by JA Huss
My heart sinks, thinking of who he has in that back room. It can’t be West. It can’t be him. There is no way he got here before me.
“Hurry now,” Lucio says. “He’s uncomfortable.”
Jesus Christ. Why did I come here?
“I knew you’d come back of your own free will, Violeta,” Lucio says once I’m within arm’s reach. He brushes the back of his hand down my cheek as I stand in front of the half-drawn curtain, hesitating. “Oh, now is not the time to be afraid, Violeta. There is plenty of time for that.”
I swallow hard and look him in the eyes. Those dark eyes. Almost black, just like his soul. “I’m not afraid,” I say. “I’m not afraid of you, Lucio.”
“You should be.” And then he draws the curtain all the back so I can see who is waiting for me in the back room.
My father is tied to a chair, his face so bloody, I barely recognize him. “Pops!” I rush over to him, my hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He doesn’t move. “Pops,” I say again, softer this time. “Please. Answer me.” But he doesn’t. He is out cold, maybe even dead. I can’t tell. I whirl around to face Lucio. “What did you do?”
Everything I came here to do flies out the window. There will be no confession, I understand that now. Weston was right. Lucio knows how to hunt. But West doesn’t have to worry, I’m not the bait. My father is.
“He came to me, Tori.” Lucio snarls the nickname West uses like it’s a filthy word. “He came to me asking where you were. Threatened me, Victoria. And I admit, I had my doubts when I waited so patiently these past few days and you never came looking for him. I started imagining all the ways your little revenge scheme might play out. I even sent people to track you down, but you disappeared in Miami. With him.”
I don’t need to guess who he’s talking about. “That was you on that island, wasn’t it? You were the one who came and tried to kill us.”
Lucio laughs loud and long. “Island? No, my sweet Violeta. That was not me. But I would have,” he says, turning his head so he can give me a sidelong glare. “I would’ve come to kill Mr. Corporate if I had known where the two of you were. Instead I took it out on your dear Pops. He took it well, I have to admit. Like the tough guy he used to be. But, well, everyone has a time and a place. He won’t be able to walk out of here, I’m afraid. His knees are broken. But if you give me what I want, I’ll let him live.”
And then, just to illustrate his point, Lucio pulls a knife from his boot and cuts my father free from the chair. He slumps forward, teeters to the side, and just… slides… down, down, down until he is bent in some unnatural position on the floor.
I have to swallow down the bile that rises in my throat. Lucio Gori tortured my father. Killed him. The only man who ever took care of me. The only man I ever let take care of me.
“I was going to bargain with you, you know. At first. I figured I’d rough him up a bit and summon you. And when you came I’d bargain for his life. You for him. I’d keep you, the way it was always meant to be. And he’d walk away. But…” Lucio laughs and tsks his tongue loudly. “We’re way past that now. You kept me waiting.”
“I never got a summons,” I say, my voice weak with terror. Terror I haven’t experienced in ten years.
“How could you?” he growls. “You were out of town. Fucking that Mr. Corporate. Well, he’s not going to be around much longer either, Violeta. You will end up with me in the end. Ruined and broken just the way I like you. But it’s too bad so many people will die because of your poor choices.”
I take a deep, deep breath and try to gather myself. He’s playing with me. My father starts gasping for air—he’s still alive!—when Lucio kicks him in the chest and makes him groan. It’s the half-hearted groan of an unconscious man.
“Let’s go on a date, Violeta. Huh? Just you and me?”
I double over trying to stop the sick from spewing out of my mouth.
Lucio is there, taking my hand, placing another one on my back as he says in a soft voice, “Come on now, you always liked our dates, remember? Remember how I forced my cock in your mouth? How I took your breath away?” He laughs so loud, it makes me jump.
He fists my hair and yanks my head back so hard, I hear a snap in the muscles that run along my shoulder. The pain shoots up into my head, right behind my eye. And even though I know I shouldn’t, I react. Years of training and practice have instilled instincts in me.
