Now would have been about the time she would have told a regular paying customer to leave the agreed upon amount on the dresser. Or, as was the case in the modern age, give her his credit card, which she would scan with a handy device on her phone. However, this client was fully gratis. All the free pussy a young mafia upstart could stomach and then some, and he thought that entitled him to something more. But kicking him out would mean she’d have to deal with Victor later, and it was because she was trying to figure out which thing would be worse that she let the guido stay.
She got out of bed, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, and put on her robe. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. Your clothes are on the floor here.”
The guido gave her a crooked grin, like she must have been joking, but the Madam only gazed at him, unsmiling, for a few seconds before he turned away with a frown. “Victor said you was a cold fish, but I didn’t think he meant you was a stone cold bitch.”
“Serves you right for underestimating your boss,” she said. She went into the bathroom to pee, leaving the door open. Protecting her possessions was more important than whether a swinging dick was uncomfortable with the sound of her piss hitting the water in the toilet bowl.
The guido continued to talk while she did her business. “Shit. Underestimate. Cousin Vicki don’t scare me,” he said. “He’s just a slow old man now.”
The Madam shook her head and wiped. This kid wasn’t going to last long. Victor would never be too old to cut off a back-talker’s balls, making him taste them before doing him the mercy of killing him, even if he was family. She’d seen him do so on more than one occasion. One time, he dangled the boss of a Bronx Russian drug syndicate off a helicopter over Manhattan to convince him to curry favor with that district’s Congressman. And those were just the more memorable moments. All a long time ago, sure, but Victor was still very spry. It seemed monsters lived in defiance of the aging process.
She hoped the guido would get dressed while she was in the bathroom, but after washing her hands and giving her face a splash in the sink, she came back out to find the Jersey wop bastard still lying flat out on the bed, leeching his fake tan onto her expensive linens. His cock was already looking a little more rigid. Irritation flamed in her belly. She hated young macho pricks.
“Don’t you have any other plans for today?” she asked, sitting down at her vanity table to pin up her hair. If he wouldn’t go quietly, she’d have to force the issue, and she hated having to do that. It often got messy.
“Nah. Figured I’d hang out here. Not like you got much else to do except fuck all day, right?”
Something in her snapped. It was the same part of her that had broken and mended so many times throughout the years it was now brittle and prone to shatter at a mere touch. Running this house had been somewhat responsible for that, but she’d been prone to it her whole life. Why couldn’t they just understand, at a single glance, not to fuck with her? Her hand slapped the little table hard enough to rattle the glass bottles of perfume sitting on it. That’s it. I tried to be nice. She flew across the room to the bed, eyes now bulging with rage, taking brief satisfaction at watching him shrink back against the headboard, his arrogant grin wilting along with his manhood. With movement so fluid even she couldn’t have tracked it, she pulled out one of her special hairpins, which was in reality a small stiletto blade she’d picked up from an artisan in Chinatown many years ago, and pressed the point into the base of his shaved testicles. It didn’t puncture the skin, but he yelped like it had. “What the fuck are you doing, you crazy bitch!”
“Don’t move, or your balls are going to be a couple of cocktail olives for my next martini.”
“You fuckin’ cunt. Cousin Vicki is gonna hear about this!”
“You can tell Victor whatever you like. He knows I have a business to run. I don’t fuck all day, and I don’t intend to start. Especially not with an orange guido prick like you. Do you get me?”
When he didn’t answer, she pressed the stiletto a little harder, and this time he screamed. A tiny trickle of blood dripped to the sheet, blooming like a flower. Red on white was always her favorite color combination.
“I said, do you get me? Or do you want a vasectomy right now? Lord knows I’d like to do my part to prevent you from spawning any offspring.”
“Yes! Yes, you crazy whore, yes! I get you!”
“Good. Now get the fuck out of here. And if I see you in this place again, I won’t be so gentle with my little blade.”
She withdrew the stiletto to the sound of his gasps. His hands immediately went to his sacks of goo.
“I’m bleeding, you bitch!”
“Relax. It’s just a prick.” She grinned at her own accidental joke.
He scrambled out of the bed, limping around desperately for his clothes. His feelings were more hurt than his testicles, but the Madam didn’t concern herself with bruised egos. Insolence wasn’t something she had to deal with very often, so she always went right for the soft and vulnerable parts. No sense in drawing things out. Victor would probably be a little irritated, but she could live with that. She’d dealt with much worse over the years.
She returned to her table and lit another cigarette. It was then she heard a little click behind her. In the mirror, she saw the gleaming metal of a switchblade. The guido’s hair was a crackly nest, his complexion an angry shade of dusk.
“How ’bout I cut you up too, bitch? Wanna see how it feels?”
The Madam took a drag off of her cigarette. If her pulse spiked even remotely at the sight of the blade, she didn’t notice. “Tell me something. You’re a cousin of Victor’s, right? Which side of the family?”
He gave her a bewildered frown. “I’m his Uncle Frankie’s grandson. What the fuck’s it to you, whore?”
