"How's your job going?" My dad pops his head into the room startling me. "I didn't mean to scare you. You're not usually this on edge."
It's excitement jitters. But I can't say that to my dad. I can't tell him how much I care for Tony and what we've been doing. He would flip his lid.
"It's going surprisingly well. It's not stressful at all and I get along with Luca."
He smiles and takes the mail from me. While sifting through it himself, he asks, "And how is it dealing with Tony? I know he's a one-of-a-kind guy who can be a bit temperamental at times. Let's just put it that way."
I imagine sucking his dick, him licking my pussy, grabbing my tits, and losing my virginity to him. But I guess losing my virginity to him falls under all those other categories as well.
"We've been professional. He's not temperamental around me I would say." His O-face pops into my head. Am I a bad person?
"Well, that's great to hear." He places the mail down on the table. "You know I'm really proud of you…going to school and taking this job. I know that working for a guy like him can be scary because well, I don't know what his nighttime job is but it's a weird place to be in."
"I think you know full well what his nighttime job is. I was meaning to ask you that…how do you guys have a business relationship at all? You're both day and night."
Just saying the word night out loud has my mind imaging me lying next to Tony in the darkness.
My dad has this long face on. It's like he's contemplating whether or not he should even be thinking about telling me what the answer is. This makes me intrigued. How can I not be?
He lets out a sigh, sits down at the dinner table, and then says, "If I tell you I don't want you to judge me. I think you're old enough to know now."
My jitters have increased tenfold. "You can tell me anything, Dad." Who am I to judge my father, especially after the fact that I had sex with the man that we're about to talk about?
"Ten years ago, there was a guy who assaulted a woman. He assaulted her in many ways, if you know what I mean. He left her for dead pretty much and she died a few days later in the hospital. This guy was wanted, every cop in town was looking for him. And it was by sheer coincidence that he came running into my shop. He starts telling me that the woman's brother is after him and he needs a place to hide. I'm just taken aback by the whole situation and I'm stuttering my words. I'm not even really speaking coherently at this point. And then Tony walks in, literally darkening the doorway as he does, his body and his presence so big and brooding. First time I ever saw him…will never forget it.” My dad pauses and just shakes his head in disbelief. “Out the window of my shop, I see two other men in leather jackets, just standing there looking left and right as if they’re just keeping tabs on the area while they wait on someone. That someone of course was Tony. I knew they were with him just because they all kind of looked similar. You know what I mean? They're a bunch of Italian guys. They're definitely not with the assaulter who’d just come running in looking for refuge. I’ll never forget the final look that guy gave me…his eyes filled with tears and trembling. Tony shoots him in the head just as easily as I butter a piece of toast for our Saturday morning breakfast. It was the first time I'd ever seen anyone die. He collapsed on the floor instantly, blood just pouring from his skull. Without blinking an eye, apologizing…anything…Tony calmly offers me a hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet. He also says that he'll look after my store until the day he dies if I keep my mouth shut. I take a deep breath and look away, not sure I should even be making eye contact with him. The guy just committed first-degree murder after all, and he’s not even breathing hard or frazzled one bit. But when I look away, where do my eyes land? On the front page of the newspaper on the counter. It has the face of the man that Tony just killed. I scan the headline, the thing just repeating over and over in my mind in rapid succession. I didn’t need to read the article because I had already read it earlier that day. I knew what the guy had done. So where do my thoughts go then? To you. As a father, how could they not? All I could think about is what if this lifeless guy bleeding out on my floor had done what this despicable piece of garbage did…but to you? I would probably do the exact same thing. So, I decide right then and there that I’ll take the money and put it away for your college. Tony had the money in my hands within twenty-four hours, a man true to his words not to mention a hundred grand was worth even more back then than it was today. We’ve been friends ever since. We have mutual respect."
I'm blown away. I'm literally blown away.
"I'm not ashamed of you for doing what you did, Dad. Not one bit. Actually…thank you.” I wrap him up in a hug before continuing. “I'm just surprised that you kept this from me. I'm surprised that you wereableto keep this from the world. This is nothing like you. You won't even kill spiders around the house because you feel bad about ending their lives."
