Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1)

by KaNeshia Michelle

  She demanded between flicks on my earlobe. “Tell me you missed me, Tristan.”

  “I missed you.”

  “Tell me you can’t breathe without me.”

  “I can barely breathe with you.”

  “We need to end this for now, Tristan.”

  I heard her, but it took a minute for it to register. And when it did, reality slammed back into the room. At the mere touch of her hands, I had been hovering over my body in another world of pleasure, but now even that was gone and I’d crashed back into myself.

  I turned to her, my mouth quivering, my tongue thick in my mouth. “Wha . . . what . . .”

  “I’m protecting you from Johnny. He’s watching me.”

  “I can handle him.” And this was a lie but it was real to me now. I’d almost reached out for her, but remembered the blood on my gloves and stopped.

  She has practiced this speech, and I was slow in seeing this until most of it had been given and she was wrapping up. “I want to be a good wife, for once, Tristan. There can’t be an ‘us’ right now.”

  “Lu, please, don’t do this . . .” I’d come to begging, and she had come to taking lengthy but healthy steps back. At this I wondered if I was acting like a madman, but dismissed the thought.

  No, I’m acting desperate; I’m acting this way because I am desperate.

  Lulina came closer to me again. She leaned in and kissed me sweetly on the mouth, then backed away.

  My tears were slow, but they were visible. It hurt because I was trying to stop them, and at that, they came even faster and harder. If she was sad about this, I didn’t get the pleasure of seeing it.

  “It’s space, Tristan. Not the end of the world.”

  She touched my face, traced my jawline, and gave me a slow, lingering pat on the cheek as if I were her child and had given her decent report card. She turned and left, and part of me walked out right with her. It wasn’t the end of the world—not hers anyway. Just mine alone.

  Katie had been an affair that hadn’t lasted more than three months.

  Lulina, on the other hand, had been an affair well groomed, well nourished, that began when I was nine years old. She was the first woman I had ever had, and the first woman I had actually thought I loved.

  I briefly wondered if I should be thankful that she was at least smart enough to end our affair when I was not. I was only about to hack up her boyfriend, and her husband had only opened his eyes and ears a little bit wider just in case he hadn’t dealt with all the loose ends pertaining to his wife’s loose legs. Maybe cutting my losses was best if I wanted to live to see past the age of twenty-four. I just couldn’t afford to be caught again with another woman who had a ring on her finger that I hadn’t put there. Caught once with another man’s wife had cost me dearly, almost my life. Caught again—this time found sleeping with my brother’s wife—would mean deeper horrors than I could possibly imagine.

  I didn’t want the men that had killed Jimmy Ricky knocking on my door.

  But Lulina Wells was a woman who knew how to bury herself deep under your skin. Being a man about this and trying so hard to be strong had failed me.

  When I breathed, it hurt.

  When I wiped my eyes, there were tears.

  When I thought of her wet, warm tongue catching my sweat just below my Adam’s apple, and the thought of her never doing it again, there was pain.

  And when I thought of Johnny holding her at night when I couldn’t, there was rage.

  I leaned against my worktable and breathed—focusing on the ins and outs of my breath, trying to push back the tears. Pining over a woman who was almost twice my age was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday night. Neither was working a body as a favor for a brother I didn’t like, and sure as hell didn’t love. There were more important things to do, like drinking till I forgot how to hold the glass, and trying to get my cock wet.

  When I felt I had collected myself, I picked up the pliers, breathed deeply, tried to find that happy place when I had to work a body, then started pulling out all of Jimmy Ricky’s teeth. After the teeth were out, his fingers and toes would be next. And after his fingers and toes, I would have the wonderful next step of searching every inch of his body for tattoos, blemishes and birthmarks. Anything that could make it easy to identify him had to be cut off—the cutting of the head usually the last step of the job. And that was in case the body was found.

  Getting rid of the body wasn’t my department; it was my cousin’s.

