Vendetta

by Christine Zolendz

  Angelo. Angelo. Where's Angelo...Oh my God. MY GOD. My Angelo. My Angelo. My mother's shrieks. Oh God, Corrado. Thick Italian curses, blunt and violent, slammed into my ears as I stood, stunned and stupid, tracing the rivers of blood with my eyes until I crashed to my knees.

  Tires peeled and screeched away. The smell of burnt rubber filled the air.

  My eyes met uncle Tony's in the hospital. He was lying off to the side on a gurney; one lucky grazed bullet wound in his arm.

  After the last funeral, after he took control of the family business and named himself boss, he joked about the bullet only grazing him because it was too scared to meet the true evil that lies under his skin.

  And I absolutely believed him.

  Two days pass since Tony had to tell Franco's wife and his son Junior about the hit. Tony asked everyone to lay low, and the club’s been closed, and the girls aren’t making any money. “Go home to your wives and your families,” he said to everyone. Not an option for me, most of my family is dead. The rest is Uncle Tony.

  Franco isn’t even dead forty-eight hours before it’s business as usual, and Tony reopens the club, and dancers and drunks shuffle their feet over the place where Franco bled out on the floor.

  Tony wants to make money and no one’s talking about the hit or taking responsibility. Tony thinks it might have been a personal thing.

  I agree, fifteen bullet holes feels pretty personal to me.

  At the club, Felony's tending bar. Her dark hair is pinned up in pigtails like a schoolgirl and I walk right toward her like a moth to a flame. "You okay? You don't look so good," she asks.

  "Fine," I answer. She doesn’t need to know I’ve been up with nightmares or that the only thing that will make me forget for a minute is to be balls deep inside her. Or how fucking pissed I am that she still works here.

  She wipes down the bar with a wet rag and pulls out a cold beer for me and slides it across the bar top. "You know, I never thanked you for the other night."

  I look at her, waiting. What night is she talking about? The night I saved her ass from a Franco pounding or the night she came on her own hand while I finger painted with her on my cock?

  "So, thank you. I really appreciate what you did. At the card game."

  "It'll keep you safe. For a while."

  "You're a stand-up guy, huh?"

  I lean my elbows on the bar and keep my voice level. "Don't go looking for any Prince Charmings here, sweetheart. You won't be finding any, there's just us bad guys."

  Felony's gaze shifts over my left shoulder and I immediately feel a pair of warm hands slide over my arms. "Hey, Corrado. You here to watch me dance tonight?" Cherry's voice asks from behind me.

  I turn in her direction, giving her a smirk. She winks in reply. Another dancer, Coco, slides up next to her and lays her head on Cherry's shoulder. "Hey, Corey. How you been, doll?"

  "Uh oh, Corrado. Looks like you got yourself a fan club," Felony giggles across the bar top. But her voice isn’t laughing, it’s dry and hurt. She’s jealous.

  "Oh-my-gosh," Cherry giggles, "I would be the president of that fine-ass fan club. But Corey? Corey doesn't mess around with us girls."

  "That true?" Felony asks, smiling tightly.

  "Nope. I had you in the back room the other night at the card game, didn't I?"

  "Damn girl, you must be special then. I've been trying for like six months to get his attention. I thought he was gay."

  “Guess he just likes know-it-all pussy,” Cherry says innocently.

  “Maybe I’m not that special, Cherry. Maybe he just doesn’t like know-all-the-cock pussy. Maybe,” she says, her gaze flashing up to mine quickly, “Maybe he likes it because he knows my pussy is just for him.”

  I back away smiling at her and shaking my head.

  She’s right. It’s only her pussy I like.

  Only hers.

  And I like that she’s letting me know it’s only for me.

  Chapter 5

  Felony

  "Girl, give us the deets! He got a big dick? He look like he got a big dick," Coco barks behind Cherry.

