How We Got To Live

A piece of crime and romance for you - Desperation, rage and flight, all in one tidy package...

"What do I always tell you?" I said. Gently moving her hands away from her crying eyes, I softly repeated, "What have I told you since the minute we met?"

She looked up at me, through mussed-up hair, with bloodshot eyes, never so sad, ever so beautiful. She whispered between sobs, "That you won't never lie to me."

I kissed her on the top of her head, just enough pressure to reassure her through her matted hair.

"And have I ever gone against that?"

"No, honey, you ain't." She cautiously tried a smile, tried to look over at the bloody wall.

I pulled her face back up to mine, kissed her lips, careful not to hurt them where they bled.

"Then you know I'm telling you the truth now, baby." I stroked her face, stroked her forearms the way that always calms her down, touched my lips to her left cheek, blocking her view. "And I'm telling you everything is going to be okay. But only if we leave now, and fast, and without looking back. 'Cos if we don't, we are sunk."

"Okay, honey, I believe you. We gotta go."

"Go wait in the car, baby, I'll be right there."

I blocked her view all the way out the front door. Then I went back to the body.

There he was. An hour ago, he was still the meanest piece of s**t I ever knew. Now he was nothing, just an object. I'd been around dead people enough to know that normally they get heavier than they were alive, but this guy... I'd tried to stop him beating on some poor f**k who hadn't had the sense to step out of his way in a bar more than once, and my hand on his shoulder... I could have been trying to stop a moving car.

Now, a half-solid push with my toe was enough to roll his arm against the table, and back again. A good kick to the temple rocked his head back on his neck, and his whole body further against the wall. The crunching noise would've made me puke in another life, but this was the one with him in it, and I'd seen and heard a lot worse.

It was a s****y life. But he'd finally given me a way out of it, when he did what he did.

After what he did to her, I wanted him back alive, just so I could kill the f**k out of him all over again.

I pulled him up and onto the chair... he slumped over the table like I'd seen him so many times, drunk as daddy, twice as mean as daddy's dog. Some brother. Some f*****g friend. I reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the zippo. Good lighter. Real good for blowing s**t up.

Up the path to the car, never looking back, sudden oppressive heat pushing down on my back as the family home exploded, and her beautiful, untidy face, behind glass suddenly awash with brilliant orange reflection.

And we did what we said we'd do: We left, and fast, and without looking back.

And his associates must have liked how it all looked, once the flames died down. Because it's five years later, and we're still breathing, only now there's three of us.

It turns out mob money buys diapers just as good as any other kind... and I can deal with us living European, as long as we finally get to live.