Chapter Eleven
Gabriel
I wake the next morning, wondering if all this bullshit was a dream. I’ve had some pretty fucked-up dreams in my life, so it’d make sense. But I wake up next to Colleen, curled into a ball and snoring softly. She’s smiling in her sleep, too. I wonder if it has anything to do with the sex. I go into the kitchen and make myself some coffee and then, after some considering, make her one as well. I wonder at myself as I do that; I never make other women coffee.
But I do it and carry it on through to the bedroom, placing it on the bedside table. The sun has hardly risen, a weak pathetic light glowing through the curtains. Colleen sits up at the smell of the coffee, her nose wrinkling. “Thanks,” she says, giving me a cute smile.
“It’s all right,” I mutter, sitting in the chair and sipping my own.
“I didn’t take you for the coffee-making type.”
I growl out a laugh. “Yeah, well, there’s a lot I didn’t take myself for. Apparently I’m full of surprises.”
“You are,” she says, not joking one bit. “You really are.”
“And you’re not?” I try for a laugh again. Then I grow serious. “I need to ask you a favor.”
“What?”
“I’m heading out to take care of some business. I need you to agree not to go anywhere. I could cuff you to the bed but … If something happens to me, I don’t much like the idea of you starving to death up here. Or, more likely, one of the skip’s bastard goons finding you here and … I need you to agree, Colleen.”
“Are you crazy?” she says, smiling at me in confusion. “You can’t expect me to agree to that!”
“But you want to,” I press on. “We both know that. So what the fuck?”
“What do you mean? How do I want to? I’m a prisoner, remember?”
“You didn’t look like a fucking prisoner last night!” I snap, jumping to my feet. Maybe it was naïve of me to expect her to just agree to it, but dammit, she should. This is why a man can’t let himself think he’s close with a woman, because then she just goes and pulls some bullshit like this. Give a woman an inch, and she’ll take the whole fucking world.
“But I am a prisoner,” she says. It’s like she’s trying to convince herself, the way her eyebrows furrow, the way her lips purse.
I rub the tension from my forehead. “I haven’t got time for this. I’ve got business to take care of. Listen: I’ll pay you one hundred thousand dollars to stay here and not try to run away. That’ll be your money, Colleen, not your parents’. But that means that you have to stay with me until all this is over.”
“You’ll pay me?”
I nod. “One hundred. Enough money to start a life when all this bullshit is over, eh? What’d you say to that? If I’m not enough to make you stay here, is that?”
“I didn’t say you weren’t enough,” she mutters.
“Fine, I don’t really give much of a damn.” I stand up and turn away from her. I’m a fucking fool for thinking she’d want to stay here just for the sake of it. What did I think, that she liked me? What is this, some bullshit high school stuff? There’s no liking in this life, there’s no closeness, there’s nothing but money, sex, and violence. “Is that a yes or a no?” I say through gritted teeth. “Tell me now, or I will have to cuff you.” I should anyway, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Leaving her here when I might be heading for my death … I don’t know. Goddamn it. She’s really gotten into my head here.
“I’ve never had money of my own,” she says after a pause. I feel her eyes on my back, willing me to turn around. I don’t. I can’t look at her right now. If I do—I don’t know. Something is changing, and I don’t understand it one bit. “I agree.” She sighs.
“Fine.” I kick the door open and march away, get dressed and gather my weapons, and head to the elevator.
I try to clear my mind on the way down, tell myself that she’s just some Irish bitch and I don’t give a damn about her, but that’s not the truth and I know it. I don’t know what happened with that fucking yesterday, only that it wasn’t like any sex I’ve ever had. It was close at times, like that lovey-dovey shit. It was passionate instead of rough and mean and hard. I need to be careful with that shit. Every cold man knows that getting too close to a warm woman can be his ruin; it was the skip who taught me that, before he decided to end my life.
I clear my mind and head a few blocks south through Queens, hood pulled up over my head and head low. My pistol presses reassuringly into my side. When I’m far enough away from the hotel, I steal a car, smashing the window and tooling with the ignition. It’s an old beat-up thing without an alarm, parked down the side of an alleyway, covered in a thickish layer of snow. I take a wad of cash from my pocket and hide it under a nearby trashcan, the edge of the notes visible. Maybe the poor bastard will find it.
Then I drive out to Samuel Romano’s place, knowing that he’s a lazy bastard who never wakes up before midday. It’s a longish ride, because New York is a bastard for traffic. When I get there, I park around the back of his house; it’s a detached place not far from the skip’s house. I wonder how often they visit each other, if they play Scrabble or drink whisky together some nights, talking for a long time about how they’re going to fuck me over.
I climb the back fence and sneak toward the house. It’s dead quiet and the rear bathroom window is slightly open. Steam comes from it. I move in close and listen: Samuel, humming to himself. Even humming, he sounds like an arrogant prick.
I go around the side of the house and then take a big step back. I judge the distance between me and the side door, step forward, and kick as hard as I can. The door flies off its hinges and then I’m not thinking at all. My instincts take over; I scan the hallways with the pistol, check the corners, making my way toward the sound of the shower and the humming. The humming hasn’t stopped; maybe he didn’t hear it.
Finally, I open the bathroom door and creep inside, stepping over his discarded jeans and shirt. His humming gets much more high-pitched when I wrench the curtain back and shove my pistol in the bastard’s face. His jet-black goatee shrivels up as the same time as his little prick.
“P—please,” he whispers.
“You’re lucky that shower’s going, Sammy,” I tell him. “Otherwise I’d be able to see your tears. Why, Sammy? Tell me that or this shower turns red.”
“Why what?”
He gasps when I force the gun into the fleshy part of his neck, half-stepping into the shower. “I don’t much like looking at that little baby’s prick of yours, Sammy, so cut the shit. Why?”
He licks his lips, his whole face shuddering in terror. He’s not a Family man, and yet the boss picked him over me. “It’s not personal, Gabriel. It’s just … you know too much about the old days, uncle says. You know too much and—and you’re volatile.”
“Bullshit.” I growl. “I’m a professional. If the skip wants me dead, it’s because you got into his head. What’d you do, drag up some old job from years back, convince him that I’d flip one day? Did you use his dead brother against him, eh? Did you manipulate him like you’re his fucking wife?” I press the gun even harder now. “So that’s it? You got into his head.”
“Y—yeah,” Samuel wheezes, hardly able to breathe with how hard I’m driving the gun into his neck. “But—what—what did you expect? You disrespect me all the time!”
“Well, Sammy, I can honestly say I’m never going to disrespect you again.”
The front door crashes open.
“He’s in here!” Samuel cries. “Help! He’s in here!”
Heavy footsteps thump toward the bathroom, moving with deadly purpose. I barely have time to throw myself through the bathroom window before they come crashing in. They fire; the glass shatters. I duck, crouch-run through the snow, and then leap over the fence, cursing myself for not ending him when I had the chance. But my instincts made me run, and my instincts never lie.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” I whisper, sitting at the end of the street in the stolen car, watching as Samuel and five other men stride toward a minivan. “This ends one way, Sammy.” I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.