by Fox, Nicole
“Okay, okay.” She nods. “Just—okay, be safe. Please. Both of you.”
“When we get into the ballroom,” Cor says, leading Mickey, “find a way to turn off the music. We need to show who’s in control, all right?”
I walk ahead of Cor into the ballroom. The divide down the center is even more pronounced now. On one side the unarmed men sit in a cluster, drinking slowly and looking like prisoners when they glance toward the exit. On the other side, men and scared-looking prostitutes dance, stamp their feet, shout, and generally act like animals in a zoo at feeding time. I scan the room, looking for the sound system. It’s on the opposite side, within view of the armed guards. The guards stand near an elevator, on either side. When the elevator opens and three men jump out, they turn in shock, but too late. My dad pushes his FBI-issued gun under one’s chin, and the other two men secure the second guard. I’ve never been so happy to see my father in my life.
When I cut the sound system out, quiet spreads across the room, a crowd forming around Cor and Mickey.
“The fuck is this?” a man grunts.
“He has the boss!” another exclaims.
Soon everybody is shouting it. “He has the boss! He has the boss! He has the fucking boss!”
Half a dozen men pull out their guns and wave them in Cor’s direction, but that also means waving them in their beloved boss’s direction. They hesitate, a couple of them leaning over drunkenly as though wishing they were good enough marksmen to fire at Cor without accidently hitting Mickey. But, of course, they’re not. They’re men Mickey picked up and they’re drunk. As this happens, the men on the other side of the room stand up. They don’t look like prisoners anymore. They look like an army getting ready for a fight. I glance behind me, making sure dad and the two men, one with a goatee and one with a bushy ginger beard, still have the guards under their control. They do. Maybe this doesn’t have to end in blood.
“You all thought this man would make you into part of the family!” Cor roars, standing side-by-side with Mickey, but with the gun still placed against his head. “You all thought he was the toughest bastard you’ve ever met. You all thought you could do any damn thing you wanted because you had him at your back! You don’t have him at your back anymore! Look at him! He’s beaten. Without him, none of you are shit. If you drop your weapons, leave New York, and never come back, you live. If one of you makes a fuckin’ move, you all die!”
It’s not true, of course. Their guns outnumber ours twenty to one. But it doesn’t matter what’s true. It matters what Cor can make them believe. And he’s right. The only reason these men feel comfortable behaving this way is because they have Mickey backing them up. I see it, looking into their faces. They deflate, taking a step back. To them, it’s like seeing a God turn into a mere man. One by one, the men drop their guns, the sound like the ringing of a bell at the end of a boxing match. Soon all of the men are without weapons, Cor’s half of the room scooping them up and training their guns on them.
“Get clear, girls,” one of the men says to the prostitutes. They scatter, heading for the hallway, and then it’s over. One half of the room has guns, the other doesn’t.
Cor turns to me. “You can call it in now, or whatever terms you use.”
“But wait!” one of Mickey’s men grumbles. “I thought you were letting us go!”
Cor smashes Mickey over the back of the head, sending him to his knees, then standing over him—standing over the whole room. “You took the woman I love, you took my sister, and you had a part in killing my father. All of you did. This here is an FBI agent. That man over there is an FBI agent. You’re free to go ... when they let you go.” He pauses, looking like some kind of wild man with his sweat and blood and grown-out hair. “You give criminals like us a bad name, you stupid fucks.”
At that, the men start to chant, “Don, Don, Don!”
I smile at Cor, and he smiles back.
“I love you,” I whisper, far too quietly for him to hear over the sound of the cheering.
Moira emerges from the hallway, standing at Cor’s shoulder. Dad joins me once the men he was guarding have been led into the crowd. For a second or two, it’s like we’re a new family.
Epilogue Scarlet
Spring is in the air as I head to the new Irish mob compound, a pub called The Leprechaun, which has changed hands twice in the last year. I think of dad as I walk down the street, the air biting but growing warmer.
I think of the mass of paperwork that had to be completed during what came to be known as The Ballroom Bust. I think about how we shared the workload together, conducting interviews and corroborating evidence. I think about the time we were in my apartment, surrounded by papers, when he patted me on the shoulder and said, “I’m proud of you, Scarlet. I’m so, so proud of you. I don’t know if I’ve told you that before. I should’ve said it when you graduated from training. I should’ve said it when you made your first arrest. I should’ve said it—I just should’ve said it. Well, I’m saying it now. Maybe it’s too late. And you need to know something else, too.” I always feel like crying when I remember how he looked in this moment, his eyes full of hurt and regret. “I don’t blame you. You need to understand that. I’m a monster for ever implying that I did.”
And all the hard work paid off, I reflect. Mickey is doing life for multiple murders. His men are in prison or being tried. The corrupt FBI agents—one of whom was a serial rapist and killer, I learned—are gone.
