After another minute or two, I couldn’t handle the frantic beat of my heart, the uncertainty that started to creep in, and went to remove the mask.
He stopped me.
His hands were on me again, in my hair, and his mouth clashed against mine, so roughly that I knew my lip split open again. He had been drinking something spicy, with cinnamon, and it mixed with the iron coming in between our mouths.
At first, he was unstoppable. Not even the blood stopped him. His tongue tangled with mine, and it was starved. Starved like I had been for years. I could feel him, consuming in any way he could. For once, I was the one giving. Maybe that was why it didn’t feel entirely wrong.
The head on his shoulders, the body carried by the legs, the arms that reached out and touched, the physical, it didn’t seem to matter to me. He could look like an ogre, and for some reason, beautiful still came to mind. I had met plenty of beautiful people, and their pretty only ran skin deep. But the people who were kind, the rare ones, they were the definition of true beauty.
Somewhere deep inside of my mind, I wondered if the fear of the last couple of hours, most of my life, had somehow caught up to me. My mind was taking a terrible situation and making it ideal so I could handle this.
I called bullshit.
It was more.
It was hard to put it all into words.
Simply put, I wanted to keep kissing him. I wanted him to keep kissing me—touching me.
I wanted more of whatever this was. It was feeding me in a way that I’d never known, except for when Keely and her family made me feel like I was a part of theirs. Then again, it was different. The feelings were new, even if I couldn’t place them while in the immediate glow.
What had the singer compared the intensity she had for her lover to earlier? A drug.
That was something I never expected. The pull. The push. The high from being lifted up by a cool wave.
The intensity of it almost made me pull away, take a few minutes like he did to compose myself, but on the other hand, my hands refused to let him go. I had taken his shirt in my hands and locked down. Touching him felt like touching life. I had never felt that before.
Life. In my hands. Mine.
Then, in a move so violent that I stumbled back, landing against the wall, palms out behind my back to stop myself from going over completely, he ripped his mouth from mine.
He cursed underneath his breath. The sound of it was as violent as his rejection.
For however long—a minute, a million years—I stood still. I wasn’t sure what to say. I trembled from head to toe, just like I’d done after Merv had attacked me. Then something came to mind, and before I could filter it, I spoke into the darkness. “The blood from my lip.” I pointed to it. “I’m clean.”
He stayed quiet for so long that I thought he left again.
“Don’t touch it,” he said, his voice full of warning. The tone of it ran over me like rough waves, but the coolness of it slid over blistered skin like a miracle. His voice was low, but with some scratch to it. He didn’t seem like he was doing it on purpose. I wanted to hear it again
Get your shit together, Mari! You haven’t even seen his face! He could be seriously messed up, a man who just came here to fuck you for money. Or worse. He likes to use blindfolds. Kinky shit.
Liar, liar, liar, my heart seemed to sing, all off tune and shit. He’s beautiful.
The devil was beautiful, too, my mind shot back.
“Okay,” I said, putting my hands down. I was going to remove the blindfold again when he came at me with “don’t touch it.”
“You’re poor.”
There it was again, my favorite sound in the world. His voice. I liked the rasp in it.
Wait.
What?
You’re poor.
I laughed a little. I expected him to comment on my I’m clean comment. That was why I had brought it up. I thought that maybe once he tasted the blood, he was disgusted and worried. Instead he hits me with “you’re poor.”
Who leads with that?
“Fabulously so.” I sighed. “Anyone poorer than me might as well be down with whale shit. I have no home. No job. No money. I used everything I had to get here tonight. I have no family either.” I didn’t want to get into Keely and her family. He didn’t need to know that. If he was deranged, or whatever was worse than that, better he didn’t know they existed.
“Name,” he said.
“Oh.” I took a breath in and released it. “My name is… Mari. I’m not Sierra. She…she couldn’t make it. I took her place. So about the rules…”
“Name,” he said again. “Not yours, Ms. Flores. I want the name of the man who did that to your face.”
“How do you know it was a man?” I whispered, ignoring the fact the he knew my last name without me even telling him.
“Name,” he said once more. I got the feeling he was losing patience with me.
Why would he need the information?
I stood taller, teetering a bit in the heels, putting up a wall against all I felt since he touched me. “That’s none of your business. I might not know much about this situation, but I do know this. It pays. I came here to earn money. So do I get the job or not? My time is valuable, Mr…?”
“What would you be willing to do to get the job?”
“I thought you were the job I’d be doing.”
“Answer me, Mariposa.”
I licked at my lip, glad that it had started to clot. I knew it looked bad, though. He had kissed my lipstick off. “I’m here. That means… whatever you want me to. I heard the job pays well.”
“Ah,” he said, sounding Italian all of a sudden. “It pays very well. Millions. Plus perks.”
I didn’t suck in a breath, but I wanted to. Millions? Perks? Was he messing with me? No, Sierra had mentioned for good. If the girl cared enough to count her cheese slices, she wouldn’t have messed around about this. Suddenly, her situation with Scarpone dawned on me. Had she broken up with him for this opportunity? It made sense, if she had.
