Machiavellian: Gangsters of New York, Book 1

by Di Corte, Bella

  I could smell his cologne—citrus and a hint of sandalwood—and it seemed like a breath of fresh air in this city full of too many people and too many dumpsters. He smelled the way I imagined the ocean did, an exotic place to get lost in. He walked with so much swagger, I was convinced that he was the owner of the restaurant. Maybe even the sidewalk.

  Smart Mouth opened the door to the restaurant for the man in the suit, and before they both stepped inside, the man in the suit stopped. Two women in expensive dresses slid past him and Smart Mouth, who greeted them with a huge smile on his face and a hand welcoming them inside.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five seconds after the women had gone in to be seated, the man in the suit turned to me, and I released a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

  Fucka me. He was even more attractive from that angle—full frontal. The only words that came to mind were head-on collision with a massive wave out of nowhere. He’d take me out with a tide I couldn’t fight, since I had no idea how to swim, and then wreck me, his power enough to slam me up against a rock.

  Not that it was hard. I hardly had anything left to wreck.

  Smart Mouth sucked in a breath when he realized who the man in the suit was staring at. His face turned a shade of red reserved for raw meat. Maybe because of my reaction to Smart Mouth giving me a death stare, the man in the suit looked between us.

  “I apologize, sir,” Smart Mouth said. “I’m about to get—”

  The man in the suit lifted his hand and silenced Smart Mouth before he could utter another word. I couldn’t stand the intense way the man in the suit studied me from behind his glasses. I knew he was studying me by the way my body reacted. It had been years since I felt…small in the presence of someone.

  Judged. Sentenced. Ridiculed. Banished.

  I looked down, playing with the straps of my backpack, feeling even worse when my eyes caught sight of my tennis shoes. They were two sizes too small. My toes pressed against the fabric, close to breaking through, and some days I thought, what a relief that will be, because they hurt. Blood stained them in spots from the wear and tear on my flesh. Then again, if I didn’t have these shoes, I had close to nothing. I didn’t have the money to buy a used pair, much less a new set.

  I am thankful to have shoes that fit—an entire closet full.

  I’d fill in the details later, once I was home and could put some thought into the ones I liked the best.

  I am also thankful that this baseball jersey matches the damned shoes. I’m not mismatched today.

  It was all I had to hold on to in the moment, something completely mine and true.

  Oh, right, back to the guy in the suit. I wanted to lift my eyes, to defy him, daring him to judge me so I could give him the “see how much I care about your opinion” look—zilch—but I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes again. My cheeks felt hotter than the pits of Hades. A bead of sweat rolled down my chest, between my breasts, and I was suddenly highly aware of my body. How anxious I felt.

  Spur of the moment, I lifted my eyes, pretending like the way he looked at me didn’t make me feel like running and keeping still at the same time. Even a little of that went a long way, so I turned then, preparing to walk away.

  I stopped after two steps, turning back. “Who needs your crappy restaurant anyway?” I shouted. “The steak is probably not even worth the kidney!” Then I sent them both an aggressive chin flick.

  At first the man’s dark eyebrows drew down, but then...was that a grin tugging at his lips? It was hard to tell. It seemed foreign. Like he hadn’t used the muscles in a while. It didn’t matter. I disappeared into the bustling crowd before I could get another look. I was just another body in the midst of millions.

  3

  Mariposa

  “Come on, Caspar! Give me another chance! Cut me some slack.”

  “You’re late again. Fired. Fired. Fired.”

  “You don’t mean that! You really don’t.”

  “I do. And if you’d like me to lend you my dictionary so you can truly understand the meaning behind the word, I have one in my office for days like this one.”

  “Today is the wrong day to fire me! I have my shit together. I really do this time. I made some changes. Thought some things out. It won’t happen again!”

  He slapped the rag he was using to polish the counter down. “You want me to cut you some slack?”

  I nodded, eager, biting my bottom lip. Shit! Why did I spend so much time contemplating trading kidneys for steaks and staring at a man who was probably a trust-fund baby? His biggest worry was probably what car he should drive to match his tie.