I stand outside The Leprechaun, listening to the sounds of families, couples, life, and laughter inside. When I step inside, I spot him straightaway. He’s shaved his beard since his time out in the cold, almost as though to acknowledge that he’s no longer fighting for survival. He wears it cropped close to his face now, his hair cut shorter. He’s sitting at the booth where this first started, all those months ago, moving his forefinger around the rim of a glass of whisky.
“I thought you might not be coming,” he says, when I reach the table.
“I wouldn’t miss this.” I smile at him, sitting down. I’m wearing the same sea-green dress I wore last time we were here together. “The place looks good,” I tell him.
“We haven’t had a chance to make any changes yet.” Cor shrugs. “I don’t know if we will. There’s nothing wrong with a family-friendly place.”
We stare at each other for a few moments. Over the past few months, we’ve been seeing each other regularly. We’ve even updated our ‘official’ status to boyfriend and girlfriend. And, yet, sometimes it still feels like we’re on a first date, playing the teenagers. The excitement and fun and thrill haven’t gone away yet. I’m not sure it ever will—not with a man like Cor.
“So,” Cor says, leaning forward, “Agent O’Bannon, it’s good to see you.”
I hide my smile behind my hand. When I remove my hand, I’m an ice-cold FBI agent again. “Mr. MacKay.” I sit up straight, staring at him sternly. “If you could please refrain from looking at me like that, I would be grateful.”
“Like what?” He grins carelessly, reminding me of the pre-Don Cor. “You shouldn’t be so keen to flatter yourself, agent.”
“I am here on business.” I tip my head back, looking down my nose at him. “If you could please try and be professional, Mr. MacKay, I would much appreciate it. Frankly, I think you are a brute and a horrible man. I want to get this over with as quickly as possible so we can get out of here.”
“We?” He darts forward, taking my hand. “Did you say we, agent?”
“I.” Just holding hands sends tingles up my arm and all across my body. I know what his hands are capable of. My belly gets warm and fuzzy. I am conscious of my breathing, being careful not to pant. But then he slides his hand up my arm, toward my neck.
“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to have some fun for once, agent?” He grins, massaging my neck, my shoulder. “You look so damn good in that dress I could die, Scar.”
“Hey!” I slap his hand away. “You just ruined the rol
eplay.”
He laughs. “All right, then. You look so damn good in that dress, agent, that it makes me wanna bend you over and fuck you until you’re screaming at me. Is that better?”
My cheeks are red. My body trembles. I’m reminded for the hundredth time of why I love this man so much. So much of this is still complicated, but—
“Maybe we should get out of here,” I say, already standing up. “I think it’s finally time I saw your place.”
Cor is on his feet in a second, offering me his arm. “Come with me, agent. Our work can wait until later.”
Soon, we’re being driven by one of Cor’s men to his penthouse suite.
Cormac
Mickey had tried his best to ruin the mob my father built. That’s the first thing I learned when I became Don, once the FBI had taken away Mickey and his men and left me to rebuild. Mickey had let all our old contacts go to shit, putting our money into drugs and trafficking instead. So, first, I had to dismantle that, putting the women he’d abused into contact with Scar so they could take them on to someplace safe, then rebuilding the mob from the ground up. Without Scar, it wouldn’t have been possible. If I’m sure of anything, it’s that I’m never gonna be apart from her again.
Her arm feels good in mine. I still need to get used to this sort of thing, walking around arm in arm, holding hands, kissing, and all the stuff normal people do every normal day of their normal lives. It’s even stranger for us with the weight of the FBI between us. But we’ll make it work. Hell, we are making it work.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks me as my driver takes us to the penthouse. I barely hear her. I’m distracted by the feeling of the small velvet box that’s been sitting in my pocket for weeks. There’s something inside it. Something small, but the weight of what it means feels like anchors weighing me down. It’s felt that way since the day I walked in the jewelry shop and told them I wanted a ring.
“What’d you say?” I ask in a daze.
Scar giggles. “I asked what you’re thinking about, space cadet.”
I look her straight in the eyes. “Us,” I say quietly, wondering if I’m being too emotional. I’m annoyed at myself for thinking this way, but you can’t kill all the hardness in a man like me, I’m learning. You can only make it so that sometimes you’re hard and sometimes you’re soft. “I’m thinking about moving you into the penthouse and how strange it’s gonna seem to everybody else.” My fingers keep stroking the velvet box in my pocket.
“But it won’t be an FBI agent and a Don living together,” she says, kissing me on the cheek. “It will be a legitimate businessman and an FBI agent living together, and even if that’s a lie, it’s a lie I’m willing to tell. For us.”
“For us,” I echo. I turn to her, always stunned by the sight of her flowing red hair and her pale Irish skin, the freckles creeping up her neck and down her chest. Her eyes are full of lust, her chest rising and falling in the way that tells me she wants to fuck, long and hard. I slide my hand up her knee, stopping just shy of her panties. “I always knew you were a freak, Agent O’Bannon.”
