Tempted By The Mafia Boss

Nick

“Noooooooo!!!!” I shout from what feels like the deepest part of my soul as the bullet slams into Mia.

Terror stabs into me.

It splinters my mind and crashes into my soul.

“Noooo!” I wail again when her beautiful eyes widen, her lips part, and she grabs on to my shirt. “Nooo.”

This can’t be happening.

And yet the laughter continues. Her brother’s laughter. In that fraction of time, the split second I hear another click- clack from his gun, ruthlessness takes over.

Ruthlessness whips my hand around and I fire a single shot.

One bullet to her brother’s head end’s him.

It was my mistake to spare him. I spared him for her.

No one would know what it meant for me to do that.

Now look… look what I did.

Mia’s hold on me tightens and blood pours from her side. I lay her down and look her over. There’s so much blood. Too much.

Too much.

“No,” I shout over and over again.

Gabe and Vincent rush up the stairs and over to us.

“We have to get her to a hospital,” Gabe cries.

I hear him but it’s all a messy disconnection of his words and his movements.

I can’t tear my eyes away from Mia.

Tears stream down my cheeks and she reaches for me touching my face.

“I love you…” she whispers. Against the dark bruises on her face, I see the paleness take her. “I’m so sorry about Tommy, Nick…”

“I love you, don’t you dare leave me. Don’t.” I shout and look to Vincent. “Help me, please… Vincent, help me.” I plead with him.

He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. I’m not even sure what the fuck he could say to me. He drags of his jacket and places it to her side in an attempt to contain the blood but within seconds his jacket is covered.

Mia is covered in blood and we’re both just looking. We can’t do anything.

Gabe is on the phone talking to the paramedics.

The stab of terror pierces my heart. It clutches my insides and claws its way through me as I realize I’m losing her.

I’m losing her.

The tears pour from my eyes and I can’t see. I can’t breathe.

I just can’t anything.

“Mia!” I wail.

The slight hue of blue on her lips is enough to let death take me too.

She deserved so much better than me.

So much better than this.

This is my fault, no matter the connections with her brother. I dragged her into the darkness and this is the result.

“My angel…”

I’m a shadow of a man, grief stricken with pain and cursed with memories.

It’s too much.

Everything that’s happened is just too much and I can’t bear it.

I stand with everyone who came to the cemetery today and gaze on at the coffin.ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

It’s the standard mahogany, glossy and eerie.

I hate funerals to no end.

Hate them because while others may say they show a certain respect to the person you love. For me it’s goodbye. Goodbye as in goodbye forever, and ever.

No coming back.

All you’re left with is memories of how that person came into your life and how they changed you.

I watch the coffin lower into the ground and tears fall, including my own.

It should never have happened. None of it and I wished I had the power to turn time back to fix things. I knew if I had power like that so much would have been done differently.

The loss hangs in the air and I’m helpless again. Nothing I can do to fix it, or change it.

There’s not a single memory in my mind that doesn’t have Tommy there. I never thought I’d be at his funeral, watching his wife grieve for him while his parents hold his baby.

I’m torn and broken. I can’t find my way back to me.

That one day two weeks ago changed everything.

Tommy died and Mia very nearly did too.

Nearly?

I sound like I have hope. How dare I have hope here? She’s in a coma at the hospital.

She walks the line between life and death and like Tommy I don’t know what fate will decide.

A coma again, and I’m in the same place I was in weeks ago.

Helpless.

The next hour goes by in a blur.

I’m at the cemetery. I talk, I say things, I say goodbye, I tell Sherine I’ll be there for her when she needs me, I promise to check in on her. I leave.

Vincent drives me to the hospital. I’m so cut up I can’t think and I just resume the thing I’ve been doing since Mia got shot.

I take my place at her bedside and wait no matter who’s there.

When I arrived it was her father. He’s barely left her side too. Her friend Chloe is the same, although it’s me who’s here day and night.

I don’t want to leave just in case something happens.

The bullet wound was two millimeters away from her heart. That was how close I came to losing her. That close.

She lost so much blood. That alone caused the coma. And the wound, although it didn’t get her heart, was near fatal. When she came into hospital, she had surgery straight away and then the doctors managed to stabilize her. She’d been in this coma since, healing.

I watch and I wait and I keep my fucking eyes peeled to the monitor that keeps check of her heart and vitals. I watch and wait and hope.

She looks so helpless, but not desperate anymore. Not desperate at all.

Since I knew her family situation would be the thing she worried about the most I took care of that.

Took care of it big time.

