Patrick laughed. "Blackstreet for me. Freshman year of high school, girl named Gwen. Can I ask you another question before the second half kicks off?"
I got up from my seat and went over to the snack table where there were fresh nachos waiting for us, a treat of the VIP section. Picking up a plate, I came back. "As long as it doesn't involve my prior dating life, go ahead."
"Actually, I wanted to ask you if you didn't mind that I'm not as educated as you. I mean, I graduated high school, but most of my so-called higher education has come via the school of hard knocks."
I took a bite of my nachos, and offered him some. Our fingers made contact as I passed over the plate, and both of us paused for a second to look at each other at the contact. A few of the tortilla chips rattled in the tray, but nothing spilled. "Don't sell yourself short, Patrick," I said. "Besides, who knows? Maybe you have knowledge and skills that you don't even know about."
The Spartan reserves ended up winning the game by two touchdowns, mainly due to the passionate plays of some of the guys lower on the depth charts who were giving their all for a chance to make the team. Driving home from the stadium, there was none of the nervous tension that I'd felt on a few other first real dates. We both knew we had enjoyed ourselves, and that we wanted to see the other person again, even if we didn't say as much. The only question to be answered was who was going to call or text the other first in order to make that first step.
There was one thing that I liked as our date progressed that I hadn’t expected. When I'd first met Patrick, he had a hint of a cocky air about him, nothing too over the top mind you, but there was a sense of self-confidence that bordered on cockiness. It was the sort of air that a lot of voters would like, but other people would get tired of after a while. Talking with him though, he opened up more, and I could see that while he was confident in himself, he wasn't cocky at all. He was actually intelligent and perceptive, and was willing to admit when he needed help or experience.
Pulling into the driveway at Mount Zion, Patrick put the SUV in park and looked over. "Well, you're home safe and sound. I hope your butler doesn't feel the need to kick my ass any longer."
I laughed. "Did Matt threaten you to act like a gentleman?"
"No, just in the way he looked at me, some of the questions we had back and forth, I can tell he cares for you a lot. He gave off that big brother vibe, it was actually both weird and sweet. You seem to inspire a lot of loyalty in your house staff."
"He and Joanna are great people," I admitted, although I didn't tell Patrick just how great. "We've become very good friends as well as them working for me. I was lucky that Marcus forwarded me their resumes, and that they even applied. Maybe next time you can meet them both."
"I'd like that very much," he said, taking the keys out of the ignition and holding them out for me. I reached for them, but when our hands touched, the reach became a lean, and the lean became a slow, soft kiss. His left hand came up to trace my jawline, and I responded by feeling the swell of his bicep under his Spartans shirt.
When his tongue traced my lips I responded, both of us tasting the other. I had to admit it wasn't the sexiest taste I'd ever had on a kiss, he did taste like stadium hotdogs, but then again, I'd had a lot of jalapeño peppers on my nachos, so I'm sure I wasn't exactly minty fresh either. We were both so wrapped up in conversation that neither of us thought to break out a tic-tac. Still, our kiss was great, and I could tell when we parted that he was just as happy with it as I was. "Top three, for sure."
"Top three what?" I asked with a small smile, unbuckling my seatbelt.
"Top three kisses I've had," he said with a slightly cocky grin. I could tell he was joking, it wasn't the same sort of cockiness he had before our date, more like a playful cockiness. "But definitely best first kiss."
"Hmmm, well, I won't give you a rank," I replied with a cocky grin of my own. "I mean, I'm not the sort of girl to kiss and tell, after all."
"But maybe it was good enough to get me another date? Say, this Thursday? I'd ask for Friday, but there's a community event I'm slated for, and Saturday is the City Council meeting that's open to the public. And I don't want to wait a week before seeing you again."
I smiled and nodded. "Thursday is good. But let me make the plans, okay?"
"Okay."
Patrick got out of the SUV and came around to open my door, escorting me to the front door of Mount Zion. There, we paused and kissed again, this time even better than the first. While I had told him the truth, I don't rank kissers, he was very good. His hands rested lightly on my waist, and he never tried to move them lower or pull me tighter, even though I could tell he wanted to. It was both passion filled and gentlemanly, the right blend that warmed my belly and sent shivers through me. After Scott Pressman, it’s exactly what I needed. When we parted, he had a slightly starstruck look on his face, and I was smiling the entire time I made my way inside and then to my room.
Chapter 9
Patrick
Driving back to my apartment, I barely avoided driving through red lights twice I was so distracted. I had told Tabby she was a top three kiss, but that was a vast underestimation. The way her lips felt on mine, the feel of her waist in my hands, everything about her was the sexiest, most beautiful I'd ever felt. Still, I knew I had to be careful, she'd been hurt, and I didn't want to screw it up by going too fast.
Reaching the outer limits of The Playground, I found my apartment and parked. I still lived in the same dump I'd been in months ago when I was just Patrick McCaffery the bar tender, and didn't really see the need to move just yet. The local gangs respected me, more or less, and none of them had tried to start shit because I was now in politics instead of slinging beers.
