by Jamie Zakian
“A donkey show?” Sasha asked, reaching for a joint.
“Si. It’s when the chica and the donkey fuck,” Angelina said, nonchalant, as if they were discussing a new strand of weed. “The men love to see it, and some women.”
Dante took a long hit on his own joint, which transformed his wide-eyed stare to a scrunched, confused leer. “The girls want to do this?”
“Si. It’s voluntario. So, should we go?”
That was a question Sasha never expected to ponder. Did she want to see a chick fuck a donkey? It would definitely be a once in a lifetime experience. Dante looked pretty intrigued and completely disgusted, which blended to form a fucking hilarious expression.
“You know what?” Sasha said, and Dante held his breath. “Maybe next time.”
“Yeah,” Dante said through an exhale. “This is kind of a serious trip.”
Sasha nodded, ignoring Angelina’s snickers. “Right. We’ll come back for a party trip, do that…then.”
Angelina sat back in her chair, straining to wear a disappointed glare. “I guess we’ll just have to do lines and watch children’s movies, since neither of you have any cojones.”
***
Sasha didn’t do any lines. She didn’t trust herself to stay on the rails, even with something as harmless as cocaine. The inability to trust her own self, know her limits, hurt worse than the pain she felt when coming down from heroin. She did, however, put some powder in the joints. Smoking coke didn’t count as doing drugs, at least according to Vinny. He’d made sure to give her a whole list of do’s and dont’s right before she left. Too bad he didn’t include fucking a sexy Spanish cartel princess on either of those lists, then she’d know whether she was supposed to feel like shit right now.
Three in the morning rolled around quickly, and Sasha found herself alongside Dante, following Angelina toward the wide front door of the villa. “Were you ever able to get me a postcard?”
Two men opened the double doors, letting in the sounds of waves rushing onto a shore, and Angelina turned to face Sasha. “No. Sorry. Do you need to send a letter?”
“No. I’ll do it when I get back. Listen.” Sasha took Angelina by the hand, pulled her away from the armed men assembling right outside the open front door. “I’d like it if Dante and I went alone.”
“Really?” Angelina crossed her arms, eyeing over Dante. “You trust him?”
“Fuck no. But I know my mom. If she sees an army of Mexicans pull up, she’ll take off and I’ll never find her.”
Angelina rocked in place, her stare bouncing between Dante and Sasha. “If that’s what you want, amor, I’ll make it happen. But…” She gripped onto the sides of Sasha’s arms, brought her lips to Sasha’s cheek. “Be careful, my love. The Yucatan is a dangerous place.”
“Don’t I know it.” Sasha flashed a smile, walking away from the luscious lips she longed to kiss. “If I’m not back in twenty-four hours, send in the army.”
“Oh, I will.”
Sasha tapped Dante on the arm and headed for the door. Men stepped aside as they walked toward the first SUV parked in the cobblestone driveway. Dante hurried to jump in the passenger seat, but Sasha’s steps slowed. There was an electric vibe coasting on the air. It only drifted in during the wee hours before dawn. Here, in a place where a salty breeze grazed her skin, and the rush of waves always thundered, the crackle in the air seemed to double. She wanted to enjoy that, real quick, before sucking the ghost of her past back into her life.
After one last look at the stone fountain, sparkling in the moonlight, Sasha climbed into the SUV. The key was dangling from the ignition, and fully-loaded rifles decorated the backseat. It would be perfect, if not for Dante’s shit-eating grin.
“You fucked your cousin,” Dante said with a mocking chuckle.
Sasha started the car. Its engine rumbled, covering her mix of cusses and grumbles. “She’s not my cousin.”
“Now she’s not your cousin. But, Saint Ashby—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Sasha drove off the compound, flooring the gas once hitting open road. Ten miles of desert rested between her and her mother. The one thing she never thought possible was about to happen, and she could barely wait another second. She was about to feel the only hands that ever truly completed her soul on her body once again, hear the only voice that could fully calm her mind. Her chest wouldn’t be empty anymore, and the world could be bright again.
Sasha pushed down harder on the gas pedal. The motor revved, the backend skidding on sand. Only eight more miles.
