Fallon & Luca

by Soraya Naomi

  After I left Fallon’s apartment, I regretted not taking her up on her offer. And then I was fighting not to send her a text message but caved in. I shouldn’t have asked her out on a date, and I sure as hell amazed myself when I told her my actual address and about our company, the company that Adriano and I built, Security Simplicity, which allows Adriano and me to simply appear to be two upstanding entrepreneurs yet is also used as a front to launder money for the Syndicate.

  Turning into the parking lot of the restaurant where I’m meeting Adriano for supper tonight, I cut off the engine and rake my hands through my hair. I’ve stopped listening to my rational side when it comes to Fallon. As the underboss, I’m treading on dangerous ground if I become attached to her.

  Opening the door of the Italian restaurant, I see Adriano’s already seated in the back booth.

  “Luca,” he welcomes.

  I nod my head in greeting. “Did you finish everything in Crystal Lake after I left?”

  We handed over Crystal Lake to the New York Syndicate, and now they can regulate the drug traffic there. Additional investigation surrounding that area came up empty. Leggia wants it for no apparent reason; he can have it.

  “Yes. It’s all done. They weren’t—”

  The waitress, a tall redhead, hands us menus. Adriano shows her a lopsided grin and catches her eyes, and the shy little thing doesn’t know how to react to him.

  “I’ll be back to take your orders, sir,” she says demurely.

  He continues after red is out of hearing distance, “They weren’t receptive. Where Leggia finds his arrogant soldiers, I’ll never know.”

  “I don’t get why Leggia wanted it in the first place. Consigliere Salvatore didn’t find anything interesting we might’ve overlooked. They’re now solely responsible for any drug activity on Crystal Lake ground, and that place is abhorrent to rule.”

  “Good riddance,” Adriano agrees. “I’m getting the arrabbiata pasta.” He waves over the redhead. “And I’m thinking of getting her too. A fiery redhead will do me some good tonight.”

  “I’ll have the same.” I take another good look at red. “Good luck. She’s seems pretty timid to me.”

  She hurries toward us. “Did you make a choice, sir?”

  “Two arrabbiata pastas with extra parmigiano,” I order and indicate with a swift nod to Adriano for him to play his game with her.

  I hand her my menu first, and when she takes Adriano’s, he holds on to it to get her attention. He winks at her, and her cheeks flush red before she turns away.

  “Oh god, she’s too nervous. I’m going to the house,” Adriano says with a smirk.

  Our boss, James, uses a house alongside the North Shore of Chicago’s suburbs as our headquarters. It’s located in a secluded area without any neighbors in sight, and it also has a strip club where the members can wind down.

  “Haven’t you been through all the women at the house?” I joke, although there could be some truth in that statement.

  “Probably, but you know who I’m going to the house for.” Adriano sits back and is cautious to ask me his next question. “What did you do today, by the way?”

  I sigh, realizing he wants to know if I was with her. “I met Fallon.”

  He’s not even surprised. “You talked to her again? Did you get any resourceful info for us? We need Danny,” he reminds me.

  Danny Mancuso is number one on our wanted list. He worked as a hacker for the Syndicate for a few years. The mafia especially needs good IT men, and Danny’s one of the best hackers in town. We need them to hack into every government system that could have important information for us and to make the people we finish off disappear from every system as if they never existed.

  Being a hacker for our crime syndicate is a covetous job. The reward is high but so is the risk. The hacker has inside information on what we do; therefore, he will never get out alive. He’ll always be associated with us. You can only leave the job if you’re dead.

  After five years, Consigliere Salvatore found out that Danny had become avaricious. He was programming and leaving behind viruses so that we had to pay him more to eliminate those viruses before the hacked system detected that we had access to it.

