Black Collar Empire

by A. N. Latro

  “So tell me about high school,” he says without looking up.

  She hesitates. Surely she's frowning at him, trying to figure him out.

  “What was it like? Who were your friends? I have catching up to do.”

  He hears ice again, hears her sip at her drink.

  “Are you going to tell me about your two years away?” she asks.

  The game never ends. She has learned well in his absence.

  “There aren't enough hours left tonight for that story,” he answers at length, battling the tension that tries to gather again. “But eventually, Em, I'll tell you.”

  “Your birthday is coming,” she says, drops it in as if addressing a casual topic.

  The words are weighted, rigged, and explosive. She's still watching him closely for any sign of reaction, gaze inking down his exposed throat, the V of the sweater, and the jutting collarbone. She wonders if he will wear linen when the summer begins to make the asphalt boil. She hopes so. His fingers thrum the arm of the chair, once, twice. She is taken by the fluid motion, simple yet thunderous across their line of tension.

  “You can tell me then,” she adds, looking away, sensing the coiling of action within him before he raises his head.

  Suddenly he is not quite as anxious about drawing her into the core of the family. Somehow, he gets the feeling she will always manage for herself. She's right. In a sense; he did leave her to learn from someone else. In a matter of months, the last pieces of her childhood will fall away and her word will matter within the foundations of the syndicate.

  “Not if you don't start talking,” he says with a sniff, avoiding a direct commitment.

  “I will get to see you, right?” she asks, pinning him suddenly with a loaded look.

  His birthday. The thought stings like antiseptic on an open wound.

  He answers, “There's not much to celebrate this year.”

  “You’re home,” she says, voice soft and mysterious.

  Freedom Building, New York City. April 23rd.

  There is something unbearably sad about women lacking their king, she thinks. She moves restlessly, and Nicolette makes a soft laugh. “Relax, Em,” the older woman says, standing lithely and walking into the kitchen.

  It’s the first time she’s been here since that night—and then she hadn’t appreciated the quiet calming effect of Nicolette’s inner sanctum. She runs an envious eye over the plush furniture, the chenille throw discarded in a chair with a book. She wants to pause, examine the book—will it offer some clue into the mind of the woman he loves?—but she is pulled along by the sound of glasses knocking softly against each other, the delicate clink of ice cubes.

  She peers into the kitchen in time to watch Nicolette splash vodka into two tumblers. She tops it off with tonic water and a lemon wedge, silently offering the drink to Emma as she perches on a high stool.

  The Oliver heir studies Emma with interest.

  Seth was adamant on bringing her into his division, and she knew enough about the younger girl to know she would be blindly loyal. But she is upset now, anxious, uncertain. She was that way even when she called, something that had startled Nicolette. Emma’s voice was shaking, excited, fitful, as she asked to see her. “What happened?” Nicolette asks, and wide eyes flash to her.

  She is the image of her dead cousin. But she is also the echo of her long dead brother. The brother Nicolette cared for, what feels like a lifetime ago. It is almost painful to see her, so vibrant and alive and different from Isaac.

  “I remember something,” Emma says softly, carefully. “Something about Caleb. I think it may be important.”

  Tension makes her hand tighten around the tumbler. An ache forms behind her temples and she struggles to keep back the wince. “Why tell me? Why not go to Seth?” she questions.

  Emma fields it well. “Seth won’t understand. This requires more subtlety than he can offer—the papers are too focused on him for subterfuge.”

  She holds her breath, watching Nicolette assess her words—she is desperate to prove her worth to him, and yet, without Nic as a safety net, can she betray him this way? Nicolette does not answer, sips her drink as she thinks, and Emma wonders what is going on behind those suddenly shuttered brown eyes.

  “What do you know?”

  “Before he died, he would take me out. I don’t remember all of it. I would get drunk.” She flushes a little, remembering. Nicolette is silent, waiting. Emma takes a nervous swallow of her vodka tonic. “The last club we went to—Bamboo. Seth mentioned it, and it made me remember.”

  There is an undeniable tension in the room that had not been there before her softly spoken words. A tension that grips the older woman. Emma is struck by her poise, the way she accepts the news with barely any outward reaction.

  This, she thinks, is how a woman is worthy of Seth.

  “Could it have been simply a pleasure stop?” Nicolette asks. “If he had you with him—would he have risked business? Caleb liked his…indulgences,” she says delicately.

  The question is so soft, it is almost easy to dismiss as introspection, rhetorical. Something compels Emma to answer. “They knew him. The bouncers, the staff—they knew him and his tastes. They catered to us.”

  Nicolette seems to pull in on herself, wrapping herself in a layer of reserve. It is similar to Seth’s cocky arrogance. Is this what she must be? Is this how a woman in the syndicate survives?

  “Bamboo belongs to the Thais,” Nicolette states.

  “Would Caleb court them?” Emma asks, and Nicolette laughs, a quiet noise of disgust. Emma looks at her, questioningly.

  “It would sign Seth’s death warrant. The Cubans do not take kindly to double crossing,” Emma sees the tightness in the hand that clutches her drink, the flaring anger in Nicolette’s dark eyes.