“Don’t you want to slow down?” Dante said, fastening his seatbelt. “There could be cops or some shit.”
“There ain’t no police out here. And if I wanted to slow down…” Sasha pulled a small lever beside the shifter. The transmission locked into four-wheel drive, the SUV bucked as the front tires gripped pavement, and she floored the gas harder. “…I’d fucking do it.”
“I snagged you some joints.”
“I don’t want no joints,” Sasha said in a bark, keeping her eyes on the pitch-black road ahead.
“Say what?” A zippo clicked from the passenger seat, and the sizzle of paper burning filled the cab. “Sure you do, little girl.”
“You don’t know me,” Sasha yelled, thrusting her finger in Dante’s face. Tires squealed as the speeding SUV swerved, rattling everything in the cab as the car bounced on and off the road. Sasha shifted her attention back to the windshield, finding cacti instead of faded lines. She tapped the brakes and cut the steering wheel.
The SUV fishtailed back onto pavement. Once all four wheels gripped road, Sasha barreled down on the gas again.
“No.” Dante turned off the ignition, pulled the key from the column. “You are gonna slow the fuck down.”
“What the fuck?” Gravel crunched as the car slowed to a stop, and Sasha spun in her seat to glare at Dante. She didn’t get to hurl her death glower. One look at Dante’s hard stare, and she shrank down in her seat.
“I know you, little girl. You’re a self-sabotager. You don’t have happiness because every time it gets near you, you fuck it in the ass. I ain’t gonna let you fuck this up for me.” Dante jammed the key back in the ignition, cranking the engine to life. “Now, you’re gonna sit back, smoke a joint, and drive this car like a normal fucking person.”
Sasha opened her mouth to lay into Dante, and he shoved a joint between her lips. She sat there, stunned, smoke rising into her eyes. This motherfucker had a lot of nerve. She’d let him have it, as soon as she thought up a legitimate rebuttal. A dark cloud of devastation did follow her around, but she didn’t create it. Or did she? Every decision she’d ever made had been rooted in fear, fear strong enough to form such a destructive cloud. She fucked Dez right after Vinny, because in that one night she fell for Vinny so hard it scared the shit out of her. The sergeant at arms position would’ve been hers, but she ran from the dreaded burden of responsibility. Everything! She did sabotage everything. Candy, Tyler, her mother…
Dante placed his hand on Sasha’s knee, squeezed lightly. “You got that shitty habit from me. But our two wrongs can make a right, as long as we stick together.”
Sasha reached for Dante, and he latched onto her hand. Waves of affection stemmed from his grip, strength flowing from his fingertips. She’d never touched Dante before, not like this. His skin pressing against her own generated a spark, one she’d only felt in her mother’s presence. She nodded, almost telling herself it was okay to release the hatred she held toward the man. It was okay for her to like her shady asshole of a father.
“I’ll keep it under fifty.”
***
Two joints, and a semi-slow ride down a deserted road later, Sasha parked in front of a skinny dirt path. She cut off the engine and reached into the backseat for a rifle.
“What’s up?” Dante asked, checking the side mirror.
“We’re here.” Sasha gestured to the sandy hill outside Dante’s window, then loaded a round into the rifl
e’s chamber.
A pink flush rushed in to claim Dante’s tanned cheeks. The big, strong man looked like a kid about to embark on his first date, especially with the way he bobbed to see through the gray haze of dusk. “There’s nothing out there.”
“A villa should be on the other side of that hill. If we drive up the path, she’ll hear us coming and split.”
Dante grabbed a gun from the backseat and hopped out his door. Before the guy could run off and blow their only chance, Sasha hurried after him. Dude was quick, halfway up the hill before Sasha reached his side.
“Damn, man.” Sasha latched onto the back of Dante’s jacket, pulled him to a stop. “Now who’s sabotaging shit?”
A gleam of light peeked beyond the sandy hill. Sasha inched forward, glimpsing the corner of a brown stucco villa. Her heart leapt into her throat. It was a good thing, because she was just about to yell out for her mother.
“What’s the plan?” Dante asked, crouching lower as he crept up the hill. “You take the front, I’ll cover the back?”
