by Ws Greer
“Is that why you told him you’d give up everything? To keep Reina safe?” Nix asks, causing me some frustration.
“Nix, you know that was all bullshit,” I snip. “Nobody could ever make me give up what we’ve earned. Everything we’ve got, we earned it through grinding. We came up on our own, and there isn’t a chance in hell that I’d ever let Dante fucking Rossi run me out of the life we’ve built for ourselves. I said what I said so I could buy some time, it’s as simple as that. I need to find out what the hell Reina was doing there, and then I need to figure out a way to do more than kill Dante. It’s deeper than that now.
“Bringing Reina into the mix, whether on purpose or not, changed everything. It’s personal now, Nix. I don’t give a damn how long ago my relationship with Reina was. It’s Reina! I’m going to ruin Dante before I kill him. I’m going to embarrass him in front of his little mafia family, and then after I’m done hanging him out to dry, then I’m going to kill him as publicly as possible. By the time I’m done with Dante Rossi, everyone in this city will know who I am. A kid won’t steal a candy bar in Strawberry Mansion without thinking of me first.
“I’m going to take the next few days to get with Rock and Marcell, and we’re going to bail out Ricky. Then, all of us are going to put our heads together, and we’re going to go to war with Dante Rossi. I don’t care what happens with Angelo or the rest of the Scarfos—if they step in, they can get it too, but my focus is Dante. I’m going to burn his life to the ground around him. Then I’m going to put a bullet between his eyes for the whole world to see.”
Nix looks over at me and smiles from ear to ear, and I flash a devilish grin of my own as confidence shuts down all the rest of my emotions and I feel nothing but focused rage directed at Dante.
“There we go,” Nix says, as he adjusts in his seat and refocuses on the open road in front of us. “Now that’s more like.”
Twenty-four hours after the sit-down, Nix and I meet at my loft to get ready to head over to Club Asylum. We discussed our game plan a little more, and we agreed that until we get Ricky out of jail for that bullshit charge, we need to act like we’re doing what I told Dante we would do. So, the plan is for us to go over to Club Asylum and have a few drinks, giving the impression that we’re there to check on the finances of the club. After all, I told Dante’s dumb ass that I was going to do it to prepare to give up everything I owned, and he bought it. Idiot.
“Wanna drink?” I ask Nix as I answer for him by pouring him a short glass of twenty-one-year-old Johnnie Walker XR. By the time he says, “Of course,” I’m already walking over to him with the glass.
Nix, wearing a white button-up tucked into gray slacks with white shoes, sits on the couch and sips his drink, while I sit down on one of my red barstools wearing black pants and a white wife-beater with white shoes of my own.
“What’s the latest on Ricky?” I ask as the whisky burns its way down my throat.
“Marcell has his lawyer looking into it,” Nix answers. “Judge put his bail at two-hundred grand for whatever reason, but Marcell’s guy is trying to get the charges dropped. Either way, Ricky should be out no later than tomorrow or the next day.”
“Good,” I reply. “As soon as he’s out, I want a meeting with him, Rock, and Marcell, at the club so we can figure everything out. I wanna know everything Marcell can possibly find out about Dante and his operation. I want every detail. No one has ever tried to go at the mob the way I want to do it, so I need it to be perfect. I want Ricky there because I know he wants to avenge Donny.”
“You think he’ll wanna take out Mason himself?” Nix asks.
I can still see the image of Donny trying to rush Mason. The shots rang out in Nix’s restaurant and the look on Ricky’s face as he watched his brother fall to the floor is something I won’t soon forget. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say Ricky is going to want revenge for his brother, whether it’s Detective Mason or Dante probably won’t matter. If it was me, I’d end them both for the hell of it.
“Can’t say,” I reply. “I would, but Ricky is the quieter type. I’d do them both, but he might settle just for Mason. I’ll make sure he’s aware that Dante is done for, regardless of what he wants to do. Mason would be a bonus for me, but I’ll leave it up to Ricky.”
