by Lux Miller
He sighs and buries his face against the top of my head. They do say that a twenty-second hug can release enough oxytocin in someone’s body that it can be more of a stress-reliever than drugs. I believe them, because right now, my anxiety has all but disappeared as I stand here wrapped up in Dante’s arms. It shouldn’t feel this good to hug my boyfriend’s brother, but I’m learning that love takes many forms.
Once we finally pull apart, Dante nods. “Now that we’re past that awkwardness, let’s get out of this cold and do what I came here to do.”
I raise one eyebrow as he takes my hand and tugs me along the sidewalk. “And what exactly are we here to do?”
Dante glances over his shoulder with a smirk as we stop in front of a nondescript tattoo parlor. He motions at the neon sign above my head and bites his bottom lip. “You know those fancy tattoos Luca has?”
I nod, closing my eyes to picture Luca shirtless. His tattoos are enormous and encompass large sections of his back, along with portions of his torso and over half his arms. The winding lines appear to be some form of tribal, though I haven’t thought to ask what they mean. There are interwoven lines of royal blue and dark purple that intersect throughout the designs. Square in the middle of his back, between his shoulder blades is an enormous prowling wolf that’s incorporated into the design.
I shudder and pop my eyes open, nodding at Dante. “Yeah, he’s never really told me what they are or why he has them.”
Dante’s lips twist into a grin. “He has them because he’s a made man whose life is sworn to la famiglia. Not all made men get them, but Barresi men do. My father had a wolf on his back, as does my grandfather. The lines and swirly shit was Luca being extra, but I have to admit, I like his style. Bullet wounds can be hard to disguise and just like him, I have quite a few gnarly scars to cover up.”
I blink quickly, my gaze shooting up to his. I don’t know if he realizes how much he just revealed to me, but if someone wasn’t paying attention, they likely wouldn’t have put two and two together just now. I try to find words to respond to his confession, but my mouth feels like cotton. Not only did he just out himself as a made man of the mafia, but he revealed some interesting details about Luca that I hadn’t realized.
Dante nods, grinning. “I knew you were smart. I won’t admit it, Emily… that’s part of my vow, but I won’t deny your assumptions. These bullet wound scars are ugly, and I have a pretty boy reputation to uphold. So, just like my brother did before me, it’s time for me to see a man with a needle about a wolf…”
SIXTEEN
The interior of the hole-in-the-wall tattoo parlor is more welcoming than I expected and far warmer. Compared to the frigid temperatures outside, it’s actually comfortable, and I’m able to shed my hoodie within minutes of stepping inside. The lighting is warm and inviting. There are numerous mismatched couches along the perimeter of the room underneath hundreds of drawings that adorn the walls.
Dante has disappeared into another room to talk to the burly, heavily tattooed man whose bushy beard reminds me of ZZ Top. He didn’t ask me to come with him, so instead of plopping onto a couch I know I won’t want to get off of, I’m wandering around and looking at the drawings. They’re gorgeous and I instantly feel a connection with the artist. These aren’t run of the mill tribals or Kanji symbols. The vast majority of the black and white images are intricately detailed works and span the gamut from portraits to wild science fiction scenes.
I’m engrossed in my admiration of the artwork and don’t notice the shadow that falls over me until a pair of hands land on my hips. My fight or flight mode kicks in, and I twist away from the grasp. I spin to face the offender and let out a startled gasp of relief to see a familiar pair of green eyes staring down at me in amusement. I narrow my eyes up at the owner and wag my finger. “You very nearly got elbowed in the nuts, mister.”
Dante shudders, then smirks. “You know, it’s kinda funny that you’d even be able to elbow me there.” He laughs and puts a hand on the top of my head. The sound that comes out of my body is inhuman and even makes Dante jerk his hand away from me like I tried to bite him. “Whoa… down girl…”
I stick my tongue out at him as I plop my hands on my hips and give Dante a withering look. He chuckles as a man twice his size ambles up behind him with a handful of papers and murmurs, “I’ve got the designs sketched out for you, Mr. Barresi.”
