by Ana Calin
She had a point, so I called Tony and invited him to join our club-group, which he agreed to just as Hector had predicted. My heart was still heavy, though. Meanwhile, my best friend had to deal with a nuisance of her own.
“You’re not coming, Cora, and period,” Leona decreed in her cell phone as she emerged from the bathroom, towel-drying her hair with her other hand. She dropped on the couch next to me, swinging her legs onto the coffee table and rolling her eyes to express how much her sister aggravated her. The fluffy white bathrobe slipped off her legs, revealing her toned, olive-skinned thighs.
“I’m the older one, you don’t get to tell me what to do.” The cell was close enough for me to hear Cora’s annoyed voice. How had she gotten wind of the planned club night?
“Yeah, but I’m the smarter one.” Leona grinned as if her sister were right in front of her. “Plus, George’s best friend is coming, too. You know, the psycho-nerd he tried to hook you up with? You swore you’d never wanted to see him again.”
I thought of the guy’s face and pretended to shudder. With his thick-framed glasses and slicked back hair, he did resemble someone who impaled rats in the basement for kicks.
“Yes, but after all this abstinence I’m not picky anymore,” Cora said. “Come on, Leo, cut me some slack here. It’s been forever since the divorce, and I’m itching to get out. Not to mention it’s the first time I’ll have a baby-sitter in months.”
“You’re itching, huh?” Leona flashed a grin. She got up, went out of the room, and returned with an apple, the cell between her ear and her shoulder.
She ended the call with, “Fine, I’ll see you on Saturday then,” and tossed the phone on the table before she dipped into the cushioned sofa by my side. I sat up, staring hard at her.
“What the hell are you doing?” I admonished. “Do you remember why we’re going to the Marquette on Saturday? We’ll be there to stop a massacre, for Christ’s sakes, you can’t expose your sister to something like that. What if something goes wrong?”
“Relax,” Leona said as she grabbed the remote and took a bite of the apple. “She’ll be gone with the psycho-nerd before you know it,” she said with her mouth full. “And there isn’t going to be any massacre. Novac won’t let it happen with you there, not in a million years.”
“I wish I were as certain as you,” I mumbled, more to myself than to her.
The door opened, and George walked in, juggling bags in one hand and a coffee tray in the other.
“Hey ladies, what are you talking about?”
Leona smiled. “Nothing, just girl stuff. You look like you’re feeling better.”
***
Damian Novac is a cold-blooded murderer, I repeated to myself on Saturday evening after a bath, tapping my forehead against the bathroom wall. The guilt was eating me alive. I would refrain from flirting too much with Tony in order to keep him safe. Yes, that was the answer. That way, Damian wouldn’t harm him, but I’d still be there to break up his little party.
“Alice!”
Leona’s rapping knuckles on the bathroom door pulled me from my churning thoughts. With only a towel around me, I hesitated but cracked the door and let her slip inside.
“What are you doing in here?” she inquired, looking at me from head to toe in horror. “You’ve been in here forever, and you’re still not ready?”
“I- I don’t know where to start,” I mumbled.
A grin slowly stretched over her face. “Has that ever been a problem since you met me?”
In a matter of minutes she’d sent George with his psycho-looking friend to pick up Cora, and began primping me.
Choosing the right outfit was the hardest task. She eventually held up and inspected two hangers with outfits she’d put together. After tedious try-ons she decreed that the black lace corset had won.
“It’s perfect,” she exclaimed. “Provocative yet refined, especially if combined with these black sheen pants.” She held them up as if presenting them on the shopping network.
I stepped into the pants. They were tight, and the hem stopping a few inches from my ankles.
“Fabulous. The corset highlights your waist, and I don’t even have to squeeze you into it,” Leona said as she tied the cords along my back. Then she took a few steps back to watch me like an eccentric fashion designer with a glass of sparkling wine in her hand. Taking a sip, she swirled her finger in the air to let me know she wanted me to spin around.
“I love it,” she said as I faced her again.
