When he was finished, he sat there breathing hard. He didn’t look at me, didn’t look anywhere. His eyes were glazed and unfocused, and I could tell he wasn’t seeing anything around him.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “His sister was right. I got Davide killed. That was my fault.”
“No,” I said. “He knew what he signed up for.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m supposed to take care of them. I’m supposed to make sure shit like that never happens.”
“We got unlucky,” she said. “That guy… he wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“It doesn’t matter, don’t you get it?” He looked at me and I was surprised to see the depth of his anguish. “Davide’s dead and it’s my fucking fault.”
I sat there, at a loss for words. I wanted to speak platitudes, tell him time heals all wounds, that he just needs to keep going forward, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The truth was, I couldn’t imagine that Steven had so much emotional depth inside of him, and I was completely taken aback.
He took deep breaths to steady himself. I sat there and waited until he seemed to calm down a little bit. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
“I’ll make sure his mother’s taken care of,” he said. “Fuck, I knew about his dad dying, but I forgot all about it.”
“You have a lot to handle,” I said.
“Yeah, I know.” He opened his eyes and looked at me. “I’ll take care of his sister too, if she’ll let me. Pay for her college at the very least.”
“I’m not sure you owe them that much.”
He waved a hand. “I can afford it. I only wish…” He trailed off and stared out the windshield.
“Only wish what?”
He looked at me. “That you didn’t have to see it,” he said. “You were next to him when it happened.”
I bit my lip and looked away. I rubbed my palms over my thighs and clutched at my jeans.
“Yeah,” I said. “I keep… seeing it.”
He grunted and sighed. “You will for a while,” he said. “You never really forget the first time you see someone die like that.”
“Does it get easier?” I asked and hoped he didn’t hear the note of desperation in my tone.”
“It gets a lot easier,” he said. “But you never forget. They’re fucking people, even if they are the enemy. It’s even harder when your friends go.”
“Yeah.” I choked back tears, swallowed against them. I wasn’t going to cry, not right now. I barely even knew Davide, not like he did, and I knew he wasn’t going to cry, either.
He reached out and took my hand. I looked at him as he held it and stared forward out the windshield. We sat there for a few minutes, not talking, just his hand holding mine. I watched his face as he seemed to relax more, letting the stress of the day leave him bit by bit, leaving him hollowed out and drained.
But no matter how tired he looked, there was always more to do.
“Come on,” he said. He released my hand and started the engine. “I have some meetings to go to.”
“Meetings?” I smiled a little. “I forgot you were a very important business man.”
He gave me a little laugh and a small smile. “Something like that. I can drop you off at my place or at the bakery, which would you rather?”
“Bakery,” I said. “I don’t think I want to be alone.”
He nodded and didn’t speak again as we pulled out into traffic.
18
Steven
Davide’s funeral was a week after my visit to his mother’s house. The war went quiet for a while, and I didn’t push against the Club for a few days. Maybe I should’ve kept pushing while I felt the momentum, but instead I drove around the neighborhood with Luca, plotting out our next hits and planning what we’d do for revenge.
The day after Davide’s funeral, I woke early, drank coffee, and sat on my front stoop. The world woke around me and I breathed the Philly air deep, smelled the faintly cloying scent of gutter water, smog from too many cars in a tightly packed city, trash from the bags left to rot in the heat a few houses down. It wasn’t a perfect city, but it was my home, my fucking city.
And my guys were my fucking crew.
I got up and headed inside. I knocked on Colleen’s bedroom door at just after six in the morning, the sunlight barely starting to drift in through the windows.
“Wake up,” I said. “I’m coming in.”
I pushed the door open and found her sprawled on the bed, one leg out from under the sheets, her ass barely covered by a little pair of navy-blue boy shorts with white polka dots. I stared at her body as she rolled onto her side and glared at me. Her hair was a mess and her eyes blinked rapidly, trying to wake up.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Get up,” I said. “We’re going for a ride.”
“Right now?”
“You can shower first if you want.” I gave her a look and a smile. “Or you can just come like that. Either way’s fine by me.”
She groaned, grabbed her pillow, and flung it at me. “Get out.”
I laughed and shut her door.
I heard her shower run ten minutes later, and ten minutes after that she was sitting in my car sipping coffee from a black to-go mug with a sullen look on her face.
“What’s so important that you had to get me up?” she asked.
I pulled out into traffic. “I want to talk about your dad.”
She went still. We hadn’t talked about her father for a few days. I hadn’t heard anything from the Club, and I was starting to think they’d killed the fucker already.
But I had to operate like he
