I can hardly feel her slight frame against me as we travel. She’s good though and doesn’t wiggle about like the sister witches used to. We are taking in the sights and sounds and smells. New Orleans is such a remarkably different city in the morning than come early afternoon. So much of the town is sleeping off the effects of the previous night. I relish in the solitude with my wife. We manage to dodge any of the crew at The Dollhouse from joining us, and that is rare.
We are doing this—being us—with her fucked up if necessary. With the light traffic, we arrive at the French Quarter quickly. I find us a sweet parking spot and prepare to play mule. I know Kaci. She doesn’t shop light, and she isn’t strong enough to be loaded down. “Who all are you buying for?”
Her hand slips into mine as we start our walk. In ripped jeans and sneakers, I feel underdressed compared to her even with the dress shirt. She has dressed me up to be the slightly elevated street thug. It’s not uncommon with Kace. She likes my dirty side.
“Coffee?” I ask as we pass a cafe.
“Not yet,” she says as we continue on our stroll. We come upon a man, sitting on the ground and setting up his saxophone for the day. He’s rocking back and forth as if he hears the music. I smile, and he nods. I don’t overthink about it, but I end up curiously backtracking a few steps to him as Kaci window shops at the next store.
I light a smoke. “Hey… You play here all the time?”
“Been playing here since 1988.”
I squat down low and offer him a smoke. “You wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Pharm, would you?”
“Yeah, man,” he says, pointing with his mouthpiece. “You po?”
“Nah. I’m a friend of the family,” I politely inform with a clear indication of my racial heritage. “You know where he is?”
He thoughtfully nods as I watch Kaci disappear into the resale boutique. “He’s probably at his Grandma’s house in Treme. You need to score some…”
“Nah…” No, I got enough drugs in my pocket to get sufficiently fucked up.
“If you can find Halley Hershaw’s house, he’ll be upstairs in the apartment out back.”
“Thanks, Sir,” I reply, flipping him a couple hundred. “Take care.”
He pockets the money quickly as I shake his hand and stand up. “You a friend of Gennaro?”
Pulling off my sunglasses, I flash a stunned look. “He’s good people. Good to the community.”
“I know he is,” I agree with a smile. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Ezekial Evans.”
“Good to meet you,” I say, feeling the pull to find my wife. “You take care.”
He keeps rocking as he lifts his flat cap, revealing his balding head with a generous splattering of white on either side. “You too, Raniero.”
I dash off towards the resale store. I’m not at all concerned about the fact that he knows my name, but caution flags raise up in my mind—something about the man—not good or bad, but perplexing. I discover Kaci at the counter, holding a piece of antique rose colored fabric with several colorful bows attached to it. “Sal,” she welcomes with a wave and a smile. “I…um, have no money.”
Fuck.
I move through the packed racks of junk store merchandise—raggedy books, vintage clothing, and suitcases from the fifties—to the counter and hand the woman my credit card. Another much younger woman surfaces from the back area. “I know you!” she giddily squeals, making her way around the counter. “You’re Sally!”
I offer up a shocked and astonished look as Kaci tosses a couple of cute shabby chic throw pillows onto her pile of finds.
I don’t have a fucking clue who she is.
“I dance at Gina’s! I’m Tess!”
Oh, God.
I’m trying to be as genuine as possible, all the while going over the visit with Ezekiel Evans. Holy fuck. He is related to The Preacher, Zachariah Evans. Absentmindedly, I acknowledge, “You’re Tessy the Twobanger?”
“Yes!” She jumps up into my arms and grabs my neck as Kaci’s eyes widen with horror. “You remember me! God, it was so long ago!”
Like two months.
“This is Kaci,” I cough, slightly embarrassed by Tess’ over-exuberance. “She is my wife.”
“Quite a catch you got here,” Tess says, hanging onto my bicep and squeezing the muscle. “You better hang on to him as long as you can, Kaci.”
