by Chloe Liese
“I’m just saying you need to stop making so many assumptions and be more open-minded. She’s brilliant and competent, and I think she’ll do great work if you don’t scare her away.” Molly smacked my arm. “Seriously, Zed. You’re better than this.”
I frowned and scraped my nails against my scruff. “I’m demanding, I’ll give you that. I want to honor Mom’s vision.”
Molly leaned in and patted my cheek. “Not at the expense of your personal integrity she raised you with. You miss her. It’s still new and raw.”
“I’m fine.”
Molly smiled sadly. “I know you are. Just be a little gentler on everyone?”
I stepped out of her comforting touch and whipped open the door. “Molly, you know who you’re talking to? Gentle isn’t really in my wheelhouse.”
She laughed and backed away from the car as I settled in the driver’s seat. “It’s all relative, Zed. Less hard on yourself then, how’s that?”
“I’ll take it under advisement.” I started the engine. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some aggression to take out on my teammates, and I don’t want to keep them waiting.”
“Go.” She waved me away. “Slug somebody. Work it out of your system.”
I pulled out with a wave back and cranked up the tunes. My brother, Teo, had last driven my car and it blared angry, thumping bass, but it fit my mood. That woman, with her odd vowels and indecisive hair, was as irritating as she was irresistible. My attraction to her was strange, out of my realm, and I didn’t like that.
My body couldn’t cool down. I was hard and agitated, and the thought of ripping that tasteful blouse of hers right down the front and fucking her tits played on a loop in my brain. I tried picturing myself out on the field, where all was calm and within my control, but not even that settled me. Why did I respond to her? She was the opposite of what I liked. Headstrong. Brazen. Indomitable.
“Stop.” I shook my head like I could dislodge the idea of her, and spun the volume dial, hoping the music’s rage would drown out my dangerous line of thought. Some asshole was right on my tail, so I zipped around a car that apparently had nowhere to be and sped off. I loved how the Ferrari handled—so damn responsive. Exactly how I liked it. Control and routine were the fundamental gears in the mechanics of my life, not just my car. There was nothing I wanted touching them. Too bad my body had very different ideas about my wants when it came to Nairne MacGregor.
Three
Zed
Practice had kicked my ass but the awareness of my dead legs and burning chest stayed peripheral. Wind sprints, long shots, and drills were the least of my worries. I threw my shit in the car, kicked on the engine, and peeled out for home. Mindless. That’s what I loved about soccer. It was the one part of my life that was mindless. The sport was like breathing for me, autonomic. Dad said the day I took my first steps I’d been dribbling a ball.
Everything else in my life was a fucking mess. I was heir to a world I hated, consumed with surviving it while trying to dismantle its depraved systems. My parents were the Boston underworld’s Romeo and Juliet—daughter and son of the city’s two prominent Irish and Italian crime families, who’d raised almighty hell when they’d refused to step up to their roles or marry in the same gene pool. Mom never wanted anything to do with the life. As a woman, her excommunication was easier. Meaning, the Irish side mostly left me alone.
Dad, on the other hand, had a harder time extricating himself. He’d been sent here from Italy in another period of instability and had been expected to bring the family to order. But Brando Salvatore was a ballsy bastard, and somehow, he’d managed to get a free education, become a surgeon, and pass off the most sordid aspects of the mafia to his cousins. His involvement was limited to sewing up busted criminals on the sly, in exchange for his family keeping their violence from innocents as much as possible. Nicky, his first cousin, had taken over, and Dad had fought with him constantly, trying to convince someone without a soul to have one.
I grew up shielded from it for the most part. Teo and I got stuck in some tiny Catholic school that Mom donated to so heavily, she practically financed it entirely, just so we had somewhere safe to learn. The plan was I’d graduate, then head to Europe and play soccer, get away from it all, before they got to me. Until circumstances changed. Mom got sick, and rather than leave her, I remained and risked the inevitability of my birthright. And, of course, the inevitable happened.
