by B. B. Hamel
I went back into the other room, my laptop tucked under my arm.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Another room. Make it harder for them to figure out that it’s us.”
“Okay. Lead the way.”
We headed out the door and back into the maze of hallways. I stuck close to Rafa as we went down a floor and followed a few long halls, ignoring the stares of the staff. I felt like we were being watched by a thousand eyes, and we probably were. There were cameras everywhere, although I couldn’t spot any. There was no way the mafia wasn’t surveilling their own mansion.
We finally stopped in front of a bland door. Rafa took his key card from his pocket and swiped. The door clicked open and we walked inside.
The room was completely barren. It looked like it had been an apartment at one point, but they were probably doing construction on it, or possibly getting new furniture.
“This will work,” he said. “Can you get Wi-Fi?”
“Let me see.” I sat down on the floor and crossed my legs. I opened my laptop lid and booted it up. Rafa leaned up against the window, his arms crossed, and watched me.
The computer booted up and connected to the internet with no problem. “Got it,” I said.
“Okay then. Do your thing.”
I paused and then laughed. “What do you mean?”
“Get the Spiders to contact you.”
“I didn’t do anything last time. They just took over my computer.”
“What were you doing when they took it over?”
“I was searching for them,” I admitted.
“There you go. Search for them.”
“Aren’t we being watched right now?”
“Not in here. They’re remodeling this room, and the surveillance stuff is turned off.”
I nodded. That explained why he had decided to come here instead of staying back at our room.
“Does that mean they’re watching and listening to us?”
“No,” he said. “It means if we do this in our room, they’ll know where to find us right away. But here we’ll have some time before they come looking.”
“I see,” I said, feeling nervous. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“Nothing we’re doing is safe,” he said, grinning at me. “But don’t worry. I’m here to protect you.”
“That’s very soothing.”
“You’re welcome. Now get searching.”
I sighed and started typing. If I was going to do this, I might as well get it over with. I could sit around and argue and worry all day long, but that wouldn’t help.
We needed to do something. I couldn’t sit around in the room and wait for Rafa to somehow save me. I needed a task, a job to complete. I hated being passive in all of this; that simply wasn’t my personality. I was a journalist, and as a journalist I was constantly checking out the world, searching and learning. That was just how I existed.
But so far, I’d been too afraid to do anything. I’d been following along, doing what needed to be done, but not taking any big actions on my own. It was time to change that. I had made the decision to go with Rafa, and to follow through with the pregnancy, but now I needed to take a little responsibility.
I began to search for the Spiders just like I had that night. I wasn’t really interested in what I was finding, more in the act of doing the search. I hoped that the Spiders were monitoring searches for their name and would spot me trying to contact them.
Ten minutes slipped by. Rafa disappeared at one point and came back a couple minutes later with a bottle of whisky and a glass. He drank while he watched me type.
Frustration mounted. The first time I did this, they contacted me within a few minutes of searching. As the minutes slipped by, I began to wonder if they would even notice me.
Maybe they didn’t want to talk. I was sure they knew where I was. Maybe they saw me as a traitor and wouldn’t want to communicate.
After twenty minutes, Rafa began to pace. “Maybe this isn’t going to work,” he said.
“We have no other choice. It’ll work.”
“Fucking hell. I hate this technology shit.”
“Technology isn’t to blame. People are always people, tech or no tech.”
He laughed at that. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t blame technology for people being shitty.”
He smirked and returned to pacing. I kept typing away, digging deeper and deeper, trying to find any seeds of the Spiders.
And suddenly, just like last time, my computer screen went black. A green cursor was blinking in the top right corner, and a message scrolled across the top as someone somewhere typed to me.
“We know where you are. You turned us down.”
I looked over at Rafa. “It’s them.”
He walked over and crouched behind me. “Okay. Let’s talk.”
“I need your help,” I typed.
“We know.”
“Tell them we need information,” Rafa said.
I typed his message.
“We won’t talk with Rafa Allegri. We will only talk with you.”
I paused and then looked at him. “Spooky.”
“They’re bluffing. Tell them I’m not around.”
I typed that message. They responded a minute later.
“We don’t trust Rafa, and we believe you are lying. Lie to us again and this is finished.”
He laughed softly. “Okay then. Tell them you won’t talk without me.”
I frowned at him. “Rafa, I think you should go.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. Let me talk to them. I understand what needs to be done.”
He looked at me silently for a second and then sighed, shaking his head. “Okay. This goes against my fucking nature, but I’ll let you handle this.” He stood up. “I’ll be back in soon.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded and then left the room.
I felt like I was alone for the first time in a long time, though it hadn’t even been a day yet.
I typed, “He’s gone.”
“We know you trust him, but he is the enemy.”