Kaci offers up the finest fake smile she can muster before the venom strikes from her mouth. “That’s Mrs. Raniero,” she scolds, tucking her hand under my elbow and pulling me closer. “Until I stop breathing, bitch.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not,” Sal nervously replies, scouring his emerald eyes over the streets. “He’s gone…” Frustrated, he sets the bags down and lights a smoke. “Tess was just a girl.”
“Just a girl implies more when it comes out of your mouth,” I say with a smirk as I watch his panic turn to fluster. With most people, Sal will charm and weasel his way out of any situation, but not with me. I make his nerves escalate to a heightened sense of awareness. He knows the power I hold, and there is pure enjoyment in his squirming. It’s rarely seen and even more so, the light hint of blush, rising on his olive skin.
Dance, boy, dance.
With the bags in tow, we silently meander several blocks until I say, “Did you fuck that?”
“No,” he rebukes as we stop in front of a bakery. “I have a standard. Dom and Jack fucked that.”
Refusing to drop the issue with Tess, I inquire, “And you watched the lesson of Tess the Twobanger?”
“I did, I did.” He nods and strokes his scruff. “Pastry?”
“Who did you get off in that night?”
My question may seem outlandish, but I know my husband. He isn’t the type to watch two Masters – he idolizes – in a hot session and not bury himself balls deep in someone. He pops his sunglasses on his head and says, “Who do you think?”
“Who do I hope or who do I think?”
“Think,” he confirms, sitting on a nearby bench. “I want to hear your expectations.”
Strutting over, I flip my hair over my shoulder as I take a seat and cross my legs. “I hope it was Amber or one of the other Kaci-approved girls, but with you, I wonder if it wouldn’t be any good-looking girl given the circumstance.”
He leans back into the bench, stretching out his arm and scanning over me. “I’m better trained than that.”
“So, no random one-nighters?”
Sal shakes his head with a revolted expression. “Fuck no. They’ve got to be able to offer something to make it worth it to me, or we need a connection. I’m not going to go looking for a random hole…”
“Promise?”
He grabs my hand, reassuring me with a light squeeze. “Swear, babe. I won’t do a skanky ho.”
I breathe, but my fears of the fallout are not eliminated. “Sometimes random holes can be fun,” I reply with a smirk and an arch of my brow. “Just be careful.”
“Do you think Chicago is safe?”
I bite my lip, contemplating. “I think she is the safest of all the possibilities. You have to think about the motivations. Amber is looking to hold or even rise from her current spot. I’m not saying she will use you for personal gain, but you need to be careful. She was raised by trailer trash, but don’t think that is an insult. In fact, if anything it means she is a survivor, but be aware, she will do whatever it takes.”
“Don’t marry Amber, check.”
“I would hope that you find a way to remove yourself from Amber should Iris become…available.”
“Easier said than done,” he mutters, taking in the sights of hurried shoppers.
I scoot back and into the crook of his arm. “On whose part?”
He pauses too long, and I already know the answer. “Both.”
“If you cannot compartmentalize the emotional side of Amber, maybe you should stop using her as a practice slut.”
&nbs
p; “No, I will,” he says, lying to himself.
I don’t think he knows he is lying, but I’ve witnessed how they look at one another. They genuinely care about one another, and the bond between them is unbreakable. I purchased Amber for a reason. I believed she could connect with him on a level which he could understand and trust, but I don’t want him so hellbent on saving her that he sacrifices himself. Amber is a whore. Flat out. I’m paying her with a generous sum of money to keep my husband entertained, but she isn’t worth his life or his vows.
“Let’s go to Gina’s,” I suggest.
“It’s like noon.”
I giggle. “She’ll make me a burger.”
“Are you going to eat a burger?”
“Maybe a bite or two,” I say, standing up. “Besides I can have fries.”