Dante gives the man a nod of acknowledgement and then points at me, “Jericho, this is Emily.”
The man holds out a meaty hand, and I grip it firmly in a handshake that feels almost like a battle of wills. Silence engulfs us as he stares me down. I get the feeling he’s appraising me more than allowing an introduction.
The man named Jericho clears his throat as a twisted grin spreads across his face. “From the way you described her, I expected someone…”
Dante snorts, interrupting him, “Bigger?”
Both Jericho and I turn to Dante and give him an incredulous look that screams ‘shut up.’ Dante holds both of his hands up and takes a step back from us as Jericho continues to dwarf my tiny hand in his. He shakes his head and responds gruffly, “Feistier. From the way you described her, I was worried she’d be an acid-spitting cobra.”
Cutting my eyes beyond Jericho’s enormous frame, I can see Dante out of the corner of my eye as his demeanor changes, his smile dropping off his face the moment my eyes meet his. “I’m a cobra that spits acid… really, Dante? Do you think so little of me?”
Jericho chuckles heartily. “Nah, Miss. From the way he talked about you, I’d about figured you walked over water. Only an angel would have the ability to tame the devil that is Luca Barresi. And thus far, you do not disappoint.”
He bows his head and kisses my hand before letting go. As he glances up at me, there’s a gleam in his eyes as he grins. “Though it would have been entertaining to see Dante pick his pride up off the floor if you’d elbowed him in the crowned jewels.”
I swallow and give him a curt nod, followed by a messy curtsy that has me feeling like an idiot. Despite my background in surfing and native dance, grace is not a gift I was bestowed. I nod and slap my free hand over my face to stifle the snort that I can’t stop. “I’ll keep that in mind. How bad is this going to hurt him?”
I jerk my thumb at Dante as I speak, and Jericho roars with laughter. “Oh, he’ll be begging for mercy by the time we’re done.”
I nod and blow out a breath. “Perfect. Can we get started? We’re expected at Ash Wednesday services by 8 p.m. and I don’t feel like making a certain Italian woman mad because we’re running late.”
Jericho nods. “Aye, ma’am. Momma Barresi is not one to appreciate tardiness. Come with me you two and Dante, lose the shirt.”
Dante shrugs and follows along behind Jericho. He tosses his leather jacket onto a waiting-room style chair in the corner of the room and whips his t-shirt off over his head. Jericho almost hisses as he draws a sharp intake of breath.
“Shit, Dante. They really fucked you up, man. Luca didn’t even look this bad after the—”
Dante shakes his head quickly at Jericho. “X-nay on the ootingshay…”
Jericho glances at me quickly, then back at Dante with a nod. “Aye. Figured she already knew. It’s no secret that Luca almost die—”
Dante clears his throat loudly, followed by an over pronounced cough that immediately stops Jericho from speaking any further. Dante cuts his eyes at me quickly and shakes his head at Jericho, who drops it. “Okay then… so the design… we can get started on it today, but as you know, it’s going to take numerous sessions just to get the black laid down. If you’re wanting to add colors and get fancy, it’ll take a couple more sessions and several months to get it all done.”
Dante nods. “Yeah, I know. I remember the rush Luca was in to get his done before his eighteenth birthday, but I have the patience to see it through. It’s only been a few months, but I’m sick of looking at these scars like I’m some kind of freak. If it
took you six months to do his, then it’ll take you six months to do mine.”
Jericho nods and gives Dante the stink eye. Dante blushes slightly, and I realize that yet again, he's let details slip about Luca’s life before me that he probably shouldn’t have, but from the glint in his eyes, I almost feel like he meant to do it.
Dante sits on the chair that reminds me of a dentist’s office with his back facing out into the room. I take the moment to assess his scars. I haven’t dared stare at him long enough to really see the extent of the damage that the attack wrought on him. And it’s bad. There’s several puckered scars that are obviously exit wounds from a bullet and numerous scrapes and abrasions that have healed over, but still mar up his skin.