  Apparently, the monetary compensation wasn’t enough for Danny anymore. He was a man looking for prestige and acknowledgement, wanting to move up in rank. But unfortunately for him, a hacker isn’t considered a true member and can never be ranked in our Syndicate. Danny sensed the net closing in on him and disappeared abruptly. He’s a liability we can’t afford, and James wants him finished off. He was spotted in the Loop, and I found out that the only person of interest he has in that area is Fallon Michaels, his ex-girlfriend. After finding out every piece of information about Fallon, I arranged to meet her in the club. Actually, the original plan was for Adriano to flirt with her, but I decided to take the lead the moment I saw her at the entrance.

  “I talked to her this afternoon. I checked her phone and phone records. She didn’t return Danny’s call after he called her the first time I met her in the coffee shop. In fact, they haven’t had any contact in years. He must be desperate if he’s calling an ex whom he hasn’t spoken to in a long time, and so far, it seems like she’s not helping him hide in any way.” I pause, hesitant to tell him everything. “I’m going out with her tomorrow.”

  “On a date?”

  “Yes,” I reply evenly. “I’m drawn to her. I can’t explain it, Adriano.”

  He shakes his head, grinning. “Fuck, Luca. Be careful. Attachments are dangerous. Especially with her, now. I think you need to come to the house with me tonight.”

  I rub my palm over my mouth. “Maybe I should.”

  Our food arrives, and by this time, Adriano’s anxious to visit the house. “Eat up.” He points his fork to my pasta dish. “We’re going to our headquarters.”

  After Adriano and I drive separately to our destination, we each park in the circular driveway of the mundane, but fairly large, three-story, white brick house. As usual, a prospect is guarding the front entrance that opens into a foyer covered in grey marble tiles.

  We ascend the stairwell toward the largest room on the second floor – which, in essence, is just an in-house strip club. Adriano cracks his knuckles for emphasis before he places his hands on the handles of the double doors.

  Soft music is filling the burgundy-decked-out room where four men, Adriano’s soldiers, are slouching on the massive half-round couch in the center, each with a girl on his lap.

  “Have some fun, Luca. I’m going to enjoy Cam,” Adriano comments and wanders to the bar to our left where she’s sitting on a stool.

  Camilla tends the small bar set up on the left side of the room and is Adriano’s favorite girl. She’s an exotic Italian with long legs and unblemished olive skin that she doesn’t cover with make-up – Adriano and I share a preference for natural looking women. She’s clever and pensive, the only woman here I converse with on a friendly level. Most of these girls will do anything if we throw them enough money, but not Camilla, who’s frankly reserved compared to the rest of them.

  Adriano saw her the first night she was here and forbade any of the other members to touch her. The soldiers and other Capi wouldn’t dare defy Adriano. She’s been here for a year, and he’s infatuated with her, so he keeps her all to himself. She’s in love with Adriano, and I’ve seen her hurt expression when the men talk about his whorish ways, although I’m not positive if he’s actually still intimate with other women. He’s not ignorant, and he realizes she’s in love with him, but he’s adamant about not wanting any attachments. Unfortunately for him, he can’t stay away from her.

  I go behind the bar and grab a bottle of water instead of an alcohol-infused drink. Rarely do I drink, only when I’m extremely wound up and need to calm down. Taking big gulps of water, I spot a brunette walking up to me, Skye.

  My first few years in the Syndicate, I used to be on this side of the house often, enjoying myself with diffe
rent women. But meaningless, nameless sex lost my interest as the years went by. I’d still indulge myself once in a while, but I couldn’t find satisfaction anymore in any of this. This life of crime, drugs, and violence that Adriano and I would never have gotten involved in if it weren’t for the nephew of my boss, James, and the one choice that changed the course of my life from carefree teenager growing into normal adulthood to a young man being groomed to be in the mafia.

  Mio zio Joseph raised me after my parents died when I was ten, and he always tried to make up for the loss of them. Even though we didn’t have a lot of means and money, parental affection was in abundance from mio zio. When his heart failure forced him to cease working, I was just a boy coming into the way of the world, a boy of seventeen wanting to take care of his second father.