“He’s not my enemy. Please, the mafia thinks I have information on you people. If I can give them something, they might spare my life.”
“Why would we give you information?”
“To save me. It doesn’t have to be true.”
“Why would we save you?”
I stared at that for a second. “Because Dasha would have wanted you to.”
There was a long pause, and for a second I thought I had lost them. Fear began to build in my chest.
But then a message came.
“Yes, she would have. She was an idealist, and now she is gone.”
“Give me something. Help me.”
“We will help, but we will want your help in return.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing from you. We want Rafa Allegri’s help.”
“I thought you didn’t trust him.”
“We don’t. We trust you to make him follow through.”
“Okay. I will try. What do you want?”
“Nothing yet. We will tell you when we need it.”
“Fine. Please hurry.”
“Come to the drop point we mentioned before tomorrow. You will find what you need there.”
I wracked my brain for a second before remembering what they had said during the first conversation. They wanted me to go to the corner of South Wales and Arch streets.
“Okay. I remember.”
“Goodbye, Cassidy, and good luck.”
My screen returned to normal.
I stared at it for a second, my mind running circles around itself.
I was sure that the Spiders were monitoring their searches, or at least they were monitoring me. Which meant they were probably more powerful then we realized, if they could pick that sort of data out of the storm that was all the interne
t traffic. They had some serious internet skills.
I closed my laptop lid and got up. I opened the door and found Rafa leaning up against the wall right outside.
“Well?” he asked.
“They agreed to give us something,” I said.
He grinned. “Great. You’re one sexy piece of ass. You know that?”
“Don’t get too excited. They want something in exchange.”
“Of course they do. What is it?”
“They want you to do them a favor.”
He frowned. “What favor?”
“They didn’t specify.”
“I assume you told them to fuck off.”
“I told them you’d be more than happy.”
He sighed, grumbling. “Of course you did.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“It’s fine. What did they give you?”
“We have to go get it. They gave me an address.”
“Fucking hell,” he said. “This gets worse and worse.”
“What’s wrong?”
“We’ll be exposed. This could be a trap.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“Maybe, but it still could be.” He started walking, and I quickly caught up. “We’ll figure it out.”
“I did the best I could,” I said.
He stopped and let me run right into him. He grabbed my hips and kissed me on the lips. “You did good, kid.”
“Shut up.” I pushed him back, smiling. “You jerk.”
“Come on. Let’s go celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
“You kicking ass.”
“I do kick ass, don’t I?”
He laughed and took me by the hand, dragging me behind him.
I felt good. I felt like I had done something worthwhile. I wasn’t just sitting around waiting for Rafa to save me; I was making deals and getting involved.
I wasn’t just dead weight. I wasn’t just a burden.
I smiled to myself, excited beyond what I would have guessed.
Mostly because I knew exactly how he wanted to celebrate, and it was what I’d been thinking about since I first met him.
22
Rafa
I pushed my way back into our room and head toward the landline set back against the far wall. I grabbed the receiver and quickly ordered room service as Cassidy followed me in.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Like I said, we’re celebrating.”
“I can’t drink, remember?”
“I know. You’re carrying my baby too, you know.”
She shrugged and sat on the couch. “Good point.”
“Do you understand what this means?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“We have a direct line to the Spiders.”
“So?”
I sighed. “We’ve never been able to communicate with them. They’re like fucking ghosts.”
She nodded. “So now you have a way to get them a message.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about helping the mob.”
“You’d be helping me. Hell, you’d be helping yourself. Fuck the mob.”
“Still. I don’t want to help them hurt the Spiders.”
“We won’t.”
“We will if we don’t control this.”
“I want to tell Vince.”
She shook her head. “No. We can’t.”
“We can trust him.”
“Rafa, I don’t know him. He doesn’t care about ne. We can’t tell him.”
“He dislikes the sex trade almost as much as you do. Believe me, he won’t want to hurt the Spiders.”
“Please, Rafa. We can’t tell your people about this, not yet.”
Just then, there was a knock at the door. I walked over and opened it. A staff member wheeled a cart inside and left it next to the kitchen table. I tipped him and hustled him back out.
On the cart was a bottle of good whisky, a bottle of sparkling cider, and two beautiful lobster tails. Despite her anger, I could tell she was interested in the food.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s toast and eat first. Then we’ll decide what to do.”
She stood, frowning. “I guess we can do that.”
I grinned at her. All it took was a little food and she was calmed down.
But maybe she had a point. Vince wasn’t as invested in this as we were, and I didn’t know how he’d use this information. He needed leverage against Ernesto, and this sort of thing could be exactly that. But it could lead to an attack against the Spiders, and that was exactly what Cassidy wanted to avoid.
I poured her some sparkling cider and poured myself a whisky. We toasted.
