The Tempted Series: Collectors Edition

by Janine Infante Bosco

  He doesn’t answer me straight away and for a moment I wonder if he heard me, forgetting his ears were still on the mend. But my father heard my words, maybe not as loudly as I spoke them but he heard my question. He thought before he actually answered, not something Jack Parrish usually did. The man doesn’t have a filter.

  He places the roller into the tray and turns to me taking a deep breath as I continue rolling the paint on the wall.

  “Careful how you answer, Bulldog, wouldn’t want to make a liar out of you.”

  The roller falls from my hand as that deep voice vibrates through me, awakening all the dormant parts of my body and finally ending the torment.

  My dad’s face comes into view first, the cocky smile, wide and proud on his face. My eyes follow the direction of his and I see Blackie casually leaning against the frame of the door. His smile matches my fathers, arrogant and victorious. But everything else about him screams exhaustion, everything except his eyes. Those bad boys are feral, primal, outright hungry.

  “Whatcha waiting for, girl?”

  Pushing off the frame, he crooks his finger and beckons me.

  “Jack, with all due respect, you might want to get your ass out of this room. Pipe’s downstairs waiting for you anyway,” he says, his long legs swallowing up the space between us.

  “Wish I lost my fucking vision not my hearing,” my father grunts as he pats Blackie on the back and disappears out the door.

  “Get over here,” Blackie whispers.

  He doesn’t have to say it twice. Like so many times before, I jump straight into his waiting arms and throw mine around his neck. The familiar smell of gasoline assaults my senses and I bury my nose in his neck, breathing in his scent. My fingers slide over the leather covering his shoulders as his slide into the back pockets of my jeans and squeezes my ass.

  Blackie’s back.

  I lift my head from the crook of his neck and stare into his eyes.

  “You kept your promise,” I whisper.

  “I did,” he agrees, leaning his forehead against mine. “Now it’s time to keep all the others,” he says huskily as his gaze lowers to my mouth. “How quickly can you finish your degree?”

  I open my mouth to question what he means, but he doesn’t give me a chance.

  “Take another class, do whatever it takes, girl,” he murmurs against my mouth, softly sucking on my lower lip. “As soon as you get that degree I’m putting a ring on that finger and then you’re gonna get that tattoo you want so bad,” he rasps before covering my mouth with his.

  I thread my fingers through his hair, pull on the ends and wait for him to say the words I’ve been waiting to hear.

  “I’m back, girl.”

  Yeah, Blackie’s back.

  And he’ll keep coming back time and time again.

  And these arms of mine will always be waiting.

  Pipe’s standing in the kitchen, his hands braced against my counter, his eyes trained on the knife laying on top of it.

  “Brother,” I say, jolting his gaze from the pocket knife. Beady, drained eyes stare back at me and the cockiness I felt upstairs when I saw Blackie alive and well disappears.

  “Mission accomplished,” he says solemnly. Two words. Two words that declared victory for our club but they were lack luster coming from Pipe. “The insurance adjusters will assess the compound this week, if there isn’t enough to cover the rebuild you have plenty of equity in my garage—pull it out and rise up.”

  “You talkin’ like you’re going somewhere,” I accuse, crossing my arms against my chest as I continue to stare at him, dreading the words he’s about to say.

  “I’m done,” he declares, shrugging off his cut. “Riggs would be good in my position; the kid is a whiz.”

  “Pipe, brother, I know—” he cuts my words with a glare.

  “You don’t know,” he spits. “Like I don’t know what it’s like to watch my kid die you don’t know what it’s like to find your wife with her neck slit.”

  I snap my mouth shut and grind my teeth. Another man would’ve been dead for bringing up my boy but I know Pipe’s just hurting. He was there for me when I buried Jack, stood by my side and reeled me in every time I tried to join my boy in eternity. He gets a pass.

  He turns his cut over and picks up the knife, inching the blade under his patch and cuts stitch after stitch.