  “Caleb would not do that,” Emma says abruptly.

  Nicolette blinks at the younger girl. There is steel in her voice, and the promise of defense in her eyes. For the first time, she wonders if trusting someone as young as the favorite Morgan daughter is wise. She has never openly questioned Seth’s choices, but this is one he didn’t explain, and now the girl defends her dead cousin. Emma continues before she can respond, “Caleb was many things, but he wouldn’t put Seth in danger without a good reason. I want to find out what he was doing. Maybe it will answer some damn questions.”

  Privately, Nicolette is forced to agree with the girl. But, “Seth will never allow it.”

  Emma makes a dismissive noise low in her throat, and Nicolette hides her smile. She is feisty—and all Morgan.

  “Seth thinks he can do everything alone,” Emma argues. “They won’t know me at Bamboo.”

  Silence settles, but for once, Emma does not fidget. Her nerves, normally so evident, are absent as she meets Nicolette’s gaze with confidence. Seth, if he knew, would be furious. He would have trouble forgiving a betrayal that jeopardized Emma. She knows it, and yet…

  The girl has a point. She has been the protected, invisible daughter of the syndicate. It is not such a strange idea. And if it will protect him—his anger is nothing. Better he is alive and angry than dead and obeyed.

  “He can’t know,” Nic says softly, and Emma jerks, startled. Nicolette finishes her drink and stares at the other girl, remote and unfeeling. “Go with someone. Find what you can—anything linked to Caleb. I want everything you can find.”

  Emma licks her lips, the only sign of nerves and excitement. “What about Seth?”

  She feels a pang as she glances at the door behind Emma, at where he would be, if he were here. She is so tired, so tired of being worried, of wondering. Of trying to trust him while keeping the families at a distance because who would put a knife in his back? “We’ll tell him when we know more,” she says definitively.

  Emma nods, and Nicolette turns away, grace and sleek power. How hard is it, Emma wonders, to love and disobey because of that love? She shudders as she finishes her drink and is thankful—for the first time—th
at she will not be queen.

  Morgan Townhomes on Broad, May 4th.

  He has lived the three years since his father died believing that his uncle would enjoy a long rule, that he as a junior would benefit and learn from Michael Morgan, but as he stands outside of apartment number seventeen-twenty-three of the Upper East Side Morgan Luxury Estates, his brother's words replay in his head.

  “Uncle Mikie doesn't trust you,” Caleb had said.

  Seth slides the massive key into the lock. This place has been closed for nearly five months, save for one maid visit right after the funeral to clear the fridge and disconnect the electronics. Five months and still the sound of the knob turning makes Seth sick to his stomach.

  Uncle Mikie doesn't trust anyone.

  He has lived the past months of his life believing that his brother intended for him to die believing lies, but the feeling hasn't quite sat right on his conscious. It wasn't Caleb's style. No, dying and letting Seth believe he hated him— that was his style. But Seth doesn't believe that either.

  He steps into the dark apartment, feeling around until he finds a light switch. A low-hanging fixture shows Seth the way down a tall, chocolate-walled hallway. He takes a breath and closes the door behind him.

  The air is chilly like the waning winter outside, only warm enough to ward off water damage. He follows an Oriental runner down the hard-wood space, wondering fleetingly how Caleb lived, on his own. Cluttered and messy, like his childhood room?

  The hall opens into a sweeping living room lit by the same hanging fixtures of pale green. Several low-back chairs make up a sitting area, and on the other side of the room hangs a giant flat screen television. A sleek bar runs along the far wall with glassware left collecting dust.

  Not like this.

  The place is so cold in a way that has nothing to do with temperature. His mind reels with possibilities. Did someone clean despite his orders not to touch it? Did someone else order it? Did Caleb change so much in two years?

  The room is sparsely decorated, without so much as a pair of shoes left abandoned or an empty glass on the table. Seth searches desperately for some sign of life, some imprint of Caleb. This scene looks more like a party hot-spot than anyone's abode, a shell of life that's empty of personality.

  “You're the only one who can take everything,” Caleb had said.

  Did Mikie want power that much, to turn on his own family? He doesn’t want to believe that—not of the uncle he respects.

  He moves across the room as if in a dream to another hallway.

  These walls are cream, glaringly bare. A closed door taunts him— the end of the tunnel. A bathroom is on his left, done in clean black and white, from what Seth can see in the consistent lights that guide him.

  His body and nerves are strangely numb. He was expecting to be assaulted by the life his brother lived, but as he roams this lonely fortress, his disquiet only grows.

  The metal door handle is frigid to touch. It discharges five months of cold gathered in silence through his skin into his deepest stores of confidence. His chest feels hollow, a casing for a blizzard of mounting inconsistencies.

  It takes him a full two minutes to turn the handle. He stares at the dark wood, contemplating how betrayal would have felt if it had happened slowly over time, instead of all at once? Would he have been betrayed by Caleb, if he had not been gone so very long? Is Caleb dead because of him?

  Like Hell.

  He pushes the door open. It doesn't make a sound as it swings away to reveal a huge master suite. He finds a dimmer switch and clicks it. The soft lighting shows him the space, done in manly browns and modern designs of half circles and highlights. A California king bed set low to the floor is centered on the long wall, made perfectly, pillows arranged in a stylish pile. Caleb never made his bed.