  I landed a job at a bakery in the city to help support my family of two, an American-Italian bakery run by Alessa Calderone, James’s wife. I worked every day after school, and I didn’t have any plans to attend college. I lived day by day, praying daily that my uncle’s health wouldn’t deteriorate. But zio Joseph was slowly dying, living here in Chicago and cooped up inside the house. I knew that if it weren’t for me, he would be moving back to his beloved Italy.

  On my first day at the bakery, I met Adriano. He was one year my junior, and we shared common teenage boys’ interests like roughhousing, football, biking, and, of course, a responsiveness to pretty girls. Adriano also worked after school, and we became close friends.

  After working at the bakery for a month, we both noticed there were regular customers coming in. Alessa catered to a menacing-looking crowd of men in fitted suits with angry expressions covering their faces. Apart from those regulars, the bakery wasn’t busy often, but it was still open daily until eleven p.m. We actually never questioned that back then.

  One night, an Italian boy came running into the bakery when Alessa was gone and only Adriano and I were there. Out of breath, he closed the door and looked around, scared. He begged us for help because some men were after him. Adriano and I shrugged and were looking forward to some action on an otherwise dull Tuesday night, so we told the boy to hide behind the counter as we put on our invincible façades.

  A minute later, three men in wrinkled suits appeared, checking the area outside the bakery before they risked stepping inside and drilling us about the whereabouts of the boy. Neither Adriano nor I recoiled. I didn’t think they would dare touch us since Alessa adored both Adriano and me, and all men feared Alessa. I told them to fuck off, and one of them punched me in the face, ordering me to surrender the boy or they would light the place on fire. I laughed, standing my ground, even though I was scared and it hurt like hell, but one thing I learned from my uncle was to never show fear. Intimidation preys on fear.

  I remembered Alessa telling me on my first day that if the shop was ever robbed, I was to mention the name James Calderone, so I told the three men that James was already on his way. This made them back off, and they scampered away.

  I should’ve never gotten involved in that situation if I wanted to stay off the radar of James Calderone. The boy was Alessa’s nephew, and he told Alessa how I saved him. She, in turn, told her husband, James, and the truth, as always, got contorted with each passing person, making it sound more heroic than it was in reality. James Calderone came in the next day and promised two impressionable young boys money, power, and women. Money for me to send zio Joseph back to live a peaceful and healthy life in Italy.

  Adriano and I fell for his story and became his prospects. We were prospective Mafiosi before we even understood what was happening. James had a mandatory stipulation that we attend business college together, always reminding us how valuable business skills are in the mafia. Adriano and I had inquisitive young minds and breezed through college, living as young princes while money and women ruled our lives for four years. Then James ensured membership for both Adriano and me after graduation when I was twenty-two and Adriano twenty-one.

  Adriano and I shared everything from the time we started as prospects to the time we became made men, and as with all prospective Mafiosi, we were bound into silence – omertà, the code of silence and secrecy that prohibits us from disclosing information about the activities of our Syndicate – by being required to commit murder to prove our loyalty.

  I witnessed his first kill and he mine. I pulled my trigger the first time on a young associate, who was an informant for the FBI, in an abandoned warehouse on the north side of Chicago that’s used by the Syndicate to torture captives. An associate works for or aids the organization but isn’t considered a true member and may be killed without permission of the Capo crimine/boss or underboss; therefore, it was a clean, quick, and simple kill, as was Adriano’s.

  But no matter how simple these kills appeared to be on the surface, they profoundly changed both of us because murdering a person, ending a life, haunts you forever on some level. Though the crazy thing is that your mind adapts. It now justifies the taking of lives because they’re not innocents. As time passes and you live in a world where every human life is expendable, normal emotions get phased out and you become detached from the viciousness. For that reason, Adriano and I made the conscious choice to never get attached to an outside woman; sustaining a relationship with a regular citizen is simply impossible and too dangerous.

  James was the underboss back then, and when James became the boss of the Chicago Syndicate, I was promoted at the age of twenty-six from Capo to underboss and Adriano was promoted from soldier to Capo, and we became powerful men who indulged in our ranks.