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Sign me up.”
This time, I felt it when he took a step closer. I was highly aware of him. Lightning searing against my personal darkness. I tried to take a step back, but he put his arm around my waist, pulling me closer. I stuck my hand to his chest, pushing, but he didn’t budge.
“Us,” he said. “Tell me about that. What happened in here, between us.”
“That’s a dirty word. Us. There is no us,” I said. “This is business. Whatever I do, and I mean whatever, I do as a business transaction. Nothing is free in this life, not even love. I’m past being dirt poor. I have to watch out for me. So, you either give me the job, or have one of those men escort me out, like you did to the girls who were flirting with the men in the main room.”
“You do me a service—”
“And you pay me,” I said.
“Nothing more,” he said.
“Not a damn thing.”
“For the record, Mariposa.” He came in closer, inhaling, his breath fanning over my neck. I closed my eyes again, trying my hardest to keep my heart from frantically beating. I knew he could feel it. “Never fucking cut me off while I’m speaking.”
I nodded. “Will do…boss.” The word sounded like a bitter insult sliding right off my honeyed tongue.
“I never said you got the job, Mariposa.”
His nose moved up my neck, touching my ear, then moved back down to my lips. He placed a chaste kiss on the side of my mouth, and then on my lips, right where the cut was. It burned, the area sensitive, but it was the only reminder that this was real. That he had existed.
The burn was still strong as my escort from earlier removed the blindfold—the other man, the boss, was gone. The feelings he left behind were as hot as the flames blistering the air around me.
After giving me a second to compose myself, the escort led me outside, no words spoken between us.
7
Capo
Out of all the clubs in the world, she had to walk into mine.
Mine.
She invaded my space without even knowing she had.
She looked completely different, but somehow, I remembered her.
The eyes. The nose. The lips. The shape of her face. She was my innocence, la mia farfalla, but she had matured. Became a woman in the span of years that felt like centuries to me. Seeing her brought back a rush of memories. I was a dead man reliving a life he had left behind.
She was the catalyst for death, for a new life, and now for the season I currently found myself in.
She thought she was clever showing up at The Club with the exclusive invitation, one that belonged to a dead girl, nonetheless. Armino Scarpone had killed her. Like father, like son.
Then mia farfalla mentioned Guido when the doorman had caught her, thinking she could slip past my security that easily.
Searching her bag had brought me closer to who she was.
The butterfly clip. The piece of broken pottery with the butterfly painted on it. The book with all of her notes. Coloring books and crayons.
A grown fucking woman carrying around crayons.
She was an odd mixture between a woman and a child.
As the piece of terra cotta in my hand had taken shape, so did the memories stored in my head.
If anyone deserved loyalty, it was me from her.
She just didn’t know it yet.
She couldn’t have remembered. She was only five.
When I had touched her at The Club, though, she had relaxed, melted into me, and the years disappeared. It brought me back to that place, that time. No matter how much she’d deny it, and she would, she trusted me. She had reason to.
Before I could stop myself, I had let go of the image of the child and kissed the woman standing in front of me. Crossed a line that couldn’t be set straight again. She was attractive in a way that was hard to explain. But one word came to mind when I looked at her. Regal. She was a queen. And those lips? They were the softest things I’d felt since my pillow.
Being that close to her made something inside of me restart. My entire world went black, faded out, and when I opened my eyes, the taste of her blood had invaded my mouth.
Red. A reminder.
Someone had touched her. Put their fucking hands on her. The child I had given my life to keep safe.
Whatever happened to her over the years had turned her into a woman who refused to allow anyone to help her. Kindness meant she owed something. It was clear that she refused to owe anyone. Even if it meant being starved. Even if it meant her life.
Most people called me Mac. Others called me their worst fucking nightmare. But no one—no one—ever called me boss. Not like she did, with a sarcastic twist of the tongue. Despite not knowing the circumstances in which she had found herself in, she was going to set her terms.
She demanded to touch life after merely surviving it for so long.
Her willingness to do whatever it took to get the job, no matter how life changing, showed me just how desperate she was. She had hit a turning point, stumbling right into the crux beyond starved and ready for more. She had run out of options.
No home. No job. No money. She was running on zero, on fumes. The stale bread in her bag was a dead giveaway, not to mention that she was skin and bones and wasn’t purposely trying to stay that way.
Desperation doesn’t always mean a person is loyal, but after someone has been in the trenches for so long, the hand that helps them up, takes them in, and feeds them will become the hand that inspires trust. For someone like her, who owed me even if she didn’t know it, she would become loyal.
Loyalty was rewarded in the world I lived in.
I’d do for her. She’d do for me.
She had the general idea of things already ingrained in her, even though I hated to think how she got that fucking way.
I’d find out about that. I always did.
Blue was once Marietta Palermo’s favorite color—the same little girl who loved butterflies and coloring books. I’d know if Mariposa Flores’s favorite color was still blue by the time I was done.
Butterflies and coloring books still did it for her. My bet was still on blue.
