Vendetta

by Christine Zolendz

  His eyes dart down to mine. They’re wild and glazed and he’s so close to cuming I can smell it in the air.

  “Cum in my mouth,” I say, tickling the tip of his cock with my tongue. “I want to taste all of it.”

  Then he’s holding my head down as he grunts and pumps into the back of my throat. Hot and raw and delicious. I swallow and lick my lips as he watches me with half-hooded eyes.

  “Now kiss me,” I say.

  “Fuck,” he breathes. “You are a bad girl.”

  Oh, Corrado Fretolli, you have no fucking idea how bad I am.

  Chapter 8

  Corrado

  I get a text message at half past nine in the morning that has me driving to the projects in Brooklyn, the Bay View houses to be exact. I have no clue what’s going on, all I know is that Carmine needs me. It doesn't bother me much, I like to help out family when I can, and all I was really doing was tossing and turning. And Carmine’s a stand-up guy—came into the family when Tony took over—helping me and my mom out a lot after my father was killed. I think he always had a thing for my mom, but he was married to Tony’s cousin Maria and she was a football player of a woman who would smash you over the head with a wooden spoon if you cursed in her home.

  She got me over a dozens times already.

  I’m zoning out on the Belt Parkway—there’s traffic for no reason—there’s never a damn reason, and I’m thinking about Felony.

  I’m repeating her words over in my head. She called herself a bad girl. There was some meaning to it, I just can’t figure out what. I wonder if there were wires strapped to those beautiful tits. That would just be the icing on my cake. Her being undercover or something.

  Or maybe she just wanted me to think she was no different than the rest of the girls at the club. Easy and willing. But she’s not like them, not at all. Each one of those girls come with a price tag. Felony—Mallory, she hooked up with me because she wanted to. There’s something there between us. Something that makes my heart twist when I think about her.

  And I think about her all the time.

  Like right now, I’m thinking about the way she dances.

  The way the stage light makes her skin glow smooth and silky. Or how she slides her hands over her breasts, teasing and taunting you. There’s also how sweet she tastes and the noises she makes when she’s shattering against my tongue.

  I definitely can’t shake the image of her lips wrapped around the head of my cock as she gave me the most intense orgasm of my life.

  All those thoughts are probably why I’m sitting in my parked car, a block away from the location I’m supposed to meet Carmine at with a hard-on that could cut diamonds.

  This girl is going to kill me, I swear.

  I adjust myself and climb out of the car—maybe if helping Carmine doesn’t take too long I can swing back to Felony…Mallory’s place and fuck more than just her mouth.

  That thought gets me even harder.

  Okay, whatever this shit is with Carmine, I’m getting it done real quick.

  I slam the door and hit the fob and scan the area. In a crappy neighborhood like this, I know I have about twenty minutes before my rims are gone and my car is left up on cinder blocks. Thirty minutes until it’s gutted for the rare parts and I have about an hour before it vanishes completely into a chop shop.

  I’m giving Carmine ten minutes, tops. Then I’m spending the rest of the day inside Felony-Mallory.

  Mallory-Felony.

  Neither names fit her.

  I make my way down the street and walk through the vestibule of the building. Immediately uneasiness settles over my shoulders.

  The entryway is empty, its walls covered with gouges and marked with graffiti. In the corner, a pile of filth stands about three feet high, crawling with cockroaches a size compatible to my fist.

  My gun is in my hand instantly.

  There’s no elevator in the place and the staircase smells of sour milk and piss.

  I’m never going to forgive Carmine for making me come here.

  Well, at least my boner’s gone.

  At the top of the stairs to the second floor I pull out my phone and reread Carmine’s text.

  Apartment 2G. Third door on the right.

  This hallway is a little better than the first. It has the distinct aroma of skunk weed mixed with fried bologna. Somewhere in the mix there’s a bit of yellow mustard and Axe body spray.

  A drunk guy sprawls out in the middle of the hallway, his face is mushed up against apartment 2E, and he’s fast asleep. He reeks of shit and whiskey and I silently step over him then a take picture with my phone. I’m not going to let Carmine live this down. I will post this place all over Facebook, telling everyone it’s his new home.