  When working a body, it’s best to keep the head clear and the mind focused. Johnny’s little invasion to show his wife who was boss, and later his wife ending our affair, had punctured a hole in my focus, and my mind was now muddled piss that I was surprised didn’t leak from my ears. Now my head hurt and my throat was dry, itching toward being sore.

  After finishing with Jimmy Ricky, I grabbed for my glass off the counter but missed it. The glass tilted slightly, then plunged to the hard ground but somehow didn’t shatter.

  For some reason, I was disappointed.

  Life is full of disappointments.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled. The lock clicked as the dead bolt that held me hostage in my little horror-filled hole with shitty lighting retracted, and the door creaked open. It was Zander, another mutt from the Rogue family—another man who had fucked up within the family and now was paying prices just like me. He was half Italian and half Puerto Rican. He had black eyes and wavy black hair that he kept short, but long enough for the thick waves to push through. He always sported a five o’clock shadow on his face no matter how close he shaved without cutting himself.

  Alexander Rogue was thirty years old and was more of a drunk than I was.

  If I had to measure a person’s downward spiral, then I would say that Zander had been falling longer than I had. He had given up on the world, and the world had obliged. I loved my cousin, but a part of me hated him because he posed as a mirror for me—a few more years and I wouldn’t be able to tell where he started and I ended.

  Before he even acknowledged me, he went for the bottle on the table. He took a long drink, finished it, then poured another.

  He glanced at what was left of Jimmy Ricky on my table. “He done?” He poured himself another drink, finishing my bottle, then quickly produced another from his coat.

  “Don’t he look pretty?” I asked.

  “Fuck you, Tristan.” He laughed, and usually I did too, but this time I couldn’t seem to even utter one chuckle. And he noticed it. “You okay, man?”

  I’m not okay. “Yeah, man.”

  He pushed my glass into my hand and topped it off with the good stuff. We sat for a moment—well, he stood, and I fell into the only chair in the tight room—and we drank, smelling the dead smell of Jimmy Ricky and saying nothing.

  “Where we dumping him?” I asked.

  Zander reluctantly sat his drink down and pulled out the clipboard of our body drops. His fingers trailed down the long list. “We can take him to Rickers; they got a titty bar over there.”

  “Low on cash,” I mentioned.

  “Me too. Shit. They didn’t give you a head ups before dropping the stiff?”

  “Papa”—and I didn’t mean my father—“didn’t give the order for the stiff. Johnny did this one all by himself.”

  A thoughtful smirk snaked up Zander’s stubby face. He jetted a thumb at Jimmy Ricky’s corpse. “That the idiot that was caught plugging Lu?”

  “Yup. The boys who did him had to be on Papa’s payroll and not my dad’s. They were way too messy and way too heavy on the grunt work—most of the bones in his face were broken.”

  “Jarred Rogue finally put away a wife fucker,” Zander added. He rubbed his chin again, his dark eyes making their way over to me. I knew what he was about to say even before he could get enough breath to say it. “That could be you next.”

  “No, not me. At least not anymore; she killed it off with me tonight,” I told him, hating the catch in my voice.r />
  Zander gave a dry laugh. “Can’t say I’m sad for you. That heartless cunt bitch will get a good man killed.”

  “None of us are good men, Zander.”

  ****

  Zander slid behind the wheel and pulled out our last bottle of the night. He filled his cup, and I just drank what was left in the bottle.

  The burn was a welcome feeling all over again.

  “What we got left?” I asked him.

  Zander leaned back into his seat. His dark eyes seemed even darker as he panned the outside world. He took a sip of his drink, waited till the burn hit his stomach, then exhaled. “I’m tapped, T.”

  Of course he was. We had been going for as long as we could, holding out on buying food and paying rent and bills like lights, TV, and water, but stuck to what was important: ass, cigarettes, and liquor. We had hit a brick wall—one of many to come if circumstances didn’t change.

  I ran a hand through my curls as I let loose a defeated breath. I lit a cigarette. “We can go to your dad’s.”

