Tempted By The Mafia Boss

Gabe

I must have sat on the edge of my bed for a whole hour just staring at the patterns the grooves made in the wood of the floorboards.

I’ve been sitting here thinking what to do. I don’t even know when she left.

I know though what her leaving suggests and I hate venturing down the path of gloom and fucking doom.

Last night wasn’t some casual fuck where we were supposed to have a one nighter and call it quits.

That’s the understanding the women I hook up with have. They know to be gone by morning. All it will be between us is fucking and that’s it.

It’s fucking why I feel so shit about Mimi because she didn’t deserve to be with a guy she gave her trust to only for him… aka me… to treat her like that.

Charlotte is the exception and she knows it.

I just… I’m scared of what she might tell me.

But if there’s one thing I hate in the world along with helplessness and weakness, it’s fear.

I stand and get ready, deciding I won’t allow fear to come for me.

Like yesterday, there’s only one way to find out what’s up and that’s to go see her.

I pull up on her drive half an hour later on my motorcycle. I took that today because of the freedom I feel when I’m riding it.

Donny opens the door before I get the chance to ring the bell and while he looks over at my bike with a hint of disapproval, I know this fucker won’t say shit to me. Definitely not when he sees my face and knows not to fuck with me.

Haven’t seen him in ten years and I still want to kill his ass.

When we worked together I was known then because of my family but he felt he had some say in what I did and my involvement with his girl because he was the crime lord’s favorite. Doing his investments and making millions. Then he lost everything.

He’s standing on the porch looking at me as I come up the stairs. He has the same look as Cordelia. Thin and gaunt. It’s the look of a worried sick father who probably has nightmares every night for his worry over his daughter.

“Gabriel.” He greets me with a curt nod and a faint smile.

I can’t believe I’m calm enough to put out my hand and shake his. I can’t believe I’m calm enough not to shove his face in the ground, break his fingers off one by one and knock his teeth down his throat.

“Hello.” I simply return. I think I’ll always feel that angst when it comes to him because no matter which angle anyone looks at the past, the nightmares happened because of him.

I can think of Charlotte and I can recall the screams of my staff at my parents’ home, people who were family to us, murdered by Antonio.

To me it was Donny’s fault. So I’m surprised I can show this calm demeanor.

“Is Charlotte here?” I ask.

“She’s in her room. You can go up and see her. She got back a little while ago and looked …upset.”

This must definitely be the new version of him because he would have never said that many words to me in the past and he would have never said them in relation to Charlotte.

“Thanks, did she say what she was upset about?”

“No, couldn’t have been you though. In the past I knew when she’d seen you. It was … well, her face alone was enough to let me know when she’d been with you. They all thought I was in the dark about it all. I guess I was and had other things to worry about.”

I don’t answer. I don’t want to. He’s fucking right he had other things to worry about. Things as in people like Antonio he shouldn’t have been messing with.

I make a point of showing him I’m not going to give a reply to that and make my way past him and up the wide staircase.

Out of the corner of my eye I notice Marie come out of the kitchen with Cordelia but I’m not here for some reunion.

I just want to see Charlotte.

I find her in her room just like yesterday, except she’s not standing by the mirror. She’s reading a poetry book. She’s sitting on her bed, knees hugged to her chest as she reads.

She doesn’t look at me straight away.

She would have known it was me here from the roar of the motorcycle engine.

Setting the book down she finally gazes up at me. Her hair is in a high messy bun and her face, free of makeup, gives her a childlike appearance. Especially with the sunlight gracing her dewy skin.

She looks like the goddess she is.

She rises to her feet and stands by her bed, bringing her hands together with the grace of a ballerina.

I glance at the book on the bed again and… remember it. It’s the poetry book she read to me in our time spent in the meadow. It was the first time I knew I loved her. It’s a different feeling to declaring a woman yours.

“I remember the book,” I state and the hint of a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth.

“You do?”

“Always baby. I remember how your eyes would light up when you read Tennyson. In Memoriam.”

She looks away and her gaze lands on the mirror. Another reflection is in there. It’s us. This is us ten years later.

“In memoriam… Be near me when my light is low, when the blood creeps, and the nerves prick, and tingle; and the heart is sick, and all the wheels of being slow…” I recite the verse I remember from the poem. I remember it for the way her eyes used to sparkle when she read it.

She looks back to me, surprise suffusing her beautiful face. Of course she would be shocked to shit that a mobster like me would remember such a thing. I’m surprised I remember too but over the years I carried pieces of her in my heart to remember her.

“Be near me when I fade away.” I continue and a tear runs down her cheek.

That stuck in my mind because I wondered what it would mean to fade away.

Over the years I think I came pretty close because the man I was even days ago was on the edge and at risk of losing everything.

I don’t remember much else of the poem. What I said though is enough to let her know what she means to me. She knows I’m not the romantic she probably deserves but what I thought counted was – I tried to be what she needed and I’m still doing it. I will still fucking do it because the look on her face says I’ve lost her all over again and she’s about to dish me that explanation she was going to give me yesterday.

“Gabriel Giordano, you will not fade away. You will be remembered long after you walk this earth. But you don’t need me to be near you to be a legacy, or a legend. Me though… I don’t want to fade away.”

“I won’t let you,” I promise her and I mean it.

She shakes her head though. “You can’t decide that.”

“I just did. I’m deciding it.”

“You have no control over what can or can’t happen. No one has.” She shakes her head.

My breath hitches and I want to tell her she’s wrong. I can’t though. “So, this is it?”

She nods slowly. “It has to be.”

“Why?”

Sadness comes into her eyes, tainting the shimmer of any love I may have seen in her for me. “I’m leaving this life behind, Gabe. I’m leaving this.” She waves her hand around and clenches, making a fist.

“Your family? You’ll leave them?”

“Not exactly. I mean I’ll be in touch. But in the sense that I may see them over the holidays if I choose to. Thanksgiving, Christmas day, a phone call here and there to check in on them but that’s all. It will be different for you. I …can’t see you at all.”

I bite down hard on my back teeth and feel my blood boil and start to simmer.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“Why the fuck not, doll?”

“Gabe… your family is known. I’m just going to say it. People know you as a crime family. You have enemies, you have friends that could turn enemies. I can’t be with you because of who you are and it’s not because I don’t feel the same way I always did about you. I don’t want to live my life in fear ever again.” Tears roll down her cheeks. She wipes them away and steels her spine and continues to explain. “I don’t want to live in danger, or live the next ten years of my life scared that something will happen to me. I’ll get taken, or someone will die. Or I’ll do something and it will cause death.”

My lips part to tell her I’ll protect her from everything, but I stop.

I can’t say it.

I can’t tell her that, because I can’t do it. I can try and I can die trying but I know the life she means. She wants the vanilla.

“Charlotte…”

She shakes her head again. “No Gabe. This has to be it because when it came to it all we all got the eyeopener that there are some things beyond our control. No one could save me. I was only eighteen when I was taken away from my family and I had to watch a monster murder my brothers and my Abuelita right in front of me. Then I had to marry him and endure ten years of horror. No one could save me… not even you. So please… please, let me go.”

I hang my head down and consider it all. I do… I consider it and I know the answer before it hits me. It’s the answer I don’t want.

It’s however something I have to do.

I lift my head and stare at her. All I can do is nod and one more thing.

I walk up to her and lower to her lips.

She moves to me too.

One last kiss that feels like the first. It’s brief like the first too and has the same effect of sealing her presence to me.

It’s all I can take.

I can’t even look at her as I leave.