  “You're right, I don’t know what you’re feeling but I know whatever it is it’s made you raw and you need to heal.”

  My words are ignored, and he continues to pull the stitches out until his patch is free. I watch on as he shrugs his cut back onto his shoulders, pockets the knife and hands me the patch.

  “That patch is who you are,” I argue.

  “That’s not who I want to be anymore,” he sneers. “Take the fucking patch, Parrish,” he seethes, extending his arm. “TAKE IT!”

  I snatch the worn patch from his hand and grab his cut with the other, stepping to him as I set my eyes on his.

  “I’m taking the fucking patch, Pipe, but you’re coming back for it. Clear your head, get your shit figured out but you get back on that bike and you come home. Your patch and your chair will be waiting for you. I will be waiting for you.”

  Without another word he pulls out of my grasp and glares at me before charging out of the kitchen like hell was on his tail—maybe it was.

  Reina steps into the kitchen as I throw Pipe’s patch on the counter and fight the urge to throw something.

  “Jack,” she shouts, demanding my attention. Turning my narrowed eyes on her I see the phone she’s holding against her chest. “It’s Bianci.”

  Of course it is.

  “Victor passed away,” she says solemnly.

  I heard the three words.

  Read them off her lips too.

  And wished I did neither

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The call came from the warden. Thinking back now I don’t remember what he said but I know there was no remorse in the deliverance of his words. And why would there be? To him he was just a number, just a problematic inmate, a criminal who turned his prison upside down. He was happy to be rid of him.

  I had been preparing myself for the inevitable and I think that’s why I didn’t react at first. I held my composure and called my son-in-law, Anthony. Bless his big heart, the man brought my daughters, and together we told them that their father had passed.

  I was sure watching my children mourn their father would be my undoing but still I didn’t shed a tear and was able to be the rock they both needed. The girls stayed with me that night and just like when they were small, and Victor would work through the night; they crawled into the king-sized bed I shared with their father and snuggled close.

  Victor’s body was released and flown back to New York, Anthony and I went to identify his body. I wish I never stepped foot into that morgue because the man beneath the sheet was not the man I married; he was not the handsome, dapper man I met at Studio 54. He was skin and bones and all the suffering he did in the last few weeks of his life stared back at me and it became evident that my husband died a miserable death. A man who was loved beyond measure died alone and imprisoned with a failing body and broken heart.

  I left Anthony in the morgue and ran out of there as quickly as my weak legs would allow and desperately tried to erase the image from my mind. I closed my eyes and begged Victor’s soul to paint me one last picture and envision the young man with the charcoal gray suit and the black turtleneck. The man who promised to marry me and make a life with me. I closed my eyes and remembered our last visit and the way we promised one another we would remember the other.

  Still, I didn’t cry, not a tear.

  At the funeral parlor I picked out the most lavish casket, the final throne for the king. Anthony gave the funeral director Victor’s favorite suit, and he assured us he would pin it to look like it was tailored to fit. We matched the handkerchief to the tie just as he always did and included a pair of his Italian loa
fers. Some might say I was being foolish since I had kept the casket closed but I wanted my husband to be impeccably dressed for his final sleep just as he was in life. He would want that too.

  Once his wake was settled, it was time to pick a burial plot. The ride around Green-Wood cemetery to decide on where we would both rest eternally, that broke what was left of my heart. He tried so hard to give me what I wanted in life, bought that huge house because he thought it would make me happy. We made that house our home and now I was left choosing our final home. And still I didn’t cry.

  The girls met us at the florist and we ordered the traditional pieces. A bleeding heart from me, a broken heart from Nicole and Mike and a piece the florist called the Gates of Heaven from Adrianna and Anthony. We also ordered the rosary beads for inside the coffin and made that from his grandchildren. So along with their pictures, Victor would be buried with remnants of Luca and Victoria.

