CHAPTERONE
CAESAR
“Excuse me, are you Caesar Marin?”
I’m sitting behind the front desk at my tattoo shop, Blade. It’s been twenty-five years now that I’ve been running this place, and I don’t take down appointments anymore.
When the man clears his throat, though, I tilt my eyes up and let out a surprised grunt. It’s not that he’s attractive, although he is. He’s got a wide, cute smile, which he offers to me hopefully, and there’s a flash of hazel in his pretty eyes.
What strikes me is that this man looks so familiar. I’m not sure what it is, his thick eyebrows or sandy stubble, or maybe something in the way he fidgets his hands while he waits for me to answer, then runs his fingers over the buttons of his collared white shirt.
Somehow, I get the sense that I’ve met this man before, but just as quickly, I try to push the déjà vu away.
I lay my palms flat on the table as I push myself up. I’m a big guy, a good foot taller than him, and he drags his eyes up to meet my gaze. “Someone will be up to help you,” I grumble, dismissing him as I turn away.
It’s not much, but it’s a hell of a lot more than I say to most walk-ins.
As I walk away, his voice rises. “Wait, you’re Caesar Marin, though, right?”
I push through the door into the back right as Joey, one of our best artists, steps out. He’ll take care of the sweet man. I’m not trying to be rude, but I fucked up at some point when I was young and ended up a minor celebrity in the world of tattooing. The appreciation for my work is nice enough, but damn if I don’t hate the attention.
There’s just one client left for me today, Kylie, a regular. She’s adding to her back piece, which is all birds, today a pair of cardinals. We go way back and both like to spend our sessions in silence, just letting the space fill with the buzz of the machine, the smell of ink, and the needle’s work.
Once I’ve sent her off, I linger in my room. I only come in every week or two lately, since I take my oldest clients in the studio at my house. After years of being a picky fucker about hiring artists for Blade, though, I finally have the shop full with the right people. My apprentice, Rafael, is stepping up and becoming a working artist on his own, and I’m barely needed around here, if I’m being honest.
I’m fifty-one, and I’m at the top of my career. It feels damn good.
Except I do miss the old days sometimes. Right after I took the shop over from my old man, when I was young and I still had something to prove.
Back when I lived in this cramped little workspace, gripping the tattoo machine until my hand ached and my eyes got blurry.
I take one last satisfied look around, then sigh and leave. I’m not the sentimental type anyway, and I’m due to meet Red, one of the other artists here, for a drink at the dive bar down the block.
As soon as I step out of Blade and onto the street, though, that man appears right in my fucking face again. I don’t know if he was waiting for me or what, but it’s like the second the sunlight hits my face, there he is.
“I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “But I’m trying to get ahold of Caesar Marin. That’s you, right? And this is your shop?”
We stand there on the sidewalk, facing each other. It’s late on a summer day, and I can hear the Chicago traffic down the street. He must be in his twenties, probably half my age, and he still looks green to my eye.
“Listen, kid,” I tell him. “I’m done for the day, okay? You got a question, ask inside the shop.”
I head down the street, my worn black boots shuffling against the pavement. Clients never used to act like this. They used to treat artists with respect. This guy doesn’t even have visible ink, but he’s practically stalking me to try to get a sitting.
I dart my eyes over my shoulder, catching one last glimpse. He stares, a finger raised, leaning forward and right on the edge of walking toward me.
“Mack,” he says quickly. “You used to run the shop with a guy named Mack. I’m trying to—”
“Haven’t seen Mack in years,” I answer over my shoulder, then rub my hand over my face as I stalk away. “You’re sniffing up the wrong tree,” I add, yelling it louder than I mean to.
The first year I was running Blade, I was stupid enough to invite Mack to head the shop up with me. I was naïve back then. I thought we had a special connection, that no matter what else, he was an artist like me, committed to his work.
The pain of Mack’s betrayal is like ice on my skin, even all these years later. As soon as we got the shop running, he split town for Miami, running off with some fling, a man he barely knew. He left me like a piece of trash and never even called to ask how the shop was going, how I was doing…
He was a piece of shit, and not even a guy as sweet as this stranger could get me talking about him.
“Caesar,” Red says, lifting his beer as I walk into the noisy bar. “Didn’t know if you’d make it.”
I grunt as I sit on the stool, then nod to the bartender, who already knows my order. “For you, sure.”