"So you're not taken aback over the fact that Tony killed someone?"
For some reason, this particular question hits me even harder than the story. When dad made that decision all those years ago I wasn’t involved, not even a bystander. When he told the story all I had to do was listen and process something that happened ages ago. But this question and how it relates to me now? I’m an active participant in Tony’s life, a very active one. As I heard dad’s words my mind started to act, to think about just how being with such a man affects me moving forward. I have a decision to make, and dammit if I don’t immediately think back to the gun on the nightstand. Was it the same gun that he killed the guy dad just spoke about with? I have so many questions.
"I'm not surprised. I feel like he's done worse. But I don't want to think about that."
My dad nods. "We've spoken a lot throughout the years and he told me that after that murder, he hasn't killed anyone since because he doesn't want to go away to prison. I think that whole thing changed him to where he's been a lot safer. He doesn't want to lose Luca. So I wouldn't look at him as a murderer or some cold-hearted man. He has limits you know. I think he wants to do the right thing. And he's changed a lot."
I lost my virginity to a man who killed someone. This is going to be hard to reconcile, no matter how much I try and falsely justify my mind into doing it. What if for some reason in the future my dad got on his bad side? What if I got on his bad side? What if we continue to grow closer to the point where he gives me his heart and then for some reason I pull away, whether in reality or just that he perceives I have. Would he feel threatened, angry, spiteful, jealous, or of course revengeful? And would he have any trouble putting me six feet under so no one could ever have me but him?
"You okay? You look like you're in deep thought. I know this is a lot for you to take in. Your boss killed someone after all."
I snap out of my little mental state of worry and say, "I'm good. Like you said, it's just a lot to take in but I kind of agree with you. Despite what I’ve just learned about him, I know Tony is a good man who loves his son a lot. He didn't kill his wife though, right?"
My dad laughs way harder than I’d expected him to. "No, he didn't kill his wife. She just couldn't handle being a mother. And not every woman is built for a life like the one that he has. I don't know if he necessarily sees it that way. For her to go off the grid, and for her to not want anything to do with her kid…I think it had to do with Tony's life and her not wanting to be associated with any of it. Plus, I don’t think they were ever really in love. As a matter of fact, I’m sure they weren’t."
I nod because it makes a lot of sense to me. It puts my mind at ease when thinking about everything concerning his wife. Because I don't know, there was a lot of mystery there that I wanted cleared up. For her to just disappear away from a man who could make people disappear himself, well, one can't blame me for thinking the worst. "So were there any other people in the store that day that saw what happened or…"
“A couple of people fled. All they saw was a shooter and the dead body and I don't think they put two and two together. By a couple of people, I mean two. It was early in the morning. They didn't even really get a good look at Tony at all, especially thanks to the low angle of the sun and the reflections off all the glass. I'm really the only one that knows what he did. I think the feds have been trying to catch him for years on something, almost for sure unrelated, but like I said he's been very careful with everything that he does. He essentially doesn’t commit crimes anymore. Everything that gets carried out in the D'Angelo family falls on his lower rank dudes. But I don't really know much. And that's by design."
The sound of the doorbells breaks the conversation, and it’s quickly followed by the knock of someone with heavy hands. We both look at each other because it's not an ordinary knock. Like I definitely know it's not the mailman or a Jehovah's witness.
"I'll get it. Just stay here." My dad bravely leaves the chair and walks over to the door. I'm scared but at the same time I know Tony's in my life and stupidly I believe that he's like a superhero who will arrive when his Spidey-sense summons him as if he can just sense when something’s wrong and he becomes the hero that everyone needs at the right place and the right time. I'm foolish, having already given him the halo effect to an infinite multiple.
The door opens and I notice the face immediately from where I'm sitting. It’s a big man all right, but he doesn’t bring fear at all, only anger because he’s not the man I was expecting. It’s Mason Brady, the annoying FBI agent having somehow found out where I live. I guess it's not too much of a stretch because he is an FBI agent after all.
"Oh, you're here. Good," he says, looking at me.
"Can I help you?" my father asks. Based on Mason's windbreaker and tacky looking collared shirt, my father probably already knows it's an FBI agent.