Hector Ramirez was found indeed. Him and his crew. Vincent dealt with them, tried to reason with them but fuckers like them don’t reason with anybody.

One bullet to the head later and the problem was solved. Vincent got all the money back that Mia and her father paid Hector and gave it back to her father.

As for the Fontaines… that night two weeks ago also laid down the law and make a stand when Joey Fontaine was shot multiple times. One of the Fontaine brothers dead was sure to cause a ruckus, except it didn’t.

Not yet anyway.

Not yet.

The rest of them hadn’t made their presence yet, but we all knew that didn’t mean shit. They were just planning I’m sure, but I don’t care about that.

What I care about is right in front of me.

I decided, or rather I promised myself that if she wakes up, I’ll say goodbye.

I’ll say goodbye to her and leave her to live a normal life.

She doesn’t belong in my world and who knows what will happen next.

The problem with a war like the one we let loose is the aftermath.

So I must say goodbye.

She doesn’t have to worry about anyone ever again coming for her and she should live her dreams to be who she’s supposed to be.

She was supposed to be the lawyer. She told me she devoted her life to studying law. I don’t know anyone who talks like that about their career. It’s who she is though. It comes from deep within.

Angel… doll.

She still looks like that to me. Hallowed and sacred… a dream and a wish my heart wants but mustn’t have.

I just want to see her wake up.

In my wild imagination though I allow my mind to take over and imagine what I wanted for us.

The image fills my mind for the millionth time and it makes me smile. Even as I look at her pale skin and my beautiful girl attached to tubes.

Night fell an hour ago and the moonlight outside reminds me of all the times I watched it grace her. Like God himself lent me one of his angels.

I reach over the bed and take her hand. Her dainty little hands.

“I wished we spent more time talking. I should have spent more time talking to you,” I say to her still form. She has that peaceful look on her face Tommy had and while it freaks me out I don’t allow it to get to me.

“I was so caught up with you and so damn into you that I couldn’t think straight. I just wanted to touch you, every day, all day. I don’t even know what your favorite flowers are. I bought you lilies. Calla lilies. They remind me of you. Sweet and delicate and I have this wild fantasy of you having the garden full of them. I make this pond for you at the house and you love it.” Now here’s where the fantasy gets crazy. “You worry though that our kids will fall in the pond because while it’s not that deep, it’s deep enough because we have coy carp there and the babies love watching the fish. We have a dog too, like the one you liked so much when we went walking that time. I bought him for you as a wedding present.”

It was a black Labrador that reminded me of the dog Tommy had as a kid. Mia loved the one we saw and it loved her. Of course it would. The lucky bastard was just as helpless as me when the angel touched him, stroking his fur.

My hands shake when I look around the room and see all the lilies I bought her. Maybe its best I stop thinking, and talking. I’m caught up in the vision of her though, so I continue the wild imagination of the couple I see in my mind. The people I wanted us to be.

“You were so shocked when I asked you to marry me, I’m not sure why though because you were always it for me… I thought I was in love once. I won’t deny I was. I won’t knock it either because it happened and I promised myself I wouldn’t let love come for me again. Then you came along. The difference between then and now is that I’d move heaven and hell to get you back. Fuck, I’d move heaven and hell to have the future I want for us. When I look at you I see forever.”

Fuck… I really am a little bitch. A tear rolls down my cheek and I can’t stop the next.

I start to bring my hand holding hers up to my face but the grip of her fingers stops me.

She grips my finger, my index finger and groans.

Part of me thinks I’m imagining things; the other part remembers what happened with Tommy and I freak out.

This can’t be it.

Her eyes, however, flutter open and tell me otherwise. My lips part when the angel looks at me with her sea green eyes and gives me a weak smile.

“Nick…” she breathes my name barely above a whisper.

“Mia!” I practically shriek and bolt to my feet.

“Nick… I … love you…”

All I can do is stare at her. I’m staring. She’s just woken up and those are her words to me.

“I love you too…” I pant, I’m trying to think. I have to get the doctors. Have to get them but I don’t want to leave her.

The weak smile widens and she looks around in a daze.

“Baby I’ll be back,” I promise.

“You’ll come back to me?”

I nod feeling elated, but also deflated.

She’s awake.

She came back, but that means I have to say goodbye.

I lower to kiss her lips and rush to get the doctors.

I only stay for a little longer, just to see its real that she really did wake up and that wasn’t part of the dream.

When her father and Chloe come I go.

One last look and I leave.

It’s my goodbye and my heart shatters.