  “I’d rather beg a street hooker for a freebie.”

  That wasn’t a good idea. Street hoes were off limits. Who knew what you were screwing? I would rather lick a public toilet seat, which would just about sum up what it would be like to fuck a street hooker.

  So we only fucked street hookers when our need for self-destruction was at an all-time high—which seems to be more and more these days.

  Zander slipped his cigarette between his lips. I held out a light for him.

  “That’s good, Tristan.” He waved away the lighter’s flame. He rolled down the window and blew a stream of smoke as he pondered if he could handle his dad for a single night. “I just don’t feel like hearing his shit tonight.”

  “Fine, that’s cool. We don’t need ass tonight.”

  He breathed a laugh and rubbed the hair on his chin. Sure, it wasn’t fine to go home horny. It was a cycle that we both particularly didn’t like. To go home horny meant a late night of pornos until you finally relented and took care of the issue yourself, but the need would be even greater the next day.

  We were both sex addicts.

  My addiction to sex was a very deep-rooted problem. For Zander’s need, I never was sure, and I never really cared to ask another man as to why he needed to get laid every single day without feeling crazy or useless as a man.

  For me, it was just the need to feel close to someone, the need to feel like you were the only one, if only for a minute. To feel a heartbeat against your chest as another breathed a moan into your mouth was like a drug. I couldn’t explain the need for it any more than I could explain the feeling of completeness when I experienced it. Not every woman had managed to give me the feel of completeness. Katie had. Lulina had. Only the best and most expensive whores had.

  Zander cranked up the car. He tossed the cigarette out the window and exhaled. “We’ll go to my dad’s place.”

  He was drunker than I was and drove like he hadn’t taken a drink of anything. He was good like that. So was I. We drank so much that we barely felt it.

  Zander was bothered, though, and I sensed it just as easily as I could sense my own feelings.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “We can’t keep this up, Tristan.”

  He was right and we couldn’t.

  I sat back in the warm seat. It was cold outside and warm on the inside. The car was a cursed wreck, but it worked. Both Zander and I shared it. Life was hard outside the Rogues’ giving a hand to its family members. Before Katie, the money hadn’t been grand, but it had been a hell of a lot better, and there would have been more as the years passed. I was just starting out back then, twenty-one sniffing at twenty-two, so my father was tighter on the money; he wanted to be sure I would handle it right. Now, that life was gone, and a harder life had taken its place.

  ***

  Zander and I walked through the dark-skinned bodies wearing different assortments of baggy oversized hoodies and jackets and triple-X pants. It was Eddie’s hole-in-the-wall joint, once a shitty club now turned into an even shittier establishment. I nodded toward Eddie’s private muscle—a massive man positioned at the corner of the club, eyeing everyone—his expression was hard pressed and cold, like anyone who crosses him would be broken.

  I call him the Bruiser.

  Eddie was Zander’s father: a screwup who couldn’t seem to find himself on the right hand of the Rogue business, but, unlike Zander, he at least tried to be worth more than shit. Edward Rogue was a wannabe kind of man. He wanted to be tall and handsome and important, but he was short and pale, balding, and looked much older than my fifty-seven-year-old father when he was in fact younger. And he was as important as a car not starting up the first time you turned the key but roared to life on the second try—which was not very important at all. His teeth were yellow from too much tobacco use, but his suits were as expensive as ever. How Zander had managed to have Eddie as a father and still be tall, dark, and actually handsome enough to get a nice-looking woman to look at him in a manner that didn’t include repulsiveness—that is, until he opened his mouth—was a wonder to me, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one who shared this wonder.

  The illegal dice and craps games were crammed deeper into the club. Zander and I never ventured to these areas, sticking only to our addictions of booze and sex, not wanting another vice, or an addiction, to add to the collection of shit we had to deal with in our own fucked-up lives. But there was more than just gambling in Eddie’s club. Drugs infested the place, which was one the reasons we never came here unless we were completely broke, out of options, and too stupid to call it a night—that, and the fact that Zander used to have a drug problem not too many moons ago.

