Chapter Two

Gabriel

 

“I want no part in this bullshit, boss,” I tell Lorenzo, the don of the Family and my cousin. Lorenzo’s a tall, fat man in a suit that fits him like a hand-me-down school uniform. He likes the baggy fit, though; he once told me while drunk that it hides his bulging belly. His hair is slicked back and his face is clean-shaven, though bits of crusty skin cling to his chin. “Can’t you send one of the others?”

 

He just stares at me, sitting in his oversized office chair that is designed to make men like me—mere hitters, nothing special—feel small. But I don’t feel small. I don’t feel much of anything sitting here except a desire to be somewhere else. This is meant to be my day off but the skipper ordered me to come in, so I had to come in. I had no clue it was going to be for this bullshit.

 

“The girl needs a date,” Lorenzo finally says, a grim note in his voice. “So we’re giving her a date. You’ll be well compensated for this, Gabriel, so don’t worry too much about it. It’ll be easier than running down rats; less bloody, too.”

 

“Do I have a choice, skip?”

 

Lorenzo shakes his head. “You do not.”

 

“Then I guess I better get down to New Jersey.”

 

I remember the conversation now, as I make the drive. Did something seem off about the skipper? It’s difficult to tell since I don’t spend much time with him these days. I only see him for business, and then the meetings are quick: go here, kill this man, torture this bastard for information. Normal, routine stuff. Now he’s got me on a date with some Irish girl. Well, not just some Irish girl: the leader’s daughter, which means that there’s an alliance brewing. Maybe the boss’ll finally stop ordering me to kill Irish; not that it makes much difference to me. A fight is a fight and a kill is a kill.

 

A blank-faced Irishman lets me in at the gate, looking at my car with what could be murder or nothing at all. I drive toward the mansion and step from the car, pace over to the front door, knock, and wait. This is the first date I’ve been on in almost ten years. I don’t date, usually. I can get everything I want from women without ever having to eat dinner with them.

 

The door opens and a pretty, aging lady smiles brightly at me. “You must be Gabriel!” she exclaims, flapping her fingers together strangely. “Will you wait one moment? She’s coming down now.”

 

“Okay, miss.” I nod. “I’ll wait right here.”

 

“Don’t be silly! Come on in!”

 

I glance at the hallway, which seems safe enough. I can always just turn around and run back outside. But what if the bastard at the gate comes up behind me and slashes my tires?

 

“I’m fine right here, miss. Thank you very much, though.”

 

A scowl passes across her face, then disappears. “Okay, then.”

 

She leaves me there with the door open, and then, about a minute later, Colleen O’Rourke, my date, comes walking down the stairs. My first thought is that I’m damn annoyed this is some fancy date, and not my usual type of meeting, because this lady is sex on heels. She’s ten or so years younger than me, with fire-red hair and freckles covering her cheeks and her nose. Her eyes are green, and so is her dress, which hides her perky breasts but does not hide her creamy, long legs. Dark thoughts enter my mind when I see those legs. I want to bite down, growl, grab. I force away the instincts. Her hips are wide, her ass full, and her expression is all shy. Her cheeks are red; she doesn’t meet my gaze as she approaches the door. She clutches her handbag oddly.

 

“Hello, Miss O’Rourke.” I hold out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.” I might as well get this done properly. Maybe if I do it well the boss won’t make me do it again. But can I really say I’m only here for the pay packet? This lady really is something else.

 

She takes my hand. She’s cold and clammy and trembling slightly. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Moretti.”

 

The mother beams behind her and then steps forward. “Has your employer given you all the details?” she asks.

 

“Yes, miss. He has. I’ve got the address of the restaurant …” neutral territory “… and the time she must be back …” unless I want to cause a war “… and the other instructions …” which basically boil down to no sexual contact at all. Look, but don’t touch: that’s the rule for today.

 

“Okay, then! Have fun!”

 

I offer Colleen my arm and she takes it, and then I lead her down to the car. I catch our reflection in the window: me standing six feet and as strong as a man can get running jobs and occasionally lifting weights, which is pretty damn strong, with slicked-back black hair and a gray suit. Some women say my nose is endearing, since it’s broken and slightly crooked, and others say that my dark blue eyes are captivating, but I never keep them around long enough to take the compliments seriously. Even so, in the reflection, Colleen and I almost look like a couple.

 

I decide to toy with her a bit on the drive to the restaurant, since she’s fidgeting and sighing like a prisoner.

 

“I didn’t know you were going to be so fine,” I say, as the car silently coasts through the falling sleet.

 

“Ex—excuse me?” she mutters.

 

“You,” I say, sensing her embarrassment. I don’t have to just sense it, though; it’s plain in the growing redness in her cheeks. “I didn’t know you were going to be so fine. My boss didn’t show me any pictures.”

 

“Uh … thank you?”

 

“Is that a question, or are you actually thanking me?”

 

“I’m thanking you,” she murmurs, turning away from me to hide the redness; now it’s creeping down her neck, toward her hidden breasts.

 

“That dress is something else, too. Classy as hell.”

 

“Um, you look very handsome as well.” She bites her lip, letting it go a moment later. A gesture like that shouldn’t drive me so crazy but it’s her shyness that does it. Shyness coupled with freckly, pale legs, legs that make a man think of where they lead. Up and up … right to that tight pussy; goddamn, I wonder how it feels. I block the thoughts; pointless, since I’m not allowed to act on them,

 

“Are you allowed to drink?” I ask as I pull into the parking lot of the pre-approved restaurant. I’ve got no doubt that the Irish are watching it. If not, then they trust the people who own it trust that they’ll report on me if anything untoward happens.