I walk over to the seat with Dante’s jacket and park it, pulling his jacket around me as I curl up in the chair. It smells like Dante, and the scent is comforting. Resting my chin on my knees, I close my eyes to rest them for a few minutes.
What feels like just a few minutes later, I’m startled awake by Dante nudging me. My heads flies up as I blink furiously against the suddenly bright light. Dante laughs and shakes his head. “Getting some beauty sleep?”
Yawning, I shrug as I attempt to put my legs down, groaning as I realize that my feet have fallen asleep while under me. I rub my hands over my eyes and shake my head slowly. “How long was I out?”
Dante turns around to show me the progress on his shoulder. “How late did my brother keep you up last night? You’ve been out for almost two hours. Jericho needed to take a smoke break, so he slipped outside. How’s it look?”
I hop up out of the chair and approach him, slowly bringing my hands to rest on the taut muscles of his back. I’m careful not to touch the fresh ink or the angry red skin. He shivers as my fingertips trail alongside the freshly inked lines. “Wow, Dante… it’s as complicated as Luca’s.”
Dante turns and grabs my hands by the wrists, nodding. “Yeah, it’s a super complicated design, so that it’ll hide my scars.”
I blink in surprise at his actions. As I try to place his expression, I realize that Dante really is just like his brother. I blush slightly as I remember how much it turns Luca on for me to trace his tattoos, and my mouth drops open as I apologize profusely. “Sorry, Dante… I, uh, wasn’t thinking. But it does look nice. It looks a lot like Luca’s too. Are you getting a prowling wolf like him?”
He shakes his head at me as Jericho wanders back into the room, an easy smile on his face. I tense up as I realize that the smell wafting in behind him is distinctly familiar. I’m worried that Dante will get up in arms over the gym sock smell, but he doesn’t. He smirks at Jericho and inclines his head at him.
I raise one eyebrow as Jericho resumes his spot beside the chair and looks up at Dante. “We finishing this thing, man?”
Dante nods and takes up his position on the chair with his back facing the room and his arms wrapped around the back of the chair. Jericho picks up the tattoo gun and continues his work, deftly outlining the swirls and dips of the twisting tribal that encircles one of his gunshot scars.
I stand behind the chair, watching Dante’s face as he does everything in his power to not show any emotion or that the tattoo hurts like hell. I’ve never had one myself, but it can’t be that bad. I nudge his arm as his face twists into a grimace. “Hey, are you going to survive this?”
Dante nods and sighs, “Yeah. It hurts, I won’t lie, but I’m kinda numb overall from it. It pinches still, but it stopped hurting a while ago. You look like you’ve smelled something terrible. What’s wrong?”
I shake my head and look up at Jericho, who meets my gaze over Dante’s head. “Uh, um, nothing…”
Jericho chuckles as he wipes at Dante’s skin, then dips the end of the tattoo gun into a pot of ink. “She smells my weed, man. It’s good stuff, but it still smells like an old man’s butthole sometimes. No harm, no foul. I won’t smoke it around the lady anymore if she’s sensitive to it. My bad, milady.”
I just blink at him, my mouth agape. Dante’s smile is blinding as he tries not to laugh. “Luca’s obviously been on one of his anti-drug tirades around her. Emily, Luca doesn’t hate weed. It’s God’s grass. Besides, Jericho here grows his own stuff.”
Shrugging, I twist a strand of hair around my finger as I bite my bottom lip, holding back the thoughts that are ricocheting through my mind. “So why the staunch stance on drugs if he doesn’t really care?”
Dante raises an eyebrow. “Look, I don’t know what kind of pillow talk you and Luca have had after your romps in the sheets, but Luca has hated drugs for a very long time. It’s a sordid part of his past, and mine, but I was too stubborn to learn from his lesson. I had to land flat on my face all on my own. He ended up made, and I ended up in jail.”
