Ryder

 

Ryder’s date for the night was rather pretty, in a kind of bland, boring way. She looked more interesting in her picture on her online profile, but he tried his hardest to hide his disappointment, smiling stiffly at her and offering her his arm as they walked into the place he’d picked out for the occasion, a loud nightclub in downtown Manhattan, filled with neon lights and incoherent music.

 

“So where are you from?” the girl, Amanda or Allison or something like that, asked him, beaming up at him with hope in her eyes.

 

“Jersey,” Ryder answered, laughing inwardly at the temporary expression of disgust that crossed his date’s face in response.

 

Most of the girls he met in the city were like this: snobby and kind of full of themselves. He honestly didn’t know why he bothered anymore trying to find the “one”—that hypothetical perfect match that would fit him exactly right. At this point, after all the failures he’d experienced over the past several months, it was like he was addicted to the disappointment.

 

Some part of him knew it was hopeless. He wasn’t going to find his submissive this way, but there was another part of him—probably the dumbest, most immature part—that just couldn’t give up. She’s got to be out there somewhere, he thought as he signaled toward the bartender to put in a drink order for himself and his date. She’s got to be.

 

“What are you doing here in the city?” Amanda (Ryder decided that was her name, even though for the life of him he couldn’t remember) asked as soon as the bartender handed them their drinks.

 

Ryder shrugged. “Nothing really. Just hanging out.”

 

Amanda looked a little confused, furrowing her brows together. “But what do you do for work?”

 

“I took care of that years ago,” Ryder said as he began to toss his Long Island Iced Tea back. Amanda just gave him a questioning, blank look, wordlessly urging him to elaborate. “By being born with money. I’ve just never had to worry about it.”

 

He’d meant to sound funny and charming, poking fun at his own privileged upbringing, but judging from the hard look on Amanda’s face, she wasn’t amused. Strike two against her, then.

 

“You want to dance?” he asked, gesturing towards the packed dance floor.

 

“Sure,” she replied, her face brightening up a little as she took Ryder’s hand and led him out onto the dance floor, immediately grinding her ass against the front of his pants.

 

Ryder instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her in harder against his chest and letting his hands wander a little bit to get a sense of her curves. Amanda didn’t seem to mind, tossing her head back onto his shoulder and continuing to move her hips in long, drawn-out circles to the beat of the music.

 

So, he was definitely getting laid tonight, at the very least. But Ryder couldn’t even pretend to be excited about it. Any other guy would have been thrilled to hop into the sack with a girl like Amanda, but he could tell by the way she moved against him that sex with her would be nothing special. She had no passion, no fire in her movements. Ryder was about to engage in another round of predictable, vanilla sex. He already knew he’d never call her again.

 

“Excuse me for a minute; I have to take a leak,” Ryder shouted into Amanda’s ear after a few songs. He headed into the bathroom, which was miraculously empty despite the crowds of people on the dance floor outside. Ryder went up to the row of sinks, bracing his hands on the hard countertops as he stared at his own reflection in the mirror, searching his eyes as if they held the answer to his dilemma. But there was no hint of a solution on his face, nothing except utter exhaustion.

 

He was bone-tired, down to every last cell in his body. For months upon months now, he’d been searching for a Sub to dominate, to take into his playroom, where he kept all the tools of his trade, all the toys he used to take women apart and put them back together again. The last time he showed a woman into his most secret, sacred place, she’d run away screaming, yelling at him, “Stay the fuck away from me, pervert!”

 

Even now, staring at his own reflection, he heard her voice echo inside the emptiness of his mind, accusing him of being sick and dirty and wrong. Maybe she was right. After all, he hadn’t found anybody who could really match his desires. Even the women at the submissive/dominant escort services in the city were just pretending, visibly biting back their disgust even as they played with him. Maybe he should have just given up months ago. There was no point, really. Nobody was ever going to be able to even tolerate the darkness inside of him, let alone accept it the way he wanted to be accepted.

 

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. His phone vibrated in his pocket, signaling a family member was calling him. Ryder groaned and let his head hang down between his shoulders, his whole body sagging as his phone continued to buzz. “All right, all right,” he finally muttered after several more seconds, digging into his pocket to grab his phone and seeing his younger brother Giovanni’s name flash across the screen before answering. “What?” he said tersely into the phone, too irritated at the moment for any pleasantries.

 

“Ryder,” Giovanni said on the other end before exhaling loudly. “Ryder, you need to come home.”

 

“Oh, fucking save it,” Ryder snapped back. This was just like his brother, trying to guilt him for living his own life. It wasn’t Ryder’s fault that Giovanni was still stuck back home, forever a slave to their domineering mother.

 

“Ryder. Seriously, shut up and listen to me,” Giovanni said, sounding more intense than Ryder had ever heard him before. “You need to get on the first train home. Dad’s dead.”

 

The words didn’t pierce Ryder’s skull right away. They reflected off of him like his brain was holding up a shield to keep unwelcome thoughts out. “What?” His voice sounded weirdly distant, even to himself.

 

“Dad’s dead. He keeled over sometime this evening. We don’t know what happened yet, but it looks like it was a stroke or something like that. He’s gone. You need to come back as soon as you can.”

 

“He’s… gone?” Ryder repeated, the words leaving his mouth slowly as his brain caught up to the reality of the situation. “What?”

 

“Yeah,” Giovanni said, sighing heavily again. “Come back to the compound, Ryder. Mom needs you.”

 

Without any further warning, Giovanni hung up, leaving Ryder in silence that just stretched on and on. Ryder didn’t know how long he stood there, staring blankly at himself in the mirror until somebody else finally walked into the bathroom, tearing him away from his empty reverie. Dad is dead, he said to himself silently as he straightened up his shirt and cleared his throat, trying to get used to the idea. Dad is dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s fucking dead. No longer with us, no longer living, he’s gone.

 

Paolo Rainieri, the biggest mafia Don that North Jersey had ever seen, was gone. Forever.