Black Collar Beginnings: Cuba (Black Collar Syndicate) (8 page)

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Authors: AN Latro

She is collecting her little black bag and her jacket. She moves toward the exit, leaving the wine abandoned on the table. She hasn't tasted it in over two years and tonight is not a good one for reminiscing. She avoids the eyes of strangers, doesn't take the time to put on the jacket as she rushes out of the bar. The biting cold is like a knife to the chest, but his reappearance hurts more. Her breath rises in front of her and, suddenly, she hates the metal and concrete around her. Who would want to rule this? Her mind goes blank. Her heart aches. She feels so much that she feels nothing.

“Please wait!”

His voice grips her, his first words to her in so long. They seize her feet. Despite all her resolve, she is bound by his voice, like black magic. She stops in her tracks, but she will not face him. “You're dead to me,” she spits through her tightening throat. Tears are fighting to surface. She swore that if she ever saw him again, she wouldn't cry. “You're dead to this place.”

“No,” he says to her back. “The city is cold, but she's not that cold. She won't turn her back on one of her own.”

“You abandoned us. What could you possibly want now?” she asks the night.

His voice and presence surround her, pull her in. She sees him in her memory, two summers ago, against the green of Central Park. She can still feel the warm afternoon rays. That had been the day before he told her he was leaving, the last perfect day and the end of a fairy tale in which she can no longer believe. It was for the good of the family, he said. He would come back soon, and everything would be different.

Well, it's different.

“I had to go,” he says.

“For the family, I know,” she says shortly. But it had been too soon after his father's death. The change of power was too new. They had done it for the opportunity, but no one understood how he could leave at a time like that, and as people do—even family—they turned on him. Her jaw clenches. She bites down on her bitterness. “And now your goddamned family is falling apart!” She turns away.

“Then I'll fix it!” Seth calls. He almost watches her walk away. Almost. But he can't. She feels his fingers close around her arm. “Please wait,” begs the man who would die rather than be a beggar.

She whips around upon the contact, pulled by some invisible force. The moment before her open hand connects with his face, her eyes lock onto his. He has to know she really means this. And she smacks the shit out of him. His head snaps to the side, and a tang rises in his mouth. “Dead people don't speak,” she says flatly and rips her arm away from him. Then she turns on her heel, leaves him stinging in the relentless cold, alone with his hot breath that bleeds white upon the freezing air.

“You sure know how to get a girl's attention,” a voice says from behind him. Seth turns. He's not quite alone. It's one of the suits. He's smoking a cigarette and leaning against the railing to the stairs of the bar. A curious expression plays upon the man's face as he studies Seth, as if he might recognize him. Seth makes a sad smile, for he is merely a ghost in this place these days. Once, he would be followed by reporters and cameras. Once.

“Some people are just born with it.” He shrugs, laughing humorlessly into the night. He looks up at the haze of light emanating from the city. In the south, sometimes he could see the stars. He misses them, suddenly.

“That was some stunt, straight outuva movie.” The suit says, grinning.

Seth laughs again, shaking his head. “No, what you mean to say is desperation.”

“Buy you a drink, buddy?”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I've got some business,” Seth says, eyes shifting down the street where he imagines he can still feel her.

“Well, good luck.” The guy laughs, flipping his cigarette at the sidewalk and stamping it out. He is shaking his head in disbelief, then he adds, “This may sound weird, but I swear you look familiar.”

Now, a real smile turns Seth's lips. Perhaps his people haven't forgotten him altogether. He says, “That's because I'm Seth Morgan. And I'll need more than luck tonight. Have a good one.”

He sets off down the sidewalk as the realization dawns upon the other man.

He's not in the mood to play the dangerous celebrity, so he makes his pace quick until he is several blocks away from the little bar. Despite the cold, he convinces himself that it's a good time for a walk, so he wanders for a while to take in the sights and impersonal assault of his city. He lets himself believe that he's walking aimlessly, but he knows he is getting closer to her. He tells himself he won't end up at her door, that he's just a dead man, traveling among his memories; but once his toes are numb and his nose is too cold to run, he turns down an alley that hosts a little stoop about half way down the block. There, he stares at the gray door with the bare bulb above it. He can't quite make himself climb the two steps that lead up to the door. Her address was the first thing he found when he learned that she no longer lived in her father's palatial home, yet this is his first visit. He wants to knock, but his arms betray him. Can it be true that she doesn't want to see him?

“You've gotten sloppy, making scenes in public,” a voice says from the darkness at the other end of the alley. It is a voice Seth has both missed and hated, dressed in a callous tone he can perfectly understand. He has missed the sound, because it belongs to his brother. He has hated it, because the last thing his brother told him was that he was making a mistake.

AN Latro
lives in Florida, where the ocean is her favorite muse. She enjoys wine and tequila, and old movies about the mafia. She loves hearing from readers on Facebook and Twitter.