Don't own; never will. Don't sue.

Enjoy!

~Rhiannon

Part one: Shatter day

As told by Vinnie Gognitti

My hands trembling, I fumble with the childproof cap on my bottle of painkillers. The smooth orange plastic slips within my sweaty grip, and I can't help but feel like the bottle is mocking me. My head continues to pound like a drum, and it takes each lingering shred of my resolve to keep it together, if only for another moment.

She's gone.

She's gone and I'm alone.

It's this realization that seems to get the bottle to take pity on me, as the cap falls easily to the side. White capsules fall to the dark wood of my desk like snowflakes as I stare at them transfixed. Will these pills really be what my life is reduced to? God, what have I become?

Hot tears trickle down my cheeks as I swallow three of the pills, washing them down with half a glass of lukewarm vodka. Knowing that this was a gift from that fuck Vladimir Lem makes me want to throw the bottle from my open window, but I need the alcohol far too much to do more than just briefly consider it. It's this white hot flair of anger that's keeping me centered, and I swear that the next time I see the Russian, it'll be *his* brains strewn across the streets of New York.

And it's this thought that has me crouching over my trashcan, my stomach threatening to expel my hard earned medication.

She fucking deserved better. Mona…Mona deserved to see an end to all this bullshit, not have her life ended in less than a second by a cowardly fuck. It only took one bullet to take away everything that ever mattered to me.

But I did nothing.

I know I'm a coward by nature, but even I should have done something…*anything* to save her from the darkness. As Lem finished Payne off with a bullet of his own, I remained hiding in the closet, biting the arm of my suit jacket to keep from screaming. As deeply as I cared for her, I couldn't bring myself to interfere and risk that it would be the day when my nine lives finally ran out.

One of my henchmen enters my office without asking, sending my pain rip-cording down into my shattered psyche. I pour myself more vodka, shooting him what I think to be a pretty convincing glare of death. "The fuck you doin' here?!"

I suppose my temper is legendary, because he doesn't seem phased at all by my outburst. "Boss, you're not going to believe this." I raise an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. "Payne is alive! Tony and I saw him just over an hour ago leaving…"

Suddenly, my anger is no longer for show.

I seize an object from the corner of my desk and hurl it against the cinderblock wall, realizing all to late that it was my Captain Baseball-Bat Boy bobble-head. The painted ceramic explodes on impact, sending colored shards falling around us both like confetti. "*FUCK* Max Payne! The only rat bastard I'm interested in finding is Vladimir Lem!" In the midst of my blind rage, I pull my pistol from the top drawer of my desk and aim it at my stunned goon. "I swear ta Christ, the next fuck that comes in to see me without the head of the Russian is going to get two between the eyes! Understand?!"

My henchman's eyes are the size of dinner plates, and all he can do is nod and flee my office with his tail between his legs. Of course, I know it's wrong of me to threaten my underlings, as it does nothing but cause dissention in the ranks. But that doesn't matter to me. Nothing does.

Not anymore.

I can feel a lump beginning to form in my throat, so I down the rest of my vodka to wash it away. Why didn't Vlad just kill me too? Surely, it would have been less painful than trying to muddle through this half life.

The tears fall freely now and I don't even try to stop them. Mona was my angel. If it wasn't for her, I would have died back on that rooftop after Payne shot me. I…I was sure it was all over as I lay bleeding on that filthy street. But Mona saved me from the darkness. For reasons that I to this day cannot process, she brought my broken and bleeding body back to her own safe house, where she nursed me back to health. My skepticism soon faded under her soft skillful touch, and before the week was out, we were lovers.

And it scared the shit out of me.

It's no real secret that my track record with women isn't exactly the greatest. My work keeps me pretty fucking busy, and when I do give into the needs of my body, it always costs me at least 5 Gs. Everything else in my fucking life is a merry-go-round of chaos, but it's only within sex where I feel like I have a single iota of control.

Mona wouldn't let me have that.

There'd be no way that she'd let me use her as the teenaged hookers that were my partners of choice would. Our first few times together were little more than an awkward ballet, with both of us desperately after control. Eventually though, I came to realize something critical.

Mona Sax was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

So I allowed myself to freefall into the abyss, certain that it would all be worth it. And fuck…Mona did not disappoint. That was certainly the best fucking sex I've ever had, hands down. When I'd recovered enough from my injury enough to go back to my own world, I figured that was it; there'd be no way my relationship with her could continue. But as she'd done before, Mona proved me wrong. Every three days or so, my angel would appear at my penthouse and we'd fall into bed without speaking. Make no mistake about it, Mona Sax was a drug and I could never have my fill.

Even though we never discussed it, I could tell that the tone of our rendezvous was beginning to shift. In the weeks prior she'd run right to the shower after the climax had subsided to wash away all remnants of my touch. Mona would then leave without so much as a goodbye, which was just fine with me. But she'd started lingering with my embrace for longer and longer intervals, until she eventually spent the night.

Only then did I realize that I loved her.

