by Ws Greer
“So, that’s your plan then?” I ask, shifting again. “You wanna pick off my associates one by one, until there’s no one left, or you scare them all away, and poor Nix and me are all alone and forced to leave for greener pastures. An elaborate plan, Dante. Might take a while to complete.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I simply noticed the difficulty you and your friends are going through right now. But since you brought it up, have you given any thought to leaving for greener pastures? Our offer?”
I look over at Nix to let him know I’m running out of patience, and that the end of all of this is coming. His face tightens in anticipation.
“Your offer,” I say. “Remind me, what was that offer again?”
“Short memory, Solomon? No problem, I’ll repeat it for you. You get all of the money from the Hyperion robbery—we both know we don’t need it—as long as you and your partner move out of Philadelphia. Go burn down another city with your loud antics.”
I shift again.
“So let me make sure I’ve got this right,” I sit up straight and lean on my right forearm, positioning it close to my body. The leather of my jacket brushing lightly against my skin. “First, you send a mole to infiltrate my outfit, then you steal my plans and use them to rob me of my own heist. Then you ask me to leave the city I’ve lived in my entire life. Then you send cops to Nix’s restaurant and get my associate killed and another arrested for the robbery you committed. Now you’re asking me again about leaving everything I know behind, simply because you and your boss can’t handle a little competition. I get all of that, Dante?”
Dante shifts in his seat now, suddenly uncomfortable with my words. Imagine how uncomfortable he’s going to be with a bullet in his head.
“I’d be careful with my words if I were you, Solomon,” he snips, his muscles tightening under his fancy Italian suit.
I shift again. This is it.
“That’s the thing, Dante,” I snip, my nerves sharpening under my skin as the moment approaches. “You’re not me. I think that’s why you hate me so much. You’re not me, you don’t run shit like me, the people in this city don’t fear you the way they fear me. You wish you were me, but I’m too big for you to even come close. I do wreak havoc. I do cause chaos, and the worst thing you could’ve ever done is . . .”
The door to the restaurant opens, and my words catch in my throat. I suddenly can’t breathe as a woman steps through the doors, followed by the waiter who poured our drinks when we arrived. She sits down at the table in the empty seat next to Dante without saying a word, and as I stare at her, I feel Nix staring at me, just as confused as I am.
“Ah, there you are,” Dante says as he throws his arm on the back of the blonde woman’s chair. She scoots a little closer to him and flashes a smile that shatters my heart into a million pieces. “What took you so long in there?”
“Had to freshen up,” she says in a voice that I could never forget, not even if an entire millennium passed. “You wouldn’t want me to look bad in front of company, would you?”
I can’t move.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
My brain is scrambled and moving a million miles per second.
All I do is stare at her. Dirty blonde hair that stops at least midway down her back, icy blue eyes, thin nose, and beautifully full lips. This isn’t some knockoff version walking the streets. She’s wearing a tight black dress that shows just how much she’s grown up since the last time I saw her—when she mouthed the words I love you from the window of the train as it pulled out of the station and she disappeared from my life.
“You couldn’t look bad if you tried,” Dante says, and I’m frozen in place as I watch him lean over and softly kiss her on the cheek. She looks down at the floor as he does it, but she doesn’t shy away. The waiter who followed her out pours wine into the glass I’d noticed when I first arrived, and she immediately sips it, still not looking to our side of the table. “Like I said before, Solomon, I’m having dinner with friends. Allow me to introduce my date for the evening. This is Reina. Reina, this is Mr. Solomon King. He’s an acquaintance, of sorts.”
Her blue eyes finally rise to meet mine, and I feel all of the blood leave my face and flood into my feet as she reaches across the table and offers her hand for me to shake.
“Hello, Solomon. It’s nice to meet you.”
