in regards to women. Tommy’s right, before Alannah came back, I wasn’t interested in anything serious with women. They got one night of my attention and my dick, and then that was it. The possibility of something more was never an option because I never wanted to risk the distraction that emotions cause, and I never wanted some girl finding out more than she needed to know and going and running her mouth to anybody. One night was all anyone ever got. But Alannah isn’t just anyone.
Alannah is the one. She’s the one and only and she always has been. So, it doesn’t matter if Tommy and the guys don’t understand right now, and it doesn’t matter if Frankie doesn’t get it either. Every capo in The Family is married, and so are Leo and Jimmy, and almost all of them have a gumar on the side, so they got no room to judge me for anything.
I wouldn’t give a fuck if they judged me anyway, because when it comes to Alannah, something’s different. With her, all of the rules change.
Alannah
The boxes on the floor are driving me crazy, but it’s worth it to have my own place. It took the landlord a couple of days to get my apartment ready, which is why I had to stay in River City, but I was able to start moving in this morning, and although it sucks having to unpack, it feels good to have a place to call my own.
It’s only been a day since I almost died at Isle of Capri with Dominic, and the memory is still a fresh wound that hurts when I think about it. I dreamt about it the night it happened and developed a new level of understanding for people who go to war and experience PTSD. My situation only lasted a few seconds and I’m a total wreck, so I can only imagine if it had lasted days, weeks, or months.
It wasn’t long ago, but I’ve spent every second since then thinking about it. Thinking about Dominic. I haven’t heard from him since that night, but I’m glad because I don’t know what I’d say or do at this point. I feel like my dreams of what it’d be like to come back to him came crashing down around me like the exploding glass window. I had one thing in mind, and I initially thought that thing was going to come true. However, reality has a way of slapping you in the face, and that’s exactly what happened.
Dominic Collazo, the beautiful Italian I fell in love with when I was just a teenager, is still gorgeous, and the emperor of sex appeal. He’s even a bigger bad boy now than he was before, but there’s a price that comes with it that I simply didn’t take into consideration.
A teenager who’s a bad boy is almost never as bad as he seems. He probably smokes, or doesn’t take shit from anyone, including adults he should fear and respect, or he dresses like he doesn’t really give a damn about anything. It’s usually something on the surface, but deep down, he’s just a kid trying to find himself.
An adult bad boy is much more dangerous. An adult bad boy is the one who’s into the illegal things that can bring you the most trouble. An adult bad boy knows who he is, knows he’s bad, and doesn’t care a bit. It’s real when they’re bad men. That’s Dominic.
As a kid, Dominic was everything I wanted, and he’s still physically everything, but he scares me now in a way he couldn’t before. Maybe it was because I didn’t know about everything, and I was a bit na?ve when it came to his father and the Italian ancestry. Well, I know about it all now—I know how the police view the mafia and I know the history of it, and after the shooting the other night, I can’t help but look at Dominic differently. At least, that’s how I think I feel before I hear a knock on my front door.
It’s nine o’clock in the evening and I’m unpacking in a new apartment, so I don’t know why anybody would be at my door right now, unless it’s the landlord checking up on me. So, I pause for a minute, holding a plate in the kitchen and assuming my visitor will realize they have the wrong house and go away. But there’s another knock. I put the plate