The little intake of breath, the sound it makes, is enough to tell me all the fighting and blood was worth it. For her.
At the compound, we ride the elevator up to my penthouse suite, one of the benefits of being the Don. I haven’t let go of the box. My head feels like I’m a thousand feet underwater. Time is kind of fast and kind of slow – I can’t quite tell. But Scarlet’s fingers intertwined in mine feels so warm and right and real.
The doors open onto an open-plan living room and kitchen, the hallway leading to the bedroom off to one side. I haven’t spent much time here except to sleep since the winter—I’ve been so busy with mob business—so the place is pretty bare-looking. It looks like a model penthouse suite.
Scar walks around the place, tutting, shaking her head.
“Really, Scar?” I ask, laughing. “Don’t forget that I’ve seen your place. It ain’t much better.”
“Yes, but I’m not thinking about my place or your place. I’m thinking of our place and this won’t do at all.”
“Since when are you such a domestic goddess?” I drop onto the couch, thinking that it’s a good thing I can sit here watching this perfect woman twirl around my apartment in a dress that flashes her perfect legs.
“I’m not.” She sits on my lap, looking down at me with hungry eyes. “But I could be—sometimes—for you.”
When we kiss, we lose ourselves. I can never control myself for long around Scar anyway. Today is no different. I pick her up, pressing my lips against hers and carrying her into the bedroom. She sits down on my groin, rubbing her panties up and down my crotch, my cock pressing urgently against my jeans. When I strip her naked, I can’t believe I ever left this woman for two minutes, let alone two days. She looks up at me with those perfect eyes, begging me to fall upon her, begging me to take her. I take my clothes off, my cock rock-hard for her and my balls aching almost painfully with the desire to be inside of her.
We fuck like animals. We fuck like we want to screw the past and screw the world. We fuck like we want everybody to know that just because there’re things in the way of us being together, we’re not going to let those things have any say at all. I push deep inside of her, her pussy so tight around me as she comes that I have to push with all my strength. Her whole body vibrates, her eyes rolling back in her head. As the last waves of her pleasure spend themselves, she brings her hands to my face, locking eyes with me.
“I love you, Cor,” she moans, squirting over my cock. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
I’ve never been the kind of man who gets intimate like this during sex. I never dreamed I’d be able to hear the word love in the bedroom and find it anything other than awkward. But with Scar, it’s different. With Scar, I’m ready to love. With Scar, I’m ready to change.
“I. Love. You.” I gasp as I come, falling forward and kissing her forcefully as my cock begins to wilt inside of her. We lie there, breathing over each other and kissing lazily until the sun sets and we start to get hungry.
After calling for some Chinese takeout, the two of us sit in the living room looking down over the winking lights of New York City.
Suddenly, it feels like a gear shifts or something clicks into place. It’s the right moment. I don’t doubt that I’m the right man for her. She’s perfect, and perfect for me, and I want to be perfect for her. I meant it when I said I loved her. I do love her. I always will.
I reach into my crumpled pants and pull out the box. Scarlet tilts her head and looks at me quizzically, until I crack the box open and she sees the glistening diamond ring nestled inside it.
Her jaw drops.
“Cor…” she says, as much of a gasp as anything else.
A broad smile cracks my face. “Agent O’Bannon… will you marry me?”
She doesn’t even answer, just crashes into me with a wet kiss and her arms wrapped around my neck. It’s easy to fall back into the rhythm of our bodies sliding against each other. Hot. Slick. Needy. Always so fucking needy. Will I ever get enough of her? Will she ever get enough of me? It doesn’t feel possible. A scratch that can never be fully itched. A hunger that won’t ever be fully fed. A fire that’s going to burn for as long as we’re both alive.
Her moans echo around the empty apartment as I slide into her. Her fingers grip my shoulders and I wind my hands through her hair. Anything to hold on tight and never let go.
Afterwards, when our breathing has settled back down, she’s curled into my arms as we look out the windows once more. She keeps glancing down at the ring on her finger, like she can’t believe it’s real. Hell, I can’t believe it, either. I never thought I’d be married at all, much less to a Fed.
“How does it feel, being married to a mobster?” I ask her, wrapping my arms around her and nuzzling my face into her neck.
“I have to admit, I see the appeal.” She twists her neck so that she’s looking up at me. “But you
better toe the line now that you’re in charge.”
“I’ll toe the line all right. For you, Scar, I’ll toe the goddamn line. For you, I’d do anything.”
The buzzer cuts through the apartment; the food is here. But the food can wait. My hand is sliding down her belly.
I push her back down against the cool floorboards. “Now that we’re engaged, time to get started on putting a little mobster baby in your belly.”
She laughs, and the sound alone is everything I ever wanted.
THE END
***
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