.44 caliber love story

[Kuno]

.44 caliber love story
kuno x neptune

 

[Kuno]

If you knew today was the last day of your life, that whatever sins you wrought that day would mark what little legacy you had forever, that it would decide once and for all whether you were a devil from hell or a child from God…

Would you do it?

------------------------​

Cold rain was a blessing on their skin. It washed away the blood, the sweat, the tears - sins of the underworld and its ugly wars. Rain, like love, covered all things.

Even a body in the dark.

"Who found him?"

"Chico."

The boy's head was snapped back at an unnatural angle against the alley dumpster. Blood laid his once spritely curls flat against his skull on one side, and his mouth hung ajar, the bullet having rendered the mandible on the left side of his head useless. His eyes were wide open in shock. Of course they were; who really expected to die while taking out the trash at work?

Jackson stood over him silently. He recognized him; he wasn't one of his movers, per se, but he worked for him as a busboy in the club kitchen. Fresh off the boat from Venezuela and hungry for opportunity. He was...eighteen? Nineteen? Curt, but a good kid. Funny looking in a way best offset by smiling, which he did often. He'd seemed surprised that Jackson spoke Spanish.

Mira. He didn't deserve this. This wasn't his war.

"Don't touch him," Jackson warned a man reaching forward, and he - Isaac - blinked a bit, pulling back. "Not without gloves. The cops find him, and they'll be looking for prints. And you're in the system."

"What do you wanna do?" Gardner was glassy-eyed, though his posture was stiff. Even drunk, he could still pull a gun on you faster than you could blink.

"Take care of him. Discreetly."

God only knew how long the body had sat there waiting to deliver its grisly message. Rigor mortis allowed the cheap rosary to remain clutched in the busboy's right hand. The Italia had stuck it there after killing him, posing the boy as if he'd been in deep prayer. The men had become infuriated at the wanton blasphemy, but Jackson, ever calm, cool, and collected, had understood it for the message it truly conveyed.

Even God can't save you from what's coming.

They were going to get up close and personal with their war. Soon.

Jackson left the men outside to do their work, his face perfect in its neutrality. Almost as soon as he entered the building once more, the cacophonous noise of Money Manny threatened to deafen him. His nightclub was filled to the brim tonight. A banker in his back pocket had a daughter who'd just graduated college, and Jackson had graciously offered to let them use the venue for her friends. Of course, her friends meant some of his friends, and his friends - bankers, lawyers, politicians - were all people who Jackson would very much like to befriend as well. A man couldn't get everywhere just on bullets and knives.

The Dominican smoothed down his silk jacket, the raindrops from outside having blended in with the rich navy blue of his suit. In the main atrium of the club, music emanated from the DJ on the raised dais. A massive crowd of people danced around him in the pulsating strobe lights, and Jackson threaded his way amongst them, headed to the low-lit bar against the back wall. If he was lucky, he could sidle back into the banker's circle of friends unnoticed. He could cotton on to the conversation, making the needed connections for now…

And tomorrow, the war with Italia would come to a head.

 

[neptune]

What had once loomed large in the eyes of a child was now just...bulk. Giancarlo Derasmo was an old man, softened on the outside from time, dirty deeds, and too much pasta, but his eyes still carried a deadly sharpness. Time couldn't soften that particular edge. It was rare that he, God's Replacement, made a house call, but apparently, desperate times called for desperate measures. Silence filled the room save for the sound of the two men puffing on their respective cigarettes.

"I told you," Caspari repeated with a shake of his two-toned head, "that's not my game anymore. Whatever you've got going on with these guys, that's none of my business."

"Guns aren't your business?"

A plume of smoke preceded a frustrated snort, "that's different." Caspari lived and worked above his own gun shop, and had for the last several years since taking the chance to leave the organization. There was that old joke about his type going straight, making a clean living, but it turned out to be his reality. "What?" he followed up, "you wanna buy something?"

"I want you to put a bullet in this motherfucker's head!" Giancarlo stabbed his cigarette into the arm of the chair with extreme prejudice, his pudgy cheeks red with a growing frustration. "I'm not asking you. I'm telling you."