“Now that we’re going down this road,” Nix says, resting his large arm on the back of the plush red couch. “I’m sick of Mason. I was down to overlook a lot of stuff before all of this. But now that this is going down, I’d be quick to pull the trigger on Mason.”
“I’ve been sick of him.”
“I know you have. Why don’t we just . . .”
The sound of my personal cell phone ringing on the glass coffee table cuts off Nix’s sentence. Nix leans forward to look at the screen and frowns at the phone.
“Blocked number,” he replies, drawing a scowl from me.
“Nobody answers blocked numbers,” I say, letting the phone ring until it stops.
Not even five seconds later, the phone rings again.
“Blocked,” Nix says again. I don’t respond this time, I just scrunch my forehead and wait for the phone to stop ringing. It does, and immediately starts up again.
“The hell? Toss it to me.” Nix underhand-throws the cell phone to me and I answer. “Who the hell is this?”
“You’re just as good a liar as I am,” a female voice says on the other end. I’d have to be deaf and dumb to not recognize this voice, and my breath catches in my throat before I can speak again.
“Reina,” I reply, causing Nix to sit up like he just heard a gun go off.
“Wow,” she replies behind an exhale. “It’s good to hear your voice. Been a while.”
“Try seven years,” I snip. The image of her sitting next to Dante rushes to the front of my mind and I feel anger bubbling in my stomach. “Where have you been all this time? How’d you get my number? And what the hell were you doing with Dante Rossi?”
“I don’t have time for all of that right now,” she spits back, her voice quickly turning serious. “I need you to listen to me, Solomon.”
“Listen to you? You show up at a sit-down on the arm of the man whose throat I’d love to slit, and you want me to listen to you?”
“Not now, Solomon, we don’t have time!” she fires back, shocking me. Nix raises his arms, gesturing wildly to me, so I take the phone from my ear and put it on speaker so both of us can listen to Reina.
“What’s the rush?” I ask as I set the phone down on the bar and Nix moves from the couch to the barstool next to me, resting his hand over his mouth.
“I just don’t have time to explain, so I need you to listen carefully,” Reina says. “They’re gonna try to kill you tonight.”
Nix and I look at each other in shock.
“What?” I reply.
“Just listen, please! Dante has a team waiting for you at your club,” Reina continues as if a clock is literally ticking down in front of her. “He’s the one behind everything. He hates your reputation and how fast you’ve come up—you and Nix both. So, he plans on taking you both out. They know all about both of you—where you live, what establishments you frequent, everything. They know you go through the back entrance of Club Asylum to avoid being seen, and that’s where they have a three-man team waiting for you tonight. They’ll have handguns with silencers in the hopes that if they can at least hit you, no one will know, and you’ll bleed out if you don’t die immediately.
“Your rise to power was meteoric, Solomon, and guys like Dante—guys who are planning on being the boss of the mob in this city someday soon—they don’t like to see legit competition to their throne. Dante wants you dead. But if you don’t show up to the club, they’ll know something’s up. So, you’re gonna have to handle it.”
Pissed off, I snatch the phone off the bar and start pacing around the room. I settle in front of the over-sized window with my tattooed reflection staring back at me.
“Handle it?” I bark. “You say tha
t like it’s not a three-man hit team waiting to assassinate me at my place of business.”
“Something tells me you’re plenty capable of handling yourself,” she replies, her voice suddenly soft again. I can basically hear her smiling through the phone, and I smile back.
“That I am, Reina,” I say, before wiping the smile off my face and getting back to business. We’re not teenagers anymore. “How the hell am I supposed to trust you after all this time? You’re acting like everything is supposed to just fall back into place.”
“I don’t expect it to fall back into place just like that,” Reina says, her voice mimicking the seriousness in mine. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”
I let out a loud chuckle.
“Trust you? You were having dinner with him like you two were an item.”