  And what about those eyes? He hadn’t even revealed those mysterious eyes… A multitude of colors played across my mind—green, hazel, brown, blue? Light like the ocean in Greece when the sun hits the surface, or dark like the sea during a reckless storm? I mentally tried them on his face, one after another.

  “Listen carefully to the word of the day, Mari.”

  I blinked, bringing Caspar back to central focus.

  “Are you listening, Mariposa?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, trying not to be snarky but hating it whenever anyone called me by my full name. Caspar was privy to that information because he had hired me. “Ya—Yeah, I am.”

  “Fired. Definition: dismiss (an employee) from a job. Let me use it in a sentence. Mariposa Flores is fired.” He said fired like FI-YERED. “Got it?”

  “How is that cutting me some slack, Caspar?”

  “You didn’t have to walk to my office to get the dictionary.”

  “Oh, come on! Really?”

  “Really. You walked right into that one. When you signed on to work here, that was one of my rules. You get fired. You read the word from the dictionary out loud. It might save you from making the same mistake twice.” He paused. “Maybe you should read it out loud.”

  The backpack in my hand dropped to the floor, and I fell into a chair with a dramatic “umph!” As soon as my ass hit the wood, I slumped over and hid my face under my arms, my hair fanning out, my forehead pressed against a wrinkled newspaper. “This is so effed up, Caspar,” I mumbled, my voice muffled. “So effed up. I thought we had something good going here.” I motioned between the two of us.

  Even though I had screwed up a couple of times, I really enjoyed working at Home Run. It was a baseball-themed shop that specialized in rare baseball memorabilia, and it also catered to those who wanted personalized items made. After the baseball business took off, Caspar and his wife, Arev, opened up a small coffee shop inside the establishment.

  It wasn’t big, but it brought in enough customers who enjoyed being surrounded by twenty-four/seven baseball games (or sports channels) and news. All walks of life came in, but our loyal clientele were over forty-five, and most of them came in for a good cup of coffee and a newspaper.

  Retract. Caspar’s clientele. He’d fucking sacked me.

  I knew more of Caspar’s verbal lashing was coming since I sat down and didn’t leave, but before he could really get started, the chime on the door alerted us that a customer had entered. Even without the chime, the scents that drifted in would have alerted me. Rose and…lavender. Both of them were subtle but distinct.

  Peeking through my self-made solitude, I watched Caspar greet two women from behind the counter. One of them had auburn hair and the other blonde. Both of them declined his offer for coffee before the woman with the darker hair gave her name.

  “Scarlett Fausti. I called a couple of months ago about having a framed jersey and hat done for my husband. My friend here has been keeping tabs on things. Violet.” Scarlett nodded to the blonde. “We were told it was ready.”

  I was positive she, Scarlett, was the one who smelled like rose petals and the other one, Violet, lavender. For whatever reason—maybe it was Scarlett’s auburn hair and fair skin, or how gracious she seemed—but it was hard not to smell roses and think of someone like her.

  Caspar struggled to remember th
e order, but what struck me as odd was, at the mention of her last name, Caspar’s demeanor seemed to change. I had seen him deal with celebrities before, or someone he felt was important, and he stood taller, pride evident in his stance.

  I lifted my face, blowing straggling pieces of hair out of my eyes. “I took the order,” I said. “It’s in the backroom. It came out really nice. Your husband will love it.”

  Scarlett had ordered her husband’s baseball jersey and matching hat to be framed. Apparently he had played high-school ball.

  As Caspar limped into the back to retrieve the frame, the two women turned to me.

  “Did I speak to you?” Scarlett asked.

  I nodded. “When you first placed the order.”

  “Mari, right?”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  She nodded but didn’t say anything else. Instead, she seemed to stare into my soul. Her eyes were a piercing green, and they seemed to know too much. And after what had happened to me earlier—the fuck I gave when the guy in the suit scrutinized me—I didn’t feel like being judged again. Though I couldn’t completely confirm that was what she was doing to me. It was like she was feeling me out.

