He raises his gun again.
“Hear me out, for fuck’s sake! My father thinks that your burden should be carried by your whole family, but I disagree.”
The gun lowers, but Stefano keeps his eyes locked onto mine, each of his decisions landing on a knife’s edge. “What does that mean?”
“It means, Mia can walk, unharmed.” I lean forward, put my arms on my knees, clench my jaw. “But for that to happen, there can’t be any debts hanging over her. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
He nods his head, falling back into his chair. “I had no choice. Mia deserved a chance of a normal life.”
“We all make our choices,” I say, and I reach out and grasp the barrel of his gun. He looks at me, then tightens his mouth as he releases it to me. I place it on the table and reveal the colt from the back of my pants. I point it at him as Vinnie walks in, his face in disbelief.
Tears start to fall from the man’s face. “Would you tell Mia I love her? That I’m sorry?”
I stand up, point the gun so that when it goes off, the bullet will go through his temple, killing him instantly—without pain, without suffering.
“She already knows,” I tell him, placing my finger on the trigger.
* * *
I toldVinnie to drop me off at a bar. I needed some time before I headed back to the house.
“For what it’s worth, boss, in the end, I think you did the right thing,” Vinnie tells me before he drives off.
I walk into this dive of a bar, just the kind I need right now. The kind where you can slump over the table with a bottle by your side and no one bothers you. I order a beer and a whiskey chaser and find an empty booth and hide myself from the world. Heavy guitar riffs sound out over the speakers. Whether Vinnie thinks I made the right move or not, it ain’t going to mean shit when I’m facing Mia. And I’ll do right by my word—if she wants to leave, she can. The debts cleared as far as I’m concerned.
Persuading her to stay, on the other hand, that’s going to need some doing. I guess that’s why most of the guys I know only have pussy on the side, because, at the end of the day, that type of pain you get from a person you love, that’s the kind that you’ll never recover from. I down my drinks, call to the barmaid to bring me another. Yeah, best let the poison soak up some of this pain for me.