Dante snagged a joint from an ashtray on the table and offered it to Paolo.
Paolo waved it away. As tempting as it was to take the edge off the agitation scraping his insides, he needed a clear head. “I want to talk to you about Luis.”
“Of course you do. What’s the problem? Is he not washing your dishes well enough?”
“Luis is a good worker.”
“I know that. He used to work for me.”
“Are you trying to get him to work for you again?”
Dante lit up and blew smoke in Paolo’s face. “Why would you say that?”
Because he’s out there somewhere losing his fucking mind, when he should be safe at home with me.“Because he’s... distracted. And your visit the other week freaked him out. Why did you come?”
“Not a crime to visit your baby brother at work, is it?”
“No, but if you were that fussed, you’d have showed up months ago.”
“If you think that, then you don’t know Luis at all. He didn’t want to see me when he first got out. Otherwise, you’d have seen my face at the start.”
“Why did I see your face at all? Why can’t you just leave him alone?”
“Is that what he said to you? That he wants me to leave him alone?”
Sensing a trap, Paolo went with the truth. “He hasn’t said anything to me.”
“So why are you so sure I’m the problem? My brother’s a complicated person, man. Dude is never happy unless he’s fucking miserable.”
“Maybe you’ve never given him the chance to be anything else.”
“Expert on my brother, are you?”
He had Paolo there. The only masterclass he could give on Luis was how to make him come in two minutes flat, and even that was only when Luis wanted him to. When he didn’t get to Paolo first and make him such a juddering mess he didn’t know which way was up. “I’m not saying that.”
Dante smoked more of his joint, regarding Paolo with lazy, weed-hazed eyes. “Do you know what I think, homie?”
Paolo fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Go on.”
“I think you’re a convenient hole for my brother to get his dick wet while he figures out how to be a real man again. That prison shit got him good, though you’re not the first pretty boy to turn his head on the outside, so don’t be thinking you’re special.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Then I’m wrong, and you get your way, don’t you?”
“You’d leave him alone if he asked you to?”
“That’s not what I said.”
The weed smoke was getting to Paolo. His brain worked sluggishly to collate anything Dante had said that actually made sense. “What are you saying then?”
Dante sat back on his vulgar couch and spread his legs. “Does it matter? What people say isn’t important, it’s what they do. But I have an offer for you if you want to negotiate, pretty boy.”
Paolo’s gaze drifted to Dante’s crotch, to his cock, where it strained against his underwear, and hysterical laughter bubbled out of his chest. “Are you for real? You want me to suckyourdick? Yeah, okay, mate. I’ll jump right on that.”
Dante moved like a snake. He lunged from the couch, grabbed Paolo by the throat, and shoved him against the TV unit. He lacked Luis’s strength, but knowing there was a posse of rude boys outside the flat, Paolo let it happen.
He fell slack in Dante’s grasp, resisting the urge to break free and punch him in the face.
