“Hey!” I shouted instead, and bolted down the street.
But when I reached the corner, he’d disappeared. I stood, holding his hat, under the spotlight of a streetlight. One part of my brain, the arty side of it, appreciated what a visually appealing image I must have made there. Shadows and light; a long-limbed silhouette; a lonely, deserted street.
Very noir. Like that little caricature I’d sketched of him.
Whyhad I told him I was an artist? I never told anyone about my art, not unless I knew them well, and even then, I kept most of my work private.
I’d go back to the Beartrap. Timmustknow his name. And maybe I could barter with the hat, leave a message with Tim setting up another meeting so I could return it—force the guy to come back and see me again.
Because I’d definitely gotten the impression that that kiss—that toe-curling, soul-shaking, breath-taking kiss—had been a goodbye.
My shoulders slump a little as I started the walk back to the bar. Hopefully Tim would still be there, so I could—
“It’s foolish to roam these mean streets all alone.”
The voice floated out of the black shadows to my left, making me jump, and I took another few steps back as a figure emerged from the dark doorway.
He was tall and wide-shouldered, dressed all in black—black pants, black shirt. Hair like black satin, smooth and shining under the yellow reflection of the streetlights, and the one eyebrow I could see clearly was a slash of dark ink over his onyx eye. The scent of his cologne engulfed me, heady and expensive.
“Pretty,” he said, almost to himself. “But foolish.” He took another step toward me, and only then did the light fall across his full face, revealing what had been hidden by shadows. A long, thick scar bisected his left eyebrow, darting savagely down toward his mouth, pulling his lip slightly askew in an almost-sneer.
He gave a fierce smile when he saw my reaction.
“Do I terrify?” he said lightly, rolling the R’s on the word with relish. He reached out a hand and I was so surprised—so scared—that I stayed rooted to the spot as he traced a fingertip down my face, echoing the scar on his own. “You should be careful, pretty boy. You follow around a man like that—” he jerked his head down the street, the way my hot stranger had gone “—you’ll end up with a face like mine.”
I pulled my face back from his touch and put another few steps between us. “What the hell is your problem?” I demanded with much more strength than I felt, and then I turned and I ran like hell back toward the Beartrap.
“Run fast, pretty boy,” the amused voice carried after me. “Run fast and far away.”
CHAPTER5
JACK
The first thingon my mind when I woke, midafternoon the next day, was that sweet-mouthed temptation in the Beartrap. The one who’d bought me a drink, kept me talking all night, acting like he wantedmewhen he could’ve had his pick of any man in that bar.
Trouble.
Was he crazy, naive, or just desperate? That was something I chewed over along with a bowl of stale Froot Loops as a late lunch. The milk had gone sour, so I ate it dry. I needed to do a grocery run, at least for basics.
Why had Ikissedhim like that?
Shaving seemed too much of a task, so I left it. Legs, my Capo, wouldn’t like it, but I’d never been in the business of making him smile. The run last night had been one of those low-level errands that Legs liked to give me just to remind me where I was in the food chain these days. “You spend a little time with the big shots, and you think you’re hot shit, huh, Johnny?” he’d spit at me some days. “You need to learn a little humility.”
His problem, which he’d never admit to, was that he knew I was better than him. I was better than all of my current crew, and they all knew it, too, but the Boss, thebigBoss, Ciro Castellani, wanted me to learn my lesson, so there I stayed.
But I missed my old job, where I’d had the respect and trust of the higher-ups. Even in Vegas, after my old man was taken out and I’d been sent to live with my extended family of hustlers, forgers, and grifters—I’d never felt so low as I did working under Legs Liggari. Never gotten so regularly pissed off.
But I couldn’t afford to be angry in my current position.
I had to be smart. Cool. Observant. I had to let the shit roll off my back, take my kicks in the gut, and work my way up again. There was no way out of the Family, but there were sure as hell better ways to live within it.
Stay smart, I reminded myself.Stay smart, stay useful, and be so good they can’t ignore you.I’d read that on a motivational sticker once, and it had stuck with me. And as it happened, I’d beenverygood at my previous profession. Quiet, fast, clean. Lethal.
Yeah, I’d been good at it.
These days I kept my head down and followed orders like a good little soldier—or tried to, anyway.
As I checked a few news sites and waited for the day to start, I couldn’t help revisiting the previous night, allowing myself a fantasy. That I’d taken that troublemaker into the bathroom, pushed him into a stall and kissed him deeply, tasted that mouth again, gotten him down on his knees, or hell, just fucked him fast and dirty over the toilet.