“Ah, Uncle Frankie,” she said, turning around to face him. He could have plunged the knife into her exposed chest at any moment, but she wasn’t worried about that. Her weapon was bigger. It always was. “I loved Uncle Frankie. He gave the best Christmas presents when I was a girl.”
Already, he was lowering the blade.
“W-what?”
“Oh, Victor didn’t tell you? I’m his sister. But you know how huge Italian families can get. You and I are only a little bit related, but there’s nothing wrong with keeping it in the family, I always say.”
The switchblade fell out of the guido’s hand as realization dawned on his face. He looked like he wanted to be sick. “You . . . there’s something fuckin’ wrong with you. Up in your head!”
She placed her hand on her heart, feigning insult. “Aw, come on now, Cousin. You didn’t seem to mind it a little while ago. Doesn’t matter when it’s in the dark and you’re lonely and just looking for a hole to stick it in. How did you put it? ‘Oh yeah, oh yeah, best pussy I ever had, mmmmm . . . lemme fuck that pussy alllll night.’ ”
She started laughing and the guido turned and fled. The sound of his footsteps thundering down the stairs, punctuated by the surprised yells of the girls he ran into along the way, was like music to the Madam’s ears. Finally, she could be alone.
***
An hour later, she was showered and sitting in her office, waiting for Ramón and the money. Normally, the driver called from the road when he was on his way, but there had been no phone call, and it was about forty-five minutes past his usual arrival time. Too much was riding on this money for something to go wrong. Ballas was an odd and frightening client, but he paid so well it was worth the hassle of having to deal with his peculiarities, like his insistence on communicating only via writing and paying in cash. The last was particularly troublesome. It was a lot easier these days to launder data than actual paper, but a half-mill was a half-mill, and she needed it more than she’d ever needed anything in her life.
She was tired of sitting on the sidelines, being her brother’s little fly trap while he ran roughshod all over the city sinking their family deeper into the pit of irrelevance. Victor had been getting careless
for a long time. Killing before thinking. Letting his ego get ahead of his better judgment. The pinnacle of it had come with his refusal to back their longtime Congressman over some off-hand remark about not liking the food at Victor’s favorite restaurant. Because of that chunk of missing money, their horse lost the race to a guy whose number one priority was cracking down on dirty campaign money and organized crime. A real incorruptible white horse type. The Madam hadn’t thought such men existed anymore, but apparently they surfaced from time to time like rare birds once thought extinct.
Yes, it was time to put her dear brother out once and for all and do what their father wanted her to do for years before he died stinking and raving in his bed: take the crazy son of a bitch down before he ruined them all. Of course, it wasn’t customary for women to take the reins and she’d only been sixteen when Dante died, which allowed the older and decidedly more male Victor to assume the lead without question after the old man’s funeral, and he’d relegated her here a few years later, in this house of spunk to do the dirtiest of dirty work in total obscurity. She wasn’t even invited to most family functions, treated like the biological outcast she was. But that would soon be over, and the fat slobs on the board would have to accept her claim to her birthright and all that it entailed whether they wanted to or not. She’d convince them. Maybe not with a stiletto to their balls, but that option wasn’t out of the question.
Goddamn it, where the hell was that spic driver? He was running late, which was highly unusual for him. As soon as she saw him, she was going to grill his taco eating ass six ways from Sunday. Ramón had been a good old dog through the years, but even the best ones eventually outlived their usefulness. And if he decided to get fresh and make off with the money this time...
She tamped down that thought, fast. There was nothing to worry about. Even if Ramón did get stupid, he wouldn’t make it out of Jersey before someone in the Cassini network picked him up. “You’re just being a paranoid old whore,” she muttered to herself, getting up and going to the window overlooking the driveway. A few minutes later, the black Town Car pulled up to the house, parking in its usual spot. The Madam’s keen eyes noticed the road dust on the car’s normally sleek body. What kind of driving had he been doing?
She watched as Ramón got out of the car, her heart relaxing a little when she saw the customary black suitcase in his hand. Okay. Everything was okay. Except he continued on into the house instead of getting the girl out of the backseat. That was not okay. Not okay at all. The Madam turned away from the window and grabbed another cigarette from the case on her desk. Something to occupy her nerves until he got up here. She could already hear his heavy footsteps on the stairs, the rhythm matching the hot and steady beat of her heart.
Where was the fucking girl? Goddamn it!
After another shaky inhale of her expensive European cigarette, she heard him knock. “Get in here,” she said. She’d intended to start off coolly inquiring about Nina’s whereabouts, but she couldn’t hold the anger at bay. The stress of the morning sucked out all of her patience.
Ramón closed the door behind him. Peeling off his cap, he walked over and set the case in its usual spot. The Madam didn’t bother glancing at it.
“You’re missing something, Ramón.”
He raised his eyes to hers, and she was pleased to see the proper mixture of fear and deference in them. “Yes, Madam. I, um . . . Here, I’ll just show you this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper and handed it to the Madam.