  “Scarlett.” Violet nudged her.

  “Hmm?”

  Scarlett seemed lost in space. Violet nudged her again when Caspar came from the back room holding the frame. Scarlett turned at the sound of his voice, but she seemed reluctant to.

  What was going on in the world today? Was it “judge Mari” day? The entire world, except for a couple of people, had no clue that I even existed, and one of them had just cut me loose. Then all of a sudden I was the central focus, like a bug on a platter.

  I let my head fall to the newspaper again as the three in the background chattered on.

  Scarlett: “Oh, my husband is going to love this! He played in high school and was granted scholarships. The big league wanted him, but he decided to join the Coast Guard instead.”

  Violet: “Brando Fausti will smile when he sees this, and somewhere in the world a woman will get her wings.”

  Caspar made small talk with them while he wrapped Scarlett’s frame in brown paper. After he was done, another chime came at the door, and when I turned my head to look, it was a man in a suit. He had come to retrieve the package for the two women. Scarlett called him Guido. He spoke to her in Italian. Dark hair. Dark eyes. If he had a theme, it would’ve been dark. Honestly, beside the man in the suit from earlier, I’d never seen a man so attractive. He was built, too. His muscles filled out his expensive suit perfectly.

  What the hell was in my tap water this morning? Too much iron? I was attracting crazy shit today.

  Guido might be ridiculously good-looking, but compared to the man in the suit…I blew out a breath of hot air. There was no comparison. The man in the suit had made me feel something, which made me feel uncomfortable. Vulnerable. Therefore judged. I felt nothing when I looked at Guido. He was attractive to the eye only. No big surprise there, though. I rarely felt anything for anyone. How had one of my foster people described me? Emotionally dead.

  Guido hauled the framed jersey outside, followed by Violet, who held the door open. Scarlett stopped when she came to me. It seemed like she wanted to say something, but she hesitated. Violet called her name, and after biting her lip for a second, she thanked me for my help and left. I could’ve sworn she said something like “see you soon,” though.

  After they’d gone, I waited for Caspar to put me out, but after a minute or so, he took the seat next to me, a cup of coffee in his hand. “Have you read this?” He tapped on the edge of the newspaper probably staining my forehead.

  Sighing, I sat up and glanced at the headline. Huh. A murderer in New York City. How about that? Maybe he’ll do me a favor and visit me next. I was full of sarcasm today, but since it was getting me nowhere, I decided to bite my tongue.

  “Fausti,” he said. “Do you recognize the name?”

  I was about to ask what the name Fausti had to do with the headline, but I kept quiet. I didn’t have the energy for small talk. My world was imploding all around me, and I was waiting for one small spark to set me on fire, since it seemed gasoline ran through my veins instead of blood. Random chitchat felt like watching in slow motion as it edged its way toward me. I felt like running to save my life, but the problem was, I had nowhere to run to.

  “They think it’s someone in the mob committing the murders. Or one mob targeting another.” Caspar sighed. “Not that the sweet girl who just left has anything to do with this. She’s a famous ballerina, but her husband’s people rule that world. It made me think.”

  “Don’t strain yourself,” I said.

  Caspar laughed. For the most part, he got my sense of humor. “You know this isn’t personal,” he said, his voice sincere. He pushed the cup closer to me.

  When I looked in the cup, it held four ten-dollar bills. I stared at them, not sure what to say.

  “Consider it commission for taking the Fausti order.” He became silent for a minute or two and then cleared his throat. “I can’t depend on you, Mari. Arev, she is sick. You know this. I have to be with her now. The chemo…” He didn’t finish the thought. “My son is coming to take over the business for me soon. I can’t hand him a business with a flaky worker. It would not be fair.”

  Standing, I tapped Caspar on the head, not having the energy to feed him poor excuses. True, I had been late today because of the mysterious guy in the suit, and that damn steak, but for the past couple of months I’d been attending community college. My school schedule didn’t always match up to my work schedule.