“I don’t deserve you,” I murmured. Her chocolate eyes met mine, the gaze of a devoted sister.
“I don’t do things for undeserving people, Alice. You’re the worthiest person I’ve ever met.”
I felt awkward in sentimental moments, so I broke away and went in search of my big silver earrings to play off the silver stilettos. I wasn’t Heidi Klum on the catwalk, but I kept my balance as long as my steps were narrow and slow.
Since I couldn’t be of much help to Leona in matters of fashion, I placed my belongings at her disposal—most of which we’d bought together over the years anyway—and straightened her hair.
The phone rang and my stomach instantly clenched. I knew it was George–he was on his way. Leona grabbed my hand. Against hers, it felt clammy.
“Are you all right?” she inquired. I stared nervously at her reflection in the mirror. She looked so confident in her white dress with her one olive-skinned shoulder bare, and endless toned legs. I pulled my shoulders back and tried to mimic her stance. The stilettos made me look tall and the makeup robust and yet somehow I felt even more fragile.
“No, Leona. I’m not.” I turned to look her in the eyes so fast, that I nearly fell off the high heels. “I’m terrified.”
“No, no, no, don’t you dare cry now.” Leona planted small slaps on my face. “Now, you listen to me. You’ll pull this through, okay? You’ll take it step by step. It’s not a big deal.”
“No big deal? Damian threatened to crush any guy who as much as holds my hand. His words.”
“Then make sure Tony doesn’t hold your hand. You don’t have to give him hope, Alice, or kiss him, or make it look like you have something going with each other. Your goal is simply to get Novac out of there, and it’s not even a must. Actually, all you have to do is be there, and the problem’s solved – Novac will cancel his plan, and no one will get hurt.”
Leona’s cell rang three times, the signal that George and Cora already waited in the psycho friend’s car.
Spring had officially started with the first days of March, but this was a still winter-crisp night with glassy ice under a thin layer of snow, and a large moon. Shivering in our flimsy clothes and silly jackets, Leona and I held on tightly to each other until we reached the Skoda on teetering heels. George sat in the passenger seat, while Leona and I joined her sister in the back.
“Tony said he’d meet us there,” I told them after a warm hug from Cora – the curvy brunette with the stylish bob and overflowing cleavage.
“How’re the kids?” I inquired, avoiding the bespectacled nerd’s ogling in the rear-view mirror.
“Oh, fabulous,” Cora replied. And from there an avalanche of stories about the little ones followed, as I’d expected, allowing me the comfort of merely asking questions from the background every now and then.
We couldn’t park anywhere in front of the club, since the narrow street was already packed. Music drummed through the open club door, two inflated and intimidating guys in black jackets stood at the entrance.
We parked a few streets up and hurried to join the line. At last immersed in the mass of bodies and loud voices, it got so warm that I could take my jacket off.
As we finally made it past the two bouncers, my heart shrank again – this was the place where my dad had been seeing Svetlana Slavic. The thought was as harsh as the cigarette smoke that polluted the club, and as dizzying as the sweaty dancing bodies. Then our purpose here solidified in my mind. We had to hustle our w
ay through the crowd to a table with a “Booked” sign on it, surrounded by white couches complying with the style the big-bellied new money of our town preferred. As soon as Cora, George and the nerd sat down, the waitress brought a bottle of whiskey and six Red Bulls, all unordered. After explaining something to Cora, George and the bespectacled nerd, she set them on our table. Leona and I threw our jackets and handbags on the couch, but remained standing.
“Where’s Tony?” she yelled over the deafening beat.
I shrugged, looking around. “Must be already here somewhere,” I yelled back when I failed to see him among the people and lasers.
I couldn’t keep my eyes from sweeping along the blurred booths on the first floor, hidden behind fake arches and heavy curtains. I wondered which one it had been. The private little space where Dad had watched the temptress dance with sleazy eyes.