“Don’t believe everything you see,” she says, and I stop in my tracks. “No matter what happens, Solomon, just remember—it’s me. I’m still me.”
The line goes dead.
I turn around and toss the phone onto the couch as Nix gets up from the barstool and walks towards me.
“This shit is getting insane, man,” he says. “An assassination attempt in public. It’s something the Scarfo family would do, for sure, and I’m sure Dante would want us out of the picture if he felt like people would fear us more than they’d fear him once he takes the reins of the family. But, can we really trust Reina with this? She was having dinner with him, Solomon. Seven years went by, and then she shows up at dinner with him. That can’t be overlooked.”
“You’re right,” I agree, but Reina’s words can’t be overlooked either. I’m still me. “But we both know it’s not a crazy idea that Dante would try to pull this shit, especially if he thinks he’s going to be boss soon.”
“So, what do you think?” Nix asks.
“Seven years is a long time, Nix” I answer. “But it’s Reina. The way I felt about her was real, and that’ll never disappear, even though she did. Can I trust her after all this time? I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out tonight.”
IS TONIGHT THE night I die?
Of course not! What a silly thing to ask! The more realistic question is; is tonight the night Dante Rossi sends three hitmen to kill me outside my own club? How about this one; is tonight the night I distrust Reina for good? Because if we show up to Club Asylum and nothing happens, my history with Reina won’t matter. I’ll have to get over any feelings I had when I was a kid and admit that things are different for us as adults. I’ll have to go against everything from my past—I’ll have to go against Reina.
The thought of it fills me with enough emotions to blur my vision, but I don’t have the luxury of just forgetting about all of it. Nix and I move around the loft like focused men on a mission. Together, we trek up the stairs to the second floor, past the red chairs at the top of the steps and the California King-sized bed. We turn into a space that used to be a guest room, but is now modified into a closet. All my clothes are hung up around the perimeter of the room, with ceiling-high vertical shelves stocked with shoes separating the clothing sections every six feet. In the center of the closet is a red island with a black marble counter top that has a multitude of drawers on all four sides. This is where I keep my accessories: belts, bracelets, rings, watches, cologne, etcetera. On the very bottom of the island, however, is a hidden drawer with no handles or knobs to open it. This drawer has to be opened with the push of a hidden button on the underside of the marble counter top, and I head straight for it.
I press the button and stand back as the island shifts with a light hissing sound, then lifts and separates from the base as all four sides of the island release and expose four large drawers stocked with guns, each in their own custom setting cut into black insulated foam. The narrow side Nix and I are on is full of handguns, including my favorite chrome nine millimeters, which I’ll immediately go for. The wider sides of the island are filled with rifles and knives, and the other narrow side opposite us has accessories of its own: silencers, scopes, laser sights, harnesses, extra clips and magazines, and even a hand grenade. It’s my own personal armory, and just looking at it puts a smile on my handsome face.
“Let’s load up,” I say to Nix, who’s standing behind me with an admiring smirk on his face.
Per usual, I grab the two chrome beauties, plus a small black thirty-eight special, and place them all on top of the marble counter as Nix reaches for two nine millimeters of his own and sets them down. I walk over to the far side of the island and pick up shoulder harnesses for the pistols we’ve chosen, and an ankle harness for the thirty-eight special, plus black silencers for each pistol. Like SWAT members, Nix and I equip ourselves with everything we need to go to war tonight before slipping on our jackets—gray for Nix, black for me—and head out the door. We climb into Nix’s black GMC Denali and set out for Club Asylum.
The ride over is quiet. Nix drives with his head down and eyes up as usual as the bright lights of Center City flash past us. He’s all focus and anger as the miles go by and we get closer to the club, and I keep my head turned towards the tinted window, looking out at the city I grew up in.
