by Gabi Moore
“Yeah, uh, let’s not try that again, huh?” I said and laughed. He seemed a little hurt by my callousness. I pretended that nothing had happened, and he had the good grace to pretend with me. Things rapidly congealed around us again and I remembered what we were here to do.
I picked up the bag and threw it at him. I pulled my clothes straight all around me and watched as he did the same, both of us still trying to process what had just happened.
“Here, you take this,” I said.
He easily hoisted it on his shoulders and we walked out. I locked the container behind us, briefly wondering what the hell it was we were even selling these days. I could understand that the best products were those that numbed. In a way, all drug barons are anesthetists, freelancers in the pain management industry. Crack I could understand. Alcohol even more so. But this stuff… this was something else entirely. I made a note to think about this more intelligently when my head eventually cleared.
For now, I could still feel his breath on me. I could still feel his cum inside me, wet and secret.
“Still, I didn’t think you’d go for it. You do seem kind of straight laced,” I said, trying to lighten the mood as we walked out.
He shrugged again.
“I have no moral objections, Evie, just aesthetic ones.”
“Deep,” I said, but instantly regretted how much of a bitch I must have sounded.
He laughed.
We felt like two college kids, sneaking around trying naughty substances and fucking in the shadows, feeling like such badasses.
“So, what’s a covert philosopher like you doing in a dump like this?” I asked. I suddenly felt very eloquent, like I was stumbling upon whole sentences already formed, and didn’t have to think of anything before I spoke out loud.
“Good question,” he said.
He still seemed a little shaken. It felt like almost a universe away, the fact that only a few moments prior I had been riding him in the dark, coming hard all over his cock while on that strange illegal powder that, for all I knew, only a handful of people in this country had even tried.
We left quickly, silently, the only difference now being the literal bag of strangeness between us on the car seat. We didn’t speak all the way back to my apartment, coming down slowly, forgetting the weird little rip in time we had found in that container and shared together.
I was long past the age where an experience like that would have me falling hard for a guy I barely knew. In any case, getting too attached to him would make what I was about to do even harder. So I tried to just focus on the road. Tried to forget about the bizarre encounter we had just shared.
We pulled up to my place and he turned off the ignition and sat motionless in the seat, looking lost in thought.
“Want to come inside?” I said. “I know it’s late, but…”
He pulled the keys out of the ignition.
I could fuck him again. Of course I could. When he lifted his dark eyes to mine and looked me over, I knew he was thinking the same thing. We walked inside; I flicked on the lights and unzipped my boots, flinging them to the side.
“Where do you even see any of this going, huh, Mr. Jack Holmes?” I said as I scratched around in the cupboard for something to drink.
“Um… hey, not to be rude but what happened back there was just, just--”
“Relax,” I said, and plonked down a glass of whiskey in front of him. “I meant in the organization. Do you plan on being a hired killer all your life? Is there an end game?”
He exhaled and flopped onto the sofa. He looked a little different somehow. Like something in his expression had been loosened. Or maybe it was all in my head.
“We’ll see,” he said and took a too-big sip, scrunched up his nose, peered into his glass and took another one.
“We’ll see? We’ll see? Not the kind of work you just drift into, though, right?”
He swirled the golden liquid in his glass. It seemed surreal that just a moment ago I had really seen into him, right into the nuts and bolts of his soul, and now he was just solid again. Just a man, made of regular flesh and blood. Good looking flesh and blood, sure, but damn did he ever say anything interesting?
“I’m good at it, and it pays well. The less I think about it, the better.”
“So you just do whatever you’re told and you’re satisfied with that? Do you see yourself, I don’t know, moving up one day?”
He flashed me a confused expression.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was a job interview,” he said, and downed the rest of his whiskey.
“It’s not.”
Then, easy as you please, I peeled off my tights, took off my top, and wriggled out of my panties. With a dazed, faraway look on his face, he watched me, but said nothing. I came over to him, took the glass from his hands and set it aside. Then I spread my legs, lowered myself down on top of him, our eyes still locked together, and carefully unzipped him. His cock sprung out easily. He still smelt of sex. Slowly, I spread the silky folds of my body apart and glided my way down onto him again. I was still warm, still slick from the time before. His body immediately sprang to attention again. I lowered down onto the heft of his cock, one inch at a time, and slowly breathed out, watching his jaw tighten and his hands clutch at the sofa beneath him. Surprisingly, I realized I was sore. He must have been quite rough with me.
Little splinters of the chemical memory of that drug reawakened in me and soon I felt some echo of it in my body. Fucking him felt so easy, so delicious. I bounced quickly on his lap, swirling my hips around the base of him and propping myself up on his broad shoulders. He lay back and enjoyed me, and I watched as little ripples of pleasure flitted on his face.
It was a quick, intense, juicy fuck. The kind of thing animals do in the forest. Secret sex. Quiet sex. We came together hard, in silence, my body tightening around him as we both spasmed. He groaned. I collapsed down onto him, his dick still all the way in me. He was hot. He fucked like a champ. But it was a pity he wasn’t more interesting.