“To a job well done,” I said.
“To not getting tortured.”
I laughed and drank my whisky back, pouring another. She sipped her drink and then sat down as I placed her meal in front of her.
She sighed and took a bite. “This doesn’t mean we’re done talking.”
“I know.” I grinned at her and sat down in the other seat. “But we can call a truce.”
“Fine. A short truce.” She brandished her fork at me. “But don’t get comfortable.”
“Or else you’ll stab me?”
She shrugged and started eating. “Maybe,” she said between bites. “I’m pregnant, remember?”
“You might be pregnant,” I corrected. “We haven’t confirmed yet.”
She looked up at me. “That’s true.”
“And we can’t for another couple weeks.”
“That’s also true. But we have to assume I am.”
“No arguments here.”
“I’ll take the test as soon as I can.”
“No rush.”
She eyed me again and then went back to eating. I wasn’t hungry, so I poured myself another drink and leaned back in my chair.
The idea of fatherhood hadn’t seriously occurred to me before. It wasn’t like gangsters didn’t have kids. They actually tended to have a lot of kids, since gangsters tended to like to fuck a lot.
I liked to fuck a lot. But I didn’t like having to take care of a kid or having some serious responsibility. I was a fucking mobster for fuck’s sake. I didn’t know how to raise a kid, let alone raise a decent fucking kid. I didn’t even know what it meant to be decent.
Would I want my kid to follow me into the mob? I had no clue. I didn’t know if I wanted this life for my child. It wasn’t an easy life, though it did have its perks. Still, it would be life and death all the time for him, and I didn’t know if I wanted that for my child.
Maybe we’d have a girl and I wouldn’t have to worry about her going into the mob. I’d have to worry about her fucking some stupid mob guy instead. Girls had their own god damn problems.
For some reason, I wasn’t freaking out. I had been assuming that she would give the kid up for adoption, but as I thought about it I realized that I didn’t know what she’d really want to do.
Since all of this had started, it had been nonstop action. We hadn’t known where we had stood, and my first thought had been to do anything to keep her safe. But now, when something had finally gone right, I had a second to stop and think about what I had done.
I was going to be a father, and I wasn’t freaking out about it. That itself almost freaked me out a little bit. The idea of being with Cassidy, really fucking being with her, didn’t repulse me like that thought had with so many other women. I could see something in her, something that made me want to change.
And I wasn’t the changing type.
She finished her meal and sat back, smiling at me. “Okay,” she said. “That was really good. I admit it.”
I laughed. “Good. Glad you liked it.”
“I could get used to this.”
“You can have whatever you want here.”
She pushed her plate out of the way and leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “Let’s talk.”
&
nbsp; “Fine. Let’s talk.”
“Don’t go to Vince.”
“Convince me not to.”
She frowned. “I can’t. Just don’t do it.”
“This isn’t the sort of thing I should keep from him.”
“Let’s at least go to the drop spot. Let’s see what’s there before we tell him.”
“That’s a bad idea. We shouldn’t do this alone.”
“We need to do this alone. Rafa, we can’t trust anyone but each other.”
I sighed. She was wrong. I knew we could trust Vince, but the way she was looking at me was slowly changing my mind.
I didn’t want to argue.
I stood up. “Try harder,” I said.
“What else can I say? Do it for me.”
I walked over to her and tipped her chin up toward me. “Come on,” I said, “convince me.”
“I’m practically begging you,” she said softly.
“Maybe, but you’re not begging the way I want.”
“What do you want?”
I leaned forward and pressed my lips against hers. She kissed me back for a moment before I pulled back to whisper in her ear.
“You know what I want,” I said.
“Tell me you’ll wait.”
I took her hair and tipped her chin back. She gasped and I kissed her again, harder. She returned the kiss, moaning softly.
“I’ll wait,” I said.
“Good.” She reached forward and began to unbuckle my belt. “I thought you’d give in.”
I grinned at her. “You’re very convincing.”
“I haven’t even gotten started.” She finished unbuckling my belt and skid my pants down my thighs. My cock was hard as hell as she reached toward it. I kissed her again while she pulled my briefs down and took the base of my cock in her hand.
She slowly stroked me as I kissed her, our tongues rolling along each other. Pleasure and desire ran through my bones, and I couldn’t help but think about the child growing in her stomach.
That only made me fucking harder. She pulled back and smiled at me as she slowly took my cock into her mouth.
“Fuck,” I groaned. “I love watching that cock between those lips. You make me so fucking hard, girl.”
She responded by stroking my shaft and sucking me harder. I groaned, taking the back of her head and pushing her down along my hard shaft. I couldn’t believe this woman was pregnant with my fucking kid, and she was sucking my cock. It was a strange feeling for me, knowing there was something greater than myself, and it only made me want her more.