Kingpin (An Italian Mafia Romance) (7 page)

“I’m sorry, Donnie,” Stephano says.

“Hey, we don’t have time for this shit,” Frankie interrupts. “We made the score, now it’s time to go. Wrap it up.”

Right on cue, everybody starts moving. Frankie shuts the door in the back, Stephano climbs into the driver seat of the truck, and the rest of us run towards the cars that are hidden in the darkness up the road. My father hits the driver in the back of the head with the gun, knocking him out, and we leave him there in the darkness.

Once we’re back in the car and driving away, my father can no longer hold in his excitement about how things just went down.

“Holy shit, this is huge!” he exclaims. “Did you see how much shit was in the back of that truck?”

“Fucking beautiful,” Frankie agrees. “You know what else was beautiful? Fucking Boy Wonder back there. Did you see him kick the shit out of that guy?”

“Oh my fucking god, I know! What did I tell you?” Dad yells.

“He’s a fucking natural, Donnie,” Frankie says, turning back in his seat to look at me. I smile, because I don’t know what else to do.

“You did real good back there, Dominic,” my father says, looking at me in the rearview mirror as he drives. “Real fucking good. I’m proud of you. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I answer, still smiling. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Fucking Boy Wonder,” Frankie says again, still looking at me and shaking his head like he can’t believe it. “Congratulations on your first score, kid.”

Alannah

I
get to the bench before Dominic does today. It’s not as beautiful outside as it normally is. Maybe that’s my subconscious making it seem worse than it actually is, I don’t know. I feel nervous. Anxious, even. On one hand I’m excited, on the other hand, I feel terrified and I don’t even know why. I have no reason to fear Dominic. Other people might, but not me. Yet, as I place my back pack on the ground in front of me, I feel like he’s about to be upset with me, and these days, nobody wants Dominic Collazo to be upset with them.

I hear the door to the school slam behind me, and I know it’s him. My heart quickens and I have to make myself breathe or I might not do it right. I hear his footsteps because he’s big and he walks heavy. Even his walk is intimidating. He sits down across from me and smiles, so I smile back to keep it light.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.”

“Why you looking so nervous?” he asks, so I know I already messed up the smiling part.

“I don’t know. I’m not nervous.” That’s a lie.

He chuckles a little. “Okay. So, you said you wanted to talk to me, and now I come out here and you look like you’re about to get the electric chair. You’re making
me
nervous. What’s up, Alannah?”

“Nothing’s up, really. How was your day?” I ask, stalling.

“My day was fine, but you ask me about my day all the time and you never look this nervous. Your note said you needed to talk to me, so just get to it, crazy.”

He’s being playful and smiling, so maybe this will go better than I thought.

“Okay, so I need to tell you something,” I begin. Dominic puts his big arms on the table and leans forward to listen. “Do you know Bobby Pistone?”

He twists his mouth and looks down, thinking.

“Bobby Pistone. Oh yeah, Bobby Pistone. Tall eighth grader on the basketball team, really skinny, blonde hair.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t really associate myself with guys on the basketball team, so I don’t really know the guy, but I know who he is. What about him? Did he do something to you? He say some shit to you?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that,” I reply, making sure I clarify. I don’t want Dominic to get the wrong impression or it could be a problem for Bobby.

“Okay, so what about him, then?”

“Well, I have, like, five classes with Bobby, so we see each other all the time.” He nods, and now that I’ve started, my heart is going crazy. “He’s always looking at me and stuff, and kind of flirting, and I guess I was kind of flirting back a little. He’s always making jokes. He’s really funny. I bet you’d like him if you guys got to know each other. Umm, anyway, so me and Bobby were talking in third period today, and he told me he really liked me. I was super nervous, but I told him I kind of liked him, too. And umm, he kind of asked me out this morning. I mean, I was beyond nervous because nobody has ever asked me out before. I’ve never had a boyfriend or anything like that. So, anyway, I said I’d go out with him. I told him yes. So, I guess Bobby is kind of, like, my boyfriend now. Or something.”

Dominic doesn’t respond, and his eyes drop down to the table between us. He’s completely silent and it’s making me feel bad, so I have to keep talking.

“I wanted you to be the first person to know,” I continue, but he doesn’t look up. “You’re my closest friend, and we tell each other everything, so I wanted you to know this.” He still doesn’t look up at me. “Dominic?”

He takes a minute and it looks like he’s trying to gather his thoughts. He stays silent, and the only sound is our breathing and the rush of the wind around us. Of course, today would be the day our parents are slow to arrive.

After two minutes of silence, Dominic finally moves. He reaches down and grabs his back pack off the ground and places it on the table. He starts reaching inside of it like he’s looking for something, until he finally pulls out a little white box and places it on the table in front of me. He slides the box over until it hits me in the chest, and then he stands up.