  Most of what the club made, if not all, went to Rogue pockets. Eddie ran the place all by himself. It was his attempt at helping out with the Rogue family business. It was his attempt at not calling himself useless. My father was just nice enough to allow it, turned a blind eye, but with his hand out.

  Zander was instantly uncomfortable when we made it to the bar. The bartender knew us, and the drinks were free, but they were always extremely watered down, and even when I wasn’t paying for them, I still felt cheated.

  Eddie slapped me on the back of the neck and pulled my head down for a kiss on the cheek. “Tristan!”

  “Unc Eddie—”

  “Here for pussy?”

  “If the fish is fresh, yeah.”

  Zander sulked into his glass and ignored his father. “We ain’t got any money, Dad.”

  Zander would try to get me to believe that he hated his father, but he didn’t. No matter what a parent does, hating them is almost an impossible emotion to obtain. Not that I put it past anyone. Zander was living outside the inner Rogue circle because his father put him there. Like me, Zander deserved it. See, Eddie loved his mixed-breed son, wanted him right next to him when he was working his club.

  It hadn’t been a good move. Every Rogue man had some kind of an addiction. Yet, Zander was the poster child for the word. It seemed like he had an addiction for being an addict. Almost like he liked being out of control, beholden to the need of something he couldn’t get internally. His happiness could never come from within, only from the outside.

  Drugs went missing in Eddie’s club, and when they weren’t missing, they were borrowed, and the dealers would confront Eddie, asking for their money that Zander promised he would pay if they gave him the drugs up front. Drug use was not tolerated in the life of the Rogue, and Zander seemed to be in the center of anything that dealt with it. Instead of Zander admitting he had a drug problem when Eddie confronted him, and dealing with the consequences, he fled, married, and had kids, and appeared content without the Rogue life for a few short years. He managed to screw up his marriage and relationship with his kids by having extra women on the side—and yet another suspected drug problem that caused him to beat the shit out of his wife. Finally, when she couldn’t take it no more, she called Eddie, crying and begging him t
o please help his son, take him away, because she was afraid he would kill her.

  Long story short, Zander came back with his tail between his legs. Eddie had pulled him back in the Rogue business but kept him on a very tight leash. It was better than nothing. If Papa had his way, Zander would’ve been dead.

  To Papa, weak men were dead men.

  I half suspected the reason Zander was paired with me was because of his bouts with drugs. Papa had wanted me to get mixed up in them too, I guess. Wanted one more strike against me so he could have me killed or completely shunned from the family.

  Eddie rolled his eyes at his son. “It’s on the house, like the drinks.” He squeezed Zander’s shoulder. “You look like shit. How about you lay off the sauce some?”

  Zander slammed his glass down on the counter. “I don’t drink no more than Tristan does.”

  “Tristan holds it a hell of a lot better,” Eddie argued. “And he’s younger.”

  “I ain’t that much older.”

  “Thirty going on forty-five and look like fifty-three.”

  Zander glared hatred at his father, then he turned his stare on me. “And you’re going to tell me Tristan looks like he’s a poster child for GQ.”

  Eddie chuckled and slapped me on the back again. “He could be; that’s for sure. I would go as far to say he’s God’s gift to a woman’s cunt.”

  I laughed to ease the tension. Not the tension between father and son but between the son and me. “You have the best way of wording things, Uncle Eddie.”

  I moved between the two and motioned to a man standing in a corner of the club. “Who’s the guy in the leather jacket?”

  The man stood out because he was white. He wore a long leather jacket that stopped at his knees, and had black pants and a shirt underneath. He had a beard that had maybe spent two days growing. He held a drink in his hand that hadn’t been drunk, only held long enough for the ice cubes to be almost gone. His eyes weren’t glazed, but sharp and watching. Not enough jewelry to be a pimp and too nicely dressed to be a dope peddler.