Page 103 of Heartfelt Pain
My good hand reaches out, smoothing Roma’s brow. His muscles tense, shaking anyway.
“Nancy Mulligan told me,” I explain. The triggerman smoked as much as Aunt Macy. If you met her on the street you’d hardly believe the stocky, gray-haired woman could pull a trigger faster than anyone else. “She and a few others liked how I did business. How I treated everyone. She took me aside and told me that Cliff had asked one of her contacts to take me out. But the guy had called Nancy and that’s how I found out.”
She’d taken a long drag of a cigarette as I stood there reeling. I tried to process life as I knew it imploding. Then she’d handed me a cigarette and we sat there silently smoking.
“I killed Cliff.” My thumb smooths over his eyebrow. “It was me or him.”
Roma grabs my hand, pulling it to his heart.
“The other day I made it out like you’d made me kill my cousin.” Those first few years after it all played out I’d lay in bed thinking a part of my soul had shriveled.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world and Cliff hadn’t given me a chance to move back home. He wanted me gone for good. Meor him.
I chose me.
Cliff had a meeting at Fujimori’s. One I’d originally arranged and he’d taken over when he thought I’d fallen to the floor, heartbroken to learn the truth about Roma.
I went through the front door, my stilettos echoing on the black and white vinyl flooring. I took out a gun. The ironic thing was Roma had been the first to take me to a gun range. Though, it was Nancy’s voice that floated through my mind at that moment.Men kill so they can take what they want. Women kill to survive.
Cliff smirked when he saw me. Laughed slightly as he found my arrival amusing. I met his eyes when I shot him. A token of respect by any triggerman’s regard.
I stepped over his body, dropped into my usual seat, and conducted business with the Italians. Later I helped Jane get rid of the body. I cleaned up the blood because it wasn’t fair to her.
If I thought she would judge me I was wrong. Women know monsters. And they’re very rarely sad to see them go.
“How do you want this to go?” I ask him in the dark. “You. Me. Us.”
“Us,” he whispers, his thumb running up my arm.
“But how?” I ask. “We were kids sitting in a booth eating ramen. It’s not even about the work. About my job or what you end up doing with your life. How do we move forward? Do I avoid your dad at all major holidays? Do you apologize for breaking my heart every day? Do we act like nothing happened because we’re stupidly?—”
“In love,” he interrupts.
My body itches, my skin erupting in heat. I try to take my hand back.
He doesn’t let go. “We love one another.”
“We are terrible together.”
“We’re only terrible when my dad’s involved.”
“He’s your dad.” I know Roma stepped back from his family after the debacle. He avoids his parent's phone calls and Max and Elijah have well surpassed him in the business. His job is secured due to nepotism.
The petty monster inside me wants to tell him to walk away. To flip his family off and go no contact like so many other people do.
Except he’s got a twin brother. And there’s this stupid nagging sensation every time I think of his mother. Plus, Lennie is all but married to Elijah and she’s my best friend so how can I tell him to cut contact with his brother when I get no less than five texts a day from her.
“They’re your family,” I whisper in the night.
I’m just some girl he met in a restaurant one day. We could bury the hatchet between us. I’ve already forgiven him for his part. His father twisted him into the man he is. But girls come and go. The Zimins, as annoying as they are, are forever ingrained in this city.
“We’ll just ask Gia Akatov to adopt us,” Roma says.
I start to laugh, biting down on my lip to stop.
“It’s where Elijah spends holidays now.” His foot slides over mine.
“This could just be sex.” We’ve always been good at it.