Nicky got shot in some showdown by the wharf two weeks after I graduated high school and left the syndicate a mess. His second in command, Carmen, was wildly unpopular and was the target of a hit two days later. Everybody knew Nicky’s consigliere—his advisor—Antonio, had put it out. The capos were divided on their support of Antonio, and their indecision grew volatile. Chaos had ensued. A string of murders, foul deals, and robberies that tipped Boston’s crime rate into dangerous territory for three months.
That’s when everything went to shit. Mom got sicker, Teo had daily panic attacks, and Dad’s despair deepened as the family pressed him to step in as boss. From my vantage point, there was only one thing to do—fix that shit. I went from a quiet, over-serious teenager to a man when I walked into the meeting that was to decide the syndicate’s way forward. I crossed the threshold, claimed my place among them, and stood tall as I spoke of a vision for our family. Keep your head down. Stay out of the foulest criminal dealings. Fly under the radar. No risky business. Be a community that was a little crooked but far from committing indiscriminate violence and outright destruction. The old way.
It was a crock of bullshit in one sense. There’d always be shady happenings, illegal and untoward. But at its root, the mafia had originated as a way to make order out of sociopolitical chaos. They ate that shit up, just like I knew they would. They were sick of the instability, the disorder, the worry that every knock on the door was the cops coming to haul you away or that someone you’d called brother was about to blow your brains out.
So, that was how I played it at the meeting, knowing they’d ask me to be advisor to the Don, while Antonio would get all the fucking money and power without the risk of exposure, which was exactly what he wanted. Antonio, the aspiring boss, was a paranoid fuck, and rightly so, after he’d seen to the assassination of the man who’d stood between him and absolute power. I had my suspicions he’d been responsible for Nicky’s death, too.
I’d continued painting them the full picture. Our Don would be invisible to the authorities, as well as to his soldatos who wouldn’t know where he was or what he was involved in. This would make selling him out or eliminating him exceptionally difficult. Capos and associates would meet in small, private settings. We’d slip into the shadows and our daily machinations would be left to people who had good standing in the community, who could keep our reputation above reproof.
When my speech was done, they’d unanimously voted me consigliere, and begrudgingly accepted Antonio as boss. While Antonio ran us like an angel investor, and I was the vision piece, the man who’d face the world for us, they still needed someone with experience and balls to handle the daily, dirty operations. So, in a rare but not unprecedented move, they elected a woman, Nella, as underboss, which spoke both to her terrifyingly authoritative presence, as well as the obvious financial power she held as the daughter of a dead capo who’d made ridiculous money off racketeering. And that was that.
In a cultish circle that made our Catholicism seem laughable, I swore a lie of loyalty to despicable men, many of whom were my own flesh and blood. That was the first night as a man that I noticed Nella, while she pricked my finger with a knife she’d pulled from her hair. She’d squeezed three drops of my blood onto a card bearing the Archangel Michael’s face while my heart had pounded in my chest. Then my dick had swelled as she looked at me and licked her lips. Blood red, like the blood on my hand. The blood on the card that initiated me into the life, ignited into flames and danced around the room, passed hastily from one hand to another, so that not one
man would be burned.
But burned they would be. I’d make sure of it. I pledged omertà—silence and fidelity—to men I despised, who cheated and murdered and stole and violated. And while I had no concrete plan yet for what I’d do, I only knew I hadn’t meant a single foul word I promised. There was no way forward that was clear to me then, how I was going to be in the life, become a leader among them, and rip the foundation apart beneath us. I just knew I had to do it.
That night, Nella took me home, and I became a man in another way. The man I was still today. Brutal. Dominating. The bastard who snapped at pretty, smart-mouthed college women and walked around angry and disillusioned. I’d seen so much shit, and the countless efforts to expunge the worst of my world had blown up in my face.
