by Marlee Wray
With a sharp shake of his head, he says, “I’d block the view.” He adds in a low voice to me, “If Trick wants the balcony, let him have it. No one could be better up there than he could, assuming he shows up before the last act. I’ll take the wing.”
He doesn’t wait for my nod, nor does he need to. The three of us aren’t exactly equal partners, but we’re as near to it as it comes.
“Just you and me, beautiful,” I say, putting out my arm for Sylvia.
She puts a hand on it and lets me escort her to our seats.
A hush falls over the crowd, and I turn, expecting to see Trick looking like a model in a designer suit, but it’s not him. There’s a surprise guest—an unwelcome one.
As Frank Palermo strolls down the main aisle, he’s all smiles. Given the chance, he’d put a bullet in my head; he’s sent plenty of guys to try to do just that. Tonight though, he extends a hand.
I stare at it for a beat, my fingers itching for the gun I can’t pull. I register two of his guys. One’s older than me by a decade and also a prick. His name’s Pauly Mangia. He hated taking orders from me when I rose up the ranks like a rocket. The other guy with a red mop of hair worn in a stupid man bun must be a couple of years younger than we are. I’ve never seen him around.
Frank’s dropped his hand since I took too long to react to it. That’s wise since I wouldn’t have shaken it. He’s a snake who’ll shake your hand then put a bullet in the back of your skull when you turn to walk away.
He’s wearing an easy smile, the big man without a care in the world.
Sylvia speaks first. “Hello, Mr. Palermo. We’re delighted you could make it. If we’d known you were coming, we’d have reserved a seat for you.”
“I thought I heard this one’s open,” he says, dropping into the seat between Sylvia and the aisle seat. “Why don’t you sit at my right hand, C, for old time’s sake?”
“Why not?” I reply, my gaze as hard as stone. It’s not been six months since we buried the latest casualty of our war with him, but he’s buried guys even more recently, so who am I to balk?
C Crue is winning the war. I know it, and apparently, so does Frank. Or what’s he doing here, pretending everything isn’t blood and death between us?
“I’m here for Zoe,” he says casually.
Now that’s interesting. It may even be true. Does she work for him now? Is that how she ended up with our mark on her door?
I exchange a look with Anvil, who I bet is sorry he chose a spot out of reach of the main aisle. Anvil’s gun hand is out of sight; that probably means the Glock is in it. With a small shake of my head, I take my seat.
“Who’s Zoe?” I ask.
Frank opens the program and flicks a finger on a name. “Zoe Arantes. You know her, right?”
Do I know her? Yeah, I know her, I think. Not as well as my cock would like to. Zoe with the dark curly hair, banging body, and naturally luscious lips that look like they’ve been pumped up from too many rough kisses? The quick-talking girl with the ass that won’t quit? Yeah, I know exactly who she is.
“Remind me,” I say.
“She’s one of Rachel’s friends. The one who wore the green bikini to Rachel’s graduation party and had all the guys drooling over her. Didn’t she have a run-in with you?”
“Not me,” I lie.
I remember that day well, but I’m surprised he heard about it. Did Zoe tell Rachel? Probably. Had Rachel told her dad? Maybe. Things between Rachel and her old man were tense back then, but it’s been awhile, and things are probably different now. She’s living in his place. And she’s letting his people dress her like a doll, whitewashing his image, at least for people outside the city. How close is Zoe Arantes to that action? I need to find out.
“Something about Zoe being where she wasn’t supposed to be?” Frank adds.
At the graduation party, I’d told all the kids to stay downstairs because our guys were upstairs drinking and talking and I didn’t want anyone to hear anything they shouldn’t. Zoe broke the rules, and we had... an encounter.
“I don’t recall,” I say.
“Sure. Always lots of girls around you and Trick. Hard to remember them all. And it’s better anyway. Now that we’ve parted ways, some girls are off limits. You’ve got a mother. Trick’s got family, right? You boys understand.”