But that stream of thought came to a snap the second my eyes crossed over Damian Novac’s face. I blinked fast to make sure I saw right, surprised at his springing into presence out of nowhere. Like an assassin from the white steam spewing out of the club gadgets just a few dancers away.
He wore dark jeans and a t-shirt, but he still stood out like a god. The t-shirt fell just right on his body without going tasteless-tight, and the jeans did the same with his powerful legs, while his face was so much more handsome than the others that it was ostentatious. With his sculpted barbarian features and raven mane he was irresistible, and his eyes had fixed on me.
The memory of his kiss charged my senses. The touch of his lips—stone-hard, and yet somehow soft and warm. It couldn’t be, he couldn’t be so cruel as to really have planned to murder all of these people tonight.
A yell made me turn briskly – “There you are,” in a scratchy male voice somewhere in my immediate proximity.
Tony stood so close that my nose hit his as I turned my head. As soon as my eyes fell on his fluffy-cheeked face, a feeling of guilt overtook me for my brainless, base attraction to the Executioner, as if I’d just woken up from a drug-induced trance. He’s a cold-blooded killer!
“Yeah, here,” I replied.
“I already ordered, there’s whiskey and energy drinks,” Tony said, gesturing toward the table where everybody else sat, already enjoying the treat the waitress had brought from the start.
“Yeah, tonight will be something,” I said and lifted a glass of whiskey as if for a toast, then took a gulp that burned down to my guts. I hadn’t eaten anything but some bread with marmalade in the morning, so the sensation of wobbliness after the whiskey only went up a notch with a mouthful of Red Bull.
Just a bit later I felt more apt to play pretense that I enjoyed Tony’s presence. I tried a cheap joke about his wearing a dress shirt and slacks even at a club, but I found him deaf to that, hostile eyes aside to the spot where I’d seen Damian Novac.
He still stood there, not even minding Tony, but scowling green crystal daggers at me.
“I see you brought company,” Tony grunted.
“I didn’t know he’d be here,” I hurried with the lie, not wanting Tony to think I’d invited him only to take revenge for matters of the past. “This was supposed to be a night out with friends.”
“You mean this is something like girls’ night for you and boys’ night for your boyfriend?”
“I mean our gangs don’t really get along. So we decided on this. I didn’t know they’d come to the same club.”
There. Tony seemed to buy it and take a bit of distance as well. He obviously hated what he heard, but it kept him from touching me in any way that could raise Damian’s suspicion and his wrath – or so I thought.
Damian soon disappeared from the spot we’d seen him stand and, no matter how desperately I glanced around for him, after two dances with Tony – he asked after Damian vanished – I still hadn’t managed to spot him. I grew desperate.
My eyes darted around as Tony squeezed me to his chest, his shirt damp on the modest swell of my breasts, his smell mixed with cologne irritating my nostrils. To top the whole thing my feet virtually bled in the shoes that felt like iron.
Then, just as I began to lose hope, I saw him again. And again my heart reacted with a jump. He glided among the dancers on the first floor gallery, but within a few moments he disappeared behind a curtain into a booth.
I worked my way up there, limping in the damned shoes and leaning either to the balustrade where the crowd permitted, or to the columns that guarded the entrances to the booths. I kept my eyes on the kissing couple that marked the alcove – he a tall, skinny guy, and she a fiery redhead. The club was circular, so keeping track of the right booth posed a challenge.
I’d never seen the booths from so close before, never lent them any attention, actually. Even though they seemed vulnerable from the outside, since anyone could brush the curtains aside and walk in, I could see a back in a suit through the crack between the drapes shielding the booth Damian had entered. A guard or something.
Another yell in my ear accompanied by spittle startled me as I tried to peek by the guy. “They must have a lot of money, the people who rent these things.”
Tony again. He must’ve followed me. And judging by that familiar sparkle in his eyes, he thought we had our own privacy up here, hidden behind one of the wide arch columns that separated the booth entrance from the gallery. A pry-proof spot. Tony stood too close, his sweaty, fluffy hand curling around my arm. I jerked out of his clasp, my back hitting the column as I retreated.
