Redemption (Sempre 2)

The guard nodded. “Yes, Boss.”

Corrado stepped back into his office, shutting the door and locking it before strolling over to the desk. He pried the briefcase open and blinked rapidly as he eyed the contents.

A lone VHS tape.

Corrado had considered a lot of things—guns, money, gold, even body parts—but an old movie had never crossed his mind.

The worn carton encasing it crumbled as soon as he picked it up. He tossed that part aside and surveyed the black tape, finding no label. It was seemingly blank, but Corrado knew better. Someone had gone to great lengths to hide that videotape.

Stepping back out of the office, he looked at the security guard again. “Fetch me a VCR.”

The man’s brow furrowed. “A VCR?”

“Yeah.” Corrado waved him off impatiently. “Make it fast.”

Twenty minutes passed, then thirty, and finally forty-five before the guard returned with a used VCR cradled under his arm. He passed it off to Corrado, who took it into the office and closed the door. Plugging it in, he hooked it up to the small television on the corner of his desk that displayed the security feed.

Immediately a movie started playing, a cartoon with a princess and an obnoxiously catchy tune blaring in the background. Corrado grimaced and ejected the tape, throwing it aside before carefully inserting the one from the briefcase.

Nothing happened for a moment; the numbers on the VCR counted away, but the screen remained as black as night. Corrado was about to give up, feeling duped, when the screen flickered and up popped a face he hadn’t seen in years.

Frankie Antonelli.

The footage jumped and rolled. Corrado pushed the tracking button, trying to straighten it out, but nothing helped. He gave up and sat back in his chair as Frankie started to talk, the sound cracking and buzzing when he turned up the volume.

“I, uh . . . I’ve never been a religious man. I come from a religious family, my pop’s a devout Roman Catholic, just like my granddad back in the old country, but me? Naw, I never believed it. I don’t believe in prayer or salvation, don’t believe in Heaven, but I do believe in Hell. I got to. I live in it.”

Frankie ran his hands down his face as he paused. “I don’t believe in confession . . . you know, asking for forgiveness and all that . . . but I get why the guys do it. We ain’t never gonna be forgiven for the shit we do, but it eases the conscience. It’s hard to walk around every day, carrying so many secrets. And I got secrets. I got plenty of sins in my book. And I ain’t asking to be forgiven for them, I ain’t asking to be saved, but I gotta get them out. I can’t carry them around anymore . . . not when I spend every day in this Hell, staring at them in the face.”

Corrado’s stomach dropped, coldness creeping through him. He felt the urge to eject the tape, throw it in the trashcan and set it on fire. What kind of wise guy—what kind of man of honor—breaks his vow of silence on video? He was disgusted, disgruntled, and downright angry.

But another part, deep down inside, rendered him immobile. Maybe it was curiosity, or maybe instinct, but something forced him to keep watching the tape.

For the next thirty minutes, Corrado stared at the screen, stunned speechless as a man he once considered a mentor, a friend, a brother, who turned into a traitor, a coward, a rat, spilled a secret that shocked even him. He had seen it all, he had done it all, but the words Frankie spoke, the horrific truth that spilled from his lips, was something Corrado couldn’t begin to fathom.

Unimaginable. Appalling. He felt sick.

Corrado’s disgust only grew with each word, his contempt now unwavering. Everything he believed, everything he knew, had been put into question by a shaky half hour of spineless confession.

“So, yeah, that’s the truth,” Frankie said quietly, shaking his head as if in disbelief at his own words. “I have to live with what I did . . . what I helped do. I ain’t gonna apologize for it, or like I said, ask forgiveness. I had to do what I had to do. But I carried it with me for a long time, and I couldn’t carry it anymore.

“If someone’s watching this, I’m probably long dead. I won’t be surprised if it’s this that gets me killed. I’ve been feeling it lately, the feeling that something’s going down that I don’t know about, so maybe it’s only a matter of time before this comes out. And maybe I deserve to die for this, but I ain’t the only one. No, if this is how it ends, if this is how I escape from this Hell to go to the next, I hope the devil goes down with me, too. It’s only fair, since he controlled it all.”

Frankie leaned forward and shut off the camera. Corrado stared at the black screen, the office swallowed in uncomfortable silence.

Shell-shocked. It was the only word to describe how Corrado felt.

Getting his bearings straight, he ejected the tape and locked it in a desk drawer. He unhooked the VCR and grabbed the cartoon, meeting the security guard in the hallway once more. “Where’d you get this?”

“Stole it,” he said. “Broke into a few houses down the block until I found one.”

Corrado shoved it back to him. “Return it.”

The guard blanched. “What?”

“You heard me,” he said. “What kind of jackass steals from a little girl?”

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