Cesare shook his head as he peered into the night over the steering wheel. The truck rocked gently across the highway as the stars crept into the air. The steady illumination of streetlights fell across him and the curled figure of Nikki Swango, leaning against the passenger door. The truck had been "borrowed" from a warehouse. Inside were the few meager belongings Cesare cared to bring with him, and the well-packed trinkets of his passenger... and the nearly 7 million dollars in casino deposit bags... They were going to Chicago.

St. Louis was far behind them now as they crept through Illinois. Cesare imagined the dusty wagon roads these used to be. He wondered what kind of trouble Paul would get himself into without him. He thought about what Tommy's face would look like when the officers told him he would be free to go after the bribe he paid trickled down the system. He was beginning to doze of and decided to pull over for a moment. Careful not to wake Nikki, he pulled off the road and slowly turned the engine off. Silence crept into the cabin. Cesare extended his arms and took a look down at the bandage wrapped around his midsection. It had been gently applied by Nikki herself before they left Vegas.

Sitting up in his chair and extending his neck, Cesare tried to get a glimpse of the bandage on her neck, which looked considerably less professionally done, but done with care nonetheless by himself. It probably should be changed soon...

He decided not to wake her, and lit himself a cigarette; cracking open his window to release the smoke into the night air, with nothing more to do but keep watch...

The ambient white noise of tires on pavement stopped, and the aromatic smell of burning tobacco began, bringing her out of a deep sleep. She didn't know where she was at first, but seeing Cesare behind the wheel, a sense of relief settled over her. 

"Was I snoring?" She murmured, running her hands through her hair and offering a lazy smile. 

"May I?" She asked, the question rhetorical as she helped herself to his pack of smokes on the dashboard. Squinting into the flame he offered, she inhaled deeply and popped the doorhandle, stepping outside.

It was beautiful out here, the sky untainted by the neon of Vegas or the skyscrapers of New York. She was sure there would be something to spoil the Chicago night sky as well, but was in no hurry to find out. Stepping up onto the bumper of the truck, she sat on the hood of it, neck craned skyward to stargaze, at least as far as the bandage adhesive allowed. Cesare exited the truck behind her, shoes crunching on gravel as he walked to the front of the vehicle and stood in front of her, close enough that his shirt brushed her bare knees. He leaned towards her, hands coming up slowly, and she leaned in, a thrill tracking up her spine in anticipation of their first...

...bandage check.​​​ His fingers gently pulled a corner of the medical tape up, producing a small flashlight from an inner pocket in order to examine her wound.

Cesare tenderly undid his handiwork revealing the cut on Nikki's neck. "How did you get such a cute looking bullet graze, while I'm left with this gut-shot?" he joked pulling his head back from the work to look at her. It really wasn't a bad hit. The security officer had been shaking with fear the moment they had emerged in the garage.

"That bandage won't do though..." he mused pulling away his hands. They hadn't thought to grab any more bandages than they were wearing. Cesare figured he could last to Chicago, but he didn't want to take the chance of her catching something on his account.

Without saying a word, Cesare moved around the truck sliding a hand into his pocket. He threw open the back doors and stepped inside causing the truck to wobble slightly. Rummaging around in a box he'd thrown inside he found some of his clothes. Grasping the sleeve of a white linen dress shirt between his fingers, he began to tear a long thin strip from it. Satisfied, he hopped down out of the truck and closed the doors.

Opening the driver's door he grabbed his jacket from the seat and returned to the hood of the truck. Nikki looked at him curiously, her head tipped slightly to the side as if she had caught something balancing on her head just as it had begun to fall. Cesare silently met her eyes and threw his jacket onto the hood before reaching back up towards her neck.

Slowly he unwrapped the bandage from her neck careful not to let any of the dried blood to stick. Tossing it into the grass off the road, he began to wrap the new linen bandage around her. Careful to let the fabric lie plush against her skin. Satisfied, he took a step back to look at her.

"You'll be alright, Nikki," he smiled at her as he took a step to hop back onto the hood of the truck. Grabbing his jacket, he spread it between his arms and draped it over her bare shoulders, "Or is it 'Boss' now?"

