The Long Walk into his Arms
      Chapter  4
 

I pressed shaking fingers to his throat, praying silently that I would find a pulse. It was there and strong and steady. Once more I fell against him, sobbing heavily, thanking God. As he lay still beneath me, I pressed my ear to his heart and found my cries fading as I concentrated on its beat. I lay there for what seemed an eternity unaware of anything other than the feel of his solid, warm body beneath me, the strong beating of his heart, when he suddenly stirred.


I sat up and his eyes, still glazed with pain, met my own.


"Nino." His voice was barely above a whisper and for a moment I was confused, unsure of the meaning of his word and then I remembered, the last few minutes went flooding through my mind. I shook my head back and forth, tears spilling anew.


"Danny, I can’t. I can’t look -" I couldn’t even say his name, I couldn’t, didn’t want to acknowledge what I had done … again.


"Michelle, you have to." His voice was louder now and firm, so very firm. I met his gaze and once more shook my head.


"I can’t."


"Michelle, listen to me. I’m too weak, I can’t do this. I would if I could, but there’s no one else we can turn to … no one we can trust to help us. We have to do this."


"What do you mean?" I didn’t know, I didn’t understand what he was saying, "Danny, we just call the police … it was self-defense, it was -" I broke off crying, unable to speak, not wanting to think.


"Michelle, sweetie, it wasn’t." And again I saw that sorrow in his gaze and I didn’t know what it meant. Suddenly the meaning of his words rang through, "what do you mean? It was - Danny, it was self-defense."


He shook his head, "no, it wasn’t. I attacked Nino. He tricked me into coming here. Then he called you. Your next step should have been either calling my mother and doing this the Santos way or calling the police and abiding by the law."


I looked away, not wanting to listen to his words, his logic but he kept on speaking and everything he said made sense, terrible, terrible sense. "But you didn’t do either of those things. Michelle, you took the gun -- a gun registered to a member of a notorious crime family - and you came here and you held that gun on him. And you killed him. You -"


"-But he was gonna rape me -" I interrupted him.


"-Prove it!" He broke in with, an intense urgency filling his voice.


"I can’t! But he shot you, he hurt you -" and again he wouldn’t let me finish, "- because I put him in the hospital the other day. Michelle, do you honestly think the police would care if a couple of gangsters did each other in? No."


"But, I’m not --"


"What? A gangster? No, you’re just a gangster’s wife who took her husband’s gun and the law into her own hands. Michelle, you’re not Ed Bauer’s little girl anymore. You’re the wife of Daniel Santos. Maybe Frank Cooper wouldn’t come down on you, but his superiors wouldn’t give a damn what you were like before you met the big, bad Mafia. All they would care about is that you are my wife and you exacted revenge and they will use you to get to me and my family." He paused and there was that sadness again, so deep in his eyes and when he spoke, that sorrow echoed in his voice.


"And they will have grounds."

I sat back on my haunches, dazed, feeling suddenly lost when moments before I had been safe in my husband’s arms. He was right. I knew he was right and now I understood his sadness, I understood why he wanted me to leave. I was in. It was too late; I could never turn back now. Mick … Mick was an entirely different situation. I had been an innocent. I had been merely protecting myself. But tonight I had come to the docks, prepared with a gun, fully loaded, ready to kill another man if I had to. And I had. I had killed a man. Again. Taken another life.


I turned slowly, so slowly a distant, foolish part of myself hoping that there would be nothing to see. He lay there in an undignified sprawl, blood staining the ground beneath and to the side of his body. Nino.


I rose slowly to my feet and stared down at the young life that I had taken. For the moment it didn’t matter that he had held a gun on my husband, that he was going to kill him, rape me, that he had beaten Danny … for the moment he was just a young man who would never breathe again. Just like Mick.


Mick Santos, my husband’s brother, a man I rarely thought of because I hadn’t wanted to face what I had done. A man whose life I rarely acknowledged because I was responsible for his death. And I wanted to live in my fairytale of true love with Danny, I wanted to forget the dark deeds and anger and violence that had brought us together. So I had locked him away in a corner of my mind, alongside my mother’s death and my father’s part in it, alongside the cruel things I had done to Eve before accepting her, alongside the devastating way I had cut Jesse out of my life even if it was for his own safety.


I stood looking at this dead young man and found tears running down my face for the loss of his life and for Mick’s. I turned to Danny and tears were wet upon his cheeks as well.


"I’m sorry," I whispered and he looked confused, he didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. "I’m so sorry that I took your brother away from you. I’m so sorry that I killed him." And then I looked back at Nino’s body and found myself on my knees, my fingers running across the bloody concrete, "I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …" and on I kept murmuring and the tears wouldn’t stop flowing and then Danny was behind me.


He held me in his arms and he whispered soft words that meant nothing into my hair and he rocked me back and forth, his hands clasped tightly in front of me and I could only cry and apologize over and over again.

His voice seemed to come to me from a distance. "Michelle, I know this hard. I know, but we have to clean this up." As his words filtered through my brain, I stiffened slightly in his arms and pulled away, turning to look at him.


"What do you mean?"


"We have to get the bullet." My eyes widened in repulsion, but he continued. "And we gotta dump his body in the river and clean up my blood. We have to erase any sign that we were here. They find his body, they’ll just assume it’s a mob hit. They may suspect me, but without the bullet, they won’t have proof and they’ll never think of you."


I shook my head back and forth, "no, Danny. No."


"Yes."


"No! I won’t do it. I won’t dig through his - God, Danny, no, I can’t do that." And I was crying again, but he was insistent.


"Michelle. Michelle! Listen to me! If we want to get out of this without the cops none the wiser we have to get the bullet. They know what type of gun is registered to me. They know. If they have the bullet, they can get a warrant and they will trace the bullet back to me. I won’t let you take the fall, you know that. But I would prefer that neither one of us has to go to prison. And in order to avoid that …" he trailed off and I finished numbly, realizing the truth in his words.


"We have to get the bullet out."


"Yes. I’m sorry, I’ll help. I’ll do what I can, but I’m barely hanging on here. I need to get home, I need to rest, I need to get cleaned up before they show up asking me questions." I looked him in the face and saw that he was understating his physical state. There was exhaustion and agony etched into every line of his face. Even the slightest move brought a wince to his frame and he was having difficulty even maintaining consciousness. Whatever Nino had done to him, coupled with the gunshot wound, our frenzied sexual need and this conversation had worn him out almost completely.


I was going to have to this myself.