23- Be Still

Alejandro For f*ck’s sake... First mama chasing a false lead into the plane crash, and now this. Sitting heavily against the chair and not on it, I turn my head showing my displeasure with the words that just dared escape from Peter’s mouth. As if I could allow it, even if I wanted to. He knew this, so why come at me with this sh*t? “I can’t just allow you, Peter.” He is my right hand. Without him, I will be basically lost until I can fully replace him. He’s been with me almost ten years now- straight out of Junior high school. We actually met in this same tired pub we now are at, playing this game of pool. The smell of old cigarettes and rum does not bother me here. Anywhere else and I get a headache. This place is a comfort to me, so I endure it. “I’m begging you, Ale,” he says in an only-between-us tone, and I close my eyes, willing my building anger to calm itself. My jaw works overtime. Peter is getting engaged but his current girlfriend wants him to quit us. “It’s not me Pete,” I say but it is a fib- partly. “You can’t just walk out of here. It’s a whole different ball game outside. People get to hear word of it and you’re a target.” I hope to talk sense into him. Taking out a cancer stick, (cigarette) I light it, taking in a drag. “She’s a target is what I’m saying.” Peter shoots a ball down the right centre pocket and then straightens his back slowly looking at the board for his next pocket. His head nodding off as he concentrates on the other ball. Solid. “I hear you, but we plan to move.” “Ese tío es un gilipollas.” Flying up, I go over to him and push his chest back a bit roughly. “Don’t be foolish. Once a mafia, always a mafia. You cannot escape it. When people think you quit, you and your family become a target.” Not from my family but our enemies. We are not small and very well known. Our affiliates are loving us or hating us and even the ones that love us, envy us and would no doubt take any opportunity to destroy us. A past member of our mafia family is prime rib to them. It would hurt us and hurt us deeply no matter how much that person claims to have parted ways from us. And Peter is not just anyone to me. He is practically my family. The only thing that divides us is no blood relation. I will possibly die for Peter if it comes to that and so will he for me. As my caporegime, Peter has a very stern role to handle. For and to me. Everyone answers him when I am absent. Though Paolo is like the president of our family, thus making me vice president, but everyone knows I, more or less run things around here. “Take my arm if you will,” I mutter to Peter, because without him by my side, I would be the same as that. Saying nothing, he pockets another ball. “What do you want me to say to her, huh?” he mutters after missing his next shot and I grab the blue chalk. “She’s scared Ale. Fcuking scared. She cries every day- I can’t do that to her.” Bending low, I pocketed a stripped ball and sent one of his down as well. While I am good at pool, I am not an expert. I have other important things to be an expert at. “She’s pregnant.” “Putamadre.” (motherf*cker) Hissing, I send all my balls down, including the white ball before I speak next. “You cannot leave. No.” “You think I’m asking you?” He ignores the white ball and does not make a move towards the board. My eyes open wide at his challenge. “You had better be Pete, otherwise I would shoot you myself.” I glared at the neatly dressed man in grey jeans, brown boots and a blazer as his eyes filled with angry tears. He swallows and clenches his jaw. “It would be better that way.” “I thought we were friends Ale. Better than this.” Pinning him with a fierce look I reply, “This is me protecting you as a friend. No.” Peter gnaws his bottom lip a bit and roughly wipes his spilled tears with the back of his hand. I know what he is thinking. I thought the same when I was younger. I wanted out of the family and back then I had not even joined in any of their activities at the time. All I knew was that the woman I loved wanted nothing to do with me because of it. Uma. So, I left home. But I returned and became part of the mafia. You cannot run from what is in your blood. I have learned so much since then. Like Uma was a grown woman and I was a child, this is why she laughed at me. In her eyes, I was a boy and nothing more. Also, the mafia protects its own. To whatever depts needed. It also goes after blood. Innocent or not. Other mafia families also live by the same code and Peter knows this. I cannot allow him to simply think he could walk away and remain safe and alive in this town or any other. They would hunt him down as if he were an animal. Tear him apart like one too. He and his girlfriend. Even their family would become victims if he were not found- until he is. Too much unnecessary blood spilling when all he had to do was stay put. Just be still, my eyes beg him. I finish my Jack Daniel’s in one shot, furrowing my forehead, waiting for him to finish the game, but he is unmoving. “The police cannot protect you, chamo, (friend) you know this.” Doubting Peter even thought he could do this, my frown deepens, and I pick up my discarded jacket from the tall table we occupied with our drinks, disappointed in my friend. We live by rules even if we do break laws. The Mafia thrived by following a strict set of rules that included a code of silence for all its members from associating with the police. Omertà; refusal to give evidence to the police about criminal activities. Heavy-hearted, I leave the pub knowing that if Peter does not show up tomorrow in my office, I might find his dead body on our property. Or maybe nothing at all and just a message delivered to inform me of his end. Sometimes we don’t leave a body, but our code entails that the family must be notified. By the time he joins me outside, I have brought the car around. Peter is usually the one driving me out but we both remain silent as I drop him off, not even bothering to glance at the woman who sat on his front porch. I have never met her, nor do I wish to, now. Why bother with her when I might see her d*ad body soon?