LEVI
Smoke hung thick like a fog in the room, and I couldn’t decide which was worse, how hard it was to see or how hard it was to breathe. I’d lost track of who was smoking what, but I knew there were a few cigarettes, a couple of cigars, at least one blunt, and a handful of vapes as well. The combined scent was acrid and sickeningly sweet, with a hint of that oh-so-lovely, unwanted weed smell. Conversation was low but steady, but no one called across the room to someone they knew. There were no rules or decorum before the meeting started, but everyone sensed how serious and potentially dangerous it would be.
No amount of smoke could cover up the smell of sweat in the air. Specifically, the sour smell that set other human beings on edge without a word being exchanged. It was the smell of fear, and there were too many people in the room to identify its source. It seemed I was not going to be blessed with nose-blindness tonight because I could smell the fear with every inhale.
“Another?” asked a soft voice to my left, and I flashed a smile at the woman. She had ‘new’ written all over her face in the way she was trying to look around the room, but not meeting anyone’s gaze.
“Hmm.” I thought about it carefully, and with a curl of my lip, I handed my empty glass to her. “I think a soda water with lime will do me just fine, thank you.”
“Sure,” she said, flashing another nervous smile before scuttling off, her shoulders hunched and her head a little too low.
“Looks like someone’s got a crush,” Leonard muttered beside me, elbowing me with a meaty arm. “Why do you always get the fresh meat?”
“I’m told it helps to have good looks and a personality that doesn’t make women cover their drinks every time they’re around you,” I told him dryly, wishing there had been anywhere else to sit. I had shown up later than most of the people here, and like beggars, latecomers couldn’t be choosers. “The first I can’t help you with, though I’m sure we could find you a good plastic surgeon...and dietician, though I wouldn’t hope for miracles.”
Leonard’s ‘men’s club’ smile dried up, as those who heard me chuckled at his expense. “You always gotta have something smart to say, Levi, don’t ya?”
“That’s not smart, Leonard, that’s facts,” I said, turning as much as I could in the chair to face away from him, hoping he took the hint.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said sourly. “Can’t think why ya might be so cocky all the time.”
“That’s me, the height and definition of nepotism,” I said, turning my head as the woman came back with my water. She gave a wobbly smile and bowed her head before retreating. I took a sip of my drink to make sure the overenthusiastic bartender didn’t decide to throw in vodka ‘just in case.’ I hated coming to these meetings with a fuzzy head. The first drink was strong enough to take the edge off the day; I didn’t want to cloud my judgment. I wasn’t the only one in the room taking pains notto drink too much, and they were the same ones avoiding the joints being passed at some tables.
It wasn’t my head on the chopping block; I knew that much, but it was a good idea to keep it on straight when the boss of all bosses was showing up to handle things personally. You never knew when you were going to be called on to answer a question or for a failure you thought had been ignored or forgotten. His memory was almost as sharp as his tongue, and his reach on the west coast was as respected as it was feared.
But you’ve never really been afraid of him...have you? I heard my mother whisper in the back of my head.
It wasn’t my actual mother, of course; she was long dead and buried, and no amount of hoping and wishing was going to change that. It was just a facsimile of her that I’d more or less accidentally created over the years. For those times when I was lost and adrift, wishing she was there for me, to help and guide me. All I had left was her memory to remember the way she scoffed at some of my morbid ideas, laughed at my stupid jokes, and her no-nonsense approach to life. I would summon that memory in my head and try to think of what she would say to me.
I’d gotten so good at it that it felt like her facsimile had taken on a life of its own. I wasn’t sure if you could trick yourself into a functional sort of schizophrenia, but it certainly seemed I had managed on some level. Not that it really bothered me; a fake constructed from my memories of her and my interpretation of her behavior was still better than having nothing of her at all, and sometimes that voice made a decent point here and there.
Here and there?she piped up wryly, and I could picture the way she puckered her lips disapprovingly, and the way her thin brows quirked at an odd angle.You might be good at planning, but you’ve never been very good at making good decisions for yourself.
An honest critique from her memory, or a self-criticism disguised in a loved one’s voice?
Both and neither?
Leonard was staring at me, I could sense it, and not to mention seeing his head flicking in my direction from the corner of my eyes. He clearly had something else to say, but I wasn’t going to look at him to invite him to share whatever idiotic thought was bouncing around in his empty skull.
“So,” he began when I continued to ignore him, because clearly he didn’t need an invitation to keep talking. “I was gonna ask if you were tryin’ to get friendly with the new staff. But I almost forgot...you don’t swing that way.”
“I can’t help but wonder what level of productivity you could achieve if you were focused on your job instead of the love lives of everyone else. Then again, considering the state of your love life, I suspect that trying to keep up with other people’s is a good distraction,” I said without glancing at him again.
“Ain’t you just funny?” he asked, and I didn’t need to look at him to imagine the ugly sneer on his already ugly face.
Personally, I would have called my insult a barely veiled attempt to piss him off and convince him to leave me alone. Which had clearly worked, but I was amused that it was as easy as that to convince him to leave me be. Considering anyone within earshot had been covertly paying attention to the conversation, I was amused to watch everyone quickly lose interest. Which was good as far as I was concerned, the fewer people stuck their noses into my business, the better.
It was an open secret that I only slept and dated men, and I preferred it to stay that way. The modern era had brought many changes, even to an established and rather traditional group like the Marelli Family. The Family could call themselves whateverthey wanted, but at the end of the day, we were a crime family, and an exceptionally well-established and prosperous one at that.
Change didn’t come easily to well-entrenched groups who lived outside the law. Change was inevitable, but it came slowly and not without cost. I was allowed to live my ‘lifestyle’ in The Family so long as I was smart about it, which meant doing it quietly and not rubbing any noses in what I was ‘getting away’ with. Everyone knew, of course, that was the ‘open’ part of the secret. Still, Leonard was a bigger idiot than I thought if he believed I was going to confess my love life details in a room full of the movers and shakers within The Family.
If someone were to ask me if I ever got tired of living a life filled with as much secrecy and hiding as there was violence and careful planning around the law, I would lie to their face with a smile and say no. The truth was, life was exhausting and not just because I had to be wary of how gay I was in public, but everything else. I’d been dealing with that life pretty much every day since I was about twelve. My integration into The Family had been slow, careful, and meticulous. That had been due to me; I had tried hard to resist getting pulled into that world, but in the end, my fall had been inevitable, and now, twenty years later, I was entrenched to the point that trying to look for a way out meant climbing for ages and probably a bullet waiting for me when I reached the exit.
In my experience, you didn’t leave that life unless you were in a body bag or handcuffs.
The murmuring in the room began to peter out, and I felt the energy thin as I heard a soft conversation on the other side of the double doors. I recognized one of the low grumbles and, withholding a sigh, I pulled out my phone and looked at thefront-facing camera. A moment was all I needed to make sure I hadn’t completely fallen apart in my rush to get here on time.
I only needed a glance to confirm that my clothes were perfect, a good suit, but nothing that was going to draw attention. My mother’s green eyes stared back at me for a moment, but the black hair that I letcarefullyfall onto my forehead had come from my father. The dark stubble on my face was carefully groomed, but not a single hair was overgrown or out of place. I took after my mother’s side mostly, with a dash of my father thrown in for good measure. Which was how I ended up with broad shoulders, while the rest of me was narrow; even my face was narrow, which was where the stubble came in, to add a little volume.