Boys, yeah, right, I think. I let his threat and the jab go unanswered. I was eighteen when Frank recruited me, so yeah, young. But Anvil, Trick, and I were never really kids, not even back then. Life burned the innocence off us way before Frank Palermo found us. In fact, seeing the hardness in me is exactly why he wanted me in his crew.
As for families being off limits, yeah, they normally are. Except if a family member gets themselves involved. Mine never would. Trick’s wouldn’t. But apparently a friend of Rachel’s would, and she’s interfered with our business. That can’t be left unanswered.
We take steps to protect our families and I’m not looking to put a target on their backs, but I’m not going to back down just because Frank’s mentioning them. Instead, we’ll double security around them, maybe send them on a trip. Because I don’t consider Zoe Arantes off limits if she stole from me.
“We understand a lot of things,” I say as the house lights dim. The sooner there’s only one king of the city, the better it will be.
I have no idea if Trick is in the theater yet, but I can predict what his outward reaction to seeing Frank will be. Nothing. Trick’s got a game face that’s better than anyone’s.
I also know exactly how Anvil will react if Frank decides to shove a blade through my ribs sometime during the show. A knife wound would almost be worth it to see ‘Vil tear Frankie P apart with his bare hands.
Chapter Two
Zoe
Everything is wrong. First, the mark on my door, and now Frank sitting in the front row next to Connor McCann. My heart hammers in my chest as I cross the stage to the alcove where Rachel is tucked away.
I lean into it. She’s taken off her hooded cloak and stands in front of a microphone. She’s not with the orchestra because she can’t be. She’s not allowed to be here.
But Rachel and I wrote this dark fairytale together, and it’s based on her own story. She wrote the score. I choreographed it. We’ve lived and breathed it from back when it was a dream we had together while eating tacos and drinking gin and tonics in my apartment.
“Your dad’s here.”
Her head jerks up, and she looks past me to the closed curtain.
“You could go,” I whisper.
Her pretty face sets itself into a mask of angry determination. “No one else can play my parts the way I can.” Her hand goes possessively to her violin. She’s not bragging about her playing. It’s just a fact. She put her soul into this music. She was already better than anyone in the orchestra, but for several of the songs, her playing is transcendent.
“What if he already knows? Maybe he had someone follow you. Maybe he’ll think you’ve been in touch with the C Crue trio, acting as a spy on his operation. He’s so paranoid,” I whisper.
“He can think what he wants.”
My breath catches. “No. Don’t say that. You know what he does when he thinks someone’s betrayed him.”
“I’m still valuable. As long as I am, he won’t do anything to me.”
The blood is slowly draining from my head. She’s considered this and calculated the risk. Of course she has.
I look at the black cherry color of Rachel’s dyed hair and the black polish on her nails. She’s been sucked slowly into darkness, like rainwater falling through a grate into shadowed sewers under the city.
Her small hands flutter as they lift her instrument. She’s a raven who’s about to be in the crosshairs of a vicious man’s gun scope. I’m terrified for her. For both of us, because I’d die if I lost her.
“Rach,” I whisper.
Her small hand grips my forearm and squeezes. “Go and do it. Be so good, it breaks hearts,”
she says fiercely.
“I will,” I whisper, before hugging her. I’m shaking when I step back to leave her.
* * *
Connor
I realize before Frank where the story’s going. The play is a fairytale, but there are echoes of real life. I think it’s based on rumors about how he tried to kill his mistress when she decided to leave him, and of what happened afterward.
Frank, though, is leaning back like a boss, smiling and nodding. He even tells me that he paid for Zoe’s scholarship when she was in high school.
“Clearly, it’s paid off,” he says with a slight leer on his face as the girl leaps into the air in some sort of scissor split.
Is he fucking her? For some reason, I hate that idea so much my hand slides to my gun before I even realize it. I move my hand away. This is not the time or the place.
Another leap, and this time her back arches so much that her long hair brushes her back thigh. She’s incredible to watch. At moments, she bursts upward with so much power I half expect her to skim the lights with her fingertips. Other times she wilts to the floor so elegantly, she’s like a dying flower.