  "Biggest one I've ever seen," I say, pouring each girl a shot, hoping they stop asking me questions. There wasn’t much more to say on the subject and I was too damn busy with trying to do my job to sit around and make stories out of nothing more than a ménage à moi with an audience of one.

  Candy’s not coming in tonight and none of these girls know why, so I’m tending bar tonight to cover her shift. They should count themselves lucky they don’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on here. I wonder how terrified they’d be if they knew someone was gunned down a few feet from where they stood less than two days ago.

  I guess it would be wrong to tell them.

  Maybe I’ll let it slip later. One of them is bound to ask why Franco isn’t around to wet his dick in one of them. He seemed to always be good for a few hundred dollars when the girls needed quick cash.

  “Ladies,” Tony’s voice rings out. “Get your asses moving, come on, get dressed. I don’t pay you to drink. I pay you to dance.”

  They giggle and bounce away. It makes me sick to watch them listen to crap like that and do whatever Tony says. But I keep my mouth shut and take a long deep breath and wipe the bar top clean. Tony likes when it shines.

  “How you doing, Felony?” Tony says, cocking his head in that stupid way he does.

  “I’m good, Tone. How are you doing?”

  “You have any issues abut the other night?”

  I blink up at him and smile. “I wasn’t here the other night, Tone. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, not breaking eye contact.

  “You remind me of someone. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “I hope it’s a pretty bad-ass dancer.”

  “I like you, kid. Come to the next card game. I’d love to see how talented of a dancer you are—up close.”

  That wasn’t so much an invitation as a demand.

  Oh, punch me in the twat until my great grandmother feels it. I’d rather die a thousand times over than have this man lay one single finger on me.

  “Will Corrado be there?” I ask sweetly.

  His eyes drop down my neck and linger on the low scoop of my collar and the cleavage that lay just behind it. He purses his lips in thought and shrugs. “He doesn’t always show up, my Corrado. He’s got a lotta work he does for me.”

  He stands there a little while longer as I try my best to hold my smile. Inside every part of my body trembles with disgust that turns quickly into hate.

  When Tony finally walks away, I realize the club is filling up and I’ve been handing out drinks and ringing them up on autopilot.

  Within another hour, the place is jam-packed and an entire drunk bachelor party is on the other side of the bar shoving twenties at me to dance for them.

  My eyes shoot up to Tony’s VIP section up on the balcony that looks out over the crowd. He’s standing there with his arms folded across his chest, just nodding to me. He wants me to dance at the bar for them. My face flushes hot with humiliation.

  Tony thinks this will break me.

  He thinks he has control over all of us. That all he has to do is say jump and we ask how high.

  God, I wish I didn’t have to do any of this.

  The group of guys in front of me is harmless, but Michael, one of the bouncers is next to me instantly whispering in my ear, “You having any trouble over here? Tony says to dance for them. If you’re willing.”

  I squeeze his arm and smile as I hand out beer after beer to the men. “I’m fine. Hey, can you call Corrado out, so I could dance?”

  “Why would I—”

  “Michael, we’re short-staffed and someone needs to run the bar while I shove my ass in these gentlemen’s faces.”

  “You sure you’re okay with this?” he asks pulling out his phone.

  “Sure,” I smile up at him. “Tony wants me to dance, and that’s my job so…”

&n
bsp; The bachelor party shouts my name, chanting it over and over until I climb up onto the bar. Thank God I had the good sense to wipe that shit dry.

  From the corner of my eye I see Corrado move through the crowd and pull up a stool at the end of the bar. I lied to Michael. I don’t need anyone to run the bar while I dance. There are three girls back here with me. What I need is a focal point to dance to—because the rage that is burning inside me is so great I’m afraid I’ll do something I’ll regret.

  I’ve done a lot of things I’m not so proud of in my life, but regrets—I have none.

  I smile to myself when the music changes and the first few punching beats of “Tonight I’m Loving You” by Enrique Iglesias comes on. I breathe in deep and feel the music pulse and thump through me. And my body moves—like ribbons in a breeze.