I’d know if she had nightmares and I starred in them, or if she had forgotten the situation completely. The night at The Club, her body remembered me, even if her mind refused to set the memories free.
I’d learn every scar on her body and hunt down every finger that had ever touched her with evil in mind. I had a multitude of sins to pay for. A few more wouldn’t make a difference when it came time for forgiveness.
There wouldn’t be a single freckle on her skin that I wouldn’t know intimately.
I longed to run my finger down her nose, to memorize how it felt against my skin. I had already memorized the lines of her body. The way she fit against me. How she felt pressed against my chest. The scent of her still seemed to drift underneath my nose when I least expected it.
Back to the fucking point. She owes me.
“Capo,” Rocco said, reminding me that I was in his office. He was being a wise ass, calling me boss in Italian. He was the closest thing to a brother I’d ever known, but we were not brothers. Not by blood, but one thing I learned the hard way, family was not always blood. Family was a title that was earned, not given. Even though we were close, there was still a gap. For him. For me. There always was when it came to the world we lived in.
I turned from the window, the city of New York sprawling around me, and took another drink of whiskey. I set it down on his rich mahogany desk, fixing my tie. “Sì,” I said. “Get the paperwork ready.”
“Her name.” His eyes scrutinized me without the weight of judgment.
I checked my watch for the time. I had somewhere else I needed to be. “Let her decide.”
“I’ll send Guido.”
“Sì.” I grinned. “I’m sure she’ll enjoy that, since she knows Guido and the Fausti famiglia so well. A familiar face might make this easier.”
He returned the grin, nodded once, and then started the paperwork.
8
Mariposa
It had been over a week since The Club and him, and so much had happened during that time.
I hadn’t heard anything from him. After his escort had led me to a waiting car, a car that had tinted windows, a privacy glass, and looked like it cost the amount of a townhouse in New York, a suited driver brought me home. I made him drop me two blocks from Keely’s place, though I had a feeling he followed me.
So, that life experience tanked. My body wasn’t even worth enough to sell.
I blamed it on my nose and then tried to move on.
It was easier to do when so much good was happening around me. Keely was able to not work as hard when Harrison paid a month’s worth of her rent. The situation with Sierra really hit her hard. She was having nightmares after seeing the girl she roomed with for so long dead. The detectives ruled that Sierra had been murdered. Harrison told me she had been brutally stabbed. Armino Scarpone was their number one suspect, but he hadn’t been found yet.
It was scary to think he was on the loose, but there were so many like him out there, the fact that he was out there didn’t really shock us. We prepared and then survived the best we could.
Two days after Harrison was able to help Keely with the rent, she got a call. She got a huge part in a famous Broadway show. We all knew she would someday, but it was a shock when it happened. The best shock any of us could’ve ever expected. She deserved it and so much more.
Keely had demanded that I stay with her. She didn’t want me out on the streets since Armino had seen us leaving that day. He knew Keely and I were home when he’d been banging on the door and screaming. Harrison thought that maybe he’d want to eliminate any witnesses, but it was too late. Keely and I had already spoken to the police since we were both there. We were the last three people (Keely, Armino, and me) who saw Sierra alive,
apart from the clerk at the store. She had run out to buy stockings and was ambushed on her way home.
Regardless of my feelings on taking handouts, I decided to stay with Kee. Not because I couldn’t face the streets again, but because I worried for her. She was having a really rough time, even when she should’ve been celebrating. But my rule of no kindness unless repaid still applied, so to make it up to her, I helped her pack. Since she got the better job, she was moving into a nicer place once her lease was up at the place she shared with Sierra.
The teapot went off and she jumped up to do whatever it was she did with it. I wasn’t a tea person, but Kee and Co. (her entire family) swore by the stuff. Her mother was what she called “a tea-leaf reader.” I didn’t want to try and read anything but grind particles floating around in my cup of coffee.
I watched her for a moment and then went back to packing things she wouldn’t need for the kitchen.
“Mari?”
“Yeah?”
I looked at her again. She was putting bags in the kettle. Something sweet but spicy filled the air. Vanilla. Cinnamon. Cinnamon. It made me think of his mouth—I cut the thought off before I could get carried away. I thought I’d only remember chocolate, but apparently, that had been a lie I fed myself.
“I keep thinking…all of these good things started happening after Sierra died. I don’t have to work so hard to keep up with the rent for this ratty ass place. Getting the call about the show. It all seems so sudden. Do you think…how do I even say this without sounding like a cold-hearted bitch?” Keely dunked another bag in, studying it. “Sierra had her ways, but for the most part, I felt sorry for her. She reminded me of you.”
I swallowed hard. “She did?”
She nodded, pouring the hot liquid into an old teacup. “Not her personality. Her story. How she had to fight to survive. She definitely had a mean streak about her, which you don’t, but she was an orphan. And then she went into foster care. I think she had to fight for her food; that’s why I never said anything when she’d count her eggs or cheese.”
Machiavellian: Gangsters of New York, Book 1 Page 8