Mother nature, being a shrewd woman like myself, made it so that men fall asleep after sex, and a good thing she did. I peeled myself off of him when I noticed he had passed out and was snoring gently. I smiled down at him. Nice sized cock. Sexy little tats all over his bicep. Pity that was all there was to him.
I went to my room, put on a robe and then got to work framing him. I noiselessly took the bags into the kitchen, slit them open, and emptied everything out into a giant pink melamine salad bowl. Hands working quickly, I pulled out a container of crushed white powder and dumped this inside, then found a big serving spoon to mix it all together. Satisfied everything was thoroughly combined, I went to the pantry and pulled out a box of thin plastic wrappers. Using a funnel, I poured the powder into these bags, discarded the old torn bags and sealed everything back up again, replacing the whole lot back into the main bag and returning it to the place at the entrance hall he had left it.
I looked at him. Still sleeping. The sight made me smile a little. His soft cock rested on his leg and his trousers lay in a bunch, still on the floor. His head tilted to the side as he slept.
“Wakey wakey. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” I said laughing and went to shake him awake. The eyes he opened and lifted to me were unguarded for a second, confused, soft. But he soon gathered himself.
“Shit, yeah. Sorry, did I fall asleep? I’ll just be going,” he said and hastily stood and started dressing himself.
It had been a strange night, I’d give him that.
I put out my hand to stop him before he raced out.
“Hey, don’t sweat it. You’ve done well. Your hard work won’t go unnoticed, trust me. In this organization, that kind of thing is always rewarded.” I didn’t want to promise him any kind of promotion outright. But it seemed prudent to at least throw down a few crumbs to that effect.
I watched as he swooped up the bag, tucked it under his shoulder and left. His headlights pro
jected triangle shards of yellow on the wall and ceilings as he drove off, and just like that he was gone and I was alone again. I felt exhausted. But I stood motionless in my sitting room for a second, taking it all in. The hardest step had been done. From here on out, it was Jack who would take the tainted “Pink Kisses” right to where it needed to go.
It was unlike anything the organization had pushed before. All the reports of its superpowers – turns out they were true. It really did give you this otherworldly sense that you could be smack bang in the mind of someone else. It really did help you soar into realms above and beyond simple euphoria. It flew you straight up into some other, new state of mind that it was difficult to even think about now that we had come off our mini-trip.
But, alas, it was also a potent neurotoxin when mixed with any SSRI. The mix I had handed over to Jack tonight would severely fuck up anyone who took it, but more importantly, I knew for a fact that it would deliver a death-blow to just the person I was ready to have removed from my life once and for all. And Jack would take the fall for it.
Now, all I had to do… was to wait.
Chapter 4 - Joseph
I don’t like the way things are going with that crowd,” he said. “I want you to get JJ to step in and take care of the Albanians. We need someone over there who can keep his mouth shut.”
“You trust JJ?”
“I trust him to do that.”
I nodded.
In the wild, everybody knows that the weak overpower the strong, the son overpowers the father and the spoils go to whoever has the balls to fight for it. I don’t know, maybe humans are squeamish or something, but they all like to pretend that this doesn’t apply to us for some reason. That we’re more civilized than that. More progressive. Fuck that noise. My time had come and if I had to forcefully shake off the old to bring in the new, so be it.
I always hated this place. Dingy as fuck. Dirty. Just …a mess. My father had enough money to put everyone up in real hotels, real conference rooms, proper establishments. He could have taken proper care of my mother, too, and he could have shown his cronies some real love and, I don’t know, bought a new fucking pair of pants once in a while. But no. My dad was a miser. Always had been good at the old Scrooge McDuck spiel. Whatever.
In the wild, the real alphas know that it’s not enough to have power – you have to show it, too. Since High School and the first days I started learning about this business, he had tried to drill it into me: Lay low. Think carefully. Plan your moves. But he was too old to admit that the times were a-changin’ and that if he were so intent on staying in the shadows, one day he’d get stuck there and people would overlook him for a leader who actually acted like one.
Like me.
“Ok, enough of talking shop Joey, let’s talk about this other thing for a second, can we?” he said.
He looked like shit.
Having a degenerative disease absolves you from being a beauty queen, I get that, but damn. His eyes were sunken right in. His face was the color of that putty you put on walls to hide the cracks.
“Sure, dad. You out of stuff already? I feel like it was just yesterday I brought you some.”
It was a heartwarming twist, that was true. Big old mafia grandpa wasn’t only in it for the money, you see. “Pink Kisses” looked like it might give him a few more years of life, and at the rate he was going, that was a hell of a lot further than he’d go on his own steam.
“I need more,” he said and shrugged.
“Sure. We got the new shipment.”
He nodded.
“Does it …you know, not to be funny here, but does it…? I heard from the guys that it’s like an aphrodisiac,” I said and sipped my coffee casually. The trouble with front cafeterias like this is that nobody ever took the damn time to make half decent coffee. I swear the Feds could throw us in jail for crimes against these coffee beans alone. I winced and put my cup down again.