 

“Of course I am.” She curls her upper lip. “I’m twenty-one years old. What about you?” She asks this as I open her door for her, offering her my hand. “How old are you?”

 

I lead her into the restaurant. “How old do you think I am?” I ask.

 

“Thirty something.”

 

“Thirty-five,” I tell her.

 

“You’re much older than me,” she notes.

 

“Is that a problem?” I ask, holding the door open for her.

 

She walks through it, head held high. “I don’t have any problems.”

 

The restaurant is a quiet Irish place with a flag on one wall and a framed photograph of Conor McGregor on another. Old folk-style tunes play on the jukebox and the man behind the bar wears a name-tag that reads Paddy.

 

“I see why they chose this place.” I laugh darkly. “All you’d have to do is shout and there’d be a hundred Irishman on me. Not a goddamn Italian in sight.”

 

“Are you scared?” She tries for a brave glare, but her eyes betray her. They’re full of nerves.

 

“Is this the first date you’ve ever been on?” I throw back, as the greeter leads us to a table in the corner. It’s the most private one in the house, but it’s not a booth. A lamp sits right next to us, throwing shadows everywhere. Before she can answer, I tell the greeter, “Two beers, please.”

 

“I don’t drink beer,” Colleen says quietly.

 

“They’re for me. What do you want?”

 

“I’ll have a glass of red wine.”

 

The greeter leaves us and Colleen shakes her head slowly. “Two beers, really?”

 

“What’s wrong with that?”

 

“I’ve been ordered to be on my best behavior. I thought they’d at least tell you the same.”

 

“Oh, they did.” I laugh, leaning back. “But what fun is that, Colleen O’Rourke?”

 

“And by the way, this isn’t the first date I’ve been on.” She folds her small, pale hands on the table. My mind races ahead: those hands, wrapped around my cock. I need to get rid of these thoughts. Impossible, undoable, and yet she’s so damn fine, and so damn shy, I can’t.

 

I hold my hands up. “Fair enough. So you play the field, eh? How many dates have you been on? Ten? Twenty? More?” I grin at her. Maybe this is cruel, but it’s fun more than anything. “You don’t have to lie to me. If our people had it their way, we’d be fucking married before the end of the month.”

 

“Do you have to swear?” But she’s smiling. Her mother’s veneer is already fading away. She glances around; there’s nobody nearby. “Isn’t it enough to know this isn’t my first date? God!”

 

“Is there something I could do to make you feel more comfortable?” I rest my elbows on the table and stare at her. I’m forgetting myself here, forgetting the skipper’s orders, but the way I see it there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun. “You don’t seem very at ease.”

 

“Well …” She lets out a long shaky breath. “We’re on a date, aren’t we? Since when are women supposed to feel at ease on a date? Do you think this dress is comfortable?”

 

“I could always get you out of it, if it’d make things easier.” I can’t stop myself. That look on her face is just too interesting, too sexy, too shy. And there’s something else, too: excitement, it seems like. I’m almost sure of it.

 

She holds my gaze for a moment and then turns away. “Are you serious?” she whispers. “What do you think would happen if I told my mother what you just said?”

 

“Bad things, I imagine.” I shrug. “But people are always trying to do bad things to me, Colleen. More often than not, bad things end up happening to them. Anyway, I was just being polite. Is it so bad that I want my date to be comfortable?”

 

“You really are a joker, aren’t you?” She brushes down her dress with a small smile. “You really do say some silly, silly things.”

 

“There’s nothing silly about how sexy you look right now,” I blurt without thinking. My teeth hurt from where I’m grinding them. I force them apart. “Where are our damn drinks? Wait here a sec, eh? I’ll go and get them. Never let it be said that I’m not a good date.”

 

I go to the bar to tell the waiter to hurry the hell up. As he’s sorting out the drinks, I glance back at our table, across the other side of the restaurant. Over the heads of the other patrons, I spot it: Colleen, fiddling with something in her cleavage. A glimpse of silver. It looks like a tin of some sort. But what’s in it? And why would she be fiddling with it now? Drugs, maybe? She doesn’t seem like the drug-taking type, though, and how would she be, with that hound of a mother breathing down her neck?

 

Then another idea occurs to me. It’s an idea that makes little sense, but then, a lot in this life makes little sense. But it only doesn’t make sense if I assume she wants to do this, that she had any part in it. No, that’s naïve. It’ll be Shane O’Rourke. This whole thing: is it a damn trap?

 

I take the drinks to the table.

 

“Excuse me. I just need to use the toilet.”

 

“Oh, sure.” She smiles at me shakily. “Okay.”

 

I go to the hallway that leads to the bathroom and watch her secretly. For a minute or so, she wavers, taking the tin out and putting it back in her cleavage. She must be so nervous, she doesn’t know how obvious she’s being. Since the dress is high-cut, retrieving the tin is no easy feat. But eventually her hesitation goes away. She’s an Irish girl, after all, and what’s a strange Italian man to her?

 

She opens the tin and pours the powder into my beer, stirring it with the handle of a fork. She then wipes the fork on a napkin.