“WHAT THE HELL are you doing?”
Nix looks mad enough to fight me as he drives away from the restaurant, leaving Dante, Tony, and Reina behind us. I could feel him struggling to hold in his aggression as he sat next to me at the table. He was breathing heavy, barely able to contain the rabid dog that lives inside of him, and now that we’re alone, he’s ready to explode if I don’t let him in on my secret.
“Calm down, Nix,” I say smoothly, in a calm voice as I look out the window again.
“Calm down?” he fires back. “You want me to calm down? You just told Dante Rossi that you’d give up everything you’ve got in exchange for the Hyperion payoff that was supposed to have been ours in the first place! Oh, and you also said that your only business would be Club Asylum! Forever! What the hell happened to you? Are you out of your mind?”
“Yes, yes I am,” I blurt with a chuckle that apparently only I find funny. “Nix, we’ve been friends since we were ten years old, I know you have to know me better than that.”
“I got love for you, Solomon,” Nix says, still with a deep furrow in his brow. “But I need you to explain to me what the hell is going on. All of this is crazy. Maybe I’m a little confused, but it seemed to me that Dante just introduced us to Reina. Even I haven’t forgotten about her, so I know you haven’t. What the hell is up? Did you let her get into your head? Is that why you said all of that?”
I look out the window and see the tall buildings of my city passing by us in a blurred flash, and I picture Reina sitting at the table next to Dante—her tight dress hugging her perfect body, those blue eyes that have always worked magic on me, and the bracelet I bought her when I was still a teenager. She was really there next to him, looking more stunning than ever—next to my enemy! A bolt of rage shoots through me as I struggle to push the image away, because the thought of her next to him brings back a jealousy I didn’t know I’d still have after all this time.
Over the years, I’d learned to force myself to stop thinking about Reina. I’d gotten good at it, too. I’ve been with plenty of women, admittedly, and I don’t regret it a bit. There’s no waiting for someone when that someone has disappeared from your life without a trace—no phone call, no letters, no emails, not a single text message for over half a decade. She was gone, and to see her back now is like being punched in the face with brass knuckles. She was everything to me, and now she’s back. My everything is back.
But is she still my everything? How can she be after all this time? How could she possibly have left like that without saying anything? We’re in the age of technology, and somehow Reina managed to cut off all communication with me for seven straight years. That isn’t the kind of thing you do by accident.
Nonetheless, it’s Reina. I can’t forget the first time I saw her at Aaron’s, doing her best to hold her own against two guys twice her size, wearing clothes that made it obvious she wasn’t from Strawberry Mansion. She stuck out for so many reasons, and she had no fear whatsoever, not even of me. She forced me to feel things I didn’t know I could feel. The truth is, she made me love her. Me! I’ve never loved anything but power, money, and the look of fear on my enemy’s face—until I met her. As much as I’d like to push that away forever because I’m pissed she was at that table with Dante, I can’t. That kind of thing is forever.
“She did get to me, a long time ago,” I admit in nearly a whisper, the emotion of seeing Reina sitting next to Dante beginning to weigh me down. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with her being back here after all this time, but I couldn’t risk firing off rounds with her sitting right next to him. I could imagine him using her as a human shield because he’s a coward like that, and the thought took control of me. Well, that thought plus a few others.”
“I can’t believe she came out of the restaurant like that,” Nix says, shaking his head in disbelief. “My mouth damn near hit the floor when she stepped out, but I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. If she’s with Dante, I didn’t wanna say anything about the history between you two, because that probably would’ve gotten her killed. So, I just fought it back. I’m sure that was hard for you, too. But if she’s with him, there’s nothing we can do about that. You know that, right Solomon? We have to make a move.”
“I don’t know what she’s doing with him, but something about it was strange.”
“No shit. Reina from seven years ago is dating Dante Rossi. That’s strange as hell!”
“No, there was more to it than that, Nix.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you see what she did as we were driving away?” I ask, looking over at him.
“Nah, what’d she do?”
“While the two of them were looking at us, Reina blew me a kiss.”
“For real? What the hell?”
I look straight ahead and let out a loud rush of air, remembering the look of it and how it made me feel.
“I don’t know, but it meant something,” I say as wonderment takes over my mind. What might the kiss have meant? If she’s with Dante, did she know it was going to be me and Nix at the table tonight? Does she know about the beef between my operation and Dante’s? I need answers. Now.
