Frankie Malone lit his last Lucky Strike with hands that didn’t shake—because Frankie never shook, even when he should’ve. The neon glow from the Starlite Lounge sign buzzed over his head like a vulture with a grudge, painting his trench coat in sick pink and electric blue. Rain slapped the pavement like a debt collector with a deadline.
She walked out of the bar like a ghost from a dirty dream.
Lola.
Red dress, same as the night she left him holding a cheap ring and a bottle of gin. Her heels clicked against the sidewalk like the ticking of a time bomb. He tried not to look at her lips. Tried not to remember the way they curled around his name like a sin.
“Frankie,” she said, voice like a record playing slow and low. “You shouldn’t be here.”
He puffed smoke like a pistol.
“Neither should you.”
She hesitated, just long enough for the lie to rot in her mouth. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
“It never is.” Frankie flicked ash to the gutter and glanced at the shadows behind her. “He in there?”
She nodded. Small. Guilty. Like a girl caught scribbling in the margins of her morality.
Frankie’s hand slipped into his coat. The cold kiss of steel greeted his fingers. The .38 he’d named Mercy. She was all he had left that didn’t lie or leave.
“Don’t do this,” she whispered. “Please.”
He looked at her. Really looked. The bruised eyes. The trembling hands. Shame wrapped around her like a fur coat in July—hot, heavy, and impossible to miss.
“Why, Lola?”
She flinched like the question was a slap. “Because he made me feel like I mattered.”
Frankie’s smile was a tired, bloody thing. “Yeah, well. So does a loaded gun.”
She cried then. Not loud. Not the kind of cry that wants fixing. Just the slow, broken weep of someone who realized they’d cashed in all their chips on a losing hand.
Frankie turned. Walked away into the rain with Mercy still in his pocket and shame chewing on his heels.
Some things you can’t shoot your way out of.