“Joey? You gotta be like that? I’m busting my ass here and you ask a question like that?”
“Jeez, sorry, just curious,” I said.
“I mean come on.”
“But really, does it?
He swiveled his hollow eyes at me.
“What, you don’t know your own product? In low doses it does nothing like that. And besides, I got no need for aphrodisiacs or shit like that. Never had, not me,” he said and frowned, then sat back in his seat looking a little wounded.
Talking about your dying father’s sex life wasn’t my idea of a well spent afternoon, but fuck, no business is immune from meetings you’d rather not sit through, right?
“As a matter of fact, I think it’s working.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m feeling strong, Joey. I feel twenty years younger. I’ll have licked this thing in a few months, just you wait and see,” he said and smiled weakly at me.
The notorious Mrs. Robinson making a miraculous comeback was definitely not part of my future plans for this organization. I sipped my coffee, winced, and took another sip.
“Yeah that’s great, dad.”
The new batch would arrive soon, all right, and I would make sure he got first dibs on it before we sent it out. But let’s just say that the poison is the dose, and I was planning to make sure he got the dose I needed him to get. He might have been something special back in the day, but we weren’t back in the day anymore. He was unfit to rule. And I wasn’t the only one to think so.
I looked up as a woman poked her head through the café doors, looked around, cast a nervous glance at me and pops sitting at the far table, then scurried out again. It was embarrassing.
“We need to spruce this place up a bit,” I said and downed the last bitter dregs of my coffee.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Dad, I know you got this thing with your eyes and shit, but come on. The place is a dump.”
“So?”
“So it’s obvious is what I’m saying. Maybe we get some real coffee machines in here. Some pie, I don’t know. Hire someone else so it’s not just Maria sitting around here all day.”
His face darkened and for a second he looked just like that classic mugshot they’d been using of him in the papers since forever.
“Am I hearing you right? We speak all morning about saving money, about clamping down on this bullshit with my suppliers and now you want to come at me about fucking coffee machines? You’re joking right?”
“Dad, forget it, I was just saying.”
“Forget it? You’re Angelo Valenti’s son and you talk like some kid with no brains, it breaks my heart.”
“Dad, come on.”
“Nah, forget it, just get me the stuff, OK?”
“Sure dad.”
“And take care of that thing with JJ, it’s urgent,” he said, and laid both his bony hands on the table to slowly raise himself up out of the booth. I hated his legs. I hated how weak and wobbly they looked. Old people freaked me out, I hated to admit it.
“Yeah, got it.”
It was easier to take this kind of yes sir no sir shit when I knew that in a few days, he’d be going on one long, long perma-trip he’d never come back from. Oh, he’d feel “better” all right. It’d be like buying a deluxe holiday home in Schizophrenia-town, more like. It wouldn’t hurt me to give the dying old coot whatever lip service he wanted these last few days.
I stood up to leave with him and quietly decided for myself that I would manage the Albanians situation just exactly as I damn well pleased. And when I was done with him, I’d drop a bit of cash on making this place look half presentable.
I walked behind him as he shuffled out of Carmilla’s Coffee and out into the bright sunlight. I straightened my lapels and stood tall, scanning the street.
“You all right to walk from here, dad?”
He grunted and waved me off and was already a few yards down the road. I nodded and turned to go my own way. Life was good. Hard, but good. Fair. The old must die and the new must thrive in
their place. Such is life. I turned the corner and caught a glimpse of my reflection in a car as I walked on. I wasn’t a pretty boy, but I cleaned up nice.
I straightened my collar and walked on, my feet suddenly changing directions and taking a different route. Sure, the empire had some obvious fault lines and had taken some knocks in the recent past. But it would soon have a new king.
And every king needs a queen.
Chapter 5 - Evelyn
He was an ugly bastard, but at least he cleaned up nice. I peered through the peephole and saw him round and distorted, like he was in a glass bubble. Still, I could recognize that smug face anywhere. I opened the door and looked at him.
“Well if it isn’t little Joey in his Sunday best,” I said and smiled at his suit and gelled back hair.
He returned the smile and pushed his way into my apartment rudely. I knew he hated it when I or anybody else called him “Little Joey.” He hated it even more whenever I brought up the fact that his father had me babysit him once way back in the day. Sometimes, I wonder if the fact that he fucked me two days after his 18th birthday was his way of putting that little humiliation to bed once and for all. I still teased him about it, though.
“Job interview?” I said and closed the door behind me. I had lots of clout in this organization, but not enough to tell the big boss’s son to go and fuck himself, unfortunately. Didn’t mean I couldn’t rag at the guy a little. Lord knows he needed to be taken down a few pegs.
“No, Evelyn, you know very well that I’ve been with my father this afternoon to discuss important issues concerning the business,” he said and walked around my apartment like he was trying to figure out what part of it he wanted to grace with his presence.