“Is that why you told him you’d give up everything? To keep Reina safe?” Nix asks, causing me some frustration.
“Nix, you know that was all bullshit,” I snip. “Nobody could ever make me give up what we’ve earned. Everything we’ve got, we earned it through grinding. We came up on our own, and there isn’t a chance in hell that I’d ever let Dante fucking Rossi run me out of the life we’ve built for ourselves. I said what I said so I could buy some time, it’s as simple as that. I need to find out what the hell Reina was doing there, and then I need to figure out a way to do more than kill Dante. It’s deeper than that now.
“Bringing Reina into the mix, whether on purpose or not, changed everything. It’s personal now, Nix. I don’t give a damn how long ago my relationship with Reina was. It’s Reina! I’m going to ruin Dante before I kill him. I’m going to embarrass him in front of his little mafia family, and then after I’m done hanging him out to dry, then I’m going to kill him as publicly as possible. By the time I’m done with Dante Rossi, everyone in this city will know who I am. A kid won’t steal a candy bar in Strawberry Mansion without thinking of me first.
“I’m going to take the next few days to get with Rock and Marcell, and we’re going to bail out Ricky. Then, all of us are going to put our heads together, and we’re going to go to war with Dante Rossi. I don’t care what happens with Angelo or the rest of the Scarfos—if they step in, they can get it too, but my focus is Dante. I’m going to burn his life to the ground around him. Then I’m going to put a bullet between his eyes for the whole world to see.”
Nix looks over at me and smiles from ear to ear, and I flash a devilish grin of my own as confidence shuts down all the rest of my emotions and I feel nothing but focused rage directed at Dante.
“There we go,” Nix says, as he adjusts in his seat and refocuses on the open road in front of us. “Now that’s more like.”
Twenty-four hours after the sit-down, Nix and I meet at my loft to get ready to head over to Club Asylum. We discussed our game plan a little more, and we agreed that until we get Ricky out of jail for that bullshit charge, we need to act like we’re doing what I told Dante we would do. So, the plan is for us to go over to Club Asylum and have a few drinks, giving the impression that we’re there to check on the finances of the club. After all, I told Dante’s dumb ass that I was going to do it to prepare to give up everything I owned, and he bought it. Idiot.
“Wanna drink?” I ask Nix as I answer for him by pouring him a short glass of twenty-one-year-old Johnnie Walker XR. By the time he says, “Of course,” I’m already walking over to him with the glass.
Nix, wearing a white button-up tucked into gray slacks with white shoes, sits on the couch and sips his drink, while I sit down on one of my red barstools wearing black pants and a white wife-beater with white shoes of my own.
“What’s the latest on Ricky?” I ask as the whisky burns its way down my throat.
“Marcell has his lawyer looking into it,” Nix answers. “Judge put his bail at two-hundred grand for whatever reason, but Marcell’s guy is trying to get the charges dropped. Either way, Ricky should be out no later than tomorrow or the next day.”
“Good,” I reply. “As soon as he’s out, I want a meeting with him, Rock, and Marcell, at the club so we can figure everything out. I wanna know everything Marcell can possibly find out about Dante and his operation. I want every detail. No one has ever tried to go at the mob the way I want to do it, so I need it to be perfect. I want Ricky there because I know he wants to avenge Donny.”
“You think he’ll wanna take out Mason himself?” Nix asks.
I can still see the image of Donny trying to rush Mason. The shots rang out in Nix’s restaurant and the look on Ricky’s face as he watched his brother fall to the floor is something I won’t soon forget. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say Ricky is going to want revenge for his brother, whether it’s Detective Mason or Dante probably won’t matter. If it was me, I’d end them both for the hell of it.
“Can’t say,” I reply. “I would, but Ricky is the quieter type. I’d do them both, but he might settle just for Mason. I’ll make sure he’s aware that Dante is done for, regardless of what he wants to do. Mason would be a bonus for me, but I’ll leave it up to Ricky.”
“Now that we’re going down this road,” Nix says, resting his large arm on the back of the plush red couch. “I’m sick of Mason. I was down to overlook a lot of stuff before all of this. But now that this is going down, I’d be quick to pull the trigger on Mason.”
“I’ve been sick of him.”
“I know you have. Why don’t we just . . .”
The sound of my personal cell phone ringing on the glass coffee table cuts off Nix’s sentence. Nix leans forward to look at the screen and frowns at the phone.