It had been so long…so *fucking* long since someone just held me that I managed to convince myself that I didn't need it. While fantastic, the sex became secondary to the feeling of her warm body in my arms, her heart pounding against my chest. While we never said the words, I could see in Mona's eyes that there was at least a small part of her that cared for me.

But then it all came crashing down.

Payne loved her. I would have to be fucking blind not to see it. Mona maintained that she didn't feel anything for him, but it was only too obvious that she was falling under his spell. It wasn't long before the nights we once shared disappeared completely, leaving me cold and alone and trying desperately to convince myself that I didn't care. After all, with Punchinello gone, I was the new head of the family. Now that I had all the power to do with what I chose, I only had one priority.

To kill Max Payne.

It was my hatred that ultimately fueled my downfall. So great was my need for revenge that I was willing to work with anyone that could get the job done. I would have sold my soul to the devil himself, if that's what it took to get Mona back in my arms.

Which I did.

Only this time, the devil took the form of Vladimir Lem.

From the beginning, I knew that Lem would get the job done. Although our past together was spotty at best, he was the most cold, calculating dickbag I knew. Payne would be dead within the week, and Mona would be mine once more.

Except for the fact that that fuck sold me out.

I should have expected it. I really, really should have. But the night that Lem and his goons burst into my garage and slaughtered almost all of my men, I was so shocked that I couldn't even process it. But leaving me crippled and alone wasn't enough for the Russian. Oh no. At gunpoint, he forced me into a specially rigged Captain Baseball-Bat Boy costume. Taking the damn thing off would result in me being blown to bits, yet even that paled in comparison to what I believed to be Lem's main reason for trapping me in the costume.

Everyone would laugh at me. It was the actualization of what I thought to be my worst fear.

I can't even tell you how long I remained in my office, my white hot anger cauterizing the tears that I desperately wanted to shed. It was all over. Do not pass go…this was your life Gognitti…hope hell isn't as hot as they say. Because of my angel, I'd managed to cheat fate once and I really didn't like the odds of it happening again. But I suppose like has a funny and horrible way of working out sometimes, because my savior just so happened to be the one person I wanted to see dead more than any other.

Max. *Fucking* Payne.

He at least had the courtesy not to immediately laugh in my face at my current predicament. Payne apparently had his own score to settle with the Russian, and the enemy of my enemy became my friend. Or at least a distant facsimile. With his help and that aggravatingly effective way he had of dodging bullets, we managed to flee back to my penthouse. Once there, he managed to disable to bomb within the suit, all the while biting back riotous laughter at my Captain Baseball-Bat Boy collection. I would have used his fucking brains to decorate my wall, if it wasn't for his next comment.

We had to get to Mona.

It was the only thing he could have said that I actually agreed with.

Payne was the one that drove to the funhouse, leaving me to stare out the window at the familiar scenery in silence. With each passing block, the lump in my throat would swell until I could barely breathe. In only a few short minutes, I would be seeing her.

Everything was finally starting to go right.

During the short time I'd called Mona's funhouse my home, she always kept the animatronics running. I could only speculate as to why she did it…maybe she used the decaying figures as a security system of sorts against trespassers. Hell, for all I knew, Mona was desperately lonely and liked to pretend they were real. But that night, the funhouse was silent. The animatronics were frozen as if in time, making me feel eerily as though I was Medusa. Glimpses of knives and guns and twisted smiles assaulted me from all corners of the building, which made my blood run cold. This was it. I'd finish off Payne once and for all, and Mona and I would run away together. We'd live happily ever after, and all that shit.

But that's not the way it happened.

Lem was hiding in the shadows like the rat bastard he truly was at his core, waiting to ambush us. Fuck, I don't know why either Payne or myself didn't see this comming. Surely, my desire for Mona was clouding all rational thought. We were fucking idiots to go to her when we knew that Lem was still alive, but none of that made a difference to me. When I saw her...when our eyes met for the first time in that massive ocean of time we spent apart, it was like comming home. I can still remember every detail about the way she looked at me. Although her face was ever emotionless, her eyes were awash with confusion, desire, and an emotion that I still can't quite place. Even though Payne was in the room, it was like the world narrowed down to a tunnel that could only hold Mona and myself.

And then she fell.

And then I hid.

Here I am, three days later, with a heart that shows no sign of mending. My head feels like it is made of granite, and I fall to the desk below, feeling painkillers stick to my sweaty forehead and not caring. Disgusted, I push the bottle of vodka to the floor, barely comprehending when it shatters. My mind wanders back to the nights that Mona and I spent together, and I miss her so unbelievably much it hurts to breathe.

I can't do this anymore.

I won't.

It's almost laughable, if you think about it. It was my fierce desire to live that kept me from acting to save the woman I loved, yet my life has become nothing but a burden. Something that I can cast aside, if I so choose. My hand shaking, I take the gun back out of my drawer and place it on the side of the desk. Harsh, horrible laughter bubbles out of me like a geyser, and it isn't long before I'm in absolute hysterics to defy the tears that keep falling. No one will mourn me. Hell, the fucking city might even throw a parade to honor my cowardice.

And as Captain Baseball-Bat Boy watches solemnly from his disjointed state on the floor, I press the barrel of the gun against my temple.