I JUST STARE at her. What the hell else am I supposed to do? It’s really her. Reina is sitting in front of me, looking more gorgeous than ever, and my mind just can’t handle it. I feel hot and prickly all over as her hand dangles in front of me with gold-painted nails and a black and silver bracelet dangling from her wrist. It only takes a millisecond for me to recognize it, and that recognition is confirmation that the person I’m looking at is, in fact, Reina Wilde from seven years ago. The bracelet is the one I bought for her when we went to Forman Mills Mall together. How could I ever forget that day? It’s the day she met my mother, and the day I asked her to help Nix and me rob Julia’s Jewels. The things that happened that day bonded us, and not even seven years apart can break that bond.
Or can it?
With her hand still frozen in mid-air in front of me, a million questions flood my brain as I stare at her, unblinking. What the hell is she doing with Dante Rossi? Where has she been this whole time? Has she been with him? Has she been in Philly for the past seven years, playing the role of Dante’s mistress? Does he know that she and I have a deep history? Is she in danger with him? Did she leave me to go be with him—the mobster who was running the city before I came up? And most importantly—why is she acting like she doesn’t know me? Is she trying to play me, or him? Is she protecting herself by acting like we’re strangers—like we didn’t have something serious when we were teenagers? Did any of that even matter to her? Was she playing me the entire time?
By the time the questions slow down, I’m furious, and I can feel heat climbing up my neck like the tattooed, demonic hands that are permanently inked there. I feel my lip quivering as the anger takes over and I want to lash out. I want to pull the gun from the holster dangling inside my jacket and start popping off rounds in every direction. How dare she show up here after all this time? With him! After what she made me feel for her, how dare she!
“Solomon,” I hear Nix’s muffled voice call to me, but it barely registers.
“Whoah there,” I hear Dante say next as his movement grabs my attention. He lifts his arm and grabs Reina’s hand, pulling it down. “Don’t worry about shaking hands with him. Solomon can be a little . . . aggressive, at times. Nice of you to try to be civil, though.”
Reina flashes a quick smirk and lets him take her hand down, but she holds eye contact with me, like she’s trying to force me to read her thoughts.
What is she doing?
“Solomon,” I hear Nix again. “You good?”
I don’t answer. I just sit there staring at Reina as Dante places her hand on top of the small table and wraps his fingers around her wrist. I want nothing more than to reach over and break every bone in his hand.
“He’s fine, I’m sure,” Dante answers for me, his Italian accent coating the words. “Now, I think we need to get back to business, if you two don’t mind. We were discussing the offer we made to you, Solomon. I think it’s important that we remember what happened in the very recent past. One of your friends was arrested for assaulting a police officer. Another one died. I’d hate to see anything else happen to anyone.”
“It’s not a good idea to issue threats,” Nix replies for me, because I’m doing nothing but looking back and forth between Dante and Reina.
“Of course not,” Dante says with a sly squint in his eyes. “I’m simply stating the facts and showing concern for everyone involved here. We made an offer, and I’m sure both of you know that’s not something everyone gets. We’re giving you a chance to get out without there being any hostile situations, and to be frank, I’m running out of patience. I�
�d like to get to dinner with my guests. So, you need to make a decision. If he can’t do it,” Dante gestures to me and then back to Nix, “then you need to make the right decision for him, Mr. Malone. We know he’s a little off his rocker. We know his reputation, and I can see it playing out in front of me right now. So, maybe you need to make the call for him, Nix.”
I see Nix look at me out of my peripheral vision, but I don’t care. Unbeknownst to every one of them, my mind is moving, working up a plan that’ll get me what I want. Everything I see is red.
“I don’t really know what’s going on with this situation here,” I hear Nix say as he gestures towards Reina. He’s got to be just as confused as I am, and I see Reina have a startled reaction to his movement. She glares at him, pleading with her eyes, and it’s that look in her eyes that finally snaps me back to the table.
“I have a counter-offer,” I blurt out. Everyone at the table turns their heads in my direction. All eyes are on me, and I know what I’m about to say is going to shock them all. That’s exactly what I want.