My hand reaches around his leg, right behind his ankle, and I squeeze. It’s not as effective as it could be if he didn’t have boots on. But it takes him by surprise, stuns him, just for a moment, and he is off balance. I grab his foot and yank it, making him fall. I fall on top of him, and then he’s yelling. The sound of thumping boots echoes in my head and I know I have only one chance to make it out of here alive right now.
I grab for the gun I know he keeps in the back of his pants and take it out, frantically searching for the safety—finding none—and pulling the trigger before I even think twice.
It’s an automatic, so three shots go off before I even realize what’s happening. People are shouting, Lucio is struggling, trying to wrench the gun from my hands. Plaster is falling from the ceiling from the wild gunshots.
“You bitch,” Lucio says, bringing his fist down on the back of my head. I see stars and things begin to go black, but I shake my head, the shooting pain behind my eyes even more acute. More piercing. He is trying to get the gun from my grip, but I know—I know—if he gets this gun, I am never leaving this bar. My father, regardless of how bad he’s hurt, will never recover.
I will lose. Lucio will kill me, or torture me, or take me as his little sex slave again.
“No,” I yell, just as more shooting comes from the other side of the curtain.
“Oh, yes,” Lucio purrs in my ear. He’s almost overpowered me, and every stupid little jujitsu move I’ve ever learned flies right out of my head. I am weak. I am not safe. I am nothing but Lucio Gori’s prize.
I elbow him in the kidney, making him back away, just enough for me to keep the gun from his hand, and I have no choice, I drop it, kick it away so he can’t get to it.
There is even more shooting out in the front of the bar now. Bullets come blasting through the thin walls of the back room. A bullet hits the chandelier and it comes crashing down, not more than a few feet from where Lucio and I still struggle.
People are screaming—no, I am screaming—but more people too. Women, those women who were having lunch. Men, the ones playing pool, maybe even the bartender. Everyone is screaming.
And then I hear a voice.
Oh, God, no!
“Victoria!” West calls. “Can you hear me?”
“I’ve got her,” Lucio says. And he does. Our brief struggle ends when he throws me face down on the hard concrete floor and steps on my neck.
And then everything happens at once. West appears, throwing the curtain aside. Lucio has another gun, not the one I kicked away, and he shoots. West disappears again. Lucio presses on the tender vertebrae between my shoulders and I know, just a little more pressure and my neck will snap. I will die like this. I will die his victim.
No!
I twist my body when Lucio pulls the trigger and break free. I grab his ankle again, and use all the remaining strength I have to pull…
Lucio goes down, West is there, Mysterious and Match are there. Everyone has a gun but me.
Everyone is going to get their chance to kill this asshole but me.
I roll away, kicking Lucio in the face, making his lip bleed, making his nose gush hot, sticky, scarlet.
And I reach for the gun I threw away, my fingers feeling for it. Praying for it. Don’t let them have this moment. Don’t let anyone take this away from me. I want to kill Lucio Gori myself. I want a taste of that rage he has always felt. I want to harness all the hate I have and be the last thing he sees when I take his life.
I find the cold, hard steel of the gun and then…
And then…
I feel warm fingers grasping my hand. I turn to look and find my father, lying on the dirty floor, covered in caked blood and bruised almost beyond recognition. He has managed to crawl over to us and there’s a sick trail of crimson behind him.
He says, eyes closed shut from all the swelling and his voice low and weak, “Let me. It’s the only thing I want. Just… let… me…”
In the moment I take to pause and feel sadness, and loss, and regret, and all the other things that come to mind when your father is about to die…
He squeezes my hand. The hand that is holding the gun. And pulls the trigger.
I watch helplessly as Lucio Gori’s head explodes.
Chapter Forty-Eight - Weston
Perfect, Romantic, me, Mysterious, and Match all in the same room with Five.
It’s not a good feeling.
Not at all.
The last time this happened we were being charged with rape.