  The night before the wake the girls came over, and together with my in laws, we went through old photo albums to display around the funeral parlor. My daughters marveled over one photograph in particular, one of me and their father. The year was 1984, and it was one of a few where my husband was dressed casually in a pair of jeans. I stared at the photo and the outfit I was wearing, white fitted pants and a turquoise blouse. I wore a lot of that color in the early years and I remember why, Victor loved the color on me, told me it reminded him of the first day we met.

  I wound up slipping that photo into Victor’s folded hands the morning of the wake when they allowed me to view him before they closed the casket for the final time.

  Victor’s wake reflected his life. It seemed anyone Victor ever met throughout the duration of his sixty-six years showed to pay their final respects. Some of the faces I remembered, some I didn’t. All I thanked for coming and told them how grateful Victor would’ve been. The old time gangsters competed by sending extravagant floral arrangements and stood in the back of the viewing room sharing stories of all the illegal activities they conducted with my husband. The younger ones, the fresh faces like my nephew, sat vigil, quietly taking in the death of a mobster. Whether they were young or old, veterans or new blood they showed up, but I knew that once the dirt settled over my husband, they would fight tooth and nail for everything he built.

  Then there were the loyal men who never wanted a piece of my husband but were always there to lend a hand when rough times fell upon him, those were the men in leather. Jack Parrish stood the left of my husband’s casket and his vice president stood to the right. They never left his side, not once, stood like two soldiers guarding his body until it was time to head to church for the final mass.

  And even then they didn’t leave his side.

  As the hearse pulled away from the funeral parlor, they straddled their bikes and rode alongside him, accompanying him to the church we were married in. But their loyalty didn’t stop there, the Satan’s Knights respectively removed their cuts and carried my husband’s casket into the church.

  It wasn’t until I entered the church and the choir sang Amazing Grace as I walked behind my husband’s casket that I lost myself and the tears fell uncontrollably down my face.

  Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch like me…

  I once was lost but now I’m found,

  Was blind, but now, I see…

  I stared at the coffin as the priest prayed over Victor’s body, begging our Lord to relieve him of his sins and welcome him into his arms. As he continues the mass I continue to beg and bargain with our Lord for a chance to be reunited with my love.

  Forgive him Heavenly Father.

  Please don’t take away my eternal love.

  The mass ended, it was time to take Victor to his final place of rest, the home where he’d wait for me to join him. A funeral procession of fifty cars, two limousines, three flower trucks and hearse guided by a dozen bikers stopped traffic along Fort Hamilton Parkway.

  Wherever Victor was, I knew he had a grin on his face, loving that his send-off was as big as his personality.

  The media were waiting outside the cemetery gates hoping for one last headline, snapping photos of us as we cried over his grave. One by one, everyone laid a rose on his coffin until there was only five of us surrounding him. Michael and Nikki said their goodbyes first, followed by Anthony and Adrianna.

  Then it was just me.

  Me and Vic.

  I stepped to the coffin and placed my rose on top of all the others.

  How do you say goodbye to the love of your life?

  You don’t.

  I’ll never say goodbye to my Victor.

  I leaned over the coffin and pressed my lips to the top of it.

  “Until we meet again my eternal love…I’ll be the girl in the turquoise jumpsuit.”

  The End.

  For now.

  Epilogue

  I ease Reina into the passenger seat of Lacey’s car after the cemetery. The two of us defied doctor’s orders, she took herself off bedrest and I damned my hearing to hell by riding, neither of us willing to give up the opportunity to pay our final respects to Vic and his family.

  “Lace, take her straight home,” I tell my daughter as I buckle Reina’s seatbelt and turn my eyes to her. “You feel okay?” I ask, narrowing my eyes as she shifts uncomfortably.

  “I’m fine,” she insists. “I’m just tired,” she adds as she kisses me.

  “I’ll meet you at home and we’ll take a load off, watch one of those sappy movies you love so much.”

  She smiles widely, and I laughed. Sunshine loves torturing me with the Lifetime Channel. I press another quick peck to her mouth before closing the door and tapping the hood of the car.

