by Gabi Moore
I drove off in a cloud of dust and hit the road hard, speeding away with my heart beating so hard it felt like a continuous tone. They’d be on me in the next minute, but in my current frame of mind, a minute felt like all the time in the world. I scanned for an exit ramp and the first one I found, I took and spun the steering wheel around to double back. It was an old trick, sure, but I couldn’t resist. Losing one of their men like that will have slowed them down, made them clumsy. If I could get them to go in the wrong direction for even a few minutes, it would be enough to get them off my tail.
But for now, I had shaken them.
I was three months pregnant, on the run from dangerous mafia thugs and high as a kite. And I felt fucking fantastic.
I sped full speed down the highway, heart singing, adrenaline pumping in my blood along with who knows what else. Out on the open road without any incident, I decided I had finally shaken them. I’d have to find another place to hide, to rest. I slipped my hand back into dragon bath robe, which had suffered a few tears in the scuffle. I slid my fingers down into that still wet slit between my legs.
Before any hiding and thinking, though, I had other things on my mind. If I didn’t come soon, I would surely explode.
Chapter 13 - Joseph
I could see my reflection mirrored in the black wood of the table. It was a polished ebony conference table, a serious piece of furniture like you’d find in a real boardroom.
I was done with our business having shady meetups in run down pizzerias with sticky plastic tablecloths. Fuck all that. And they had anything to say about it? Well, fuck them. When there’s a change in leadership, there are always a few disruptions, there’s always a period of destabilization. That’s just the natural order of things.
But I was watching with an eagle eye all my father’s cronies who reminisced just a little too hard for the old ways. They were welcome to go the same way he did if they were so obsessed with the past.
“Joey, the new corners, we’re having problems. It’s not our usual turf, the kids we have out there are struggling, and you heard, we already lost two men out there just this month…”
I leaned back in my seat and watched the guy in front of me shake his head from side to side. Fat fuck. He didn’t even bother to change his greasy shirt before coming to this meeting.
“Your point?”
He raised a hairy eyebrow at me.
“My point? We should pull them out of there. We don’t have the men, Joey.”
“No,” I said.
Grumbles erupted around the table.
“What do you want? To send the message that we can be bullied?”
“No offense, Joey, but they’re sitting ducks out there, if we pulled back to Forty seventh and Queen--”
“No.”
The grumbles were louder this time.
“We need to consolidate out there, Joey.”
“You want me to say it three times? How about you fuckers let me get to the real issues today? Or are we gonna gripe like old women about a few lost runners for an hour?”
Nobody could make eye contact with me. Good.
“Where the fuck is Mickey, by the way?” I said, feeling my neck getting hot.
They all shrugged.
“That’s just Mickey, though, I let him know about today, but his wife is sick, you know…” somebody said.
I felt like I was staring out at a table full of incompetent children.
“Well ain’t that touching. Any of you know if he bothered to do his job before he fucked off? Huh?”
“I chatted to him on Friday, Joey. It’s cool. Mickey sometimes does blink out for a few days; it’s not usually a problem. Anyways, I’m in touch with Denny and his boys. They’re out looking for Evie right now,” said another guy, this one skinny and grizzled, but just as poorly dressed as everyone else here.
Jeremy Something was his name. Something with a P? I couldn’t keep fucking track. I don’t know why the hell my father ever took a shine to him but he reminded me of a rat and at that moment I saw an opportunity to flex my muscles a bit.
“Hey, uh, Jerry, how’s your section doing these days anyway?” I asked, knowing the answer already. Every cell in the organization was floundering, but Jerry’s was the worst by far. He shifted in his seat a little, looking embarrassed.
“Well, you know how it is, Joey. Your father left that mess with the Nigerians and I just didn’t …we’re fixing it up, Joey. Slowly. We’ll get our numbers up,” he said, as though that was any kind of answer at all. I cracked my knuckles.
“You know what I think, Jerry? I think instead of trifling with small fries on our new corners, we should look to trimming the fat here in upper management, don’t you think?”
His face went ashy white.
“You guys keep telling me we need to consolidate,” I said, …”and I think you’re right. We need to find the real strong players here and filter out the dead weight.”
Something sour grew on his face.
“Tell me, Jerry, they’re after Evie, but what about the guy? John?”
“It’s Jack,” someone piped up.
“John, Jack, whatever. The meathead who was fucking Evie, what about him?”
The tension in the room was palpable. Jerry winced and shrugged and looked pained.
“Yeah he’s dead, Joey. I’ll talk to Mickey when he comes around, but he said he’d already taken care of him, no problem.”
I smiled. The thought of both of those fuckers being wiped from the board was a satisfying one. You can only get so far in life being a good-looking hitman. But in the end, power counted. At least on this front, I had won.
“Eh Joey, we uh, we need to pull the new stuff. The tainted stuff Evie sent out. The boys have already recalled some of it but nobody’s sure what to do with it…”
“Tell them to sell it,” I said. I caught my reflection in the table again. Damn I looked good.
“Boss? The batch that Evie cut?” someone said.