After Pops killed Lucio, the whole place just went crazy. We got the fuck out of there. It’s mob territory and no cops coming, were coming to help. Mysterious led us through the back door. I picked Tori up and threw her over my shoulder. She was screaming. Calling her father’s name. But Match picked him up, all broken and bloody, and took him with us to the helicopter waiting on a roof a few blocks away.
Dozens of people saw us.
No one tried to stop us.
“At least we know more than we did,” Perfect says. Then he shrugs, because really, we don’t. Add in the fact that we don’t know what Allen was doing when he started fucking with Perfect’s girlfriend, or whether or not Romantic’s psycho sibling was in on anything back then, not to mention I’ve still got a secret or two I’m not ready to talk about and… yeah.
Nothing is settled at all.
We might even be worse off than we were.
“How’s Tori?” Mysterious asks. He’s been weird since that night. He’s beating himself up because he didn’t get us there just a few minutes earlier. Just a few minutes earlier and we’d have left Tori out of everything and taken care of business. But he’s getting better now. Calming down. I’ve come to the conclusion I prefer calm, asshole Paxton Vance than agitated, manic Paxton Vance. He’s got one of those mint juleps in his hand. He’s sucked down like six of them since we got here.
“Good, I think. Relieved. Sad about her father. But I for one am glad he’s the one who pulled the trigger and not her.” He died in a Colorado hospital about two days after that whole thing went down. Five arranged the hospital.
Fucking Five.
And no one came looking for us about Lucio Gori Junior.
Fucking Five again, I think.
Tori was a mess. But I’m just grateful—blessed, happy, pleased, thankful… whatever you want to call it—that it was him and not her. I am all of those things. It’s horrible to think that way, but I don’t care. “Or any of us,” I add, looking around the room.
Romantic nods and takes a deep breath.
“So?” Match says. “What’s next?”
“Me?” Mysterious says, making himself a new drink. “I guess. I’m the next target, right? They had my evidence in Nolan’s house. No one saw it but me and Romantic, but how long do you think we have to wait until we figure out for sure that Lucio Gori was not the one who really set us up? I mean, will we have to live with this hanging over us for the rest of our lives?”
“I think,” Five says, leaning up against my kitchen counter, “I think we give it some time, see how things shake out after a few weeks. Maybe whoever it is will be happy with what they got?” He looks at me, waiting to see if I’ll add anything to my story.
But I don’t.
Won’t.
That shit needs to stay where I left it. Buried in the past.
Lucio Gori’s family did steal my money, that’s what Five was referring to. And it’s gone. For good. But I meant what I told Tori. I don’t care. We can start over. Once a self-made man, always a self-made man. That’s one thing I learned from my good-for-nothing real father.
Besides, Mysterious has already transferred the money he owed me into a new set of accounts. I’m good. No man should complain that he only has several million in the bank. So I won’t.
The last time we had a Mister meeting was after all that shit went down with Romantic. And it’s starting to become a pattern. They fuck with us, we win, we settle down, they come back and try again.
I guess we won’t be able to settle down.
“A few weeks, huh?” Perfect asks Five.
Five shrugs. “Give or take. If it was Lucio, then we should be fine. The threat has been neutralized. We should just stay the fuck off the East Coast for a while.”
Despite the seriousness of that warning, we all chuckle. Fucking mobsters. They can have New York. We’re all out west now, anyway.
“It wasn’t Lucio,” Mysterious says. “I think we all know it wasn’t Lucio who set us up.”
Well, I think I’m the only one here who knows for sure who it was. I didn’t before all this happened. Not really. I’ve had my suspicions over the years. But after that island bullshit. That whole Wallace Arlington contract—which turned out to be fake. I called him up after the shit settled down and he had no clue what I was talking about—Yeah. It wasn’t Lucio. I’m glad he’s dead. But it wasn’t him who set us up back in school. Nothing about that makes sense.
“You ever gonna get a girlfriend, Match?” I ask, trying to change the subject. Get them thinking about something else. “I mean, for fuck’s sake. What kind of man runs an online dating site and doesn’t even use his own service?”
