Lenny's POV

"Explain?!" I spat out, throwing my plastic bag at him. "How the heck are you going to explain this?"

He dodged-he always had surprisingly fast reflexes-and groaned, pulling up his pants and buckling swiftly.

"Sofia is a friend,"

"I'm sure she is," I seethed as he approached me. He had the audacity to wear 'that' smile, the one that usually had me melting in a puddle and swallowing any half-baked apology he had to offer.

Not this time... or ever again.

"Len... look, I'm a man," he gestured to himself like it wasn't obvious enough, "I have needs. Sofia is just a distraction." He sounded so convinced with himself that if I had any less self-respect, I would have actually believed him. I dragged my palm over my face, the tears already beginning to bubble in the corner of my eyes. I already knew the answer to the question I was about to ask next, but I did so anyways. Perhaps a vain hook still lived somewhere in my heart as it crumbled into pieces. "Why didn't you call me even once? Why didn't you come and visit me at all? I waited all those years. I waited for you and nothing-not even one single call."

He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, then suddenly his voice went up.

"What the hell? You barge in and you're only talking about yourself. What about me? Do you know what I've had to go through in the past 5 years after your screw up?" The ground was suddenly spinning under my feet. I marched up to him. "My screw up? You're the one who ran someone over!" I stabbed my finger on his chest, my sadness boiling into rage.

He looked at me, his expression becoming strangely blank.

"Well, that's not what your confession says... or the court." My knees turned to water, and it took everything inside of me not to buckle and collapse.

"Rico, you sick-"

"It doesn't matter what you think of me now." He bent down, picked up my plastic bag, and threw it back at me. "The person with a criminal record right now is you, not me."

A bucket of invisible cold, icy water splashed over me. There was no hint of shame or guilt when he said it-just pure smugness.

I wanted to walk away; the sound of his voice alone was twisting my stomach, but he grabbed my wrist and forced me to look at him.

"Where do you think you're heading off to?" he said, a shift in his voice and tone making my skin bristle with unease.

"Away from this insanity... Away from you! I'll take back my life savings and-"

He laughed hard, a loud throaty sound that sounded as pleasant as garbage going down a chute.

"Just how stupid can you be?!" he snickered. "There's nothing left of that so-called savings of yours. I've spent it."

This time I collapsed, or at least I would have if he wasn't still holding me with that iron grip.

"Rico, you know how I got that money..." I said, shaking all over. I'd worked myself into exhaustion day in and day out, picking jobs that other people wouldn't touch with a 6-foot pole. I starved myself, eating just enough to keep my body in motion.

All of that couldn't have been for nothing. I can't accept it.

"I mean, there's some of it left..." He finally released me, went to the kitchen, and looked through some cabinets before returning with an envelope. "You got like 8k in there."

It was 7.

"How do you bring $200,000 to this?"

As though I was still gripping to hope, I asked him, "Was it for your Nonna's care?"

He chuckled.

"You really are stupid. I've never even met my Nonna!"

He sounded so proud of deceiving me, and I was just spiraling in my mind, thinking of all those times I'd lent him money, those late nights I was all alone because he was catering to her...

And when I took the fall.

Thinking I was keeping the family together, that I was saving a bond that I could only ever dream of.

I'd asked to meet her several times, and there was always an excuse.

Of course she wasn't real.

His hands found my shoulder. "Look, baby, now that I've been honest, let's put that all behind us and-"

He couldn't finish before I delivered a hook to his jaw. He was bigger than me, stronger maybe.

He staggered back, hitting the counter he'd just used to cheat on me, holding onto it as blood coated his lips.

"What the-"

"Pain wasn't the only thing I got from prison, you know," I said, holding the envelope. My eyes explored the apartment that was basically collapsing in on itself. Looks like my life savings had been squandered into the air.

In that moment, my whole body was an earthquake of emotions threatening to crush me.

But I gathered what was left of my strength... and my dignity.

"I wish I never met you, Rico. You're a vile, awful man and I curse the day I met you."

I left before he could see my tears, mourning for a love I never had.

That day I wandered around the streets of Florida aimlessly until night fell and the air felt oddly cold and sticky against my skin.

In my hand was an envelope that was a mere crumb compared to what I once had.

The man I've loved for eight years was nothing but irredeemable scum.

All the dreams I had of us-of a future, of the family life never let me have.

Where do I go from here?

I just want to quit... Nothing ever works out for me.

Lost in my thoughts, a flood of light hit me in the face. I heard the screeching of tyers, and yet I couldn't will myself to move.

The lights covered my vision and in a snap...

Darkness.

Vincenzo's POV

"I swear I'll get you the money! I wasn't running... I wouldn't dare...!"