I gave a dry laugh.
“Guys, I know everyone here’s a little, shall I say, advanced in age, but are you fucking deaf or something? How many time I gotta say the same shit before you hear me?” I yelled. This seemed to catch their attention.
“Joey, it’s crazy, that shit can kill people…”
“Tell them to sell it all. Purple kisses, green kisses, I don’t give a fuck, just recoup me the cash I blew on that dumb shipment and get it over with.”
“If we just wait for the new shipment, we can send out the pure stuff then, get back those new corners and slowly ramp up.”
“There’s not going to be a new shipment.”
“Boss?”
“I’m speaking to some people. Our old connections. We’re going back to coke.”
This time the grumbles around the table weren’t confused, but angry. I leant back in my chair and smiled to myself as I waited for their bickering to die down. I liked watching it dawn on them that they weren’t in Kansas anymore. Coke worked. Coke was cheap, it sold itself, and we already had the network in place to distribute. My father’s squeamishness about it had been hampering the organization for long enough.
I wasn’t in the mood to argue though. The meeting tussled on for a few minutes more but then we adjourned, and I made a mental note to make sure a little accident befell rat-faced Jerry. The details weren’t important here. My first move was to make sure everyone understood that I was the one calling the shots. That I wasn’t my father, and they should thank their lucky stars I wasn’t. I could wrangle the admin later – for now, I wanted to make sure they all understood that things had changed, and they sure as hell better change too, if they wanted a place in the new order.
They ambled out and left me with my expensive new desk. I tried leaning back into my chair and putting my feet up onto it. They would come around. Every last doddering old fool. They had no choice. So why did I feel so on edge?
Evie. She kept popping into my head. Yes, it was a pity. Yes,
I wish she had come to her senses and taken me up on my offer to manage the new lines I was setting up. I will never understand how whores like Evie will turn down someone like me, but willingly fuck losers like that John asshole for nothing. Her loss though.
I mean, it was a pity, but it was mostly her problem. Women like her were hard to come by. But I still had options. I flopped my feet back to the ground and grabbed my phone. I dialed some numbers.
“Mellissa? How are you baby? I miss you.”
I listened intently as the silky voice came through the phone.
Melissa was young, and a little naive, but she had a pair of tits that could convince any man to do something stupid. Melissa was no Evie. She was a Spanish beauty pageant drop out with notions of marrying a wealthy drug kingpin. But she was cute and knew what she wanted out of me, and what I wanted out of her. Within fifteen minutes I heard her car pull up outside.
She came inside wearing one of those pink tracksuit bottoms with the diamonds on the ass cheeks spelling out words. And heels. And big dangly earrings and fake pink nails and a little tank top that was one size too small and pulling too tight over her belly. The whole getup was tacky as hell but whatever, she was still fucking hot. I buzzed her in, and she shut the door behind her, and was now just standing there waiting for me to tell her what to do. Good. I liked that.
She opened her mouth to speak.
“Your shoes are filthy, Melissa. Take them off,” I said to interrupt her. She did, taking her time to set aside each glossy pink patent pump with the heels turned to the side so they wouldn’t scuff the new floors I just had installed. She was short without her heels. A good little mafia girl, asks no questions, knows her place.
“Now take off the rest of it.”
She gave a self-satisfied smile and began to slowly peel her shirt off, lifting up her flat-ironed hair with it and then tossing the tank top aside. Like a stripper.
“Not like that, Melissa. Not slutty. Have some fucking class,” I snapped at her. She didn’t bat an eyelid. Like a switch had been turned on, she suddenly became demure, moving more slowly now, more hesitantly.
“Like this, pappy? This is OK?” she said in her best schoolgirl voice.
I hated myself for being so fucking predictable. I was a man who had impeccable taste. I liked good whiskey and expensive cars and fine tailoring. But god damn if I didn’t like my women cheap as they came. It wasn’t the fact that she was playing innocent. I didn’t care about that shit. I just wanted her to obey. I liked seeing her like that, completely subservient to me. Very nearly humiliated.
Evie would have told me to shove it. No way in hell she would be writhing around in front of me right now, pouting and squeezing her tits together for the promise of cash. It was so easy to degrade women like this, when they went so far along the way to do it themselves. But I didn’t want it to be easy. I wanted to deserve it. To win it.
“Stop dancing around and go to the corner.”
“Pappy…?”
“Just shut up. Go stand in the corner and bend over” I said. The brief look of fright on her face instantly had me hard. She padded over to the corner and stood there like a naughty child, looking over her shoulder at me.
“Bend over,” I said slowly.
She dutifully leant forward, lifting her bubble ass up and towards me, exposing a thin band of cropped black fuzz between two full cheeks.
“Spread yourself.”
She obeyed.
In that moment I felt a crushing sadness. Evie was gone. Gone before I could have her. A waste. A missed opportunity.
“Evie,” I whimpered.
She twisted her head around to see if she had heard correctly.
“Don’t look at me!”
My cock felt almost painfully hard. I unzipped and let my trousers crumple to the ground.