The war between pseudo-father and streetrat son was long and paved with small defiance. A naive part of Caspari had believed that he could wash the past off of his hands and never look back, like there wouldn't always be a laundry list of bodies as long as his arm tied to him like an anchor. Sweet freedom would always be a fantasy. "When?"

"Tomorrow." Pleased, Giancarlo eased back into his seat, the veins in his neck no longer pulsing quite so violently. "Our boy Jimmy left this prick a little present outside his club. He'll be ready, but he won't be expecting you."

"Your boy," Caspari corrected just to be waved off. He finished his cigarette, putting the butt out in the nearby ashtray like a civilized person. "Are you going to give me a picture? A name? I'm just supposed to guess and pop whoever looks like he's ripping off your territory?"

With a grunt and a little bit of effort, Giancarlo got to his feet. His leather shoes managed to shine in the dim lamplight, and he straightened his tie before speaking, "you'll know him when you see him."

"That's not vague at all."

Smiling his pleasant smile, charming as ever, the boss closed the space between them and took him by the back of the neck, forcing eye contact that Caspari would have liked to avoid. "Do what you do," he insisted, "make me proud of you again."

The goons Giancarlo brought along to protect his massive ass didn't flinch when Caspari jerked away. He didn't acknowledge the three as they left, closing the door as quietly as they'd opened it half an hour ago. A light flicked on down the hall, followed by a lithe shadow and the creeping of careful feet.

Who was that?

Caspari scrubbed a hand over his whiskered chin before reaching for another cigarette to cover the sickness in his stomach. "No one," he said blandly. "Go back to sleep."

He caught one hell of a glare from the kid. Bice was no longer a snot-nosed brat trying to steal the rims off of his car, but a well-adjusted sixteen year old with a built-in bullshit detector after years of watching it up close. "I'm not stupid."

"I know."

—​

From the high vantage point during the small hours of the morning, Caspari watched the comings and goings of the night club across the street until well after last call. The parking lot at the back of the building grew emptier by the minute as the bartenders and waitresses called it a night, followed by the DJ shuffling his equipment into a grey SUV. A politician's daughter was carried out by a bouncer who surely didn't get paid enough, and a group of unhelpful but slightly less drunk girls. They were loud.

So loud.

If they knew how much attention they drew to themselves—if anyone knew—they'd never feel safe again.

Traffic started to dwindle until there were only a few cars left. Caspari had been set up for hours now, lying on his stomach after getting rhythmically, methodically, setting up his gear. Work was old hat, and although Caspari sold guns instead of shot them these days, he'd never quite lost his touch.

"Come the fuck on," he mumbled to himself, frowning at a cold and particularly breezy gust of wind. The sooner this job was over with, the sooner he could go back to believing that he was just a normal guy.

The door swung open again, and Caspari watched a pair of well-dressed men exit the building. Through the scope, he could see them in perfect detail—the diamonds in their ears, the black and grey tattoos that crawled out of their collars and up their necks—he could even tell which needed a better barber.

The second one. Obviously.

But neither of these guys were the target. They couldn't be. They didn't have the look of someone arrogant enough to fuck with the oldest outfit in the city. That look would have been ambitious. It would have been ruthless. It would have stuck out in a crowd no matter how hard it tried to walk in shadow. Caspari would know it when he saw it; he'd snuffed enough of them out.

It was fifteen minutes before another sign of life. Just five or so cars left in the parking lot, only one worth six figures. Giancarlo's bane was framed in the scope perfectly, in oculis dei, just as beautiful and horrible as the last time they'd been face to face. "...Jackson," Caspari exhaled, his finger shaking alongside the trigger.

Before he knew what he was doing, or what was good for him, Caspari was packing his gear at lightning speed. He snapped cases, hoisted bags and flew the down back down the stairwell as fast as his inked legs could take him. His hand slid down the railing, his palm sweaty and sticking to the door when he finally shoved it open. He had to get to his car, he had to follow Jackson and just...make sure he wasn't seeing things.

And if he wasn't, then he had to find out what was going on. Because couldn't just shoot him. Not Jackson.

His hands were still shaking when he got the key in the ignition of his black SUV and peeled out of the parking lot. Lucky for Caspari, Jackson hadn't gotten far.