  “Jack, I need a word,” Rocco Spinelli calls from behind me and the smile instantly falls from my lips. I turn, rolling my neck from side to side as I size up the boss of the Pastore family. The threads are the same and I’m sure Vic’s smiling down on his protégé. On second thought, maybe not, the kid seems to have forgotten the silk tie and matching handkerchief. That shit wouldn’t fly with Vic.

  “We have nothing to discuss,” I say finally, lifting my gaze to his. Standing beside Vic’s coffin I observed a lot over the last few days and I decided on a number of things on behalf of myself and my club.

  Victor Pastore wasn’t anything like the mobsters that flooded that funeral parlor. Not even the man he trained to take his place could ever fill his shoes, and I didn’t have a desire to join forces with any of these mutts.

  “It’s about the bomb,” he mutters, undoing the top button of his collared shirt.

  Rolling my eyes, I let out a sarcastic chuckle, he knows shit about that bomb. He wasn’t there when everything turned to dust. He didn’t lift a finger to help rebuild. He sat his pretty boy ass down, kicked up his legs in his mansion and barely checked in on his aunt.

  “Thanks, but we’ve got everything under control.” I dismiss him, turning back around to head for my bike but he grabs a hold of my arm and holds me back.

  Snatching back my arm, I step to him, narrowing my eyes as I drill him with a deadly glare.

  “Don’t you ever put your fucking hands on me again, not unless you want me to cut them off—” I threaten but he quickly cuts me off.

  “I don’t think the Corrupt Bastards sent that guy into your clubhouse with the bomb. There’s another enemy moving into our harbor and our streets and his name is Vladimir Yankovich. I have reason to believe he was working with the Bastards. Now, I think we can shut him—”

  “Hold it,” I order, cutting him off and holding up my hand to stop the bullshit spewing from his mouth. “First, what happened to my club isn’t your concern. I don’t give a fuck about your theories and I sure as hell didn’t ask for them. Second, you made a mistake assuming there is a we here,” I growl as I wave a finger between his chest and mine. “My alliance was with Victor,” I clarify, pointing behind his shoulder to his fresh grave and his wife standing over
his casket saying her final goodbye. “That alliance follows that coffin into the ground today. The Satan’s Knights are done with the mob.”

  “But—” Rocco argues and I shake my head.

  “And they say I’m the one with failing ears,” I grunt. “We’re done here,” I continue. “Good luck, boy, you’re sure as hell going to need it.”

  “Dad!”

  I turn around at the sound of my daughter shouting.

  “Reina’s water broke!”

  There was no mistaking those three words, and I took off as quickly as my feet would carry my ass down the hill to the curb where Lacey’s car was parked. Pulling open the passenger door, my eyes roam over Reina, watching as tears stream down her cheeks and she clutches her belly.

  “I’m sorry,” she cries.

  “Woman, what’re you sorry for?” I question, taking her hands in mine.

  “The car, it’s a mess!”

  I glance down at the stains setting in Lacey’s mats and let out a low chuckle as I turn my attention back to my wife.

  “Damn, Sunshine,” I shake my head, taking her face in my hands and touch my forehead to hers. “Who gives a fuck about the mats? We’re about to have a baby,” I rasp as I smile at her, my thumbs work at drying her tears. “You ready to meet this kid of ours?”

  “I’m more than ready,” she whispers. Leaning in to kiss me, she pauses and her eyes go wide. “Oh God,” she groans as she clutches her belly.

  “What? What is it?”

  “I think I’m having a contraction,” she says, through clenched teeth.

  “Is it true? Oh dear, it’s true!” Grace says, coming up behind me. I turn to her, relieved to see someone who probably knows what the hell is going on.

  “She thinks she’s having a contraction,” I explain.

  “She most definitely is. Give me your watch,” Grace orders, pulling open the back door and climbing into the car. I hand her my watch and run around the front of the car and switch places with Lacey. Grace has one hand planted on Reina’s shoulder, caressing her arm as she tells her to breathe and eyes the watch in her hand.