  I have to remember to snap a pic of those dragon-sized roaches downstairs too.

  When I get to apartment 2G, the door is wide open.

  For a moment I stand there confused, not understanding the scene in front of me.

  An overturned chair, one splintered leg swinging slowly back and forth. A broken window with a swirl of autumn leaves blowing in and spilling across the stained carpet that sparkles with glass. A panel of once-white curtains hangs crooked on a bent rod, covered with pieces of drywall crumbled over it. And all around the room, at chest level, are fist-shaped holes punched into the walls.

  I’m about to lift up my camera and take another picture when a hoarse voice whispers my name. "Cor...rad...o." Gurgling and wet.

  My heart jumps erratically. I feel it pulsing and throbbing under my skin and muscles and bones when I shouldn’t be feeling it beat at all.

  A crumpled shape lay in a heap on the floor. “Carmine?” I call out. “Joke’s over, this shit isn’t funny.”

  Gasping breaths, bubbling and thick. I take a few steps closer and on instinct the crook of my arm is immediately at my mouth trying to block the heavy scent of tangy metal.

  I’m standing over Carmine, his body bathed in sweat, a pungent stench of urine lingering over him that comes from the dark stain across his pants. "Ang...elo. It's Angelo..."

  It’s Angelo? The name trickles down my spine like melting ice.

  “Carmine? What the fuck? Carmine?”

  A neon blue Post-It note sticks to the top of his forehead. Half of it is soaked with blood. My eyes blur out of focus and back again. I squat down lower to read what’s scribbled on the note.

  Two dead. Eight more to go.

  Nausea hits me low in the gut and sputters up my chest. I stand back up, covering my mouth. I can’t puke. I can’t. I’ve seen worse than this. I once watched someone disembowel a man with a shank while I was doing time. Watched his intestines spill and splatter all over the cellblock tiles.

  But somehow this is different.

  Dark smears of dried blood clotted over the walls, glittering with flecks of tissue and stringy tendons. It makes me feel sick. There are no bullet holes. No smell of gunfire. Just open bubbling wounds and a dying man calling out the name of his dead friend. “An-ge-lo. An-ge-lo.”

  I look up toward the ceiling—in the direction Carmine’s apple-shaped eyes stare. Is he seeing a ghost? Or is he saying a dead man did this?

  “Carmine? Who did this?” I whisper, kneeling beside him.

  But Carmine can’t answer. His body stills and his eyes lose their gleam.

  His blood soaks through the bottom of my pants and covers my hands.

  Two dead, eight more to go.

  Someone’s knocking off Tony's gang. Meticulously, one by one.

  The ghost of a dead mob boss killing off every member of the outfit. Savage vengeance.

  I move to the corner of the room and wait.

  I wait and wait and watch the lengthening of the shadows hoping to see ghosts. No one comes. It’s only me, alone with a rotting corpse.

  I put the call into Tony when Carmine’s body turns room temperature and I can't stand the smell of the room any longer.

  After a few moments of icy silence he
whispers, “Take care of it.”

  So I do.

  Same as I always do.

  Ten hours later, the Fretolli family’s personal, and discreet, housecleaning service is thirty-five grand richer and I’m heading back to the club, praying I don’t get pulled over.

  But somehow I end up at Felony’s front door, blood still covering my clothes. It’s been a day since I’ve seen her. A day since I felt her.

  I ring the bell and pull in a long steady breath. I need to calm down, my fists are clenched, my muscles strained. Death is all around us, monsters versus monsters, I just wish I knew who the enemy was.

  My heart rate slows, evens out, I’m getting a handle on controlling it. Right up until she opens the door.

  She’s a roar of thunder in my chest. My heart thudding wet and loud, my pulse swooshing past my ears, along my neck, taunting me: You have no control here.

  None.

  My eyes focus on a pair of long tan legs. Silky black panties. The hard peaks of her nipples pressing out against her white shirt. Her hair cascades over one shoulder and her lips are glistening with a pale pink gloss.