Right now she’s racing to warn the fairy queen of the troll king’s plan to kill her. A huntsman chases her across the stage. She weaves around the woodland set pieces. A violin’s sinister shrieks reach a crescendo.
She jumps, takes flight, and then a crack of sound and she plummets, landing with a slap directly in front of us. The audience gasps. Her slim body convulses, once, twice, three times to the knife’s edge of a violin bow across its strings. Then she is still.
When the fairy finds her and weeps over her fallen body, there’s no other sound.
Then the audience reacts to the emergence of the troll king behind them.
Next to me, Frank stiffens. With the spotlight on the creature, we can see the mole between its left cheek and ear, at just the spot where Frank’s used to be. He had a dermatologist snip it off and cover the scar, but I remember it from eight years ago.
The troll king lifts his blade and licks it with relish, then raises it to strike.
The fairy queen turns sharply and shoves an icicle of her tears into his heart. He staggers back several feet, slowly pulling the ice dagger out. He reels forward again, but before he gets to her, she drinks from a vial around her neck. The fairy queen falls onto the body of her friend.
A singer’s voice rises louder and louder as the troll king staggers off the stage, coughing up snowflakes.
In the final act, the troll king tries to reclaim the forest, laying flowers on the bodies and offering handfuls of flowers to passersby, but they turn away from him with his ashen skin and sunken cheeks.
There is a sprite in a tree. He tries to hook her leg, but her foot swings out of reach over and over as she reads from a book, singing a ballad to the spirits of the forest. The troll king turns to ice and falls dead.
In the final scene, the music is again powerful, but now joyful. The verses call to everyone to rise up and love life as the new dawn comes. The fallen fairy sits up, shaking off the flowers covering her, the spell from the potion broken with the troll king’s death. Other birds and fairies dance and the fairy who woke dances with the sprite from the tree. Twirling together, they lead the procession away.
People jump to their feet, clapping.
I stand and applaud, my eyes fixed on Zoe as she waits her turn. She is the last to take her bows and comes forward, blowing kisses and throwing something from the small bag that the fairy queen carried early in the show.
I reach up and catch one of the favors. It’s wrapped with ribbons. After a moment, I realize it’s a foil-covered chocolate violin.
She bows to thunderous applause. The crowd is wild for her, stomping their feet and shouting. She rises with a bright smile and waves, then puts a hand over her heart.
I stare at her until she finally steps back into the line of assembled cast members. I look at the wings. The musicians took their bows earlier, but not the violinist. We never see him or her. The fact that we don’t makes me think it’s a her, Rachel. If so, I hope she hears the ovation go on and on.
“What’d you think, Frank?” I ask.
He pushes past me without answering.
I smirk until I spot Anvil moving swiftly down the far aisle. He’s parallel to Frank walking down the center one, and I wonder at Anvil’s intent. There’s a look on Anvil’s face that makes me believe he might take a shot if he gets it.
There is no way I can let a hit go down in a crowded theater. I start hauling it, but I can tell I won’t make it in time. Throngs of people are in my way, some even congratulating me about the production, giving me credit I didn’t earn.
A side door opens, splitting the center aisle group, and Frank sails out with the crowd that pours through it.
I reach the side door about the time Anvil does. As we emerge into the night, I find Trick’s leaning against a wall just outside the door. It’s obvious to me that he spotted what I was trying to prevent and propped the door open to make a path for Frank to get out ahead of Anvil. I gauge the distance down the balcony stairs. Trick made good time.
“Pretty good show,” Trick says as Anvil stalks past him, scanning the parking lot for Frank Palermo.
“He’s gone,” I say in a low voice. “Not like you could’ve taken him out here anyway.”
Anvil takes his hand away from his holster, scowling. “Wasn’t going to do anything to him here.”
“If you say so, ‘Vil,” Trick says.
Anvil looks between us for a moment, then at Trick. “Give me your keys. You can go with C. I’ll meet up with you guys later.”