“I got this for you a couple of days ago,” he says, looking at the box instead of me. “I meant to give it to you and talk to you about some stuff, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Guess it’s too late.”

I look down at the box. “What’s this?”

“It’s an iPod. I got it from Best Buy a couple of days ago.”

“You got me an iPod? Wow, aren’t these expensive?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Just take it, it’s yours. I’ll talk to you later.” Dominic hoists his back pack over his shoulder and walks away, never making eye contact with me.

“Dominic, what are you doing? You have to wait for your ride,” I plead, but as soon as I finish, I see his mother’s car driving towards the parking lot.

Dominic walks to the road and waves her down. He climbs into the passenger seat, and they drive away without him ever looking back at me.

As I watch them go, I feel like I just messed something up—like an opportunity has been missed. Something about it feels wrong, but Dominic and I are strong, so no matter how wrong it feels, I know we’re strong enough to survive it.

Alannah

Y
ou ever get the feeling something bad is about to happen? It’s like a little warning inside of your heart that tells you to watch out, because everything is about to go wrong and you need to be prepared. Well, that’s how I feel waking up this morning. It’s in my stomach like a cancer waiting to be discovered—it hasn’t been officially diagnosed yet, but you can feel it eating away at you from the inside.

There are rumors about Dominic now. Over the past couple of years, the kids in school have been drawing their own conclusions about what he and his father do to make all the money they obviously have. Donnie Collazo has had a different car every year, and Dominic is one of the best dressed kids in school now. Not to mention the fact that he seems to have every electronic device known to man. Last year, he gave me a new iPod before that version was even available for purchase. Kids are nosy, so when a guy goes from being normal to being picked up and dropped off at school by Italian guys that look like they’d have no problem slitting someone’s throat, people talk, and since Dominic and I are best friends, they talk to me.

I spend a lot of my time trying to convince people that Dominic’s father is simply a casino business man. I say that because that’s what Dominic tells me to say. Apparently, a year or so ago, Donnie Collazo became part owner of River City Casino & Hotel and started making big bucks. Around the same time, all these news reports and newspaper articles started popping up about potential organized crime going on in downtown St. Louis, and the FBI started looking into it, but they didn’t have anything solid yet. Even my father started complaining about Italians coming in downtown and running big businesses. The next thing I knew, there were rumors and stories about people going missing and being beaten up inside the casino by people who looked like they worked there. There was even one story about a young Italian kid helping to cut off some guy’s pinkie finger for trying to pocket chips at River City. Once that story started spreading, everyone thought it was Dominic. His level of respect went through the roof. Anyone who was brave enough—or dumb enough—to disrespect him when we were younger, wouldn’t dream of doing it now.
Teachers
respect Dominic Collazo. The principal talks to Dominic like he’s the president. Everyone believes that he’s somehow connected to this wave of Italians downtown, but they don’t know for sure.

I do.

The best thing about my relationship with Dominic is that we tell each other everything. It’s been four years since we met, and we get closer every single year. Even through the few boyfriends I’ve had—all of whom Dominic has despised—and the few girls he’s been interested in, he and I are still close. That closeness brings honesty.

And trust.

And secrets.

We’re best friends, so when Dominic told me he got the new iPod from Best Buy, I knew he didn’t mean he bought it. He didn’t come right out and say it, but I understood what he meant, and he knew I knew it. When he took me out to dinner after we graduated eighth grade and paid for it with a wad of cash that was nearly too thick to fit into his pocket, I didn’t think twice about it. When I asked him about the pinkie story and he grinned like The Grinch without saying a word, I knew it was true. When he bought me a watch for my fifteenth birthday that was nicer than anything my mother has ever owned, I just smiled and accepted it—and hid it from my parents, of course. Dominic has never said the words mafia or mob to me, but it’s been implied enough times for me to know, and I don’t care.

Our relationship is complicated. The truth is, the things I know about Dominic only make me like him more. I love that I know things about him that other people wish they knew. From the very beginning, Dominic has done nothing but make me feel safe and special. He’s the reason I’m the only popular girl in school who doesn’t have rumors being spread about her. Nobody talks about me behind my back, and guys wouldn’t dare disrespect me like they do other girls in the school. Like I’ve always said, nobody wants to be on Dominic Collazo’s bad side. Dominic goes out of his way to make sure I’m taken care of, and he’s been doing it since the day we met, so I would never break the bond we have. I’d never betray his trust, and he’d never break my heart.

A few guys have come and gone, but Dominic has always been there. Even though I think I’ve always known the way he feels about me, he’s always supported me when it has come to dating. He’d do his best to convince me he wasn’t upset about anything, but when I got a new boyfriend, I could always tell it was killing him inside. I just never thought of Dominic in that way.