An hour later, we sit in the closed bar with a basket of fish and fries between us. I’m studying the water droplets on his cold beer bottle and munching on copious amounts of ketchup; fries are just the vehicle. Sal is dousing fish in malt vinegar while I skeeve and turn my nose up. The burger didn’t sound good either by the time we arrived.
With tonight and Christmas Eve being busy nights, I knew Gina would be here accepting deliveries. She’d open her door just because Kaci Hope came to see her. We were an extended family, not to mention—she adores Sal.
From the corner of my eye, I spot Amber in a winter white outfit. She is a source of envy for me. Her figure is fantastic and healthy. I’ve never had one of those. Or pretty skin. Or glorious loads of hair. Or perfect nails.
I’m the zombie girl, cursed with a fate I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. The waves of self-pity come and go, but right now, I want to scalp Amber for her loads of lush curls that swoop down to brush her ass cheeks.
I hate her right now.
As much as I do though, I miss watching her fuck my husband. That’s the voyeur in me and nothing more, but no one ever said dying girls couldn’t be kinky bitches. She speaks with Gina for a moment behind the bar before heading over to our table by the window. I expect her to slide into the booth beside Sal and languish kisses all over him in front of me—after all, that is what I’m paying her for, right?
“Hi!” Her pristine smile lights up the room, blinding like I’m on the surgical table and waiting for the unfortunate outcome to be less dismal. “How are you doing?”
Her hand lays on my shoulder, and I’m slightly stunned when she tucks her body in next to me. Her thigh brushes mine and I don’t want to react, but I do as heat emanates from my core and sends a chill through me. I shrug it off.
Detecting my shiver, Sal asks, “You okay?”
“Yeah, I'm fine,” I fib. Takes one to know one and all that good shit. “Want some food? We have more than enough.”
“No, actually I was getting ready to crash. Big night—Delarte Cristos and Saint Cruz are both coming for a late-night, private party in the back room.”
I note Sal’s face and the jealousy in his eyes. There is nothing unattached about it. His fury isn't explosive, melting everything in sight, but hot and directed. I've never seen him this funneled.
His scowl doesn't shift as he asks, “When was the last time you saw Cruz?”
“Before Houston,” she softly whispers, buckling under his intimidating gaze. “You know the agreements, Sal.”
“You’re not going tonight.” His command is the warning vibration in the impending earthquake as I imagine his flipping the table, tossing her over his shoulder, and bolting for the door. There will be no room left on the bike for me.
More importantly, no room left for me in his heart.
“I have done a bad thing,” I mumble out as I focus on the grease-soaked paper in the basket of fries. “I’m sorry.”
“You cannot tell me what to do and who I meet,” Amber states, not backing down. Meet is a keyword for fuck. Nonetheless, her resolve is impressive, and I understand why before this last round of treatment – before our marriage – I hired her for the job.
Salvatore Raniero can be a royal jackass—a King in the making.
Make no mistake. He is in many ways—his father’s son—but under no circumstances should he ever be confronted with such. He is brilliant and conniving, manipulative and diabolical. A mastermind of the game we play on the streets and between the sheets.
“I’m not telling you again,” he sounds off with a snarl. This is going to get ugly. Real fucking ugly.
“Good,” she hisses with her jaw taut, “because I’m not listening.”
Before he can add another word in, she rushes up from the table and disappears through the back room. “Let me go talk to her.”
“Kaci…”
Barely holding my gumption, I throw it down. “Don’t make me pull rank on your ass. You know I can; you know I will. I don’t want to, but I will. Let me deal with her.”
“The deal at the docks cannot go wrong,” he implores, leaning forward. “I need to get the guns back to Cinco. I need Cristos to let me have Texas.”
“And you’re going to get it – one way or another – but what I’m concerned with most is the damage you just inflicted to your girlfriend.”
“She isn’t my girlfriend.” He downs his beer as I slide out of the bench seat. “She is my practice whore, remember?”
“That doesn’t mean you need to pull the trigger.”
