He took another shot and signaled to the nearest woman for another round. Anteros had left the penthouse minutes after slamming his bedroom door in Frankie's face. Then he spent the night in one of his clubs, hammering shots like water.
The club was like a sultan’s harem in a Victorian world. Decorative chandeliers hung from wrought iron stems, their crystal beads oozing sensual red light. Gauzy jewel-toned fabrics hung from the ceiling, ranging from sheer to thick draperies, creating the illusion of privacy. The music was a deep, sensual beat that thrummed in your veins.
All the men were dressed in tuxedos, all except for the Beast, who had thrown on a pair of trousers and a long-sleeved shirt in his haste. The women ranged from completely naked to fully dressed, but all of them were in masquerade masks.
All you had to do was ask, and they would strip. Every single one.
Anteros took another shot.
“Just like the old days,” Little O said, lifting up a veil and taking a seat. A woman in nothing save gold jewelry placed another drink at Anteros’s table. The gold was thin but heavy, starting at her neck and covering her body so that her nipples were erect through the chain.
Anteros took another shot as Pretty Boy, Big O, and Crazy A came through the curtains and slid into the velvet booth.
“You know the one thing that will get Crazy A out of his hole is naked women,” Big O said. Beast glanced at Crazy A. The Wolf’s scowl was deep, making the grooves in his face appear like caverns.
“Yeah,” Anteros growled, taking a shot. “Right.”
“So,” Pretty Boy said, signaling at another nearly naked woman carrying drinks. “What’s going on?”
“This—”Anteros slammed the flyer down on the table “—was on my window.”
Pretty Boy picked up the flyer, held it to the ruby light, and examined it. “There’s no way that was an accident,” he said, handing it to the others at the table. Big O looked at it and passed it down the line. “You’re too high up for it to have been wind.”
“Exactly,” Anteros replied. “Someone was in my home. Someone planted that.” Anteros raised his hand, signaling for another girl. This time he ordered a drink to go along with his shots.
“Did you look at the tapes?” Big O asked.
“Obviously I looked at the fucking tapes. Erased.” The pink flyer reached Crazy A and Anteros watched, waiting for him to reveal the fact that he’d known The Council was behind this for some time. Instead he stood up, placed it on the small round table in the center of their private booth, and slid back into his seat. A moment later, another nearly naked woman appeared and placed Anteros’s drink down on top of the pink paper.
Anteros picked up the drink, thinking about the flyer, the tapes. There were only a few people with enough manpower to get into his guarded house and erase them, and those people sat at the top of a ubiquitous tower in the center of the Financial District. Judging by the silence in the booth, his Wolves were thinking the exact same thing.
“Why now?” Pretty Boy asked but seconds later Pretty Boy answered his own question: “The Pavoni Princess gave them clout, didn’t she?”
“If The Council is behind the attacks and rumor, then it’s about time we end them,” Big O said.
“More than,” Little O said. “I’ve been waiting to kill those fuckers for years.” Anteros took another shot, looking to Crazy A. Still he sat quietly in the shadows.
“Yes,” Anteros responded, setting his drink down, empty. “We have to end The Council.”
Big O jumped up. “All right. About fucking time we kill those old pricks.” He punched the air, fist hitting fabric.
“But,” Anteros added, narrowing his eyes at Big O’s grand display. “We can’t just rush into this.”
“Of course.” Big O straightened the lapels on his coat and sat back down.
“If we’re going to do this, there can be no doubts who did it or why,” Anteros said. “To end the uprising once and for all.”
“All these years denying we had anything to do with that councilman’s death,” Crazy A spoke up finally. “It’s kind of poetic.” Anteros looked to Crazy A, eyes shrewd. He was nearly shrouded entirely by shadows, light only illumining the hands folded on his lap. Naked women moved through the filmy cloth behind him like specters, coming and going, their flesh tinged ruby red.