Jericho coughs behind Dante, and Dante sighs. “Man, she’s serious with my brother. This thing between them isn’t some lovesick puppy infatuation. Luca may not be ready to bare his soul, but my story is mine.”
Jericho holds both hands up in surrender. “I won’t say a word, Dante. My lips, as always, are sealed. But for my own protection…” He leans over and grabs a pair of Beats by Dre headphones and deposits them over his head, covering his ears. I can hear when he turns them on and sets to work on finishing what he can of Dante’s tattoo.
Dante nods and looks up at me with a heavy expression. “There’s a hundred reasons why my brother hates drugs. And by extension, my father and grandfather grew to hate them. But that wasn’t always the case. His reasons are not mine to tell, but you have to understand that most criminal organizations have got their hands in the drug import pie. The New York families got into heroin in the 1950s and have profited from it ever since.
“My father dabbled in drugs in the nineties, but by then, people were over the purity of God’s design. They wanted drugs that acted faster and lasted longer, so the dealers started mixing up designer drugs. High dollar cocktails that went for hundreds of dollars a pound. It was a quick buck, but my father saw firsthand how destructive the designer drugs were… and he saw the potential for them to become outright deadly.
“So he washed his hands of it and forbade the family from dealing in drugs any longer. Not even the pure stuff, because you can never really be too sure when you’re importing things and leaving the refinement process in the hands of dozens of people before you. Even today, most heroin is imported from Sicily, then cut with quinine to make more profit and it’s sold off as pure.
“Then you get people like Parker and his cartel. The real scourge on society. They move drugs through New Orleans and every other urban center within a hundred miles of here. They don’t deal in pure - they deal strictly in designers. And they’re dangerous. Their latest creation, Moonrock, is a mixture of crack cocaine and heroin and it’s claimed dozens of lives, including some close to the family, and especially to Luca, but again, that’s not my story to tell.
“My story begins on a night much like tonight. It was like hell had come to New Orleans and frozen over. Luca was already a mafia prodigy, and I was a stupid fourteen-year-old kid with a chip on my shoulder the size of Texas. I hated a lot of things. I hated my brother for abandoning me. I hated my father for stealing my brother. I hated my mother for not stopping him. Most of all, I hated myself, because I was a scrawny kid who was reassured daily that I’d never escape Luca’s shadow and that I would always be a disappointment to the Barresi name.”
I hear the gasp slip out of my mouth, but I’m not about to stop Dante now, so I slap my hand over my mouth and nod at him to continue. I remove my hands from my mouth with a sigh of relief when he does just that.
“So, I decided I would make a name for myself any way I could. I was impressionable and easily convinced to do stupid things. One thing we have in common, Emily, is that we both lost our virginity young in payment for other things. You were trying to survive, and I was trying to numb the pain of being Barresi.
“I lost my virginity to the thirty-six year old socialite w
ife of the mayor’s brother when I was fourteen. In exchange for my services, she gave me a ball of blow which I promptly used to get high as a kite. Blew through that in less than a week. So, I fucked her again… and again… and again. Every time, she’d pay me in drugs and we’d go on about our merry ways.
“By this time, my father had kicked me out. Said no son of his was going to be a drug addict, so I could either quit the drugs or die on the street. I was a stubborn, foolhardy teenager who thought I knew everything, so I opted for the street. One of my street buddies and I started a bit of a business.
“We liked to think of ourselves as entrepreneurs, but really we were prostitutes catering to the lonely upper class women who could afford our services. We didn’t come cheap, because by this time, we’d both developed a Coke habit that wasn’t going to get satisfied on a C note a night.
“Six days after my fifteenth birthday, while Luca was being glorified into a position of power within the family, I was finally falling apart. I ended up agreeing to sleep with an undercover officer for a gram of blow. That would have sustained me for a couple of days at that point. We went to the hotel room with my partner in crime, and instead of our fuck and run that we usually did, we were cornered and cuffed.