He spreads his arms wide and looks around. “Do you see any bangs here?”
Touching his lips with my pointer finger, I harshly chastise, “Bullets don’t always come from guns. And sometimes the ones you shoot are lethal. If nothing more, take this as a finishing point—your words do more good and bad than any weapon you can hold.”
Listening to her sobs, I lightly tap on the wooden door. The plank is well-worn from age. Gina’s has been a bar and brothel for many years, but it hasn’t always been under Gina’s guidance. The bar has served Sibyl and their agents as well as the criminal underground like a neutral safe house. In short, Gina’s is Switzerland. The big boys don’t necessarily come here to make peace, but they damn sure won’t come to take each other out either.
The dancers—strippers—are selected and ranked by Gina and sent to take a battery of intelligence, psychological, and physical tests. If they pass with flying colors, they become the backbone of it all. The whores of Kings are not typically cross-shared between the families. Amber belongs to Saint Cruz. Her fucking Raniero was a side job until it got personal with my offer and an unexpected bond developed quickly. So essentially, she is now a Cruz and Raniero whore, and that is making things quite messy.
The argument boils down to the most basic of primal masculine desire. You cannot have what is mine. Including my bitch. Cruz won’t be happy when he finds out his sweet baby girl has been riding on some Italian, and the Italian cannot think about what happens to Amber when he does. All of this coming to a head when there are missing shipments on the line only adds to the impending threat from external forces. Cruz will see Amber, too, as being stolen by the belligerent motherfucker downstairs.
Crates of weapons or not, guns will be drawn over pussy—the one crying behind this antique wooden relic of our past. We tend to think we have come so far in our advancement, technological and commercialism, but the truth is if one man sticks his dick in another man’s girl, shit gets ugly quick. Her glory hole becomes territorial and worth a savage, bloody war.
These are the things I do not think Sal understands yet.
Amber belongs to Cruz.
Iris belongs to Gennaro.
Jaid belongs to her father, Cristos.
Women are pawns, bartered, traded, and sold. These Kings have fought battles over them and made peace with them. Women can be the white flag of surrender or the declaration of war. The Dark Prince has no idea how deep these rituals go, but I do. I know.
And I know how bad it will be if Amber doesn’t play hostess for Cruz tonight. Because after he is done torturing her to the point where she confesses her crime,
he will mutilate her, and then he will come after the punk who tainted his holy ground. Spit his seed on another man’s sacred throne.
Yet, I insisted they do it. I’m responsible. This mess is on my hands, and I’ve put them both at risk.
You may wonder why I did it—pitting them against one another over a piece of ratchet ass like Amber.
And the answer is simple.
I want to play as well as the boys with their tools. I want the motherfucking throne. I want to be remembered not as a Diva amongst them all, but a King with a rightful seat beside them. Because I play a better game than them.
Forty-four crates of weapons were taken.
And how do I know?
Because I hired Pharm and his goons to do it for me. I used my brother, Cam, and made it all happen. Yes, I stole the guns from my own family.
And the network in the Lone Star State…
It doesn’t belong to Cristos anymore.
Because it belongs to me.
They say this is a man’s world—but by my last breath, they won’t be looking to play in the boy’s club anymore because I have been giving all the power for almost ten years to the girls. Grinding my fingers to the bone in researching, cutting deals, and making arrangements for a future to overturn the whole underground network. I’m not just scattering the pawns on the board; I’m tossing the entire thing upside down. Welcome to the reign of pink.
These bitches will be the new Kings, and they will sing my name in glorious praise when the only tool left in the middle of the board is—Sal Raniero and his band of merry gentlemen.
Cracking open the door, I whisper, “We need to talk.”
“Not right now, Kaci.”
“Yes, right-fucking-now,” I insist as I shut the door behind me. “This is important. I need you to listen closely. I’m running out of time.”
Vote Then Read: Volume II Page 106