Nikki snorted. "I don't pay attention to titles anymore, Cesare. Before I met you, I was a Consigliere and Right Hand in New York. I worked so damn hard to get there, and know what it got me? Demoted and lost in the shuffle of Vegas when my boss was gunned down. Didn't matter that he'd been a Vegas auth himself. It's all just words," she said, exhaling a stream of smoke with a bit more force than she'd intended. Politics. The more she fought them, the further she was sucked into them. 

"Nowadays I'm just in it for the thrills. I'll never be the housewife with 2.3 kids and a white picket fence and a drooling golden retriever. I'd rather steal a car and smuggle hooch over the border while leading the coppers on a high-speed chase," she said, a lopsided grin on her face as she gazed at him. Even in the darkness, they were deep blue pools she wanted to dive into. Blinking, she turned away. It was always the unattainable ones that she was drawn to. Frank had chosen his CL over her. Husky had chosen Lucy over her. Cesare, well, she didn't know, really. He'd never mentioned a girl, and he'd just uprooted at her request, but he seemed wholly uninterested in anything other than a platonic business relationship.

She'd been so damn lucky in so many ways, except in matters of love.

Cesare wondered at the collapsing mirage. From the moment he'd entered into the 'life', he'd been told that the top was the place to be. He wanted to believe that all this work actually led somewhere. Nikki's words told more story than she intended. He wondered if his brother had ever felt like it was all for naught. He looked down at the cigarette burning in his fingers as he spoke.

"You know I heard people talk about you in Vegas." he began, "About this devil-may-care starlet of the Strip who laid down roots all over the country. This prestigious eastern girl who had cities of gangsters paying her lip service." Cesare raise his eyes back up to her,

"And I thought to myself, 'what a fearsome thing to behold she must be.'" He let his eyes linger a moment longer,

Then he laughed, "And when I hit that taxi, boy, I thought I was dead. I mean who am I?" he motioned with his hand towards his chest.

"I'm a hood." he shook his head, "I'm not even a good one. I knock over taxi's for Christ sake." he placed his palms on the truck hood and leaned back on his arms,

"But then you took on that casino job. And while we were in the casino, they shot up my crew. In a second, I didn't have anything in the world except what was in that truck." He took an audible breath, "And I thought of how cruel and humorless Fate must be to leave me stuck in the brightest city on earth by myself."

Leaning further back to recline against his elbows he continued, "But then you asked me to go to Chicago. This..." he searched for a word, "heiress of Vegas, asking me to go to Chicago with her, imagine that." he laughed nervously again, "What was I gonna say huh? No?"

He finally spread his back full against the truck's hood sliding his hands behind his head and staring up at the stars and flipped his cigarette into the street, "And since then, we've driven a thousand miles, and all these questions keep floating around in my head." his eyes searched over her face in the dark...

"Like how, I don't think I know a single thing about you that isn't rumor." he paused, "I've seen you get shot and kill a man but I don't know how you like your coffee, or what your favorite color is," he couldn't help but laugh at the juvenile idealism, "Everything just feels so backwards..." he trailed off...

Nikki smiled, tucking her nose into the collar of his jacket as she turned to answer him, flicking her own smoke into the night. 

"Cream, two sugars. Blue." His scent caressed her nose, half buried as it was inside the coat. She took a moment to memorize it.

"I don't know what else to tell you...you won't think well of me. My father left my mother when I was small. She proceeded to drink herself to death. I tried to stop it...then simply took care of her when I couldn't...until she died. When she...when she went, I found that motherfucker and I killed him. My own father. 

"So I ran, I ran from North Dakota. I ran from my nickname, Shotgun Swango. I ran until I hit Detroit and found a crew. One day after joining, my CL killed himself. So I ran to New York and worked my ass off, everywhere at once, making connections and money and trying to get noticed. And it worked, I climbed up the ranks, only to get kicked back down when that CL died. You know the story from there," she said, her hands fidgeting in the dark. Okay, maybe she hadn't been so lucky in life. 