Normally that’d be the plan, but Sasha wasn’t about to do this alone, or let Dante out of her sight. “No. We’ll sneak onto the porch, kick open the front door, and storm the house. Together.”
“All right, little girl.” Dante flashed a smile, clutching his rifle to his chest. “Let’s do it.”
Sasha followed Dante into the shadows. Every step forward made her throat clench tighter, drove her heart to pound faster. This was really happening. She was about to see her mother. After all the horrors, blood, tears, she was about to see her mother, feel that magnetic vibe, and the world would be right again.
Sand crunched beneath Sasha’s boots as she jogged to keep with Dante’s pace. The guy was like a fucking ninja. Dante slid from one dark corner to the other with barely a sound, like a shadow himself. He must be a professional stalker by now, after all the years he’d spent sneaking on and off her compound.
They stopped beside the wide trunk of a palm tree. Sasha peeked out, staring into the front window only feet away. A figure moved beyond the glass, and she flinched. She pressed her back against Dante’s side. Instead of revulsion, comfort ran through her. She looked up at Dante, finding a confident stare shining down at her.
“It’s now or never,” he whispered, straining to hold back a grin.
Sasha pushed off the tree and hurried toward the porch. Before she reached the top step, Dante was at her side. Without a second of hesitation, he lifted his leg and kicked the front door open. Sasha stormed inside the brightly lit house, her rifle aimed out.
A crowd of men turned to face the now shattered door, which stopped Sasha and Dante in their tracks. Rifles veered to Sasha’s chest, and harsh words were shouted in Spanish.
“Drop the gun,” she said to Dante, tossing her rifle to the floor. “Estamos aquí para ver a Ellen.”
Bullets loaded into their chambers, and snarls decorated the men’s faces.
“That’s funny,” said a man with a thick Spanish accent from somewhere within the horde of angry Mexicans. The crowd parted, and a tall man stepped forward to stand in front of Sasha. “We’re here to see Ellen too.”
Winter in Mexico sucked. With everybody wearing long sleeves, covering their tattoos, there was no way for Sasha to know if she was cool for kicking in a door, or totally fucked. One wrong word and bullets would fly her way.
“Well then.” Sasha lifted her hands, slow, and inched backward toward the kicked-open door. “Y’all were here first, so we’ll just go. Let you guys have at it.”
Boots thumped on the porch behind Sasha. The air grew thick as another group of men rushed through the doorway to shove the barrels of their guns into her back.
“Your mother,” the tall guy said, narrowing his psycho-killer eyes. “She took many things from me. That punta owes me.”
Sasha shook her head, keeping her hands high. “Nah. You got me mixed me up with someone else. I’m not Ellen’s kid.”
“This not you?” The man held his hand out, and a short dude placed a thick book in it before scurrying back into the crowd. He opened the cover, flipping through pages of pictures.
“This is you,” he said, showing Sasha a picture of herself and her mother by the pool table in the clubhouse. “And here.” He turned the page, pointed at a shot of them in the cab of a semi. “Here.” Every page had another picture, going back to when Sasha was a child.
The man flipped to the last page, holding up a black and white photo of Ellen and Dante at their wedding. “I have Ellen’s husband, and daughter.” He smirked, which warped his dark stare into a menacing leer. “It’s a good down payment. Tomarlos.”
Dante lifted his arm, fist cocked, but before he could hurl a punch the butt of a rifle crashed against his temple. He dropped like a sack of bricks, landing at Sasha’s feet.
“Wait,” she called out as men closed in on all sides of her. “I have money, mucho dinero.”
A grin lifted the tall man’s brown cheeks. He leaned close to Sasha, his long black hair gliding over his wide shoulder. “Chica, you are money.”
The worn butt of a handgun filled Sasha’s view. A loud crack echoed in her head, before the sting of the hit splintered out. She dropped to her knees and face-planted the floor. Somewhere above the buzz in her ears, and the throb in her brain, she heard laughter, then…nothing.