Unluckily for him, traffic was sparse at this hour and he didn't have much cover. If Jackson was still as shrewd as he'd always been, he'd know he was being tailed, but there was little he could do about the inevitable. Caspari just hoped he could say a few words before the bullets started flying.

 

[Kuno]

Jackson left Money Manny in a haze of smoke. Drunken guests made for bad club closings; the party girl and her business cohorts had partied, drank, and smoked until there was nothing left, and Jackson had had nothing to do but be enveloped in the hedonistic activity.

Meanwhile, the body outside had been moved. Traffic had driven by in oblivion. Business was business.

C'est la vie.

Wisps of marijuana smoke curled around his face. Inside the back of his car, the gang leader watched the club fade away, melding into the blur of streetlights and buildings that flew by. Someone would have to tell the boy's next of kin that he had passed away. One of his men could pay the mortician a visit and tell them to clean the boy up…make him presentable for his folks.

Jackson blew out the dying embers of his blunt. "Ramon."

"Mm?"

"You see anything while you were out front? Sabes qué the drinks, the lights – people can miss things, you know?"

His driver shook his head. "Nah, boss. I didn't see nuthin.'"

It didn't really matter. By now Jackson knew the mafia's dirty little tactics. He was a thorn in their side; he'd been one for years now, but only recently had he been hitting them where it hurts. They liked to strike fast and hard in an attempt to catch their opponent off their guard. To instill fear into their enemies. He wouldn't have been surprised if they tried to kill him that very night.

Life. Death. Both marched on, inevitable, but only one came unexpectedly to some. They fought it, resisted it, twisted against their organic design as it reached its culmination. Jackson had cheated death once, but he knew it would come for him again. It didn't really matter if it came from the barrel of a gun or the groaning grind of age; he would keep moving forward until stopped.

A moment or two into the silence, as Jackson let his eyes close, Ramon spoke again, too softly, and he looked ahead.

"Boss."

"Yah?"

"You got a tail, boss."

That got his attention. Turning bodily, Jackson glanced behind them. "The SUV," Ramon pointed out, and his boss clocked the car, black and sleek, following them a few car lengths away. He stared for a while, face impassive. Ramon asked him what he wanted to do; slowly, he turned back around, settling back against the cushioned car seat. There was a pregnant pause before he answered.

"Let's go home."

—----------


The Villa wasn't really a home. The Tuscany-style estate played to the elites' fantasy of the sun-kissed countryside, and the opulence of the sepia-toned house spoke more of the area than Jackson's personal tastes. He couldn't be bothered with the elegance; his wealthy constituents, however, were drawn to its appeal, and the expansive grounds and seclusion of the treeline provided ample means to carry out his operations. A luxury, yes – a luxurious means to an end.

The gated door swung open at their appearance. Jackson watched the guards posted there close it as Ramon radioed in to someone about their tail, the man swiftly switching to Spanish as the words in English alluded him. More guards this, more patrols that… Jackson exited while he spoke, ignoring his calls to wait.

A guard ran up from the gate. Tony. "Hey boss, let us check the house first-"

"Go home."

Tony froze, his puggish face gaping. "Wh…What?"

"I said go home. It's late; there's enough people here already."

In his hands bloomed another ember of light. He drew the lighter towards the cigarette in his mouth, exhaling slowly as the end was lit. Jackson glanced back at Tony, who still stood there dumbfoundedly. His eyes cut at him.

Tony was a stray puppy he'd found in Fresno. Nice Italian guy, if not a tad guileless. The others had been convinced he'd be a rat one day, especially in their war against the mafia, but Tony stayed true against all odds. Maybe it sweetened the pot that the mafia had had Tony's brother killed when he was a kid, but Jackson liked to think this was repayment for taking such good care of him and his family. Yeah, he was a stand-up guy.

He didn't want Tony around in case things got ugly.

Jackson waited until he was gone before he skirted around to the back of the house. The last homeowner had designed an infinity pool. Prismatic Grecian tiles laid the foundation of the pool, and the blue lights within gave it an ethereal image. Blunt in tow, Jackson sat at the pool's edge, letting his bare feet be submerged. He took a quick huff, exhaling slowly.