Memories of Reina play in my head like a violently romantic movie montage, and I can’t help but ask myself what I expect as we get closer to the club. Do I really expect Reina to be telling the truth? How ironic is it for Reina to show up here again after seven years, just in time to call me up and tell me my enemy is plotting to kill me? That’s just too perfect, isn’t it? I have so many questions that I don’t have answers to, and my mind is a ball of confusion and anger, because when I don’t know what the hell is going on, I get pissed off and things get damaged. Under normal circumstances, I’d torture somebody until I get the answers I want, but I can’t torture Reina. So what do I do?
In the midst of all this, there’s another question that weighs on me heavier than the rest; if it turns out that Reina is lying, do I kill her? If she’s really with Dante and this is all some elaborate ploy to set me up, do I kill her like I’d kill anybody else in this situation? Can I kill Reina?
As we approach the last stoplight before the club, I feel a sense of anxiety creep over me. It’s not out of fear of Reina being right, it’s fear of her being wrong. If we park this SUV, get out, and waltz into Club Asylum like we do all the time, with no issues whatsoever, what the hell am I supposed to do? What does it even mean? Why would she call me up and tell me something is about to go down for no reason at all? The only thing I can think of is that this would be some sort of distraction for something bigger. Nix and I show up here awaiting this expected hit, and while we’re here, something is happening elsewhere. But what would that be? Where would it be? My loft? Nix’s place? Nix’s restaurant? I can’t figure out why she’d do this if it wasn’t true. There’s so many questions, but the answers are coming, because the stoplight has turned green and we’re turning into the parking lot behind Club Asylum.
My nerves immediately stand up as we take our usual route and find our familiar parking space near the back entrance of my club. Nix parks the SUV, shuts off the ignition, and waits, looking out the window to his left while I survey the area to my right.
Nothing.
Both of us sit completely still and look for signs of absolutely anything to be out of place, but there’s nothing. No suspicious vehicles, no strange people lurking anywhere either of us can see. There’s nothing but the orange glow of the streetlights and the dark shadows they cast in the corners of the alley next to us.
“I’ve got nothing, Solomon,” Nix says, and I can hear the accusation in his voice. He and Reina were friends all those years ago, so I know he would be upset about Reina lying to us just like I would, but after over half a decade, he’s obviously lost trust in her. Right now, I can’t blame him.
“Yeah. Let’s go,” I reply through the growing frustration. Nearly in unison, Nix and I open our doors and step out into the night, the bass from the music in the club humming in our ears. Trying
to listen intently through the music inside, I hear only our footsteps as we walk to the back of the SUV and meet there.
Neither of us says anything. We just look at each other, silently acknowledging that we only have about fifty feet between us and the private entrance of the club. There’s no need to say anything now. Whatever happens next will speak volumes.
We start walking, making sure to step with each other like a military parade. Nix looks to the right, I look to the left. My side is darker than his, but the streetlights are doing a great job of casting shadows, turning sections of the alley pitch black We don’t slow down or speed up, we just walk as if everything is totally normal, even though I’m growing more and more concerned for Reina with each passing step.
Halfway to the entrance, I hear something. The sounds closest to me are our own footsteps, still in sync, but there are more footsteps coming from my left that aren’t matching ours, which is exactly why we walked in step to begin with. Someone’s not stepping when we step, their foot isn’t landing when ours do. They’re marching to their own drum, and it’s a dead giveaway. Whoever it is, they’re trying to be quiet, but Nix and I had them outsmarted before the game ever began simply by walking in sync with each other.
I keep my head straight as we step, but I shift my eyes over and see a dark silhouette coming towards us on my side of the alley. It’s a man for sure, maybe six-feet tall, wearing tight-fitting dark clothing. I can’t see a weapon, but he’s there, and he’s heading straight for Nix and me.
My nerves come to life as I slowly reach into my jacket and pull one chrome nine millimeter from its home in my shoulder harness. Just as I remove it and have it exposed, I see Nix reaching inside his jacket to pull his, but he seems to be in much more of a rush than I am.