  It’s her night off and she stills dresses like she’s made of pure sex and all my filthy fantasies.

  I can't tear my eyes away. She could hold a gun to my head and I still wouldn't be able to control my own body, my own thoughts.

  “Corey?” There’s a divot that deepens between her brows. “Corrado? Corrado, are you hurt? What happened? You’re covered in blood.”

  I want her to take what I saw away. I want her to erase it all.

  I move close to her. She’s standing in her doorway, a spring to my desert. I breathe her in. Jesus, she smells like my childhood, after a storm, mist in the fresh air.

  My hand slides up her arm. Goosebumps trail behind, her body reacting to my touch. My fingers touch her shoulders. My face tilts down brushing my nose to the shell of her ear. Lightly, I press my face against hers, wrapping a strong hand around her chin to hold her still.

  "Lock your doors and all your windows. Get a good night’s sleep tonight. Tomorrow, pack everything you need and get the fuck out of this life." My free hand slips a fat envelope into the hem of her panties as my lips brush a kiss against her neck, and step away. I leave her in the doorway, breathless and eighty grand heavier, to start a new, safer life.

  Somewhere far away from the Fretolli crime family.

  Chapter 9

  Felony

  There are two more hours until the club opens and I’m behind the bar slicing lemons and limes thinking about what Corrado said to me two nights ago. It’s on repeat in my head—the wild, dangerous way he looked, soaked in blood, to the heat of his whispers against my skin demanding me to leave. As I stand here I can still feel the grip of his hand on my face and how aroused it made me.

  I didn’t listen to him, though. I didn’t pack my bags. I can’t. I can’t leave this place. It’s my home. And the truth is, I have nowhere else to go.

  “Mignotta.”

  I freeze at the vulgar word—one hand squeezing the blade of a knife, the other crushing the life of out the lemon I was slicing.

  Junior slides up behind me and repeats himself in a whispery, taunting voice. “Mignotta.”

  He’s calling me a whore.

  Instantly his giant frame cages me in, his rough callused hands grabbing my wrist so hard I know there's going to be bruises as soon as he lets go, if he lets go. "Tony wants to see you."

  I hesitate for a moment, tightening my grip on the knife, imagining what it would feel like if I pressed its tip through his skin and muscles and bone. But instead of fighting, I drop the utensil and the fruit. Junior isn’t going to hurt me if Tony wants to talk to me about something. He’d wait until after, so I’m buying time.

  He twists me around fast and yanks me against him. It’s like hitting a brick wall and all I can feel is the hard metal of the gun in his waistband and the erection from his pencil-thin dick right next to it.

  His hand slides down to my ass and squeezes so hard my eyes tear from the pain. "And mignotta, I ain't done with you, yet."

  I close my eyes shut tight. His breath is rancid and smells of spicy sausage and cigarettes.

  He drags me out from behind the bar, right to Tony's office and shoves me inside. I stumble to get my footing and hit my elbow against a corner of a shelf and curse under my breath.

  "Sit." Tony’s voice is gravelly and demanding.

  I stare right into his eyes and walk to the chair that’s set in front of his desk and do as he commanded me to.

  I never lose eye contact.

  I don’t drop my gaze, but I know he wants me to. He’s dying for me to. Because he’s sitting behind his desk cleaning about half a dozen guns. Well, not cleaning them, he’s polishing them with a rag like they’re trophies he hangs on the wall. He’s trying to intimidate me. There’s a cigar in a large crystal ashtray next to him with a long, thin string of curling smoke drifting up from it. I’m more intimidated by the cigar and its secondhand smoke in my lungs than any of Tony’s guns—or any of Tony’s boys.

  I’m just one of the dancers. Worthless in their eyes. Whatever this is, it has nothing to do with me. I’m just a pawn in some game they’re playing.

  I straighten my back and sit quietly, like I’m ready to listen, to obey.