He was referring to the rumor that brought them together when Anteros had purposely sent a councilman to death and they had backed him up. It had always remained a rumor, a dark thing no one could prove yet still made them the sinister thing that went bump in the night. As they grew in the ranks, the rumor grew with them.
Even then, they had only sent the man to death, they hadn’t curled their fingers around his throat. A smile crept to Anteros's face, knowing they would finally breathe life into the rumor.
“Emilio is nearly in place,” Anteros said. “In two days when he’s appointed, The Council will be distracted. We can strike that week.”
“They’re all heavily guarded,” Pretty Boy said. “Not just with high-tech security systems, but actual guards.”
“It’s a feat that should take months of planning,” Little O added.
“It will be handled,” Crazy A said with icy determination.
Big O laughed. “No offense, but even you can’t pull that off.”
“It will be handled,” Crazy A repeated, sitting forward. “One week from now, a day before the New Year, we will take them down.” All the Wolves shifted slightly, raised eyebrows, but didn’t argue. Crazy A hadn’t gotten his name for being mentally ill or for doing odd things.
He’d gotten his name for the uncanny ability to distort reality around him. Aside from Beast, he was the most feared one, as no one knew how Crazy A did the things he did. They just happened, and they were fearsome and terrible and ruining.
Anteros nodded. “A day before the New Year, then.”
“But,” Crazy A added, “The Council is not the only threat. There’s a much bigger one sleeping in your bed.”
“Dude.” Little O raised a hand. “Don’t go there.”
“She did give the Pavoni Princess rumor life,” Big O responded. “Gave the fanatics something to grab on to.” Big O paused. “Look, we don’t want to take away your toy…”
“My toy?” Anteros growled.
“He means…” Pretty Boy shot a glare at Big O. “There are soldiers and laborers who are starting to follow this fucking rumor, not just De Lucas. This thing is starting to spiral.”
“She is being dealt with,” Anteros growled, cutting through the bullshit. Truthfully he had no idea what the fuck to do with Frankie. Rationally he knew she needed to go; it was the type of calculated decision he would have made without a second thought just a few weeks ago.
But rational and calculated had gone out the window the moment she came into his life.
So he was pounding shots.
Anteros signaled for another round. When it didn’t come quickly enough, his arm slashed through the air with fury. A girl appeared, the tray she carried wobbling with her tremors. Anteros snatched a shot off the silver tray, not even waiting for her to place them down. She quickly cleared his empty glasses off the table and disappeared. Anteros’s throat was so numb from the liquor that he didn’t feel the burn. Glare fierce, he bore his intention into Crazy A.
“If she is not dead before The Council’s death, I will do it myself,” Crazy A said casually. Slowly Anteros set his empty glass down. All the Wolves looked to him, waiting to see what he would say and do. Crazy A challenged him, and there was only one way Anteros could respond. One way if wanted to continue as Boss.
A few more moments passed, Pretty Boy coughed.
“That won’t be necessary,” Anteros replied, clenching his jaw. “Because I will do it.” It was the ending he always knew was coming, so why did the words feel so anathema on his tongue?
“Do I have your permission to do it if she lives?” Crazy A leaned forward in the booth, his f
ace becoming visible in the red light. A small smile crept across his face.
Anteros narrowed his eyes. The delicate curtains swayed with the movement of clothes being discarded on the other side. The beat thrummed in a certain demanding pattern. Crazy A never blinked, meeting his stare eye for eye. He could feel the stares of his other Wolves, their attention rapt and unsure.
“Everyone in this room has permission to kill Francesca Notte if she lives past the thirty-first of December,” Anteros declared with a growl, standing up.
Crazy A leaned back against the velvet booth, his smile disappearing in the shadows.
“I’m good,” Little O said, throwing his hands up.
“Me too,” Big O said. “I trust you to finish it.”
“There are already too many dicks in this sword fight,” Pretty Boy said, folding his arms.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Anteros said, pulling aside the diaphanous curtains, “I’m going to go get my dick sucked.”