  Another bathroom is visible behind a black folding door. A black and white aerial photo of New York hangs in a thick black frame on the right wall. His eyes linger on the closet, the door cracked open.

  It is as big as rooms that house families in other countries. He is a little surprised to find that there are actually clothes hanging inside. He forces himself to move that way.

  Everything here is professional, he realizes, expensive slacks and pressed dressed shirts. Business clothes. He can't shake the thought that all he's found thus far has been that Caleb didn't trust Uncle Mikie. Why would he keep a closet this big so painfully spare?

  Only one pair of shoes adorns the rack, and there's a pile of document boxes in the far corner. Of all the items he’s encountered on his journey to this point, those boxes look the most used. He can't resist inspecting them.

  He drops the lid of the first onto the floor carelessly. He is instantly accosted by a photograph of himself, Caleb, and their dad at the last Spring Gala they attended together. They're all smiling radiantly, the most handsome men in the world and excited by their high-profile lives. What a night it had been. He blushes a little, thinking of his heated tryst with Vera. He allows himself a small smile.

  The rest of the box is just as painful: Gabe's old revolver that Caleb had been fascinated by since they were kids; a medal of entrepreneurialism from the city to Morgan Estates; a well-worn baseball glove that still smells of oil soap; a blood-stained dress shirt, his—he recognizes it right away, the steel gray color and the giant hole in its chest and shoulder.

  He takes a knee, staring at it until tears sting the rims of his eyes and he blinks. Now is not for crying. He never knew this shirt was still around, never considered what had happened to it. He has never been able to completely fill in the pieces of what happened after that traumatic car ride with his dad.

  He drops the shirt back in the box and lets his fingers press against his shoulder, touching the scar that mars his flesh there. He remembers the agony of the wound, the horror of those painful moments like lifetimes in slow motion. His brother had carried him through it all, emotionally and, when it was most important, physically.

  He moves the box aside. It's full of things that Caleb wouldn't want to see, a container of reminders of how his life once ran shoved in the darkest corner of a place in which he didn't spend his time.

  The next box is worse. Seth sifts with a trembling hand through scraps of Caleb's memories: a picture from a prom that wasn't his with a young, hot date who surely succumbed to his charm later that night; his diploma from Irving Prep; an Alice in Chains album.

  He slams the lid back down without finishing the tour. He swipes it aside with his arm. It topples, but doesn't spill. Again the tears threaten to come, but he bites them back and hurries to the next box.

  This one holds merely a stack of five newspapers, The New York Times. He frowns. It's enough to distract him from his grief. He removes the top of the pile.

  The picture above the fold shows a parade of uniformed men, fire trucks in the background. The date is from before he left. He holds it before him at full length. Right below the fold, on the right bottom corner, are the first three paragraphs of a story on a Latin family with heavy stakes in a gambling ring that stretched across the Burroughs. The reporter—Vera Rohan.

  The next is from November of 2007. The cover story is about the mayor and his never-ending social travails. Again though, he finds the beginnings of crime story about a group busted for fabricating identification for illegals, and again, it is Vera's story.

  Third paper, March, 2008, above the fold: Brooklyn based syndicate exposed for human trafficking by Vera Rohan.

  He sits completely, back to the wall of the closet.

  How strange.

  Why would Caleb keep a bunch of old articles about other criminals? Was it a case of “know your enemy,” or something bigger? Caleb hardly ever acknowledged Vera's existence past some lewd comments about breaking her in, though Seth always suspected that was because she obviously preferred the younger sibling.

  Seth sifts through the remaining papers, all the same basic idea, though one of stories is buried. Not one focuse
s on or even mentions the Morgans or any of their associates. He tosses the last one to the floor with a heavy sigh.

  Does every avenue of information slam into a dead end in his life? His eyes widen as he stares at the floor, scanning the scattered papers again.

  Of course. He has to go outside of his carefully controlled environment, find a source of his own who isn't in his uncle's pocket or at his gun point. His gaze falls on her name. Is that what his brother had been planning?

  Central Park, New York City. May 21st.

  The clicks of her heels are so out of place in this borderland of barely making it. From his place on the bench, he can smell the strange mixture of semi-rotten vegetables of the sidewalk merchants of China Town, and the musky, city smell rising from the subway beneath him.

  She takes a tentative seat on the bench beside him. Through some stroke of serendipity, the block is deserted. The hotels across the street cast a neon glare against them. From her view, he looks like a dramatic representation of himself—serious expression thrown in high and low light contrast. He looks so very vexed.

  “You certainly have a sense for setting,” she says softly, as if her voice might destroy the surreal moment.

  “You are wearing Cashmere,” he answers without looking up from the greenery that is awakening in the earliest hints of spring.

  She pauses, looking away. He's not talking about her clothes; she is in a half-sleeved button-up made of some heavy cotton blend, and gray twill slacks. He means her perfume, the designer fragrance that costs more than most of her assorted debts. It is her one way of opulence: Cashmere Mist by Donna Karan.