“What are you doing?” I warned, but it must’ve come across to him only as mouthing. The music thumped deafeningly. He trapped me against the column, his small eyes sparkling with expectation. He bent to my ear.
“Does it turn you on? Having your way with another behind his back?”
“You’re drunk.” I pushed him, my hands sinking in his cushion-like body, but he was surprisingly resilient despite the swaying.
“Then why did you get me here tonight?”
“I just want to be friends, Tony.”
“Come on, Alice. After everything we shared, we can only be enemies or lovers. You know that. I know that. You want more.” His mouth almost touched mine. He stunk grossly of alcohol. I tilted my head aside to get out of the way of his, and brought my own lips to his ear, gripping his upper arms to signal that he should stop.
“Why on Earth would I want you,” I said, already anticipating the pleasure his expression would give me. “When I have him.”
And then I faced Tony again, unable to control a grin and the satisfaction I’d unconsciously desired for so long. He stared at me, forehead creased as if struggling to understand my words.
A little drunk, I relished the look on his face, that delightful mix of an offended ego and genuinely hurt feelings. I knew that part of me would take the chance to feel guilty just some hours from now, when my spinning head would settle again, or when my throbbing eyes would open to daylight.
But then there was a small falter in his eyes. I noticed it, since my gaze was fixed on his. He glanced to the side a few times and then settled on whatever he saw, as if the sight was not only unexpected, but held particular relevance. I turned to it.
Damian had reemerged from the booth, bright green eyes darting from Tony to me. I barely got to blink until Tony grabbed the sides of my face, and his lips covered mine. His tongue broke into my mouth like a drunken mollusk. I thought I’d throw up instantly, but something yanked Tony away with such force that my teeth raked his tongue.
The first thing I did was spit out the jelly-like remains of liquor and saliva, coughing and wanting to puke. The second I looked up again I panicked. Damian had grabbed Tony by his throat and pinned him to the wall.
My eyes dropped to the fist that clenched by his side. The muscles in his arm flexed up to the sleeve of his t-shirt, his knuckles protruding like stone bolts ready to smash a skull. I had a flash of him lifting the oak counter at Café d’Art with just two fingers, and one of the train wobbling on the frosty trac
ks in the mountains, set in motion by other creatures of his kind. And with those flashes reality stripped naked – a single blow from Damian Novac could kill Tony.
Chapter Sixteen
I clung to Damian’s arm with both of mine, but he still moved with ease, as if my weight counted for as much as a feather.
“I can explain,” I yelled as I jumped up to reach his ear and make myself heard over the music. “This is my fault!”
But Damian’s eyes were ice cold, and his fist already underway toward Tony’s face.
“My fault!” I screamed from the top of my lungs.
I watched in horror as his fist changed trajectory by just a few inches, and slammed like a hammer into the wall by Tony’s scrunched-eyed head. The blow was so hard that crumbles of plaster dribbled to the floor.
I still stared with an open mouth at the white cracks in the wall as Damian’s hand tightened like a wrench above my elbow and pulled me after him along the gallery, making way through the crowd.
I turned around, hoping to catch a glimpse of poor Tony to make sure he was all right. And as soon as I spotted his face that resembled that of a pig who’d just escaped slaughter, I also glimpsed something else between parted curtains. A big, bald man in a suit, with an intimidating frown. His body made the shape of an X-cross as he held the curtains apart with his hands, inspecting the immediate vicinity of the booth, surely having heard the impact of Damian’s punch in the wall. Yet the most striking thing about this snapshot was another.
Visible under the guard’s armpit was a man sitting on a leather sofa the color of brandy. A man dressed in what looked like an expensive suit, or maybe it was just the elegance about him that gave the impression of filthy-rich. He looked refined, had white hair, other particularities unclear, but one thing was certain – he was as stunningly handsome as Damian Novac and Nathaniel Sinclair. A man of their league. A man of their “species”, gazing straight in my direction, a glass of liquor that looked like scotch in his hand.