She gave it a read, noting especially the smudged red lip print, and crumbled it up in a rage-filled fist. What sort of fucking nonsense was this? She wanted to stay there? The girl didn’t have the authority to make that kind of decision. And who the hell did Ballas think he was keeping her without prior authorization of a deal? That girl was her property, not his. He might be some wealthy weirdo, but she was in charge here.
“Those . . . those fucks!” She glanced back up at Ramón, who had taken a few steps back from the desk. “And what did you do? You just let him keep her?”
The driver fumbled for a moment. “Madam, I didn’t see her there. Didn’t even see him, not really. The note was . . . waiting for me with the money.”
“And you didn’t look for her? Just picked up the money and ran?”
Ramón shook his head. “I swear to you, I would’ve, but that house. Something ain’t right about it, Madam, or the person who lives in it. And I mean really not right. You have to believe me. Without a weapon or any sort of protection, I didn’t feel qualified to go on a rescue mission”
She looked at him for a moment, her cigarette a forgotten cylinder of ash in the ashtray. She plucked another one out of her case and lit it, this time feeling a bit calmer. He was telling the truth, at least partially. Of course, something wasn’t right about Ballas. She’d seen enough ruined girls come out of his house to know that. But this was the first time he’d ever turned into a thief, and if there was one thing she hated more than anything on this earth, it was a thief.
She grabbed the case and opened it. “How much is in here? Did you count it?”
“Yes. It’s the usual amount.”
There had been a slight pause before he answered. It was minute, noticeable only by someone trained in the art of deception. Or maybe her anger at this unexpected turn of events was making her see phantoms. Ramón wouldn’t be holding out on her. He wouldn’t be so stupid.
She relaxed in her high-backed leather seat. “Very well. This transaction isn’t complete by any stretch, though. Tonight, you’re going to go back up there and collect my property. I’ll even authorize the use of a weapon. If Nina is indisposed, I expect you to come back with a second case identical to this one. If that freak wants to keep what’s mine, he’s going to pay for it. Got it?”
Ramón nodded. “Yes, Madam.”
He turned to go, but she stopped him. “Actually, a slight correction. Take me with you. I think it’s high time I meet with Mr. Ballas face to face.”
Chapter 4
Nina Dances
I’m dead. Oh thank God I’m dead.
So this is what it felt like. After so many years of pondering the afterlife, she was now experiencing it, and it was wonderful. There was no pain, no sadness. The memory of her terrifying final moments felt distant and hazy.
But why was it so dark? She didn’t recall passing through any tunnels leading to a cleansing white light, like so many people who have had near-death experiences talk about. Maybe all that was just a hallucination or a collective fiction passed down through the ages. In death, it seemed there was no light.
Unless you’re in hell. You didn’t exactly lead a clean life, you know. You didn’t have a chance to repent for any of it.
No. She wouldn’t hear any of that noise. Not yet. This couldn’t be hell. She thought the lake of fire and salivating demons were a similar collective fiction shared among humans, but there had to be more to it than just this roaming darkness. She couldn’t even buy that it was purgatory.
“Hello?” she called out. Or attempted to call out. Her voice was a gravelly screech, and her throat momentarily flamed like embers in a cool night breeze. Then she recalled her screams, a long grating torrent of them. She had become the screams, and either those screams—or the terrible result of them—had followed her into the afterlife, or she wasn’t dead and she was just lying here, drugged and semiconscious in the den of a monster who had done so many horrible things to her.
Unspeakable things. The most horrible of unspeakable things. He’d even glued open her eyelids so she had to watch it happen, but they had come loose at some point, the only mercy in the whole ordeal. Terror and tears will weaken even the strongest adhesive.
Her lower lip began to tremble as little by little the truth of her situation filtered into her. The dank smell of the place, the rough feel of the cloth covering her eyes, the sound of the freak puppeteer that did this to her wheezing overhead in its web of rope and
string.
She tried to move, but her limbs were so much useless putty. At least she wasn’t tied up anymore, but her arms lay like nerveless meat at her sides. Maybe that was a good thing, because she couldn’t feel the rest of her body either. The mutilation. Nina thought of the club-like instrument sticking out of Hank Ballas’ pants—the corpse of Hank Ballas, her cruel mind interjected—with so many spikes sticking out of it like needles on a grotesque cactus, and how she’d wished for a quick death. The pain and terror and the goddamn iniquity of still being alive, after that endless torture from which at some point she’d retreated to the deepest most childlike corner of her mind, filled her with a rage and despair she’d never known in her twenty-two years.
A yawning chasm of madness awaited her, just over the edge of a very tempting cliff. If she just let herself fall, it could all be over. It sang her a song in dulcet tones, much like her mother’s voice when she had been young and pretty and sort of nice.
Fall, sweet Nina.
Come to me
You’ll never be alone here
I’ll give you sweets
No more pain. She’d never even have to truly wake up from this nightmare. Just fall straight into the comforting madness and wallow around in its soft, marshmallow goodness. Besides, would you really want to live through this? Those other girls checked out, just like Ramón said, and clearly that was for the best, because unlike those other girls, she was stuck here. Something had happened earlier, but she couldn’t remember what. A deal of some kind? A note to Ramón she’d been forced to write.
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