I laughed out loud. “Listen, I actually have a job to do. Unlike you—where you get to sit on your high moral horse and delegate all day long—I have to perform. If I want to take Sierra home and fuck the shit out of her all night, there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.” I stepped closer to him. “You see, unlike you, I can’t be replaced—”
“What does that mean, Adrien?” Damien demanded, using my given name.
“It means you need to watch your fucking place in the food chain, brother dearest. I’m the baddest motherfucker in this family—not you.” I walked away and parted the blood velvet curtains as I sauntered onto the stage with all the charisma of a rock sex god.
None of this had come easy for me but now that I was here, I could perform this show with my eyes closed.
Zero and Tricky began to play in tandem as I stepped to the microphone, plugged my guitar into its amplifier, and grabbed the mic before throwing one tattoo-sleeved arm in the air. The crowd went wild as the feeling of Ziggy’s drum beats were one with my heart. Hard, fast and potent, the music was like the best cocaine on earth with a cognac chaser. Nothing else could compare to pleasing a crowd this large.
Well, maybe sex but I had yet to have any as mind-blowing as an awesome live performance in front of over eighty thousand people.
I placed the mic back on the stand since I would need both hands free to play but dragged it closer to me.
“Bonsoir mes fans parisiens!” I shouted into the microphone so even the people in the nosebleed section could hear me loud and clear. “Are you ready to rock? I know I am.” I crudely thrust my hips toward the crowd like I was fucking them and the women went wild.
Despite all my antics and love for the ladies, our fan base was still a good sixty-forty. Men outnumbered women but the female fans were rabid in their love despite their post One Direction days being over. The average Breathless Eternity fan was the median age of twenty-one. Although we collected those who were in their thirties as well as late teens, most of our fans were what we were—hard-edged Millennials, stuck at the bottom of a shit-infested caste system where Gen X, aka the “Lost Generation” meandered impatiently squeezed in the middle, waiting for the Baby-boomers to die off while we watched yet another fucked up generation start to come of age after us.
The world was a screwed up place, no matter whether one lived in an industrialized nation or not—the naughts and tens sucked so far. Our nihilistic music, taken from influences such as Marilyn Manson, Deftones, and Nine Inch Nails was thus fused with Papa Roach, Breaking Benjamin, and Bring Me The Horizon. By doing this, we’d created our own edgy sound that separated us from the pack. My voice could be dark, throaty and seductive one moment while the next, I could be angry, loud and completely mesmerizing.
We spoke not only to the disenfranchised university students who were told to “shut up and thank their lucky stars they were “well off” but also to “les jeunes de les banlieu”—the youth from the ghetto who had no chance of ever becoming productive members of French society because every first world country needed a “throwaway population.”
My parents—being part of a subculture that consisted of people from that same “throwaway population” despite being “bleu, rouge et blanc”—a term for ethnic French people—didn’t raise us to think of people in terms of colors. We thought of class first and skin color second. What difference did it make if you were blanc or black if you were still treated like crap?
So I allowed my frustration against society in general to build and the cynicism of life flowed over me like a comforting blanket. Fuck my wealth, my supposed status. I would never be anything other than biker trash—the son of a Prez and his former exotic dancer old lady he decided to sit at his tattered throne.
“Fuck ‘em all!
There’s no sympathy,
For peeps like you and me,
Not what they want to see.
“Kill ‘em all!
Pile up their brittle bones,
Make them moan,
Their blood dripping from stone.
“Beat ‘em all!
They won’t ever learn,
The lies they earn,
The lives that burn.
“Fuck ‘em up!
Just do what I say,
No more games to play,
Their time has finally gone away.
“No sympathy for you and me,
No matter how far we rise,
Above the dirt and their pride.
Feed them shit!
Handle it!
No mercy for you and me,
They never gave a shit.
Fuck ‘em over, make ‘em your bitch,
Let their blood flow,
That’s sympathy for Diablo!”
The crowd went wild and I loved every moment of it. Yeah, so the fuck what? We had every right to be angry at a society that lied to us over and over again. The citizens of Paris should have given me an award. At least I had most of the “troublemakers” rockin’ out to my music instead of rioting.
What could I say? I loved a hard rockin’ anthem and “Sympathy for Diablo” was just that. It wasn’t the only type of music we played and my whole aim was to entertain, just like Zero, Tricky and Ziggy when we all got on that stage. This was what we did for a living. We revved them up since most were high on drugs—both pharmaceutical and illegal—and wanted to be amped up. Yet by the end of the show, we always brought them back down and we made the landing comfortable and soft.
If we learned anything about the music industry, the real money to be made was in doing concerts and that meant as much as we enjoyed making albums, we actually got off on performing them.
I had started off a “Liam Gallagher,” a lackluster lead singer with good looks who stood in one place and played my guitar but as my shyness wore off, so did my whole persona to not want to watch the crowd as an observer. I wanted them to be one with me and me with them. Without it, what the fuck was I doing out here?