“Blocked number,” he replies, drawing a scowl from me.
“Nobody answers blocked numbers,” I say, letting the phone ring until it stops.
Not even five seconds later, the phone rings again.
“Blocked,” Nix says again. I don’t respond this time, I just scrunch my forehead and wait for the phone to stop ringing. It does, and immediately starts up again.
“The hell? Toss it to me.” Nix underhand-throws the cell phone to me and I answer. “Who the hell is this?”
“You’re just as good a liar as I am,” a female voice says on the other end. I’d have to be deaf and dumb to not recognize this voice, and my breath catches in my throat before I can speak again.
“Reina,” I reply, causing Nix to sit up like he just heard a gun go off.
“Wow,” she replies behind an exhale. “It’s good to hear your voice. Been a while.”
“Try seven years,” I snip. The image of her sitting next to Dante rushes to the front of my mind and I feel anger bubbling in my stomach. “Where have you been all this time? How’d you get my number? And what the hell were you doing with Dante Rossi?”
“I don’t have time for all of that right now,” she spits back, her voice quickly turning serious. “I need you to listen to me, Solomon.”
“Listen to you? You show up at a sit-down on the arm of the man whose throat I’d love to slit, and you want me to listen to you?”
“Not now, Solomon, we don’t have time!” she fires back, shocking me. Nix raises his arms, gesturing wildly to me, so I take the phone from my ear and put it on speaker so both of us can listen to Reina.
“What’s the rush?” I ask as I set the phone down on the bar and Nix moves from the couch to the barstool next to me, resting his hand over his mouth.
“I just don’t have time to explain, so I need you to listen carefully,” Reina says. “They’re gonna try to kill you tonight.”
Nix and I look at each other in shock.
“What?” I reply.
“Just listen, please! Dante has a team waiting for you at your club,” Reina continues as if a clock is literally ticking down in front of her. “He’s the one behind everything. He hates your reputation and how fast you’ve come up—you and Nix both. So, he plans on taking you both out. They know all about both of you—where you live, what establishments you frequent, everything. They know you go through the back entrance of Club Asylum to avoid being seen, and that’s where they have a three-man team waiting for you tonight. They’ll have handguns with silencers in the hopes that if they can at least hit you, no one will know, and you’ll bleed out if you don’t die immediately.
“Your rise to power was meteoric, Solomon, and guys like Dante—guys who are planning on being the boss of the mob in this city someday soon—they don’t like to see legit competition to their throne. Dante wants you dead. But if you don’t show up to the club, they’ll know something’s up. So, you’re gonna have to handle it.”
Pissed off, I snatch the phone off the bar and start pacing around the room. I settle in front of the over-sized window with my tattooed reflection staring back at me.
“Handle it?” I bark. “You say that like it’s not a three-man hit team waiting to assassinate me at my place of business.”
“Something tells me you’re plenty capable of handling yourself,” she replies, her voice suddenly soft again. I can basically hear her smiling through the phone, and I smile back.
“That I am, Reina,” I say, before wiping the smile off my face and getting back to business. We’re not teenagers anymore. “How the hell am I supposed to trust you after all this time? You’re acting like everything is supposed to just fall back into place.”
“I don’t expect it to fall back into place just like that,” Reina says, her voice mimicking the seriousness in mine. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”
I let out a loud chuckle.
“Trust you? You were having dinner with him like you two were an item.”
“Don’t believe everything you see,” she says, and I stop in my tracks. “No matter what happens, Solomon, just remember—it’s me. I’m still me.”
The line goes dead.
I turn around and toss the phone onto the couch as Nix gets up from the barstool and walks towards me.
“This shit is getting insane, man,” he says. “An assassination attempt in public. It’s something the Scarfo family would do, for sure, and I’m sure Dante would want us out of the picture if he felt like people would fear us more than they’d fear him once he takes the reins of the family. But, can we really trust Reina with this? She was having dinner with him, Solomon. Seven years went by, and then she shows up at dinner with him. That can’t be overlooked.”
“You’re right,” I agree, but Reina’s words can’t be overlooked either. I’m still me. “But we both know it’s not a crazy idea that Dante would try to pull this shit, especially if he thinks he’s going to be boss soon.”
“So, what do you think?” Nix asks.
“Seven years is a long time, Nix” I answer. “But it’s Reina. The way I felt about her was real, and that’ll never disappear, even though she did. Can I trust her after all this time? I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out tonight.”