  I wanted to make something of myself, but I was too chicken to tell anyone. If I failed, I’d hide it in my metaphorical closet full of skeletons. Which was exactly what I was going to do—leave the secret there. There was no way that I could keep going.

  What was the point?

  Hitting rock bottom didn’t always make you go up like people claimed. Sometimes it weighed you down and buried you under ashes. Hopelessness was a burden that refused to let me move.

  After collecting my bag, I stood at the door, coffee cup in hand. I was so in the negative that not even this small ray of kindness could put me in the positive. “I hope Arev gets better,” I said and then left, the door chiming behind me.

  * * *

  No, no, no, no! I flung my backpack to the ground, breathing heavy. My heart felt like it was about to burst.

  Shit! The locks to the crummy apartment I rented had been changed.

  Apartment stretched the description, though. It had a cot in the kitchen, which consisted of a rusty stove and an even rustier fridge, and a bathroom that was probably built when indoor plumbing was first a thing. It wasn’t much, but it was mine.

  Mine meant that I wouldn’t be out on the street all night. Mine meant that I wouldn’t be bouncing from one all-night establishment to another, hoping my money wouldn’t run out before the sun came up, coffee cup after coffee cup to keep me rooted instead of roaming. Mine meant that I was safe, for the most part. This wasn’t the best part of town, but I kept my head down, my backpack close, and the shitty shoes on my feet while I kept forward, minding my business. And now?

  Out. On. The. Street.

  Whoever said the devil strikes in threes, they fucking meant it. I was convinced the guy from the five-star restaurant (not the guy in the suit, but the other one) was the devil himself and had kicked off this day straight from hell.

  Reality took a nice swipe at me then and made my problems entirely too real. I couldn’t breathe. The heat of the day felt like it swarmed around me, alive with a buzzing sound. My oxygen was low to nonexistent. My vision faded in and out. Sweat poured out of me and soaked my clothes. My stupid baseball jersey and the ratty jeans and the too-tight shoes were going to stink even worse after this.

  Could shoes that were too tight make you dizzy? Cut off the oxygen to your brain? Or was New York on fire?

  “Crazy thoughts, Mari,” I said. “St
op thinking insane thoughts.”

  When I looked down, I had somehow slipped to the floor in front of my apartment, all of my energy gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.

  I was sick of always being only one step ahead of the devil that chased me. I was sick of fighting for one more day only to be touched by this hell. What felt like so many years and so much running…and what good had it done? Nothing. It had caught up to me anyway.

  Opening my bag, I dug around, looking for my journal.

  No, no, no!

  My fingers frantically pulled and set aside, knowing that I’d never leave it behind. Butterfly clip, a new pack of colors, a coloring book, gum, a pen. It had to be here. It was gone, though! Another thing of mine gone! My sacred place to keep all of my dreams and wishes and things to be thankful for was gone!

  It was stupid, I knew, but it was something to hold on to…it was mine. Like the mediocre job and the too-tight shoes and the ratty place currently keeping me upright.

  Think, Mari! When did you have it last? I mentally pulled it forward, trying to remember the last time I wrote in it. This morning. Before I left for Home Run. Shit! I’d left it next to Vera in the “apartment.”

  It was like fate knew my life was going to implode today and was saying, Leave your book of good behind, kid. Less painful when you have to watch your dreams burn to ashes with the rest of your life.

  I had no idea why I was so attached to the stupid thing. The same went for Vera. It wasn’t like I ever had anything good in my life to call mine, for good, but once upon a time, I felt like I could. The possibility for something better was there. It was the chance that something great could happen to me, or I could make it for myself, if only I could get two steps ahead.

  The day the idea took root, it had all felt so kismet.

  During one of my evening shifts at Home Run, the happiness guru appeared on the television, claiming that she’d written in her journal for years. She wrote down all she was thankful for, even if she didn’t have it yet. She claimed that being thankful for a life you didn’t have prepared you for a life you would have. She had compared it to having enough faith to build train tracks before the train even had the route.