roses made of lead | Vito Scaletta

Chapter 19 - The rest of the story

It was a freezing January afternoon and I was pulling one box of stuff after another inside. The house was beautiful. It looked just like the commercials. It was exactly what I wanted.

But it didn't feel like home. Home for me was this half-ruined little apartment I've been taking care of for eight years. This is brand-new, modern. It's got appliances I've never even seen in the stores.

I put the box in the living room and looked around. Vito was just walking past me.

"I can't take it anymore, can you bring the rest of the stuff in? I can start unpacking," I sighed with exhaustion and sat on one of the boxes.

"Sure, no problem," he winked at me, but paused. He came closer to me.

"But I was wondering if you'd like to try out the new bed a bit?" he whispered, stroking my cheek. Here we go again.

"Vito..." I laughed sadly.

"What? We haven't had anything together yet," he sighed and stepped away from me again. I felt a little sorry for him. But I really wasn't in the mood for this.

"I know, but I just... I don't know," I lowered my gaze and went next door to unpack. But Vito stopped me.

"I don't want to wait any longer, I want to get to know you in another way, finally," he said quite angrily. But how can I fulfill this if I don't want to? I broke away from him and this time actually went to unpack.

His clothes in the closet, my clothes in the dresser. He didn't have that much stuff, so unpacking was really just a matter of one afternoon.

We left a lot of the appliances and furniture in the apartment, there was no reason to haul it here, we'd just have stuff twice and not use the old stuff.

So after unpacking things, I sat on the bed and looked out the window. I was so scared to start living this life. In a house, with a guy who kills for money. And pretending being someone who was born for this life.

What was I born to do? I was doomed to the lower society at birth. And Paulie knew it. And now I'm sitting on a bed in a house he could never afford.

The view from here was really nice. It was getting dark and I could see the city lit up outside. It was like a fairy tale.

Vito came into the room and that was the end of the fairy tale.

"Do we want to at least open the wine or something? I'll have to work tomorrow, you can come with me, but I'd like to get some more rest today," he sat down next to me and I turned to him and nodded.

...

We were sitting in the living room, by the window, but it was open just enough to keep the cat from slipping out. Cookie liked it here, she had a lot of room to run around, Vito even mounted some steps on the wall so she could crawl somewhere other than the kitchen counter. I'd really like to know what she thinks sometime.

I sipped my red wine and looked at Vito, who was telling me again what he'd experienced. Sometimes it's awful to listen because I wonder how many times he could have died. And how many times he might do similar things again.

True, he won't let the hotel floor blow up again, but he will spill more blood. When the hotel thing happened, I was a few blocks away. And I didn't know then that my future partner was responsible. I went from a quiet city life to this.

"Well, Henry recognized me at the hotel, you know who he is, right?" he lit another cigarette and I nodded curtly. I don't remember much, but the name is enough to tell the story.

"So Henry came to us afterwards, said he'd rather work for Falcone, so Eddie gave him the job of getting rid of Galante."

"But, Galante, like Leo Galante, right? He survived," I wondered.

"Yeah, because I went to see him, hid in the closet with him, and Henry found us there. He saved him and I went to take him to the station, but keep quiet about that in front of Eddie, for sure," he laughed. You saved him and then you shot him. In his own car.

"Henry and Joe and I were really best friends, at least for a while. We went to bars and brothels together and did work together. Because we wanted to make some serious money, we borrowed thirty-five thousand dollars from Bruno the loan shark, where my father was in debt, to buy drugs from the Triads."

I listened carefully, watching his smile straighten down. He wasn't smiling anymore, he was more like crying.

"Selling those drugs was making us a decent profit, but Henry was a snitch. And it came down to this. The Chongs chopped him up with cleavers in front of me in the park where we were meeting. So we took our revenge into our own hands and went to get rid of a big chunk of them."

I patted his hand sympathetically and took a sip of wine. And I had never noticed such bloodshed in all my time in the city.

"Then I found out Derek Pappalardo killed my dad, so he showed up on the other side of the gun, too," he sighed.

"Well, now we're almost to the present, Leo came back to tell me I could redeem myself by killing Falcone, so I did. But after all that, I couldn't let myself lose Joe too. So Leo had to go."

"And that's when we met..." I said.

Vito pulled me into his arms and remained silent. Silence was needed.

I'd heard his whole story, or at least his main storyline. He always forgets some details and fills them in, like when he's driving in the car.

Sometimes it makes me sick that his hands, which have touched several dead bodies and made even more bodies dead, are touching mine, a tender woman's.

But I guess I haven't really resisted emotion and love, even though the thought of getting into the dirt sooner than fate intended bites me.

But I really meant it with him. My feminine naivety wouldn't let me let someone like him go. I'd already grown attached to him and was suffocated by the idea of him doing to another what he'd done to me.

So I wanted to prove to him that I was worth it, too.

"Like you said, we can go to bed..."