Our playlist rarely changed because we knew what songs were crowd favorites and which ones sounded best live. The only change I’d made was tonight, I wanted to debut “Escape.” Zero finished off the lyrics that I started as soon as he saw the paper in my music room. Though he would never be a great singer—more like a drunk and incoherent Scott Weiland—he’d broken down the lyrics to me in melody form on his acoustic guitar and it was perfect.
More often than not, he could get together with Tricky. They would run through it as Tricky chose the right bass notes and Ziggy had such a great ear, he could usually come up with his drumming on his own.
The night was still young but after entertaining a huge crowd and giving it my all, I was exhausted. I’d ripped off my shirt and threw it in the crowd somewhere. Dressed on stage in nothing but a pair of relaxed black jeans and matching Chuck Taylors, the guitar melody from Zero began to play and I picked right up with my own as Tricky added bass.
“I have waited for you.
Help me, I’m so blue.
Startled to see your face come into view.
I thought you were lost but now, I’m anew.
“I always knew you were out there waiting for me.
How on earth did you come to be?
The brightest light to my dark.
You’ll always be the perfect spark.
Open up my jagged, battered heart.
Only you will know how to start.
Before the darkness takes all of me . . .
And consumes all I’m ever meant to be!”
I took a deep breath and looked down at the front row.
There she was: my angel with the tarnished wings who played the part of perfect princess but beneath all her pretty straight teeth and intelligent Americanism—an irony unto itself—was a wild and bold woman who wanted to break free. She might have seemed conventional but I had a feeling once I got a hold of her, she’d be something else.
Staring into her face, I began the chorus with flourish.
“So hide away from the part of me,
That desires you uncontrollably.
Have you come this far,
Just to erase all my scars?
Come inside and face my wrath,
You can’t run away from this path.
There is no turning back,
‘Cause we lead our own pack.
You and I were always gonna be,
So escape with me . . .
Give me some peace,
Haunted by your timeless face,
Life’s long wanted lease,
Lies inside your wanted embrace . . .”
Just by looking into her eyes, I knew the song was affecting her more than I could ever know. It gave me a sense of pride that I was able to bring out those kind of deep and arresting emotions inside of her. I wasn’t done, not by a long shot.
“You waited all this time,
Strayed from the line,
That held you apart,
You struggle in the dark.
I know how much you want me,
It’s because we were meant to be,
Stop trying to escape your fate,
Before it is too late!
Don’t you know I won’t let you go?
You can’t bring yourself to say no . . .”
Although unconventional, both Zero and I decided it would be a perfect time for a melancholy guitar solo from him once the notes I played were done. Meanwhile, Tricky strummed his bass so lightly, it was barely heard but it was haunting never the less.
Sierra’s eyes never left mine, and like a vampire, I was ready to bring down the house and claim my willing victim.
“So hide away from the part of me,
That desires you uncontrollably.
Have you come this far,
Just to erase all my scars?
Come inside and face my wrath,
You can’t run away from this path.
There is no turning back,
‘Cause we lead our own pack.
You and I were always gonna be,
So escape with me . . .
Give me some peace,
Haunted by your timeless face,
Life’s long wanted lease,
Lies inside your wanted embrace.
How long must I wait at this pace?
Please allow me to escape . . .”
The crowd cheered loudly as I mock-bowed in front of the adoration of tens of thousands.
“Thank you so much to my fellow band mates, and thank you all for showing up. We bid you now a bon nuit. Go home, get drunk and fuck your brains out. That’s an order from all of us to you! Adieu et merci beaucoup.”
After throwing the cordless microphone to some awe-struck fan, I slunk off the stage confidently, drenched in sweat and ready to shower before I left for my own personal after party.
Most of the time, I didn’t interact with fans backstage but it had nothing to do with me not being appreciative. I’d given so much during the concert, it was simply hard to give more afterwards.
I wasn’t the most emotionally open person. In fact, many would have called me stunted in the area because although I could feel, my empathy was sorely lacking. I could feel hostility because I was angry just like I could feel love because it was merely self-preservation. If I didn’t love myself, no one else would either. That didn’t mean I had the ability to give love so easily.
My heart wasn’t open at all. In fact it was locked up tighter than a nun’s virginity with a chastity belt thrown on for good measure.
I had absolutely no idea what I felt for Sierra but I had every intention of exploring it that night.
THE CROWD HAD begun to thin out of the backstage area by the time I sauntered in, freshly washed and ready to begin my own night of personal debauchery and sin. Most of the fans left were hanging all over Tricky and Ziggy. Zero had in fact zeroed in on Sierra’s blonde friend. I knew how much he enjoyed the company of the fairer sex—he was betrothed to my younger sister, Annalise, but I couldn’t begrudge my best friend for being a pussy hound until he officially took her as his old lady.