Opening my door, I stepped in and closed the door quickly before someone looked inside. I had spent a little bit of my pay so far to put on another lock to my door, not that it would really stop someone who wanted to break in. I'm pretty sure my front door could be kicked down by a motivated seven year old if desired. Still, The Playground seemed to be happy that one of their own had gotten out of the hood while not forgetting where I came from, and my building hadn't had a break-in the entire two months I'd been in office.
I had another reason to close my door quickly however, and that was what was hanging on my living room wall. I'd have put my outfit away somewhere different, but to be honest my apartment was seriously lacking in hiding places. Also, I'd just laundered the thing, and had to hang it up to dry, the dryers downstairs were all taken up when I'd washed it. Getting blood out of the fabric is kind of important, after all.
Looking over my uniform, I wondered which side of me was more important, or perhaps which was the real me. Was I the newbie politician, who seemed to have the gift for gab that attracted the voters, while at the same time was a little bit cocky, unflappable under pressure from the vested interests of the city?
Was I the masked vigilante who was starting to clean up Filmore Heights? I'd chosen Filmore simply because it wasn't the same neighborhood I lived, but was still nearby and needed help. If I'd gone into action in The Playground I was worried I'd get recognized. Also, I had to admit to myself that busting the heads of the 88's had been thrilling.
Or was I the guy who had just had one of the best dates of his life, who had intentionally been sensitive and listening, and had found that in listening to Tabby I'd found a deeper level of enjoyment than I'd ever had before with a woman?
As these whirled through my mind, another, darker voice whispered to me, one that I had tried to suppress for a very long time. What if I was the asshole, the player, the criminal I was on the path to becoming in my teen years? What if everything I'd done since then, the years of struggling as a bartender, running for city council, hell, even trying to date a woman as classy and high quality as Tabby Williams was just a front, a desperate attempt to run away from what I really was? What if I was just another kid from the ghetto who'd drunk his first malt liquor before he could do long division
, and whose chemistry knowledge depended mostly on how to mix household stuff together to get somebody high? What if I was just another piece of Playground trash?
I looked up at my mask, a simple black hood, and made a decision. If I was trash, then so be it. I'd heard somewhere, I didn't remember where, that sometimes, to combat evil, you didn't need good. You just needed a different kind of evil.
Pulling off my Spartans shirt, I reached for my uniform.
* * *
An hour later, I was crouching in an alleyway in Filmore Heights, listening as three of the Latin Kings were talking business outside a brownstone apartment across the street. I was using a cheap parabolic microphone, the sort you could get from just about any electronic shop for about a hundred dollars, and had to wince every time a car or bus drove by on the street, overwhelming the microphone and temporarily deafening me. Thankfully this late at night, few people were stupid enough to try and drive through Filmore Heights unless they were looking for trouble. The Kings used a lot of code words, but if you grew up in the bad part of town, you knew what was going on.
"Orale. After the hit on that group of Eights the other night, El Patron is worried. Thinks Filmore's gonna cook off," one of the Latin Kings, a short skinny guy in a black tank top said. "Wants us soldiers to keep our eyes out for trouble."
His compatriots, one bald and overweight while the other was long haired and looked kind of like a rat, nodded. Rat-face, who had a black and gold Latin King bandanna tied around his forehead, reached between his legs for the forty ounce malt liquor on the steps and took a pull. "Es frio, man. You know the GD's ain't gonna come up here. They're just gonna bark and talk shit like the little bitches they are."
The big man interjected. "They outnumber us, and if they think that the attack on the white boys was done by one of us, they might just find the stones to do more than bark. They could find their teeth."
The three Latin Kings nodded. I'd seen the video, and while my face was never shown, there were enough flashes of skin from my movements that it was easy to tell, even in the cheap black and white security footage, that the attacker wasn't black. If the Gangster Disciples thought that the attack was done by another gang, it would have either come from a Latin King, who were mostly light skinned to light brown Hispanics, or an outside white gang, the nearest of which was on the far side of The Playground.
"I'm more worried if it's the Snowman," One commented, earning alarmed looks from the other two.
"Homie, don't even whisper that shit around here,” Big man hissed. "I'm just happy he's stayed pretty much in the Confederation stomping grounds. Filmore Heights was just an affiliate of them, he's left us alone so far."
"And let's hope he stays that way," Rat-Face added. "I don't need a bomb in my mailbox, or a sniper shot in my grill."
"Shit, that'd improve your looks," one joked, causing the three of them to laugh. The Rat-Face guy was a remarkably ugly man, that was for sure. "Hey, did El Patron have anything to say about when we might get a new load for the streets? My cousin's running low, and a lot of customers are feenin'. I know it's been tight the past few months, but I'm 'bout at the point of whipping up some bathtub crystal if we can't get the good stuff goin'."
A car drove by, so I missed a few seconds of of reply. "... in about a week. They're just trying to work it all out."
I was so absorbed in what the Latin Kings were saying that I didn't hear the person creeping up behind me until I was dragged back and slammed against the brick wall of the alley, pulling the earphones from my head, the parabolic microphone clattering on the pavement. Staring me in the face was another man, all in black, his face obscured by a glued on face-mask. "You're dead, amateur," he rasped in my face. "You're playing a game that you aren't ready for."
