by Lux Miller
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 wife 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.
“His father beat the shit out of him and shipped him off to military school. My father pretended I didn’t exist. He kept what had happened from Luca, and without a lawyer and without money, I went to Juvenile prison for fifteen months for solicitation and drug paraphernalia charges.
“My father wrote me off as a lost cause, but Luca didn’t. It didn’t take him long to find out what was happening. He’s the one who funded my account while I was inside. He’s the one who assured I went through proper rehabilitation both inside and when I got out. And he’s the one who let me move in with him, despite my fuckups.
“I also suspect that my glorious downfall was the nail in the coffin of Luca’s hatred of the drug trade. He already hated them with the power of a thousand suns, but he wasn’t about to let them take someone else he loved.”
Dante stops suddenly, clearing his throat like he just said something he shouldn’t have. He quickly changes gears and continues, “He dedicated his life to eradicating the scourge of narcotics from the streets of New Orleans. He has a particular vendetta against the dealers who made what happened to me and countless other stupid kids possible. It was kept hush-hush in the family, so you now know more than over half the men sworn in service to Luca.
“The woman who got me hooked on Coke turned up dead mysteriously. Luca swears to this day that he didn’t have anything to do with it, but I suspect he was responsible. If not directly, he had the authority to call a hit. By that time, Luca’d been initiated as the consigliere of the family. The family’s counselor and arguably the most powerful position aside from the Don himself. In some circles, he’s considered more powerful than our father ever was.
“So, as you see… I don’t hate what God has created, but for obvious reasons, it’s best for me to avoid that lifestyle for myself. I’ve been clean for over ten years now, but the temptation will always be there. I don’t ever want to fall down that rabbit hole again, but it’s so easy to trip if you’re not careful.”
I nod in understanding, a bit flabbergasted by Dante’s confession. I offer him a small smile and grab both of his hands, squeezing them. “Your secrets are safe with me, Dante. And it appears that despite his asshole reputation, Luca saved us both from the demons of New Orleans. Do we have time for me to get something?”
Jericho is finishing up with applying bandages to Dante’s back where he’s inked a large portion of the design. He pulls his headphones off and motions to the chair as Dante gets up. “As long as I don’t have to tattoo a butterfly on your lower back. I don’t dig the whole tramp stamp look.”
I giggle and shake my head as I push my leggings down to my knees, then sit down on the chair with my back pressed up against it’s faux leather surface. “Nah, I can be a little more original than that.”
I hand him a piece of paper with a doodled design on it. He looks it over, then cocks his head sideways as he looks at me. “This isn’t one of mine. Where’d you get it?”
I shrug and tap my temple with a smile. “I sketched it out earlier before I fell asleep. Can you do it?”
Jericho nods. “Yeah, I can do it right quick. Maybe thirty minutes since it’s small. Where you want it?”
I glance over at Dante for a moment, then back to Jericho. I push my panties down off my hip to expose the stretch of skin covering my hipbone. “This is one of Luca’s favorite spots on my body... could you do it here?”
Jericho exhales a shaky breath. “Is your brother gonna kill me for touching her there to put this tattoo on her?”
Dante shrugs. “I don’t know, man. To be honest, he’s a bit of a loose cannon when it comes to her. Damn near broke my jaw, because I kissed her. Fired a driver, because he talked about wanting to fuck her.”
Jericho’s eyes widen and he glances down at my bared skin, then up at my face. “Are we sure this is a good idea?”
Rolling my eyes, I cut them over at Dante. “Shut up, Dante. Luca won’t hurt anyone over this. It’s my body, not his, and I can put anything I want on it. Please, Jericho, ink me.”
He steps out of the room for a minute and returns with a stencil of my design, which he transfers to my skin. I smile down at the image and relax as I close my eyes and try to picture the finished design. Dante reaches out and grabs my hand as Jericho begins working on the tattoo. He shakes his head and sighs, “Did you purposefully interweave the exact same tribal moon from Luca’s tattoo into your design?”
I nod slowly as I wince. The pain is sharp, and it radiates through my entire lower half, but I somehow manage to stay still as I squeeze the crap out of Dante’s hand. “I did, but it holds meaning for me too… the moon is the crescent moon and it represents New Orleans. The star is a hibiscus flower and it represents where I came from. It’s a reminder that no matter where I end up, Hilo and New Orleans will be always be my origins. No matter what kind of devastation happened there, they are a part of me… both figuratively and now, literally…”
SEVENTEEN
It’s nearing six in the evening by the time Dante and I stroll back into the house, trying to stay under the radar and avoid the impending questions about where we’ve been all afternoon. The moment the front door closes behind us, we turn to look at each other and grimace. Raised voices waft down the stairs from somewhere on the second level. From the sound of things, there’s a considerable amount of arguing happening up there, and while I can faintly hear Luca’s voice, my ears focus on the two female voices that are sniping back and forth at each other. I shake my head quickly at Dante and murmur, “I think we’d better get out of here before—”
Before I can fully turn around to reach for the door handle, I hear Bianca’s pleading voice from the top of the stairs. “Oh, thank God. I thought you’d never get back. It’s been chaos here for the last hour. Dante, for the sake of this family, please deal with your brother. He’s locked himself in that room and is refusing to come out. I don’t know what he’s doing in there, but I’ve heard things breaking. He won’t answer me any longer, and even if I could break down the door, he’s raging in there like a pissed-off bull.”
Beside me, Dante deflates as his shoulders slump slightly. He heaves a heavy sigh and nods as he looks up at his mother. “Of course, Momma.” He gives me a sideways look, and it almost looks like fear swirling in his green eyes. He stomps around me and disappears down the hallway that leads to the one room in the estate that I’m not allowed to go into. I cringe at the loud crashing sound that comes from somewhere down the hall. Bianca wasn’t kidding when she said that Luca was angry.
I take another step toward the door, but freeze when I hear a soft pleading in Bianca’s voice, “Emily…” Freezing once more, I glance over my shoulder and up the stairs at her. She looks harried . Since Matteo’s death, she’s ignored the glamorous public expectation of a mafia wife. Instead, she’s chose
n largely to wear all-black ensembles with her midnight black hair loose in waves. It’s a far cry from the dark beauty she emanated at Christmas, but she’s no less beautiful — or intimidating.
I swallow and turn around completely to face her, casting my eyes to the floor. “Yes, ma’am?” The yelling from down the hallway gets louder as I hear the door open, then slam shut again. Several moments of tense silence pass, then I feel a hand on my arm that makes me jump. My head jerks up and I find myself eye-to-eye with the mafia matriarch. My heart thunders in my chest as I open my mouth to try to say something else.
Bianca shakes her head and gently places her outstretched index finger against her lips with a smile. “Emily, we’ve been through this. Please call me Bianca. Ma’am sounds so… stuffy and proper. I assure you I am neither. I’m simply a widow trying to navigate her new circumstances.” I nod tersely as I stand there, glued to the spot.
She pats my arm softly. “Relax, girl. I have nothing but admiration for you. You’ve done the one thing no woman has ever been able to do to my sons, both of them.”