Us men had needs and although Annalise was hardly a wallflower, she wasn’t exactly ready to settle down from her wild ways. She wasn’t a slut by any means but she had her fun while Zero was out on the road the same way he had his. The only difference between the two was she had to be a lot more discreet about it.
No matter what Zero said, I knew he clung to the club’s old ways. A guy could be as much of a pussy hound as he wanted to be but it wasn’t okay for the ladies. My mother definitely broke the mold when she did what she did for a living and still managed to acquire the title of old lady and raise kids that she could be proud of. None of us were in prison or had criminal records—overall, we’d turned out okay to be children raised in the biker lifestyle most of society would never understand.
My thoughts drifted away from my past and back to my present as I witnessed Sierra drinking from a bottle of beer and laughing with both Damien and Angelina. This was new especially when the man acted as if she was a national threat the size of ISIS when in reality, she was barely a wisp of a woman who posed not an ounce of danger to anyone or anything . . . except my cock of course.
She was slim but not as thin as her friend who could bother to gain a few pounds as far as I was concerned. God knows I didn’t want zaftig but any woman from lithe to voluptuous wouldn’t be turned down for a night in my bed. The color of hair and skin nor did astrological sign matter in my book. I was a connoisseur of beauty in all its forms and perfect imperfections. I’d been with every kind of woman in the world, from Asian to African, Middle Eastern to Nordic and the far beyond. I loved to fuck women and I was a very profound and consummate lover who knew how to give and take.
Too bad I’d had a ball and chain, formerly known as Sorsha—she’d deprived me of my appetite for different pussy for far too long. This would not be the case with Sierra. I would need to know if she was worth the time and effort.
As much fun as it was sampling all the flavors of women throughout the world, I never wanted to become a jaded, clichéd rock star. I’d fucked more than my fair share of women and I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit I was tired of the merry-go-round. The more famous we became, the less real anyone actually seemed and there would always be that question in the back of my mind of whether someone was with me because they truly cared about me or because I was Diablo, sex god incarnate. A demonic incubus in the form of a human being who was there to wage war on the female population by shoving my cock into as many different holes as possible.
It was a fucking fantasy, and although I was far from being a choirboy, that was a stage persona and certainly not me.
I felt a genuine connection with this woman and desperately wanted to explore it. Who knew? She might be the future Madame Adrien “Diablo” Bissette. I was a serial monogamist and no good on my own. Sierra might just be the balm to soothe my scarred and battered soul. God knows no other woman alive could fill the position and the one I’d always lusted after turned out to be lesbian. I was good—I knew that much when it came to my sexual prowess—but no way could I compete with another woman.
Until Sierra had come along, there was nothing and no one in my life worth writing home about. I swam in my own sea—an utter abyss filled with a strange mix of narcissistic personality disorder, self-loathing, and boredom. The only bright light in my life had been the music, the band, and my brothers from other mothers along with my biological one who happened to be our manager. Everything was so easy and free. I’d never had to put too much effort into anything until now.
This woman who I knew was interested in me would definitely play hard to get because it wasn’t in her nature to give in. I had an instinct for understanding the female sex, and this one was lucky if she’d ever had an orgasm that wasn’t induced by her own fingers or sex toys. She wasn’t used to a man like me so I would have to introduce myself yet again and show her how it was done.
I grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and drank straight from the source until two thirds remained. It was smooth as the warmth settled firmly in my stomach. Even I needed liquid courage every now and then.
Sierra would be a tough nut to crack but as I walked over to her, bottle in hand, I knew I could handle her.
Time to get to work, I mused silently before her head turned towards mine, and the smile she wore faltered only slightly.
Yes, I would gladly admit to being the serpent in her Garden of Eden and nothing would please more than to seduce her and bring her over to the dark side.
My playground.
My rules.
I always managed to get what I wanted out of life.
And what I desired right now was Sierra, in my arms, in my bed and buried balls deep inside her gorgeous body.
I WASN’T FRIGHTENED of much but I had to admit seeing Diablo approach me with a bottle of vodka in his hand and that sexually predatory walk had me on edge.
Granted hanging out with Angelina and Damien wasn’t ideal but the frosty Frenchman had seemed to settle a bit and not seem so interested in despising me. I didn’t know if this was because we were in the accompaniment of one of my best friends or because he truly no longer saw me as a threat. At this point, I didn’t care either. I just wanted to go along with my cheerful buzz from a couple of beers too many and enjoy myself after a great concert by Breathless Eternity.
And what a fucking show it turned out to be. Aside from Winter’s Regret, Bring Me The Horizon, Scarlet Fever, In This Moment, Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran and Nick Jonas, they were one of the best bands I’d ever had the pleasure of seeing live. It was seductive, powerful and brought out a feral energy I had no idea a band could produce. I was a goner—hook, line and sinker—before Diablo had bothered to saunter my way with that walk and air of elegance and depravity all finely wrapped in the heavenly body of a drop-dead beautiful man.
Sympathy For Diablo (Breathless Eternity #1) Page 6