"I enjoy long walks on the beach, candlelit dinners, and fuzzy bunny slippers," she said, trying to lighten the mood she'd darkened. 

Cesare closed his eyes to listen...

When she had finished he spoke softly into the air, "...Cream, two sugars, blue." he repeated it, "Cream, two sugars." he repeated it as if it was the most important thing he had ever heard and he was committing it to memory, "two sugars... blue."

Then he stopped.

"I stoved a boys face in who took advantage of my sister." he began, unprompted, "My brother was already out in Vegas disgracing the family name, and my father was off doing business somewhere... we were a well-off family involved in real-estate in Virginia, and I was the only one around to do anything when she came home sobbing."

then opening his eyes,

"I stormed out of the house as my mother called for me to stay with my sister in her arms. I found him at a soda-fountain with a couple of his friends and slammed his head into the counter so hard his forehead bent backwards..." his voice was beginning to become pained, "After that I was so panicked I hiked my way west to meet back up with my brother. We made Vegas ours for the next year... then it wasn't."

"But now here I am chauffeuring around one of the Queens of Vegas, so I can't be doing too bad can I?" he smiled, teasing in his reference to their first conversation.

He sat back up on the hood next to her and nudged her shoulder, "So what's the story behind that line on your finger?" she seemed confused... "The third finger on your hand... just there," he pointed, "Seems like it was hidden from the sun by, from what I can tell, was a beauty of a ring."

Nikki sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. He hadn't run screaming yet.

"I was married briefly. To a good man, who deserved better than me. Much better. Before the wedding, I met someone. We carried on a bit, but he had someone waiting in the wings, too, so I ended it. I ran off to Sicily and got married, but after we returned to Vegas, the Right Hand position opened up in New York again. Frank said he'd go. And then, well, he changed his mind. So I left him, and Vegas, behind. 

"It wouldn't have worked anyway. He's deeply rooted in his Italian family and its ways, wanted a lot of children and an early retirement in the Old Country. I can't offer either, as I'm unable to bear children, and I most certainly won't be dying of old age. I don't even want to! I wanna go out in a hail of bullets with adrenaline rushing through my veins and wads of bloody cash in my hands," she said, remembering the feel of just that, as they stood in the casino service bay. Staring straight out into the darkness, an odd little smile crept across her lips and she reached out blindly for his hand. Not because she was flirting. Not because she sought comfort. But because she fully expected to feel that residue of the rush coursing through him, too. 

Cesare felt the cold rush of blood pound through his head. Her hand slipped effortlessly into his and something in him understood that there was nothing he could do to escape her, even if he wanted to. The headlights of an oncoming car illuminated her face, but neither of them flinched. He watched the moonbeams reflect off her eyes and thought of all the trouble he had gotten himself into by leaving Vegas.

Slowly edging off the hood of the truck, he let his fingers glide across hers until they separated. He took a step forward in the pale moonlight and stared down the road, his back to her. She was dangerous. She was something he couldn't hope to understand, and it made him careful; so careful. He turned around to face her wrapped in his jacket pulled up over her mouth as if peeking from under a blanket, and something in him changed... something he would not realize for until some time later...

He took a step towards her, and then another, until her knees pressed into his chest, and he rested his hands on them. He looked up at her spying eyes, "What's waiting in Chicago, Nikki?" he asked her, "Where is it we're going?" though it may have sounded redundant, there was no denying that these were very different questions...

A simple act, really. But his hands on her knees altered her reality. Air pressure changed. The darkness got brighter. Seconds stretched into a small eternity, like taffy in a child's fingers. Would it last, or snap apart? She struggled to find her voice.

"Well. I imagine, if you're inclined that way, you're going to be someone of significance. I don't know what you're looking for, Cesare, but I suspect that, whatever it is, it's going to be yours for the taking. You're something special," she said, looking down at her hands. Empty hands, cooling rapidly in the night air. She was struggling not to fidget with them again, and started wishing for a drink, or a joint, or hell, even another cigarette. The scraps of her pride and humility made a final rally, screaming at her to shut up already, but that internal argument had long since been lost. 

