“I can do this,” he says quietly. “It’s eighteen steps. I counted last night with Casso. Eighteen steps from the kitchen to the table. I can do this.”
I bite my lip and say nothing. He hasn’t taken more than ten steps without help since I met him. That’s not to say he can’t pull this off—it’s totally possible he can swallow his pain for the time it takes to cross the room. Eighteen steps, all things considered, aren’t that many.
“It’ll prove nothing,” I say, unable to look at him right now. “I think you can do it too, but it’ll prove nothing.”
He doesn’t respond right away. He knows how I feel about this and rubbing his face in my disapproval won’t help anything, and yet I can’t stop myself. As a professional, I have to try to convince him to take it easy.
“I didn’t grow up in a house that taught me I could be anything,” he says quietly, almost so softly I have to lean closer to hear. “My father always said we could do great things, but only if we’re willing to sacrifice for it. People that succeed do so through hard work and sometimes luck. I was born with a lot of things, but never the belief that I’m invincible.”
“What do you have to prove?”
“That I can be more.” His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “It’s not about my injury anymore. It’s about proving to myself that I can be more than just—” He gestures at himself. “More than a gangster in a suit.”
“Eighteen steps won’t do that.”
“No, you’re right. Eighteen steps won’t fix whatever’s broken inside of me, but it’s a good start.” He nods to himself like he’s making up his mind. “The PBA will be here shortly. We’d better get into position.”
With that, he climbs out of the car. I watch him go, crossing the parking lot as quickly as he can, leaning heavily on his cane. I follow slowly, keeping my distance, my head spinning with what he said.
He wants to be something more. I try to imagine what it must’ve been like for him growing up in a house with a father that dragged him down into a basement hell to torture him. It’s impossible to guess what kind of damage that did, permanently and irrevocably. And I wonder if that’s what he’s really trying to do, attempting to prove that he can be more than his trauma, than his pain and suffering, that what his father did to him as a child isn’t what he is now.
That he can be more than the man he was forced to become.
Eighteen steps. That’s all he’s got right now.
We head in through the front. Casso’s there with a few other Capos I don’t recognize. We’re led into the kitchen where I’m left near the doors with a decent view of the dining room. The staff doesn’t even look up as Fynn sits on top of a prep station.
“Last chance to turn back,” I say with a smile.
He acknowledges me with a laugh.
“That’ll never happen.”
We wait in tense silence. Men appear, trickling in, until Casso is seated with his Capos and several older gentlemen in suits around a large table. There’s a single chair, directly across from where Fynn’s standing behind the kitchen doors. He takes a breath for luck and holds out the cane.
I take it from him. He balances on his own legs, on his own power, and nods to himself.
I reach out on impulse and touch his hand.
“Good luck.”
He smiles at me. “I don’t need luck. I have hard work.”
He pushes through the door, and he walks.
One step. Two steps. He’s not limping, not too badly at least. He’s not shuffling. His back is straight like a general walking into a room filled with his troops. The men at the table look over and spot him, and several halfway rise to greet him. Casso seems normal, like he isn’t worried at all.
Ten steps. Eleven. He’s nearly at the table now, striding confidently. Sixteen. Seventeen. He’s at the chair now. And that’s when it happens.
We didn’t practice sitting down.
He pulls the chair out like he normally would, but his legs don’t respond the way he wants them to and he stumbles. He catches himself on the table, but there’s a moment where everyone’s staring at him, and several of the men I don’t recognize from the PBA look nervous. But Casso says something, and Fynn says something in return, and the group of them laugh. Fynn sits down heavily, gestures and says something, and the meeting continues.
My heart’s racing and my mouth is dry, but he did it. God, he did it, eighteen relatively normal steps without his cane and one stumble at the end, but he did it.
“I was hoping I’d find you here.”