The next timeI thought to look around my surroundings, we were almost the only two left in the bar, except for a group of noisy drunks in the corner, singing the latest Taylor Swift song. “Well, shit,” I said, breaking off a long, rambling monologue. “We should get out of here, let the poor guy close up.”
“Timmy doesn’t mind how late we stay,” the guy—whose name Istilldid not know—said dismissively. “Besides, I promised him a blow job if he’d stay open until I convinced you to come home with me.”
I did a slow double take. I hadn’t drunk anything but water, but I was the kind of tired that makes you feel inebriated, and I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him right.
“That was a joke,” he said after a beat. “About blowing the bartender, anyway. But if you’d like to come home with me, that part wasn’t a joke.”
Under the table, his foot had been stroking against my calf this whole time. Now I felt it climb higher, nudging my knees apart, and smoothing down my thigh.
His toes wriggled right into my crotch. Somehow he’d shed his shoe, and his toes were massaging me.
“Uh,” I said. My mind was a jumbled-up puzzle. There was a picture emerging here, one that I was pretty sure I’d like if I could make sense of it, but I couldn’t quite see how the pieces would fit together yet. My dick had gone on ahead of my brain, already filling out in my pants under the probing of his toes.
“Anyway,” he went on quickly, as his foot pulled back, “you were saying? About your family?” He grabbed my hat and planted it on his head, watching me with a gleam in his eye.
Shifting on the seat, I willed my hard-on away. I tried to act casual, like he hadn’t just been giving me an over-the-clothes goddamn foot job, and ran a hand through my hair. I always felt a little exposed without my hat, even inside, where I always took it off.
Manners were important in my line of work, right up until you were pushing a knife into someone’s trachea.
“Yeah,” I said. “My, uh. My Family.”
About a half hour ago, he’d asked me about my family, and I’d…well, not told him anything I shouldn’t have, but I’d bitched about myFamily, without even meaning to.
Either I was getting stupider the older I got, or this man in front of me had ways and means about him like no one else in this city.
He was dangerous. Even if he wasn’t bait, he was dangerous.
“Why exactly do they hate you so much?” he went on, frowning. “You never told me that part.”
“It’s a long and boring story,” I lied. The story was short and dramatic. It was just too much for a first meeting.
I had to catch myself again. I was sure by now that the guy opposite me was just what he appeared to be: a bored twenty-something looking for a hookup. But whatever was going on between us, it definitely wasn’t a first meeting.
It was a one-off evening of conversation with a good-looking guy who, for reasons unknown, was throwing himself at me in between getting me to spill my thoughts and feelings.
I hadn’t even realized Ihadthoughts and feelings.
Time had passed without me noticing, and all I’d thought about during those lost hours was the way he smiled, the way he listened to me with genuine interest, the way he laughed at my jokes, his hands caressing that second and now third Hollywood Harlot cocktail, playing with the straw, twisting around the glass as the condensation dripped over his fingers…
“How aboutyourfamily?” I asked, deciding it was time to flip the interrogation.
“Myfamily?” He flicked the water drops off his fingers. “They’re boring. I mean, we all hate each other too, of course, but we’re polite about it and we keep out of each other’s way. So tell me, if your family hates you so much, why do you still hang around them?”
It was a question I often asked myself, in slightly different words. Not long ago, I’d had the opportunity to leave them all behind, those strange and twisted Castellanis. I could’ve moved to New York, joined up as an associate with a new crew, maybe even made my way into a new Family.
But I’d made oaths to the Castellanis, and more than that—I owed them. I owed mylifeto them, to the Boss. Don Ciro Castellani had gone out of his way to offer me protection against another powerful Mob Boss. Without that protection, I would have been dead ten years back.
And then there was Sandro Castellani—the Boss’s oldest son—and the things I owed to him.
“I guess I feel to blame for some of that hate that gets thrown around,” I said slowly. “I’ve made some mistakes that I need to make up for. Besides, you can’t just walk away from Family.”
He pulled a face. “Loyalty, huh?”
“Loyalty,” I agreed. It was my curse. Loyalty to the wrong kind of people. But it was time to take responsibility for my choices—and my mistakes. I missed being the Boss’s go-to problem solver. I missed the thrill of the hunt, the satisfaction of a job well done, of one less asshole running around LA. But every day I swallowed down my pride, obeyed orders, and kept my killer instincts on a tight rein as I undertook my penance.
I was the best damn hitman in the state, after all; the Boss couldn’t afford to keep me in the mud for too much longer.
“You know how it is with Family,” I went on with a shrug now. “Some things you do for loyalty, some things you do for love.”