"I hope that, as the opportunities arise, you see them for what they are, and take advantage of them," she finished, afraid to breathe, to move. Seven million, all his. A place in Chicago, guatanteed advancement, already offered and accepted. There was nothing left to use her for, if those were his intentions. There was only one thing left on the table.

Or, rather, on the hood of the truck. The taffy continued to stretch as they stared into each others' eyes. 

Cesare tilted his head slightly and hummed audibly when she finished. After everything he'd lost, he was on the cusp of having everything he thought he wanted and it scared him that he wasn't satisfied.

"that's good," he mused with the flippancy of a man commenting on weather, "It all sounds really good, but..."

Here he reached forward and reclaimed her hand, allowing her fingers to fall into his palm as he curled his thumb over them, he lifted it slightly into the air and moved his body a step to the side. It resembled the movement made to help a lady exit a coach or a car, and he motioned for her to descend. She shifted forward and took a bounce off the gravel with her foot, but he reached out his arm to steady her. As she gained her footing, he caught her eyes and continued,

"...but what about you, Nikki?" He took a step with her towards the door of the truck leading her by the hand, and opening it, aided her rise to the seat above him. She turned in his jacket with her legs hanging out of the door towards him as he released her hand,

"...are you going to be in Chicago?" he hoped his voice would not betray the monumental significance of effect her answer would have on his opinion of the city.

Nikki leaned towards him, lowering her voice conspiratorially, as if the crickets and night jasmine could repeat their conversation.

"I'll be there, unless you refuse to take me. Then we'd be in a right proper pickle, as I don't know how to properly drive a stick," she grinned, wanting to draw out a laugh from him with her silly innuendo. 

"Get in, Cesare," she whispered, swinging her legs into the truck, brushing them against his thighs in the process.

He closed the door and laughed. Damn if he wasn't going to love Chicago. He would have taken her offer to go anywhere on Earth. He crossed in front of the windshield on his way to his seat and he could see her already curling back up against the window to sleep. As he opened his door she had closed her eyes, and a spark caught fire in his brain. He searched the center console for a piece of cigarette paper and by all the luck in heaven her found one. Retrieving his pen from his pants pocket, he cast a glance at Nikki who's eyes were now curiously studying him. He wrote frantically so as not to let the spark die out before capturing it. When it was finished he quickly replaced both paper and pen in his pocket and started the truck...

"To Chicago, then." he said to no one in particular, as they began moving into the cool dark night.

When the skyline of the city began to spring into view along with the morning sun, Cesare decided to stop at a quaint little diner within view of the city, but not close enough to be caught in the bustle. Pulling the truck into the lot he carefully extracted the keys. Nikki's form rose and fell gently with her breathing. He was glad she had been able to sleep through the night. He, on the other hand, was dragging on like a corpse. So he quietly exited to get some coffee.

He opened the door and turned to leave, but then, he reached into his pocket and withdrew the note he'd written a few hours before. Ever-so-carefully, he slipped the paper into Nikki's hand before leaving the truck and heading inside the diner.

HONK!! HONK HONK!!

The blare of a car horn expressing its disdain for being cut off in the parking lot jolted Nikki awake. She had another moment of total disorientation, this one not broken as fast, as a quick glance around found her alone in the cab. Peering through the windshield, she found herself parked in front of a greasy spoon, and it wasn't until she spotted Cesare's form inside, standing in front of the register, that she calmed again. Big, bad Nikki Swango, suddenly grasping at a security blanket. She wasn't sure how that had happened, but there it was.

She went to scrub her face with her hands, but there was a note folded up inside her palm. Carefully unfolding the delicate cigarette paper, she began to read:

I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens

Only something in me understands

The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
 

She read it again, and again. Oh, this was a keeper, she thought, gently folding it closed and slipping it inside a compact mirror she fished from her purse. Cesare emerged then, hands full of paper to-go cups. Leaning over to open the driver's door for him, she smiled at him through the window.

Very much a keeper.