  However, nowadays, the power doesn’t excite me, this world doesn’t intrigue me, and the women don’t interest me anymore. And the constant worrying, arranging, and scheming simply tires me. Never can I just be. I will forever be on guard with everything I do. Once you’re part of the Chicago Syndicate, you can never, ever leave alive.

  I’m forced to pay attention to Skye when she places her palm on my chest. “Want me to take your mind off things, Luca?” she asks as she entwines our hands, leading me to one of the three private rooms in the back.

  When she holds the door open for me, I step inside the grey-white room and sit on the four-poster bed in the center while I undo the button of my suit jacket. Skye slides it off my shoulders, and I close my eyes.

  Fallon.

  Remembering how it felt to finally touch her smooth skin with my lips, I feel an undeniable passion threatening to boil inside me. Still, I try my best to stay in this moment while Skye attempts to comb back my hair that’s clinging to my forehead, but I catch her wrist, wrapping my fingers forcefully around it. “Get out,” I order in a low voice and release her arm, shoving her away from me.

  Confusion is setting in. Fallon is starting to creep under my skin. She’s igniting a sensation I’m unfamiliar with, a sensation I’m incapable of rejecting, and I am going to pursue her.

  CHAPTER 8

  Fallon

  Sundays have always been a lazy day for me, and although I did go running this morning, today is no different as I lounge around the apartment and read. Then I paint my nails, toes and fingers, with a vivid red color and start my grooming around five: shave my legs, scrub my skin until it feels like satin, blow dry my hair and curl the ends, which are now flowing in beach waves over one shoulder. My bangs are swept to the side, and I decide on light, au naturel makeup, applying some mascara, blush, and nude lipstick.

  Standing in front of my closet in my black lace underwear, I look through my dresses and stop at my dark blue one to remove it from the hook. I decide on my strappy black sandals, but I’ll also wear my black thigh high stockings since it’s cold outside. My dress has a silver beaded halter top that ties around my neck in a big bow and a knee length A-line skirt. I top off my ensemble with my white gold diamond studs.

  I’m buckling the straps on my sandals when my phone rings, and I snatch it off the bed.

  Before I get the chance to speak, Teagan yells, “Hey, babe!” />
  “Hey, babe. What did you do today?”

  “I went shopping. You?”

  “I’m getting ready for my date with Luca.” I sit up without fastening my other sandal.

  “I told you he’d call.”

  “He didn’t call. Well, not to ask me out. I saw him again at the coffee shop yesterday.”

  “I was kind of right,” Teagan persists.

  Wanting her opinion on my dress, I tell her, “I’m wearing the blue dress with the beaded halter.”

  “The silver beading?”

  “Yes,” I confirm.

  “Fabulous choice. Is he still cute? You usually lose interest once you’ve had a conversation with a guy.”

  “He actually quoted Alexandre Dumas,” I boast.

  “Well, then you have got to marry him,” she mocks. “Are you having dinner or what?”

  “Yes, dinner. He’s picking me up in a few.”

  “Did you shave your legs?” she probes tentatively.

  “I did but not for reasons you think,” I retort in defense.

  “My girl is going to get laid. Now I’m proud.”

  Grinning, I ignore her crass comment. “I have to finish. I was putting on my black sandals when you called.”

  “Another sexy choice. I approve.”

  “I’m glad,” I reply dryly.

  “You do realize I’ll be texting you throughout the night,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Now, I groan through my smile. “I know. Just don’t expect me to answer you right away.”

  “You better. Or on second thought, only answer when the dirty stuff takes place.”

  “Yeah, that won’t happen. I won’t be thinking of you then.” I add, “I hope.”

  And we both laugh.

  “He’s not doing a good job if you’re thinking of me then. Go have fun. We’ll talk or text. Do things I would do.” Teagan makes a kissing noise.

  “We’ll text later. Bye bye.” I toss my phone on the bed and finish fastening the straps on my shoes.