  “This is what’s going to happen,” he begins, lifting up an abnormally huge gun and inspecting it with a close eye. He’s still just trying to threaten me. I didn’t look down at his toys so he’s bringing them up to my eye-level. “In a few minutes, Corrado is going to walk through that door,” he explains, pointing to his office door. “And he’s going to see something that makes him real angry. Got it?”

  I don’t dare speak.

  I give one quick nod.

  “If you want him to stay alive you’ll play your part right now. You understand what I’m getting at?”

  My gut instinct is to play stupid. I’m just a dancer. A worthless mignotta, in their eyes. “I don’t understand, but I’ll do whatever you ask me to.”

  He regards me for a moment and places the gun back on the desk in front of him. “I have to find out who has my back,” he says, quietly. He stares at me without expression for a few more moments then leans forward. "Do you know anything about Franco and Carmine?" he asks. “How about Paulie and John?

  I squint my eyes at him like I don’t comprehend. "Excuse me?"

  “Ah, never mind,” he says waving a hand, disregarding me.

  Because I’m just a stupid dancer. A worthless mignotta, right?

  He leans back in his chair and takes a pull from his cigar. Smoke billows out of his mouth. "I walk through my club when you're on stage, all these men about to bust their nut just from watching you. And the only one you want to touch you is the one that won't pay you. I watched Corrado eating that pussy of yours in the back room. Free pussy for my Corrado?”

  Oh shit.

  “You like my Corrado?"

  “Y-y-yes," I stammer, voice shaking.

  "Y-y-yes?" he mocks, barking out a laugh. Spittle and saliva fling from his lips. He walks out from behind his desk, and crooks his finger toward me. “Get up,” he growls.

  He doesn’t wait for me to stand. As I lean forward, he yanks me up by the hair and pushes me onto the desk. My back arcs over the edge and he shifts in front of me, pressing his groin into my stomach. He smiles over me, grinding his hips and the erection behind his pants into me. "You'll fuck who I say to fuck. No more free pussy for Corrado. You stay away from him. Corrado is like my son, you're not good enough." Then he chuckles and slides his flat hot tongue from my jaw up to my temple. “Well, let’s see if he passes this test.”

  A thick meaty hand comes up and grabs at my chest, roughly palming one.

  “No,” I groan, trying to push him away.

  "You like fighting, little one?" His right hand grasped onto my cheeks, squeezing my mouth open. "I like when girls put up a fight too," he laughs, stic
king his tongue in my mouth. The other hand squeezes at my breast.

  My muscles clench, the veins in my temples pound, my pulse rushes with a rage. Fury. I want to kill him. I want to take that huge gun off his desk and blow his dick clean off and stand over him, laughing.

  Suddenly I'm collapsing to the floor, and I'm squeezing my eyes shut tight.

  “You’re doing good, Felony. He should be here any minute.”

  My eyes snap open. He should be here any minute? Corrado? He wants Corrado to walk in and see this? He wants to see how Corrado reacts to it? How I will? He wants to see who he can trust because someone is murdering his little wise-guy club, one by one.

  The door to his office opens. I instantly look up but all I see is Tony with his hand around his small, stubby cock, leaning over me as if he was ready to fuck the life out of my face.

  "Uncle Tony?" Corrado's voice trembles with rage.

  Corrado pushes past and stares at me, stunned.

  He’s either going to think I’m sharing myself with everyone or he’s going to think Tony was trying to force me.

  I shake my head at him. Tears welling in my eyes.

  What kind of a man is Corrado? I guess I’m about to find out.

  What’s he going to believe? That I’m nothing more than a worthless whore?

  Or is he worthy, really worthy of someone like me?

  Tony tucks himself back into his pants and motions for me to stand up. He even holds out a hand to help.

  Corey's eyes look livid. He’s breathless with fury. I want to say something but I can’t. I can’t think of anything to say.

  Tony takes another drag of his cigar and he’s back to business, turning his back to me to face Corrado. “We just got word Paulie and John got popped.”

  With his back to me, I think of a thousand ways he could die with his back turned. But someone like Anthony Fretolli deserves a little bit more than that. He deserves the giddy stare of his killer and one of those long movie monologues about how much he’ll suffer in Hell.