“What?” I said, my voice reflecting the panic in my chest.
After my accident, I was probably too careful of a driver, if there ever was such a thing, but the tone of her voice scared me. It made me wonder if I’d run over an old lady and hadn’t noticed. My thoughts were on Aniello.
“You can’t look, but it’s Warren Dalton. Your boy’s dad. Breaking news,” she said in a formal newscaster voice. “Warren Dalton, senator, has been caught with his hand in a forbidden peach tree. Along with two unnamed, unidentifiable officials.”
“Stop being funny!”
“All right! There’s footage of him at a strip joint. He’s fucking kinky. I’m talking feathers-still-on-a-chicken kinky. The other two are high-ranking officials, the news thinks, but they can’t confirm who sources say they are. The figures are too blurred out. By morning, I don’t think there’s going to be a news outlet this is not going to be on. These pictures are bad. B-A-D.” She spelled the word. “I bet they take these down, but there’s still going to be a scandal. Old Warren should have kept his kink at home, behind closed doors where it belongs. You can’t get away with shit like this now, not with all of the technology.”
I blew out a heavy breath, and she laughed.
“What?” I said, wanting to look but refusing to. Driving in New York wasn’t for the faint of heart. I was constantly getting honked at, not to mention all the rude hand gestures that Cilla kept returning. She got off on other people’s anger.
“And people say romance is dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, your man did this for you. If you can’t smell Assanti behind this, then you need to get your sniffer checked. The strip joint. That was the business he went to take care of. The place they mention is different, but it’s probably owned by the same person. Both business names end inbutt.”
She started reading the article to me, and I squeezed the steering wheel a little tighter.
Aniello was behind it, but I wasn’t sure how romantic it was. Not when I could feel the fire coming from Desolation, probably turning every rose in the Hamartia Garden to ash.
17
Rosalia
Iwasn’t sure what to expect the next night at Club D, but the small iota of hope I held for smoke and embers was squashed when I pulled up to the gates and the place was not engulfed.
I’d imagined it up in flames, the way the paper in Aniello’s hand had burned when he’d been in the tub, reminiscing about the oath he’d taken.
I’d taken an oath, too, and it tasted bitter on my tongue. As if my heart had already set it on fire, and ash had stained every decision I’d ever made in the color of regret.
It was hard to imagine not taking the oath, though, because if I would have moved on, I would have never met Aniello. He was the one decision in my life my heart refused to regret.
A bright light hit my tinted window, and I narrowed my eyes at it. The place wasn’t burning, but it was full of media hovering outside of the gates. Which told me something important: either Warren Dalton had taken a trip to have a talk with Big Bismo, or his son had. My bet was on Ben.
He might have liked me, probably found me attractive enough to marry, but that was where the interest ended. He wanted me only because he knew Aniello refused to let anyone else have me. Which meant that I meant something to Aniello, and that was as dangerous as playing with fire close to a source of gas.
In this life, there was a wide chasm between business and personal matters. When a grievance became personal, it went beyondboom,bam, job done. It became a lethal game. Instead of just killing the enemy, what he valued the most was ripped away.
Death was final. Suffering lived as long as the enemy did.
Maybe the fire didn’t exist outside, but the place was on high alert, as if the powers that be felt the heat rising on the inside, and it ran through each girl as if one massive vein connected them all.
The powers that be hated media exposure.Anyexposure.
We, the workers, were never given specifics. We didn’t know why certain girls left, or why some members disappeared without a trace, but there were always logical theories. Some of the girls got hooked on drugs. Some of them started dating regular citizens Club D didn’t approve of—and continued after being warned. Or maybe the rules became too stringent, and they wanted out.
The members? The business of the clientele spoke for itself. It had a high turnover rate.
So even though the girls probably didn’t have specifics about what was going on with Warren Dalton, the darker than usual mood reflected what they sensed. Something was off.
As usual, they gave me the cold shoulder, but I had no clue if it had to do with what was going on or just the usual.
Big Bismo caught me on my way out of the locker room. He grabbed me by the arm, hard, and started pulling me in the direction of his office.
“Where the fuck were you?”
