Losing Her Wings

Chapter 3

Dino couldn’t help but be nervous as he paced the floor outside the courtroom. This was Angelo’s big day. He’d been with the same firm, Hope and McQueen’s, for the past five years. He’d started as an intern after high school when he was nineteen and had worked his way up the ladder and gone to all the lectures and courses they had offered to pay for. Law was in his blood and it was nice to see that, at twenty one, Angelo was happy to keep working his way up the ranks, working alongside his best friend, and fellow Italian, Jacob ‘Tanatoah’ Chardin. Why they called him Tanatoah, he’d never know, but it was something that had stuck after a summer away with the ice hockey team when they were teenagers. And now, they were equals in the firm, partners and best friends, although the recent announcement that one of the two was getting promoted over the other, was making them both nervous. Neither wanted to be competition to the other, but at the same time neither wanted to lose out on the fifteen thousand dollars that was going to be added onto their current pay every year and the corner office that came with it.

Thankfully, Dino had already found them laughing over it, both wishing each other luck and taking each day as it came. He just wished that Angelo had someone to share that inner worry with. It was obvious it was there. He had so much riding on this promotion, so many hopes for the money that it would bring, that it was clear to everyone around him that he was still on edge about whether or not he’d get it. But there was no hope of that happening soon. There was only one girl in Angelo’s life and had only ever been one girl. Paige Donna, the beautiful daughter of his best friend, had always been the centre of his son’s attention. Ever since Angelo was a teenager, he had always felt that the three years age gap between himself and the sweet girl of his affections, was more of a curse than a blessing as it had been when they were children. He’d always been glad of the age gap when he was younger before he’d noticed her natural beauty, thankful for the fact that they had never been forced to spend time together. But as soon as Paige had turned sixteen and had blossomed into the beautiful woman she had become, it was impossible to make him see any other woman.

Which was a blessing for his mother. Dino could still remember seeing Angelo, at three years old, when Paige was born, seeing her for the first time and listening to Silvia, Paige’s mother and his own mother Simone, discussing their plans for them. They’d grow up together and spend time together, when they were old enough, they would date each other and eventually get married. But unfortunately for them all, and the heartbroken Angelo who had grown up knowing those plans, wishing he could make them a reality and being unable to, Paige had never seemed to feel anything but a deep hatred for him. All they ever seemed to do was argue whenever they were near each other. And it made Dino sad. He wished that things could be as they should be. That Angelo could get the promotion he wanted so much and marry Paige, who he’d always loved, and have someone who could look after him the way he looked after everyone else but himself.

And when the double doors to the courtroom opened suddenly, he stopped pacing and smiled in hope, waiting to see how his son’s latest case, which had made him brood so much lately, was going to proceed. “Alright kid, keep your head up and I’ll talk to you in a few days.” Angelo smiled, patting the sixteen year olds arm as they walked out together, a prison officer waiting to take Nelo back to the detention centre he was being kept in.

“Yeah, and if you want anything…comics or food or something, just give us a call.” Jacob added, shaking his hand before Nelo was handcuffed and taken out to the waiting police car, with a new ray of hope shining in front of him. As soon as Nelo was out of sight, Jacob felt it was alright to go ahead and say what had been on his mind since Judge Avril had agreed to their terms, far too easily for his liking. Just as long as Dino didn’t start yelling at him. He always felt a little strange bringing up law issues in front of the ex-policeman, ex-lawyer now working on unsolved cases with the police board in a new crime unit. He knew too much about law for him to mess up in front of him and he had too many contacts in the business. “He’s going to go through hell. What’re we going to do?” Jacob asked with a sigh, raking his hand through his hair, knowing how hard the first few days on his own were going to be for Nelo. He was scared enough as it was without adding juvenile hall into the mix.