Trick looks at me, and I’m wondering too what the hell is up with Anvil. For important decisions, we conspire together. Anvil’s not impulsive, so this feels off. But I’ve known him long enough to recognize the look on his face. Whatever’s he’s got in his head to do, no one is going to stop him. So I nod for Trick to give him his keys.
“Have C’s back,” Anvil says. “Don’t get distracted.”
“Who are you going to visit? C and I got nothin’ going that can’t wait,” Trick says. “We’ll come.”
Anvil shoves his hand out. “I’m not gonna storm the Pali fortress on my own, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve just got something to do.”
“Since when?” Trick says, dropping the keys into Anvil’s hand.
Anvil doesn’t answer. He turns and stalks away.
Trick watches him go. “Now that’s interesting.”
“Yeah.” After a beat, I say, “He’ll say when he’s ready.” But I am curious. Anvil’s not known for having a life outside The Life.
We walk toward the Range Rover, and I toss the keys to Trick. We climb in, with Trick behind the wheel.
“So what about an after party?” he asks. “I’ve got some girls at the ready whose pretty asses really need attention.”
A wild time dominating and fucking pretty women is always a good end to the night, but there’s something else on my mind. “Tell me about Zoe Arantes.”
* * *
Zoe
I’m relieved when I get a text from Rachel that she’s staying the night at a friend from school’s place. It’s someone her dad’s never met, so that’s good. I hope he won’t send one of his guys to my place looking for her again. It was a close call, and I don’t want to relive it.
Rachel’s relationship with her dad is complicated. He’s got two legitimate sons with his wife, but he had a longtime affair with Rachel’s mother. When Rachel was little, Frank didn’t publicly acknowledge her, which hurt her.
And he always ran hot and cold with her, depending on whether he was fighting with her mother or not. Sometimes he gave Rachel lavish gifts. Other times he said cruel things, calling her a little bastard girl who’d better not tell anyone his name or cause trouble.
When her mother decided to break things off for good, Frank had sent men to kill her. Rumor had it that her neighbor had
been killed for warning her. She’d fled and went into hiding with her new lover, but she’d been too late to take Rachel with her. Frank had sent someone to pick her up from her violin lesson. He’d held her, thinking her mother would come for her. But she never did.
So at sixteen, Rachel got what she wanted as a little girl. Frank Palermo announced he had a daughter and moved her into his mansion. Unfortunately, living with Frank became a prison sentence with him controlling every aspect of her life. Because it suits him, he calls her the Palermo princess and makes sure she’s always photographed in beautiful outfits at lavish parties.
I can’t imagine what it’s like for Rachel’s mom to see her living with Frank, knowing that he could turn on Rachel anytime and hurt her, knowing he’s forcing her to pretend to be happy for the cameras.
I’m the only one of her friends who knows the truth. Rachel behaves the way Frank wants in exchange for Frank not hunting her mother. As long as Rachel does what she’s told, her mom gets to stay alive. Lately though Rachel’s mask seems to be cracking. Frank Palermo’s war with C Crue is taking its toll on the city and their rebellion seems to be giving Rach ideas. For the first time ever, Rachel won’t confide in me, which worries me. A lot. She says she’s not making big plans, but she doesn’t even want anyone to know about her small rebellions. She says she wants to keep me safe.
I park my old car in a spot near my stairs. Outside, the temperature is dropping. There are more flurries drifting down from a dark Massachusetts sky. I usually love to see snow sparkle in moonlight. When we were little, Rachel and I thought it was fairy dust. But tonight I don’t slow down to watch the snow.
I’m thinking about the way I danced and how alive I felt on stage. I’m also thinking about Connor McCann sitting in the front row. My mind races with thoughts of him. Honestly, I think about him a lot anyway, but tonight it’s relentless.
All of us—the girls from school—have watched him with a fascination that borders on obsession. With his knowing eyes and square jaw, the pretty mouth that never smiles, the hard body and harder stare, he’s been an avenging angel around the city. It’s known. He’s known.