“Evie, I’ve wanted to do this for such a long time,” I said.
I could tell Melissa was uncomfortable, but she held her tongue.
“I knew that this is what was always meant to happen. I knew you always wanted me, didn’t you?” I said.
She took a moment.
“Yes, Joseph. This is what I’ve always wanted.”
I stroked my stiff cock idly, and stared at that cleft raised up to me. I grabbed each of her ass cheeks and stroked the tip of my dick down then slowly up through the damp slit, tasting her body, feeling its soft, silky crevices.
“Shhh, I know baby, I know what you want, and now the time has come and you’re finally gonna get it…”
I leaned forward and breathed down onto the back of her neck, smelling her hair and the warmth of her skin.
“But once I start, baby, I’m not going to stop. If you scream, I’m going to have to kill you, do you understand baby?”
“Yes Joey,” she mumbled, and bent even further forward.
Chapter 14 - Jack
I knew Mickey was a key player. Not muscle and not admin, but the guy who coordinated it all.
I had some idea of how the organization liked to stack people like him, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before his underlings started noticing that their boss wasn’t answering his calls anymore. I didn’t know how long I had till they found out he was gone. But I knew that even when they did, it would take them some time to organize to send a task team after me. Little Joey Valenti was ruthless, but he belonged at Paris fashion week, not heading a nation-wide covert network of drug traffickers. I barely knew the guy and even I could tell that he wouldn’t respond well to having an important person like Mickey picked off.
In any case, I had to get to her as soon as possible. They would be hunting her down right this instant, and I didn’t have a moment to spare. I had to stop them before they realized Mickey was dead and knew to expect me. There might easily be three or four of them; the element of surprise might be the only thing I had in my favor.
I thought it was strange that they saw her as a threat. The woman had run off halfway across the country to start a new life. She had put daffodils in her window boxes, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t see how she was a threat to the organization’s stability any more than that asshole kid Joey, but what do I know. She must have some pretty juicy intel.
I sped along the highway, arms outstretched on the wheel and the sun in my scowling eyes. I picked up my phone and dialed a number.
“Hey buddy,” I said to the voice that picked up. An old friend, one of the few in this snake pit I actually trusted. He was ex-military, a reformed killer who now had a family and a Labrador. He was the bravest man I knew. And having the balls to actually quit the organization was the reason I thought so.
“My man. Long time,” he said.
“Mike. I need your help.”
The line was silent.
“Where are you? I’ll come meet you.”
I gave him the address of a diner I knew I’d be hitting in an hour or two. Mike had all kinds of useful connections. He would be able to tell me whether Evie’s car had passed through the massive tollbooth on the interstate or not. He had eyes and ears all over. He had bugs and trackers and kids who would hack things for weed money. But when he told me he had men on the ground who had seen Evie just a day earlier at a gas station a few miles out from where I was, I nearly swerved the car off the road.
Mike and I had done a few hits together back in the day. I’ll never know why he was always so keen to help me out of a spot when he had long since retired, but he did, and I wasn’t about to ask any questions. She was tough, I knew that, but she was also pregnant. I didn’t even want to think about the danger she was in.
By the time I arrived at the diner, I couldn’t suppress a grin to see him standing outside in the parking lot. I parked, but he was already climbing into the passenger seat.
“No cherry pie?” I said.
“Just drive,” he said with a mischievous smile. God, was I glad to have someone like him in my camp.
“She’s probably at an old farm house a little West of h
ere, an old place that used to belong to somebody’s cousin or auntie or something. Your guys are on her tail. We don’t have much time” he said. I was flabbergasted.
“How the hell do you know all that?”
He smiled and shrugged.
“Let’s just say I’ve been waiting for little Evie to come to her senses for a long time now. I’m glad she’s broken away from those people at last. You’re not the only one who’s been following her…”
“I don’t understand.”
“Evie knows something. Something important. If she’s not going to put that intel to good use, doesn’t mean I can’t, right?”
“But you’ve left the business, too,” I said.
He tapped the side of his nose with his finger.
“Just keeping a lookout for opportunity, that’s all” he said and laughed. “Anyway, I might ask you the same thing, but I have a feeling I know the answer.”
I tightened my fists on the wheel.
“She’s pregnant, Mike.”
He gave a low, long whistle and shook his head.
“Jacky, my boy, you surprise me sometimes,” he said at last. We drove on in silence for a while.
“Take this left here, it’s coming up in a second. We need to find her and run. If they’ve sent who I think they’ve sent, they won’t think to look here for a while, but still.”
Mike had clean blue eyes, an uncomplicated face and a thin, serious mouth. He didn’t look much like an angel, but he sure as hell felt like one in that moment.
“You uh, you try some of this new stuff kicking around? This Pink Kisses?” he said as I steered the car off the main road and into a side street that was shaded over with trees.
“Christ, Mike, I thought you were retired from all this,” I laughed.
“Just following the news, man. Used to be the Valenti’s ran the tightest ship in this country. Now the people on their corners are dropping like flies and they’re selling some hippy sex drug or something? Man I feel old.”