“If you headhunt me a girl, Corporate, I swear to God…” But we’re all laughing.
It’s good to laugh about it.
What else can you do? Let it change you? Let it control you? Let it eat you away from the inside out?
“Well,” Perfect says. “Match and I are leaving for Colorado in about an hour.”
“Have fun,” Romantic says. “I gotta get back to the resort, anyway. Big chef’s class coming up this weekend. What about you, Five?”
“No personal details, friends. It’s better you don’t know.”
“Right,” Mysterious says, downing his drink as he gets up from my dining room table. “All secrets all the time with you. I’ve got no one at home for me, but hey, there’s always work. So that’s where I’m headed. New case came in today. Gonna take it, I think. Just to get my groove back.”
He’s not as cocky as he was a few weeks ago, that’s for sure. And I hope they leave us alone. I hope he doesn’t have to deal with the bullshit Perfect, Romantic, and I have gone through.
But it’s wishful thinking.
There’s more coming.
We’re not done yet.
“Hey,” Match says, looking at Mysterious. “What’s with you and these girly fucking drinks, anyway? The last time I saw you, it was straight bourbon all the time.
“My hot new assistant has me hooked on them,” Mysterious laughs. “She’s a fucking wild little trip, man. And goddammit, she’s good in bed.”
“Well, that fucking mint julep reminds me of my damn sister.”
“Ariel?” Mysterious laughs. “I cannot picture Ariel drinking mint juleps.”
We all laugh at that. Fucking Ariel is one tough chick. She’s not a girly-drink kind of girl.
“Not Ariel, you dumbass,” Match says. “Cinderella.”
Mysterious spits out the alcohol he was just about to swallow and it goes all over Five, who narrows his eyes and brushes off his suit. “What did you just say?” Mysterious asks. “You do not have a sister named Cinderella.”
“Cindy, you freak. You’ve never met her. She’s the black sheep. Took off when she turned eighteen and became some kind of wanderer.”
“I gotta go,” Mysterious says. He grabs a pack sitting by the door and two seconds later, it’s like he was never here.
“What the fuck was that about?” I ask.
“Who know
s with him,” Romantic says. “He’s probably banging a girl named Cinderella and now he thinks it’s your sister.”
Everyone but Match thinks that’s hilarious.
Epilogue - Victoria
Weston Conrad, AKA Mr. Corporate, asked me to marry him for the seventh time on my thirtieth birthday.
I said no.
He didn’t care, he just pulled that ring out, shouting and screaming, “You’re mine and goddammit, you’re gonna wear this ring!”
I let him do that. I even frowned, and then said, “OK, I’ll wear the ring,” like I didn’t want to, just to keep up with my wild side.
And he said, “OK? You’ll wear the ring?”
I said, “Yeah. Didn’t you ever notice that our initials go together?” He gave me this puzzled look until I made a V with my two pointer fingers. Then I moved them apart a little and made a W with my pointer fingers and my thumbs. “V is one half of W. I’m only complete when I’m with you.”
He couldn’t put that ring on my finger fast enough. He even got down on one knee to do it.
I have a feeling West and I might never get married. I think I might just wear his ring forever. I think I might even have his children and cook dinner, and have it waiting on the table when he gets home from work.
I can act like his wife without being his wife. Right?
When I told him that, he agreed and hugged me tight for several seconds, then dragged me upstairs and wanted to fuck me against the wall.
He can own me if he wants.
I don’t seem to mind it these days.
Everything seems different since my last trip to Brooklyn. I feel free. Like the past just drifted away and left me behind.
I lost the building in Manhattan, and the charity. It was inevitable. And ironic, I think. That once West knew, and was willing to help me keep it, and I was willing to accept his help, it was all taken away because they wiped out his bank accounts. The East Coast, and everything back there, is history. I left it all behind when I came to California. But we worked our asses off to place all the kids in the best possible foster homes.