Page 62 of Long Live the King
Dominic
“It’s open.”
Frankie pushes the door open slowly, looking around the room as he enters. He has a scowl on his face. Something in him is different than when he left, and I don’t have a good feeling about it.
I expected it, though.
“Where’s Alannah?” he asks, still looking around the room.
“She left. We needed some stuff from River City, so she had to go get it,” I reply, breathing a sigh of relief that my explanation keeps him from investigating the room any further.
Frankie nods his head as if he’s giving me some sort of approval, then he takes off his leather jacket, revealing a nine millimeter housed in a harness that wraps around his shoulder. He stands at the foot of the bed constantly nodding his head, convincing himself of something I can’t see. I feel my nerves starting to flare as he puts his hands on his hips and looks around the room, everywhere except at me.
“So,” I start, treading lightly. “What’d you find out?”
Frankie finally brings his eyes down to me, his mouth twisted into a sinister scowl as he lets out a loud exhale. This is definitely not the same Frankie that left the room a few hours ago.
“What’d I find out?” he repeats, nodding his head, working up the courage to say whatever he’s thinking. “Well, for starters, as far as Victor is concerned, you were right. Victor gave Giovanni the order to take a shot at you, and the Commission gave him the okay to do it.”
“Well, at least I know I was right about something,” I reply. I sit up in the bed as best I can, trying not to put too much pressure on my leg and shoulder. “But you said that was for starters. There’s more?”
Frankie’s muscles stiffen as he prepares to answer.
“Yeah, there’s more. As much as it fucking sickens me, there’s more.”
I swallow hard as the temperature in the room feels like it just went up twenty degrees.
“As I was finishing talking to Big Sal about Victor and the Commission, I got a call from one of my guys who works in the St. Louis Police Department. He says they got a call about a fire in an abandoned house in E. St. Louis, right off the bridge.”
My heart nearly explodes in my chest, but I can’t do anything now but listen to Frankie tell me what I already know. I was worried he’d run into this info, and it turns out I was right.
“He tells me when they finally put the fire out,” Frankie continues, nearly snarling with anger, “there was almost nothing left. Except inside, there was a body. Tommy’s body.”
Suddenly, Frankie reaches his hand up as fast as a lightning strike and rips the gun from the holster. He aims it at my face, his grip tight on the handle, and his finger trembling on the trigger.
“You knew Tommy was dead!” he snaps. “When I asked if we should tell him, I could see it in your face, you knew he was already dead. It wasn’t about trust for me, it was about Tommy already being gone! Now you better tell me what the fuck happened to Tommy.”
He’s shaking with anger and confusion, but the danger of him pulling the trigger is very real. I feel the usual heat building up inside me as I swallow hard and think carefully of how to explain this to him. Frankie is loyal, and he’s confused. A boss killing the underboss without permission or reason is not something that would sit well with an old head like him. I try to remember that as my anger from the fact that he’s pulled a gun on me boils in my stomach like lava in a volcano ready to erupt.
“Yeah, I had a feeling you’d find out about Tommy,” I begin, speaking quietly. “And I had a feeling you’d be a little pissed. I can understand that. I get it. But, I needyouto understand that he left me no choice.”
“That’s not a good enough explanation,” he barks.
Frankie is so distressed from having pulled a gun on me that he’s shivering like it’s cold in the room. He’s so mad he has veins popping out of his neck and forehead. He’s so focused and blinded by his anger that he never hears Alannah open the door to the bathroom. He doesn’t hear it until she chambers a round of her own and the sound echoes off the walls of the small motel room.
“Put the fucking gun down, Frankie,” Alannah says in a soft tone. So soft and menacing it puts a smile on my face.
Frankie freezes. He leaves his gun aimed at me, but he tries to look over his shoulder with just his eyes. Alannah stands behind him holding a twenty-two, her eyes ablaze with the anger of a woman who has had enough. She’s tired, and she’s willing to do anything to bring this to an end, even if it means killing Frankie right here, right now.
“I should’ve known you didn’t leave,” Frankie comments. “But if he doesn’t start talking, I guess we’re all gonna die in here tonight.” He adjusts his eyes back onto me, waiting for me to explain, but when he looks at me, he sees I have a nine millimeter of my own trained on his face.
“Okay, Frankie,” I begin again. “I know you’re pissed right now, and like I said, I can understand that, but we both know that pulling a gun on me isn’t a good fucking idea. If I didn’t need you, you’d already be dead. If I didn’t believe that I could trust you, I would’ve already pulled the trigger while you were focused on Alannah. But I didn’t. We’re in a tight situation right now. I didn’t call you here to kill you, but you’ve taken it to that level by pulling that gun. You know me better than that. So, we can either all kill each other, or you can let me explain why this situation is so fucked up. I’m not gonna lie to you, but I can’t make you believe me. I killed Tommy in that house because that’s the house he took Alannah to when he kidnapped her and held her hostage. He took her there because Alannah figured out he was the one who took Victor’s truck. He was the one who took Victor’s money, and he was the one who shot Dan and killed Raphy. It was Tommy all along, and when Alannah put the pieces together, he was gonna kill her too. You know I couldn’t let that happen.”
My words hit Frankie right in the chest, knocking him off balance. He blinks quickly, like he’s trying to bring his world back into focus. He’s caught between two guns and a ton of fucked up information.
“Bullshit,” he snips. “Why would Tommy do that? He had no reason to fucking do that.”
“Because my mother told him to,” I interrupt, feeling embarrassed by the fact. “She dug herself into a hole she couldn’t get out of by asking Tommy to help her remove me from power. She didn’t want me to end up like my father, and that thought attached itself to her brain and wouldn’t let her go. Even when the two of them realized their plan was obviously flawed and wasn’t thought out at all, they were already in too deep. I think deep down, Tommy saw it as a way for him to become the boss of the Family, and once the ball was rolling, there was no stopping it. He didn’t kill Raphy because he wanted to, he did it because he had to. My mother gave him an idea, and he took it and ran away with it. She confessed it when I confronted her, then she killed herself.”