“A counter-offer?” Dante asks, as if to suggest that a counter-offer isn’t allowed, but he relents. “Alright, then. Let’s hear it?”
“I’ll quit,” I say with a straight face.
“What?” Nix asks beside me.
“Give me the Hyperion money, and I’ll walk away from this life altogether.”
Dante looks intrigued, but also suspicious, as I expected.
“Elaborate, please,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.
“Is it confusing? You give me the money from the job you stole from me, and I’ll walk away from the life. No more robberies, no more deals, no more anything. I’ve made plenty of money over the years, and my club is one of the hottest in the city. I can go legit, like I’ve always wanted.”
“That’s not what we asked you to do—and do you think we’d trust you to just walk away, just like that?” Dante counters, but I have a quick reply.
“I don’t care what you think,” I snip. “Asking me to move away from my home is too much, and I won’t do that, but I give you my word that I’ll quit. I’ll leave all of this behind, and you can have the nice, quiet, little life you and Angelo have always wanted. Take it, I don’t care anymore. But I want the money from what would have been my last job. I think you owe me that much after all that’s happened.”
I can feel Nix staring at the side of my face, wondering what the hell I’m doing, and Reina is glaring at me from straight ahead, with a barely noticeable smirk on her mouth.
“You’re saying you’ll quit everything?” Dante asks, barely believing what I’ve just said.
“Everything,” I answer.
“That’s an interesting offer,” Dante says. “But we’ll need more than that. Any contacts you have, any payoffs you receive, every racket you have—I want them all. Since no one ever said this was a negotiation, you get no deal unless we come out on top. So, I want everything you’ve got. All you take is your little club. Nothing more. Agree to that, and I think we can work it out here and now.”
“Solomon,” Nix says, unable to read my thoughts.
“Deal,” I answer Dante before Nix can say another word. “I just need a few days to set it all up.”
“A few days?” Dante snips, suspiciously.
“Yeah, a few days. You want my contacts, my connections, my rackets? I need to contact everyone and tell them about the change. Otherwise, you’ll get nothing. You’ll get no loyalty from them without the okay from me. I have to set all of this in motion, Dante, and I’ll start by going to my club tomorrow and making sure everything is in order. Is that not reasonable?”
Dante eyes me with cynicism, considering my words. He lifts a hand and rubs his bearded chin before agreeing.
“Alright, Solomon,” he says. “I’ll give you a couple of days to get it all in line, but that’s all you get. I better hear from you and everyone that now owes me money. If I hear anything about you trying to setup another heist or anything of the sort, it’s gonna be buona notte, my friend. Capiche?”
I glance down at the table, knowing I just changed everything by doing this. I can feel Nix glaring at me, but I won’t look at him. I’m going with it.
“I got it,” I reply. “I’ll be in touch. Thank you, Dante.”
Dante doesn’t reply as I stand up to leave, followed by Nix whose got confusion weaved into his every movement. He doesn’t know what to think as I walk away from the table towards his vehicle, but he follows me all the same. Neither of us says a word as we climb into his SUV and he starts it up. Out the window, I see Dante and Tony glaring at me. I don’t trust them, and they don’t trust me, but it’s irrelevant now.
Next to them, I see Reina’s grinning face. With Dante and Tony giving us their attention as we get ready to drive away, she’s free to look at me. We lock eyes as Nix puts the SUV in gear, and just as we start to pull away, she reaches up with the arm adorned by the bracelet I bought her, silently kisses the palm of her hand, and blows the kiss to me.
“WHAT THE HELL are you doing?”
Nix looks mad enough to fight me as he drives away from the restaurant, leaving Dante, Tony, and Reina behind us. I could feel him struggling to hold in his aggression as he sat next to me at the table. He was breathing heavy, barely able to contain the rabid dog that lives inside of him, and now that we’re alone, he’s ready to explode if I don’t let him in on my secret.
“Calm down, Nix,” I say smoothly, in a calm voice as I look out the window again.