  There’s no pole to lean on here, but there’s men and stools and a bar top, that when I crawl across, my ass is in all their faces. I feel the music in my bones and the eyes of my audience heavy like a weight—like hundreds of hands caressing me, hundreds of mouths brushing against me, hundreds of tongues sliding over me.

  I close my eyes when I slip off the bar in front of Corrado. I can hear his heavy breathing. I could feel it fan hot over my skin. I think about his hands and how they moved up and down his shaft as he watched me when we were in the lounge.

  Slowly I reach down and lift the hem of my shirt up and over my head. Underneath is just a small demi-cup bra made purely of lace.

  “Jesus, Felony,” I hear him swear.

  The others, the ones from the bachelor party are singing the words to the song. I lean my back against the bar and arch forward, sliding my hand down the front of my pants.

  I won’t do it for real, not in front of everyone, but the tips of my fingers brush over my soaked panties and my body tenses when they slip past my clit. It throbs an ache so deliciously bittersweet I could probably make myself orgasm by just thinking about it.

  When I open my eyes, all I see is Corrado.

  My finger slips down lower.

  “Song’s over,” he growls and he pulls my hand out of the top of my pants and drags me through the shouting crowd and into one of the back rooms.

  He locks the door behind us and spins around on me, grabbing my wrist and bringing my trembling hand up to his face.

  My fingers are soaked.

  We both stare at the glistening tips until his eyes lift to mine. He pulls my hand toward his mouth and wraps his lips around them, then sucks softly. My knees go weak from the warmth of his mouth, from the expression on his face, from the moan that’s humming from deep in the back of his throat.

  He slides my fingers out of his mouth. “Slide your bottoms off.”

  I do as he asks. I’m so wet and I want him to see—I want him to see what he does to me. I pull them down slow, keeping my eyes locked on his wild ones.

  “Do you see how wet you get me?” I whisper.

  “Was it me you were just dancing for?” he asks, trailing his hands down my sides and lowering his body in front of mine. He knows the answer. He knows it as he kneels in front of me, eye-level to exactly where I need to be touched.

  “God, yes.”

  His hands shift back, each reaching and cupping each side of my ass. The firm squeeze makes me moan and arch forward, his face no more than an inch away from my inner thighs.

  He looks up to me and bites at the bottom of his lip.

  I’m dizzy with arousal. If he doesn’t touch me I think I might explode from the thought of him touching me. “Corrado,” I beg.

  Then his mouth is on me, sucking my clit hard. The feeling is so intense I lose my balance and my back thuds into the door. But he doesn’t let up, he’s sucking and sucking, flicking his tongue in insanely fast movements and, instantly, pleasure builds hard and fast where he’s devouring me.

  “Fuck, oh God, oh God. I’m gonna cum. Fuck, Corey.” I’m fisting his hair so I have something to hold onto as I teeter on the edge of complete annihilation. The feeling builds and builds and I start trembling. “Oh fuck,” I cry as my orgasm explodes and shatters against his lips. As soon as I cum, his lips work less frantically, licking in long soft strokes. I guess he knows how sensitive a girl could get right after a kneel at the altar.

  I’m so weak my back slides down the door until my ass hits the floor.

  Chapter 6

  Corrado

  “You would tell me the truth, right Corrado? If you knew something wasn’t straight here. You’d tell me, right?” Tony rolls up his sleeves and rakes a hand over tired eyes.

  “What’s going on, Tony?” I say, closing his office door behind me.

  “It’s going on ten years now, isn’t it?” Tony asks.

  I pause by the door, my hand still on the handle.

  “Ten years ago when our family was slaughtered. Since then I’ve kept the peace, haven’t I?” He motions for me to sit on the chair across from him. Shit, I hate sit downs. “I’ve tried my best to take care of all of you, right? You’ve seen me do so.”