The woman sucked him, pulling his cock into her mouth in a talented fashion. She’d given him a name that he couldn’t remember, it was probably fake, something like Desire or Passion. She wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t doing anything for him—at all. There was something about her, something that just wasn’t right.
Anteros lifted the hair from her neck, sweeping it past her shoulders until it was gathered in his hands. It was soft as silk.
Fuck.
Frankie was like some kind of goddess before him. Looking up at him, his cock in her hand, as if waiting for him, he realized it was he who had been waiting. Waiting for this.
He was going to remember this—the look of utter submission in her eyes. His cock perched on her full, pink lips. The feel of her hair in his hands as she prepared to take him. It was all seared on his brain matter.
Then she was on him, her mouth taking as much of him as she could. Her tongue was flat against his cock as she tried to swallow him, but he was too big. She looked up at him, earnest, sexy. So fucking sexy. He’d never been so turned on by a blow job before.
With a frustrated shove, Anteros pushed whatever-her-name-was off of him and zipped up his trousers.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said, rubbing a palm to his forehead. Too much to drink. He’d had too much to drink.
“Wait,” she said, wiping her mouth off. “You owe me.”
“For that?” Anteros laughed.
“It’s not my fault your dick doesn’t work,” she said, standing up. Anteros grabbed her neck, thrusting her against the wall. Her mouth popped open, gasping for breath, face purpling. It would be easy to kill her, easy to let her life drain from her body. Desire, Passion, whatever she called herself—technically she belonged to Anteros.
He owned the entire club.
Owned her.
With a growl, Anteros dropped her.
She clutched her bruised throat, looking up at him hatefully. “I’m going to tell Bruno and you’re going to be so fucked.”
Anteros bent down. “Bruno works for me, sweetheart.” She paled and he watched without emotion as she spun quickly away, scrambling out of the dark, gemstone-colored room.
By the time Anteros got back to the penthouse, he was still good and drunk. After kicking the whore out, he’d gone out and grabbed a bottle of whiskey off the top shelf, deciding to walk back home. It had been years since he’d been drunk. He wasn’t a fan of liquor, usually just drank it because it was custom. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually walked through the city, either. There’d been no need, and it wasn’t as secure.
His car was constructed with the best materials to be bulletproof. It appeared a normal town car, but it could stop damn near anything. That night he ditched Nikolai and walked through the snowy streets of Manhattan with a bottle of whiskey.
“Mi accingo pazza!” Anteros yelled, thrusting the whiskey into the face of a man he passed. The man jumped back, looked at Anteros with unease, then walked away.
“Fucking drunks,” he heard the man mumble under his breath. Anteros watched the man walk away then swallowed the last of the whiskey. He chucked the bottle on the sidewalk, watching it shatter into a thousand pieces.
When he got home, he stumbled down the hallway, skipping his bedroom. Anteros walked the few feet until he was outside the now all too familiar white wood door and pushed it open. Frankie was fast asleep in her bed. Her hair shone like satin, the color of chocolate, melting all over her pillow. He wanted to tug it, to grasp it, to feel the way it would fall through his fingers like water. She gave a little sigh, burrowing deeper into her blanket.
He knew she had to die.
His position in the Family was teetering on the edge of a cliff, and his fingers were growing bloody with the effort of hanging onto the edge. He slipped with the blood, fingers sliding off the precipice, and the solution, his rope back to the top, lay right there in bed.
Asleep.
Comfortable in sheets he’d given her.
He undid his belt slowly, watching the way she breathed in her sleep. Sliding the leather between his hands, he clenched the belt in a fist. She rolled her head, exposing her slender, pale neck. The shades were not drawn, a testament to how tired she’d been. The city lights poured in, illuminating her face in a swath of blurry, dotted glares.
With the belt gripped between his two hands, he studied her. Just as with the whore from the club, he could easily snuff out Frankie's life. He could wrap the belt around her neck until the breath stopped coming. Her face would turn purple. She would die.
