for an entire day. I drifted from the bed to the bathroom and back into bed. The only time I went into the kitchen was when I got desperate for food and I knew my father was out.
Otherwise, I stewed under the covers and thought about how my life was over.
I couldn’t imagine what I was going to do. I was pregnant with some murderer’s baby, and I kept thinking about how the baby might end up being some kind of psychopath. I knew that sort of thing could run in families, and I was so scared that I had my father’s genes in me, plus whatever made Tanner into a killer. This baby had no chance at a normal life, not with a mom like me and a father like him.
And yet this baby was my responsibility. I was pregnant, and my whole life was about to change. I knew it as well as I knew anything. I still couldn’t turn my back on this child, even if I wanted to.
Coming back to my father’s place was a mistake. As soon as I cooled off, I knew I screwed up. My father was much worse than Tanner in the grand scheme of things. Tanner killed people for a living, but my father destroyed lives and cities for his own profit. My father was truly a monster, while Tanner was just a psycho trying to make a living the best way he knew how.
And besides, Tanner saved my life more than once.
Watching Bennigan die broke me. It snapped something inside of me that I didn’t know could be snapped. I woke up the next morning and felt like everything inside of me had seeped out, and all I could do was run away. But after a good night’s sleep and some time, I was starting to come back to myself, a little bit at least.