  I smile back at him. “Yeah, Tony. Of course. What’s going on?”

  “I served justice–justice of my own, mind you–to the rat bastards that had a hand in the slaughter. I made them pay dearly. Some are still paying.”

  I never heard the entire story. My mother told me it was probably so horribly violent even a man like Anthony Fretolli couldn’t repeat it.

  But I never believed her.

  I always thought Tony just didn’t know—he didn’t know what happened and who was responsible for it—therefore he made up some fictional account that was so crazy he just couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone else about it.

  He’s the boss.

  No one ever asked him to explain. They just took him at his word.

  “I have over twenty-five whores working here and only ten came in tonight. They’re scared and they’re not even supposed to know what happened here.”

  I flinch at the word whores. Felony isn’t a whore. Some of the others are questionable.

  He rises from behind his desk, his face impassive and his words dry. “I went over the inside security cameras.”

  We have inside security cameras?

  “I’m the only one who knows about them. They’re in every room of the club except the game room.

  “What did you find?” Did he watch me kneeling in front of one of his dancers like her pussy was my church and I prayed hard until she came? My pulse races.

  “I found out that Franco had his hands deep in my pockets—touching things that were mine. That son of a bitch deserved what happened.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask, not believing a word of what he says.

  “He even came in here and went through my drawers, took a few of my Cubans. I thought I was smoking too much or losing my mind. Watched him take five at a clip, Corrado. What do you think about that?”

  “I think you don't ever bite the hand that feeds you, Tony.” I lean off the edge of the chair. “You get a look at who it was that did him?”

  “No,” he growls.

  “No? What do you mean no?” I ask, confused.

  “Someone made sure the security cameras got turned off before it happened and right back on when it was over.”

  So this is someone with experience. “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what I should do. I should find the guy and give him a job. Have you teach him how to clean up after himself, where to put the bodies and such. I could always use enforcers. This son-of-bitch should be on my side, on my payroll.”

  I haven’t seen Felony all night. I heard her set music but Tony kept me too busy in the back, which only proved to me he must have watched me go down on her in the back room.

  And get off with her in the lounge.

  And get off without her in the lounge but watching her on my phone.

  Twice.

  I have no shame about it either. That girl tastes like gold and I was
Fort cum-on-my-face Knox.

  It’s after four in the morning and the girls are leaving. I hear them walking across the dressing area with their clunky shoes on. We're in the basement waiting on Junior. He was higher than a kite before, I’m betting he’s passed out somewhere. He does more blow than Tony, enough to kill a horse. But after what just happened with his old man, it’s understandable. Junior and Franco were as close as any dad and son could be.

  Tony messes with his phone and music starts playing. He does this so no one hears us talk. The problem is his taste in music sucks balls and we’d all rather listen to Aunt Connie whine in her Jersey Shore accent about her nail polish chipping right after she gets them done.

  I'm standing by the window when I hear someone shouting. I don’t know where it’s coming from at first, “Hey, Tony,” I shout over the techno crap he’s got terrorizing us. “Turn that down, I just heard something.”

  He pauses the music and everyone cocks their heads to listen.

  “You might be just hearing things,” Tony says, eyeing me doubtfully.

  Enzo, another one of the boys, is in the other corner, laughing at me. “What’s a matter bro, you scared or something?”

  They are all scared. One of them got gunned down in cold blood and no one knows who did it. The note that was left implies there were nine more of us to get. All of us are wondering what’s happening and who’s getting capped next.

  “Ah,” Tony mutters, “I’m putting the music back on.”

  I hear someone shouting again.

  Something doesn't feel right, to hell with listening to Tony. I climb up and look out the window. I hear Felony's voice and a man’s voice shouting in the background behind her. I can't make out anything that's being said.

  Rage flushes through my body. Something is happening and Felony is involved.

  "Tony, something's happening in the lot. Something with the girls,” I say, slamming my fists down on the table as I pass in front of him to the door.