Behind the pathetic pleading filling my ears, my 8 o'clock class loomed in my mind...I have an essay I've been putting aside. The professor was a pain, but he had a backbone unlike the others in my department, who shrank like snails into their shells when they saw him.

Coming back to the present, I allowed a snake of smoke to slither over my head then pushed back against the relaxing leather seating the begging fool before me had been enjoying before I barged in. The girls who were crawling all over him had sharper survival skills, as proven by how they immediately dipped when they saw me.

He, however, was drunk, his senses blurred. When Luca-a soldier often paired with me-walked in together, he gargled out, "Where are the girls? Tell them to come back... I paid good money for the spot."

"I know," I said far too quietly, sweeping off a half-empty bottle of whiskey from the glass table. "That's funny, because the last time we met, you all but told me that the only thing you had on you were the clothes on your back. And here you are, spending 10K at this club. Funny, isn't it?"

As I said all of this, there was not even the slightest trace of humor in my eyes. The burn of my gaze began to trickle into his consciousness and his eyes grew wider by the second.

"Vincenzo," he called out, his face losing color.

"It's been a while," I said, grabbing his flabby jaw and shoving the bottle between his open teeth. He struggled as the whiskey violently rushed down his throat with burning intensity. He coughed and wheezed, some of the droplets crawling to the sides of his mouth as the rest of it bubbled and more of it kept going down.

By the time I was done, he was coughing harder, his whole body shaking, his eyes red. Now he was on his knees, his eyes occasionally going to Luca guarding the door, hoping the more sane one of us might stop me. Fat chance.

"I'll get the money," he rumbled pathetically, his body drenched in alcohol and saliva. What added to my rage was that some of it had dropped on my clothes, too.

I shook my head tiredly. "You know how we do things around here. Three strikes and you're out."

He looked at me, a fresh, gleaming, disgusting hope written all over his face. "But... but this is my second strike, right? I still have the third! I'll get the money before then, I promise I-"

Before he could finish, my fingers had shot out with the cigar, using his face as an ashtray. I had made him strip off his shirt, and most of his upper body was covered with those small burns. He winced, but had enough sense to keep his screams locked away. There were several other spots where my cigar had gone on his face, and I wasn't satisfied with that.

I was supposed to be catching up on sleep; so far in the past 72 hours, I had been running on only three. I didn't really care what my Capo would ask; some days I felt like reminding him that my position was more important than his being my uncle.

"I don't feel right leaving you like this," I said, picking up that same whiskey bottle again. "You put me through a lot of stress to find you and at the very least I should thank you for that by leaving a parting gift that will make you think of me-and how much time you have left. Which is exactly 10 days. If you think of running again, it will be wiser to start shopping for caskets."

He looked at me with justified horror in his eyes, more pleas rolling out of his mouth, but such things had merely become background noise to me. Pain, blood, murder-I had become numb to it all.

Life was just a series of repeated emotions necessary for the familia; in essence, it meant nothing and everything. Look at me getting philosophical-not what one would expect from a monster.

I shattered the bottle, watching the shards fly and catching the color-infused lights of the VIP room. "Turn around."

He was now sniffling, but he obeyed, knowing what would come if he did not was far worse. Then, casually, I printed the next date-the date that could easily be his execution if he tried me one more time.

I wrote it casually, not minding that the glass was cutting into my fingers as well. Luca had to come and hold him still as he was beginning to shake. Then, as a last thoughtful gesture, I poured some alcohol on his fresh wounds just to disinfect them. His screams exploded through the VIP room and he collapsed. He'd survive; I'd seen men survive worse than that.

I cleaned my hands with his clothes, disinfecting my wounds as well-not like they were actually deep enough to hurt. I barely even flinched as Luca poured it.

Five minutes later, I was behind the wheel and Luca was next to me in the passenger seat. As he closed the door, he sighed. "Thanks for keeping everything PG-13 tonight."

I chuckled at that. Indeed, being by my side, he had seen far worse. I remembered the first time I showed him how easily I could have gone into surgery if I weren't part of the familia.

That was a rather funny joke, though; considering it, I could be nothing without the familia. He hadn't appreciated it then because he was too busy throwing up. Now he had a tougher stomach, and that almost made me forget his job was to watch me.

I dropped him off in our territory at one of his favorite spots-a strip club.

"Come in for a night," he said, throwing out the invitation he had given almost a thousand times. "The girls they have here are always something else. A perfect way to relax, if you ask me."

"Then it's not for me," I responded, putting the engine back in action. "I never relax."

And I meant it. Even in my sleep I was fully alert, ready for the next bullet that would be aimed my way. If I had lived my life in any other way, I would be dead right now.

But maybe just three hours of sleep in three days had worse effects than I expected, because I lost myself for a moment. Then, by the time I was fully awake, there was a woman standing in front of my car-inches away from an impact she could not survive.