Then there was Nairne, too damn haughty. Like life was all so sure and defined, black and white, right and wrong. She pissed me off because she embodied what I wanted for my world—clarity, goodness, and just enough room for some healthy deviance. The fun kind. That happened in bedrooms and bathrooms and cars, and—you get the idea—between two consenting hot-for-each-other adults.
And I couldn’t have any of that.
My drive home from practice was fast. I stood in my blessedly quiet kitchen, chugging a shit-tasting protein shake before I’d even processed where I was. Mindless. The tiny sliver of my day where my brain went silent and nothing had to be thought about or worried over. I sighed and set the glass in the sink while I stared at the river.
A sharp ringtone pierced my serenity, and I rummaged through my bag to shut it up. I found my cell buried in my slacks and ripped it out in time to answer.
“What?” I snapped.
Traffic noises told me Bruno was outside. “You need to come down to Lupo’s.”
I waited for his explanation that didn’t come, which just made me want to punch something. Bruno was thick as a brick. “Why, soldato?”
“Joey’s pulling shit again,” Bruno said, “and the narcs are here.”
“Fuck’s sake. I told him—”
“I know.” I heard him hit his cig and a car alarm go off. “But he don’t listen. Now he’ll learn what happens when he breaks his oath. Filthy business.”
As consigliere, I handled disputes. I mediated, negotiated, and often got our men out of scrapes. Mostly, I tried to push deals into the less sordid echelons of criminality. It was deeply unsatisfying for someone who found it all morally repulsive.
With Joey, who’d clearly waded into the one territory we avoided—drugs—I couldn’t do a damn thing. I’d talk with the narcs and hand him off, maybe offer some leads in good faith for a couple of years shaved off his sentence. Point was, Joey was screwed.
The contents of my pockets were splayed across the counter and something caught my eye amidst the keys and odd coins, as Bruno grumbled about other drama I had to handle.
He hacked a smoker’s cough and exhaled heavily into the phone. “He had it coming, Zeddo. Anybody who gambles like that is going to get burned at some point.”
A pen. It wasn’t mine. Inconspicuous. Black. I picked it up, held it to the light, and turned it one hundred eighty degrees until I saw what I was looking for.
“Zeddo?”
I unscrewed the base of the cap. Goddammit. A transmitter. “I gotta go, Bruno. I’ll be there in thirty.”
“But the narcs—”
“Tell the narcs they can fucking wait.” I set the pen down and backtracked to the drawer where I kept a few essential tools.
Bruno sighed. “Bene, okay.”
I snapped my phone shut. Set it aside. I was muscly for a footballer, not because big biceps did jack shit for a striker. I had to be able to protect myself. In the mafia, not having a solid right hook and a good one-two was a professional hazard. So, it wasn’t hard to lift the hammer and accurately crush the bug with one swing.
I’d braved suspicion before. I took it in stride, waved it off. Calm face. Even voice. Legs set wide and shoulders back. I’d gone this long without anyone catching on. But Bruno’s words came back. Joey wasn’t the only one who’d been gambling, operating on borrowed time.
Anybody who gambles like that is going to get burned at some point.
“God, I hate it when he’s right,” I grumbled to myself.
I went upstairs and showered off the grime that had settled in my skin. Scalding water, an abrasive scrape of the sponge against my spent body. I was tarnished and trapped and all I wanted was some way to rid myself of it. Some filth was just too rank to be cleansed. I was in deep. And only getting deeper.
Four
Nairne
“That rat arse!” I slammed the door behind me and threw my keys on the counter.
We might live an ocean apart these days and she was only visiting, but Elodie was my best friend, and knew exactly how to proceed when I was in a temper. She stood slowly from the sofa and folded her arms. “Who?” she said.
I scrubbed my face, then yanked open the refrigerator door. I was famished, and hunger never did good things for my mood. “The bloody new board chair for that organization I applied to.” Nothing appealed so I slapped the refrigerator shut.
“The one about health-initiatives in community restoration?”