The sound of my scuffle must have reached across the street, because I heard the three Latin Kings stop their conversation and start coming our direction. My assailant, his forearm pinning me by the throat against the wall, jerked his eyes in their direction before looking back at me. "Follow me, keep up. If not, you're going to get your ass killed."
Releasing me, he took off down the alley, with me hot on his heels. It was hard keeping up, partly because I was wearing supportive combat boots while he was wearing a lighter, more flexible shoe, but also because he was at least fifteen to twenty pounds lighter than I was. Even though I was in good shape, he made me feel like a slob as he rounded the corner and vaulted on top of a dumpster, then jumping and grabbing a fire escape ladder that was bolted to the side of the apartment building we were running behind. "Move it!" he harshly called behind him, giving me a single glance back.
I could hear the Latin Kings coming down the alley after us, and I knew they'd be carrying weapons. Scrambling up on top of the dumpster, I barely cleared the jump to the ladder, pulling with everything I had to find purchase for my boots. Finally my right foot reached the bottom rung, and I followed the masked man up and over the roof, throwing myself over just as two of our assailants turned the corner. I figured the big guy wasn't too far behind, and was most likely bringing up the rear.
"What the fuck?" One of them said, looking around. "You see anything?"
“No, you?"
"Not a fucking thing. Hey, Victor, your fat ass see anything?"
"Fuck you, Ricardo. You know I didn't see shit."
"Still, there was that thing in the alley, someone was there. That sort of shit ain't exactly common."
One of them started to look up, and I jerked my head back out of sight. "What if it was you know who?"
"For fuck's sake man, he isn't fucking Voldemort. You can say his name, bitch. You think we spooked the Snowman."
They argued for another minute before giving up and heading back to their brownstone, most likely to go inside. I turned my attention to the other man, who was crouched about fifteen feet away. In the hazy moonlight I could see the glimmer of the pistol at his side. At least it wasn't pointed at me.
"Thanks," I said. "But I was doing fine."
"You were unaware of your surroundings and had cut off your hearing to listen on that cheap mike set," the masked man admonished me derisively. "That's twice you've done something stupid and amateurish. I saw your little stunt with the 88's. You got out of that with just pure luck that none of them thought to pull a blade on you."
"You know, not everyone has the resources and training you do..... Snowman," I said, adjusting to a seated position. He had the drop on me and was already armed, there was no point in useless posturing. "I'm just trying to do what I can on a shoestring budget."
"You could have done the exact same thing from this roof if you'd used your brain," Snowman countered. "What the hell were you doing, anyway?"
I rested my forearms on my knees and sat back against the brick retaining wall of the roof. "What does it look like I'm doing? You took down Owen Lynch and the Confederation, but this town needs a lot more than just that to have a chance, and it's too big a job for one man."
"A big job, but one made more difficult by people who don't know what the fuck they're doing," Snowman countered. "I don't need your help. You’re just going to make things harder.”
He stood up and holstered his pistol, backing away. As he turned to walk to the edge of the roof, I called after him. "I'm not going to stop, you know."
"You're going to get yourself killed," he replied, turning and walking back towards me. "I may not be the guy who sneaks up on you next time."
"Some things are worth dying for," I said. "You of all people should know that if the stories about you are true."
Snowman looked at me for a moment, I wasn't sure if in exasperation or admiration, then turned and ran towards the edge of the roof. Jumping just before he reached the edge, he easily cleared his way to the building next door, jogging across and disappearing into the gloom. I waited for him to go, then made my way over to the edge of the roof that overlooked the street where the Latin Kings had been gathered. Unfortunately, they'd either gone in
side or run off, leaving me with only a hint of information, and out a parabolic microphone.
Damn.
Chapter 10
Tabby
Monday through Wednesday were pretty routine for me, as I dealt with the paperwork of getting the community centers off the ground. The only notable thing was Wednesday afternoon, when I went by City Hall to have a meeting with the Mayor. Joseph Williams and I may have shared the same last name, but that was where our similarities ended.
The stress of the past few months had trimmed close to thirty pounds off his frame, and he looked cadaverous as I stepped into his office. He had survived the scandals that had taken down his Deputy Mayor with his own job intact, but that was about it. I honestly thought that if he wasn't constrained by the term limit law the city had in place, he would have been taken down as well. Instead, the voters were willing to let him serve out the last two years of his term before retiring into obscurity. I felt for him, since according to Mark he was a man who had been caught up in circumstances beyond his control more than actually being evil himself.
"Good afternoon, Your Honor," I greeted him. I was dressed to impress, but had toned the sexiness down just a touch. There was a time to be drop dead distracting, but I didn't have to always, so the suit coat and skirt was just a bit looser than normal. "I'm thankful you asked me to come by."
"When a company agrees to spend millions of its own dollars for community outreach, I'd be a fool not to," the Mayor replied. "But, like I told your boss the last time he and I had a private conversation, can the Your Honor and Mister Mayor stuff. My name is Joe, except to my wife when she's mad at me, when I become Joseph. Lately, I've been called Joseph a lot."
Ambition: A Dark Billionaire Romance (Driven Book 1) Page 8