Chapter Twenty
Vinny
A knock rattled the front door of the penthouse and Vinny sat up on the couch, blinking back the haze of sleep. He never made it past the living room. There was no point in going upstairs anyway. His room was crammed with Sasha’s shit, and her room…only a bed remained in her room, and the lingering memories of her agonizing detox. He never wanted to go in that room again, except to light it on fire.
The door shook under another barrage of knocks, followed by the chime of the doorbell.
“All right,” Vinny yelled. His stiff muscles burned as he rose from the couch, bones cracking. “I’m coming.” He grabbed his glock off the coffee table, dragged his ass across the room, and opened the door.
Marco crossed his arms, leaning against the threshold. The man’s long coat brushed the wall, and he dipped his head so his narrowed eyes showed just below the brim of his hat. It was some real deal mobster shit.
“You boys must’ve had one hell of a night,” Marco said, forcing his grin into a scowl.
“The boss started it,” Vinny said, heading for the first glass of water he saw. “Why didn’t you use your key?”
Marco walked inside the penthouse, closed the door behind him. “Kev took it from me last week. Some bullshit about broken locks.”
“Right.” Vinny set down his gun on the kitchen counter and grabbed a spare key from the hook on the wall. Marco was one of the originals, from when Tony ran the family. Sasha had trusted the man with her life, which was why Vinny made the guy his right hand and gave him free reign over Manhattan. A borough was one thing, but he wasn’t trusting city folk with Sasha’s secrets. His girl’s little mishap with heroin was nobody’s business, unless Sasha decided it would be.
“The locks are fixed,” Vinny said, tossing the key to Marco. “So, what’s up?” He sat on the couch, pulling a semi-crushed pack of smokes from his pants pocket. “Otis finally crawl out from beneath his pile of cocaine and whores?”
“Ain’t seen the boss yet,” Marco said, sitting on the loveseat. His foot tapped the floor, gaze darting away every time it landed on Vinny.
“Fuck.” Vinny lit his cigarette, throwing the lighter onto the coffee table. “You got that look. Did Manhattan burn to the ground?”
“Nah, boss.”
Vinny cringed, as he always did when Marco called him boss. The title never sunk in. He was the VP of Ashby Trucking, not the boss in an Italian mob family.
“Business is good,” Marco said, with a sour look that stated otherwise.
“Then what?”
Marco reached into the inside pocket of his coat. �
��You got some mail.”
The scrunch of Marco’s nose, refusal to maintain eye contact hit Vinny in the gut like a sucker punch. Sasha broke it off with him, on a postcard no less, and everybody must’ve read it.
Vinny crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray, snatching up a joint as Marco pulled an envelope from his pocket.
“A letter?” Vinny dropped the joint and grabbed the envelope. Scrawled on the front, in bright blue ink was Sasha’s chicken-scratch excuse for handwriting. This couldn’t be good. Nothing good ever came inside envelopes. Eviction notices, past-due bills, letters from over-priced specialists saying the love of your life would never wake up was what came in envelopes.
Marco fished the joint off the floor, sparking it up as Vinny tore open the envelope. Vinny took a deep breath, and looked inside. A smile popped onto his lips at the sight of a postcard and a polaroid. The picture brought a wall of tears to his eyes. Outside his clubhouse, Sasha knelt beside Tyler. Her arm was wrapped around the boy’s little shoulder, holding snug as she planted a kiss on his laughing face. It was the greatest picture Vinny had ever seen throughout his entire life.
“What is that?” Marco asked, gesturing to the photo in Vinny’s now shaky hand.
Vinny took the joint from Marco and with great reluctance handed him the picture. A laugh, warm and genuine, flowed from Marco’s mouth.
“Look at this,” Marco said through a wide grin. “We should have this blown up, hang it at Tonys.”
“Yeah,” Vinny muttered, reading the postcard. “Maybe.”
“What’d Sasha say?” Regret crossed Marco’s face the second the question left his lips. “Unless it’s personal.”
“No. She’s going to Mexico. Sent me the coordinates for where she thinks her mother is.”
“You want me to have it translated to an address?”
“Fuck yeah.” Vinny gave Marco the postcard, then snatched back the picture. They could make a million copies of that photo, hang them wherever the fuck they pleased, later. He needed this little piece of home close to him right now.