She said she’d been sick. What did that mean? Like cancer? Could it come back? Why did it even fucking matter if he was planning to kill her anyway?
Frankie twisted in the sheets, rolling on her back. Her arm came above her head and the blanket fell so he got the briefest glimpse of her breasts beneath the lace of her nighty. She released a small sigh. Letting one hand fall, the belt dangled from his hand, touching the floor.
Anteros didn’t know how long he watched her. Everything dulled to a quiet hum. His eyes were glued to her, only roaming to catch the little movements she made.
A sigh.
A shift in her leg.
The flicker of her lids while she dreamed.
Belt still clenched in his fist, Anteros slid into the bed, wrapping his arms around her body.
Seventeen
“Tonight is Christmas Eve.” I could feel his presence behind the wingback chair, looming, begging for something.
I wouldn’t give it.
Not anymore.
Even if I had to fucking tattoo it on my brain matter. That morning I’d awoken to him cuddling me. It had been warm…comforting, even. In my sleep I’d curled into his large, muscular frame. It had seemed safe and I’d forgotten. AGAIN.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“I own a calendar, thanks,” I sniped, keeping my attention on my book. He grabbed my elbow, whipping me to attention, the book falling from my grasp. I arched my back, glaring into his eyes. They were dark, like a swamp at night, dangerous.
They flicked to the book on the ground and he said, “It’s time you put away your fantasy and go get dressed for the party.” He let go of me with a violent thrash and I fell back into the chair.
Then he left.
Without saying another fucking word. Without letting me say another fucking word. My fantasy? Who calls Night by Elie Wiesel a fucking fantasy? I clenched my fists, staring at the empty doorway for a few more seconds before walking through it in a huff.
I walked back to my room, trying to keep my eyes down. Sometime while I was sleeping, the penthouse had been decorated to look like Christmas jizzed everywhere. Dozens of little white trees dotted the surfaces. I couldn’t blink without seeing twinkling white lights. Silver and blue nutcrackers taunted me.
We never really celebrated Christmas back home. Some years the day passed and I didn’t even know it was Christmas.
Home.
My sadness and betrayal
had twisted in to anger, white-hot anger, at my father. He was just sitting at home, getting drunk, having a jolly good time while I was here. Why? Why didn’t he want me? What had I done? I’d tried so hard to be a good daughter. I’d done everything I could. I cooked. I cleaned. Why didn’t he want me?
I pushed open the door to my room so hard it slammed against the wall and bounced back. Even my hovel hadn’t remained untouched. While I’d been in the library, my room had been revamped. It was the only place color popped, too. Bright lights danced, intermittently changing color. My white bedspread had been replaced with a deep red one. Pillows had been added as well, each showing a different Christmas scene. An antique-looking painted wooden Santa sat in the corner.
I grabbed a pillow with a stitched scene of mice decorating a tree and walked over to my window, opening it. Setting the pillow down on the sill, I stared out at the city as snow tried to suffocate it. Beyond the tall stacks of light, my father sat at home, not caring where I was.
My anger dissipated in to hollow despair.
It’d been doing that lately.
I tried to hold on to the anger, because the despair hurt so much more.
Hanging up behind me was a gorgeous green dress. It was simple when compared to the regal, haute couture masterpieces I normally had to wear. Don’t get me wrong, it was utterly divine. The neck was a deep, deep V that fell just a hair above my belly button. The waist was cinched and then flowed to the floor. It was a dark emerald color but the delicate beading and metallic thread lace caught the light and at certain angles it shone like diamonds. It was almost demure, save for the long slit that started at my cinched waist, exposing my entire left leg.
Below the sill, ant people walked along the sidewalk, snow falling on their heads. I wondered where they were going. To parties? To families that actually wanted them? It was the happiest time of the year—were they happy? Did they have everything figured out? Before Beast, I never imagined there could be a girl like me in the US, much less on the East Coast. I wondered if one of those ant people was a slave.
Beast: A Hate Story, The Beginning Page 27