“Calm down?” he fires back. “You want me to calm down? You just told Dante Rossi that you’d give up everything you’ve got in exchange for the Hyperion payoff that was supposed to have been ours in the first place! Oh, and you also said that your only business would be Club Asylum! Forever! What the hell happened to you? Are you out of your mind?”
“Yes, yes I am,” I blurt with a chuckle that apparently only I find funny. “Nix, we’ve been friends since we were ten years old, I know you have to know me better than that.”
“I got love for you, Solomon,” Nix says, still with a deep furrow in his brow. “But I need you to explain to me what the hell is going on. All of this is crazy. Maybe I’m a little confused, but it seemed to me that Dante just introduced us to Reina. Even I haven’t forgotten about her, so I know you haven’t. What the hell is up? Did you let her get into your head? Is that why you said all of that?”
I look out the window and see the tall buildings of my city passing by us in a blurred flash, and I picture Reina sitting at the table next to Dante—her tight dress hugging her perfect body, those blue eyes that have always worked magic on me, and the bracelet I bought her when I was still a teenager. She was really there next to him, looking more stunning than ever—next to my enemy! A bolt of rage shoots through me as I struggle to push the image away, because the thought of her next to him brings back a jealousy I didn’t know I’d still have after all this time.
Over the years, I’d learned to force myself to stop thinking about Reina. I’d gotten good at it, too. I’ve been with plenty of women, admittedly, and I don’t regret it a bit. There’s no waiting for someone when that someone has disappeared from your life without a trace—no phone call, no letters, no emails, not a single text message for over half a decade. She was gone, and to see her back now is like being punched in the face with brass knuckles. She was everything to me, and now she’s back. My everything is back.
But is she still my everything? How can she be after all this time? How could she possibly have left like that without saying anything? We’re in the age of technology, and somehow Reina managed to cut off all communication with me for seven straight years. That isn’t the kind of thing you do by accident.
Nonetheless, it’s Reina. I can’t forget the first time I saw her at Aaron’s, doing her best to hold her own against two guys twice her size, wearing clothes that made it obvious she wasn’t from Strawberry Mansion. She stuck out for so
many reasons, and she had no fear whatsoever, not even of me. She forced me to feel things I didn’t know I could feel. The truth is, she made me love her. Me! I’ve never loved anything but power, money, and the look of fear on my enemy’s face—until I met her. As much as I’d like to push that away forever because I’m pissed she was at that table with Dante, I can’t. That kind of thing is forever.
“She did get to me, a long time ago,” I admit in nearly a whisper, the emotion of seeing Reina sitting next to Dante beginning to weigh me down. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with her being back here after all this time, but I couldn’t risk firing off rounds with her sitting right next to him. I could imagine him using her as a human shield because he’s a coward like that, and the thought took control of me. Well, that thought plus a few others.”
“I can’t believe she came out of the restaurant like that,” Nix says, shaking his head in disbelief. “My mouth damn near hit the floor when she stepped out, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. If she’s with Dante, I didn’t wanna say anything about the history between you two, because that probably would’ve gotten her killed. So, I just fought it back. I’m sure that was hard for you, too. But if she’s with him, there’s nothing we can do about that. You know that, right Solomon? We have to make a move.”
“I don’t know what she’s doing with him, but something about it was strange.”
“No shit. Reina from seven years ago is dating Dante Rossi. That’s strange as hell!”
“No, there was more to it than that, Nix.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you see what she did as we were driving away?” I ask, looking over at him.
“Nah, what’d she do?”
“While the two of them were looking at us, Reina blew me a kiss.”
“For real? What the hell?”
I look straight ahead and let out a loud rush of air, remembering the look of it and how it made me feel.
“I don’t know, but it meant something,” I say as wonderment takes over my mind. What might the kiss have meant? If she’s with Dante, did she know it was going to be me and Nix at the table tonight? Does she know about the beef between my operation and Dante’s? I need answers. Now.