The counter had what I needed. I ripped off a piece of baguette, imagining it was Zed’s face as I smashed butter into it with a knife. “That one, yes. I got it, obviously, and I thought it would be such a brilliant way to finish my time here. A prestigious nonprofit that actually does good in a major city, and focuses on my area of research.”
She stepped warily toward the baguette and pulled off her own piece. “And you don’t like the new leadership?”
I laughed as I chewed and swallowed. “Don’t like him. What an understatement. He was pompous and proud. God, I wanted to slap him.”
Elodie buttered her bread thoughtfully and glanced over to me. “What did he do?”
While I put the kettle on and scooped tea into the pot, I told her how he’d implied I was too young to know my field and doubted my qualifications in front of the whole table of board members. Tea steeped then poured, we split the rest of the baguette over the counter and blew over our cups. “Oh, I’m boiling mad. Then, after the meeting was over, he walked over, all terse pretension, and had the audacity to—while he further insinuated my incompetency—stare at my tits!”
Elodie sipped her tea carefully. “And?”
I glared at her. “Did you not hear me? I said he ogled my tits.”
She shrugged. “What’s so bad about that? He likes your tits. They’re nice tits.”
“You and I have different standards for men.”
Her cup clattered on its saucer as she stared me down. “We didn’t always. You used to know how to enjoy yourself! What’s that expression? Work hard, play hard? You might deny it, but I remember how much you liked to go out after a match. To throw on a dress and just enjoy some attention.”
Leaning back, I looked her over, cocked my head to the side, and tried to figure out how the hell her brain worked. “Perhaps, but I never enjoyed being objectified by men who were strangers.”
“Fair,” she said. “However, the moment you knew them, you wanted some pretty—”
“All right, let’s drop it.” I scrubbed my face. “That’s behind me now.”
Elodie stared at me over her teacup. “Let me ask you something. Since Paris, have you ever met a man who treated you as you say you want”—she waved her hands, butting up against the limits of her English—“courtois, bien élevé, gentil...”
“I get it. Gentlemanly and polite. Go on.”
She nodded. “Précisément, like that, that you actually want to fuck?”
I opened my mouth, prepared to make a stinging response, but I came up short. “Well, no.”
She threw her hands up again, which made her look as Parisian as she was. “Thank you. You blame yourself for liking a man who was your type and turned out to be psychotic. Not all men with good looks and some se
xual aggression are going to be like him. You can still like that.”
“Elodie,” I said, sighing. “I’m not that psychologically tortured. He was a creep, and I know that wasn’t my fault. It’s just…Zed is not what I need right now.”
She stared at me in concern. “Did he say anything about…”
I glanced at my lap, then met her eyes. “No. It was like he didn’t even notice.” She waited me out as I spun my teacup on its saucer. “I suppose he was just distracted by—”
“Your tits?” she offered wryly.
I blushed at the memory. “I suppose. It was nice, for a change, not to be looked at with curiosity or pity.”
“He sounded plenty curious, but about the right thing. You. Your beauty and your intelligence, and all the attitude I’m sure you gave him.” She grinned.
“Perhaps.”
Elodie leaned in. “Nairne, you’re angry about his attention, but you’re smiling remembering it. It’s like you won’t allow yourself to be happy. When are you going to start living again?” She sat back and looked me over. “You’re miserable because you know what you want, you just won’t accept it. Until you deal with that, you’re going to stay very sexually frustrated, ma fille.”
I frowned at her and drained my tea. “That’s complete tosh. It was a phase for me, and one that I won’t indulge anymore. People change.”
She sighed and shook her head. Her chestnut curls bounced and swayed, and she shoved them back from her face. “Not you.” Teacup in the sink. Water on. She turned her back to me and squeezed out some soap. “You’re a very intense person, Nairne. That hasn’t changed. Don’t you think you still need that same kind of intensity coming your way?”
“No.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Well, you’re stubborn, and in this case, I think you’re wrong. Consider it, and after your next meeting, see if you don’t think I know what I’m talking about.”
