Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) (28 page)

She repeated, “Love is beautiful and sometimes it is everything.” Dominique panned the cool, crystal waters of the pool then looked back at me. “And then sometimes love has nothing to with anything.”

She walked up to me, the towel falling away from her body and onto the floor. Her eyes, the same ones that had showed love now had an edge with rage, hate and disgust, she shoved my chest and I stumbled back. She went after my stumbling body and followed up with a slap.

My hand touched at the warm skin on my face. I bit my bottom lip, my teeth baring, I wanted to fight back. The same rage that had blacked out my mind and gave so much power to my body was hovering over me. I was seeing red and my teeth ground together. I heard the plastic of the back of the chair I was holding crack under the pressure of my hand clenching it.

Dominique saw the change in my face.

She didn’t run.

No, she didn’t run, she stepped into my face and looked me in the eyes. “When you said you weren’t fucking my mother, I believed you.”

And the rage was gone.

I lifted my arms and let them drop at my sides. “There is much bigger shit between you and me then just me screwing your mother.”

She slapped me again and I laughed around the pain this time around.

I asked after rubbing my cheek. “Are you done?”

She hauled off and slapped me again, my bottom lip tore and I tasted blood. I laughed harder, my head tilted up as I guwhaff into the air.

It was all funny, all of it.

You either laugh or you lose it.

I had failed at losing it and now I was laughing instead.

She went for another hit, this time her fist was curled. I caught her arm, my fingers squeezing on her wrist until I felt bone. She didn’t wince but I knew I was hurting and I knew there would be a bruise.

I stared long and hard at her. “You think your mother is innocent? She’s not. I started fucking her when I was nineteen, but she had started fucking me when I was nine.”

She yanked her arm away. “You’re a man, Tristan. Get over it.”

I laughed at this, my mouth widening inhumanly as it aloud the smile. Then the smile was gone and the rage was back, raw, hot and everlasting.

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me!” I scream and my voice was echoing off the walls. “You excuse your perverted mother but I’m the one you hang for it?”

“I asked you to tell me the truth.”

“And obviously it wouldn’t have meant a fucking thing!” My lips were quivering as the waves of rage hit one after another. “You and my family had this collassol plan to use me to knock you up, so the fuck difference did it make that I was fucking your mother or not?”

Dominique grabbed the towel of the floor. Her hands touched at her hair as her eyes looked for the exit. It was as if she was considering to even give me the good graces to have the conversation we were having.

“I’m going to be your father’s wife, Tristan. And your son will be your father’s son and theres nothing you can do about that, but you’re right. I did feel something when we met on that balcony, and what I felt for you may have grown into something.”

“Something like what?” I asked.

“Something along the lines that when your old daddy croaks that I may have decided to take you as my husband and give you a chance to run the family that should’ve been yours but mine instead.”

The blood was draining now. “And now?”

Dominique licked her lips and closed the distance between us. Her mouth was on mine, her tongue parting my lips and licking around my mouth. And I was lost to her, grabbing the towel from her hands as it was the barrier between hers and mine.

I loved this woman.

So, when she kissed me, the world ended. Yes, I was kissing the enemy, the very woman who had destroyed the parts that I didn’t destroy myself.

Then she yanked her mouth away from mine and the world situated itself back to the shit it had been before her lips touched mine. “Maybe, if you’re lucky, you may be one of the men I choose to fuck when my husband doesn’t satisfy me.”

I shoved her away from me.

“Yes,” she said, “show me the rage that caused you to rape my mother.”

I opened my mouth to retort, but nothing came out - not even a scream, which is what I felt in the pit of my stomach and felt it growing fast up to my throat. I crashed within myself, my head going back to that night and hearing Lulina’s screams all over again, and seeing her blood smeared all over my floor.

“That was between your mother and me,” I said, unsure even if I was talking.

“So you say she deserved it?” She snapped.

“I say she was playing with the monster she created a little too roughly.”

Dominique laughed, her voice something I loved so much and even as I heard her laughing in my expense, I yearned to continue to hear her voice. “I don’t care, Tristan. But-“and she was walking away as she said this,”-I wonder what I will get for playing so rough with the new monster I creating in you.”

I dropped my head as I listened to the soft thuds of her bare feet hitting the ground.

I called after her. “You don’t want me as an enemy, Dominique.”

She whirled around, cocking her hip out which she perched her hand on. “Please, Tristan, don’t let me take that as a threat.”

The battle lines were itched in the ground.

“I go back to my first statement: you don’t want me as an enemy, Dominique. It’s a weird transformation when you push a man against a wall. He does something wonderful. He starts fighting back.”

“Come on, Tristan, show me that man that your family missed when they chose me to run the family,” Dominique beckoned.

“Trust me you don’t want to see the man your mother saw.”

“I don’t give a fuck about my mother,” she hollered across the pool. “I don’t give a fuck about my mother in general, but you know that. I’m a very dangerous person when pushed and you keep pushing me you may see that danger for yourself. No one owns me, no one gets the pleasure to hold something over my head. I’m every bit as powerful as you are weak, and you were just the unlucky one that I didn’t choose to hold my purse, Tristan.”

I shook my head as I smiled. “Then if I’m at such a disavanagted, why don’t your first order as boss is my death?”

And she answered back with, “You aren’t an enemy I would have to fear for long. Your mistakes are catching up with you, Tristan, and I’m patient enough to let them kill you.”

***

I was watching the pillow of smoke moving from my mouth as I was leaning against the railing inside the gazebo.

I remembered Dominique’s kisses on my neck.

I remembered her kisses on my lips.

It seemed like forever ago.

Then I watch the smoke moving from my mouth, thinking how envious I was of it. The smoke could disappaite into the air and become nothing and not even be missed.

I wanted to do the same. 

Lulina breathed my name from behind, “Tristan.”

I half laughed, half cried as I balled the cigarette in my hand, feeling the hot embers burning my palm but still barely felt it.

“Here to grind salt in the gaping wounds, Lu?”

I turned to her, feeling the cold banister sinking through my coat. Lulina crossed her arms over her chest, a wrinkle forming in the middle of her eyebrows. “You’ve had a rough day, dear?” She almost sounded like she cared that I had.

And a part of me wanted to walk into her arms and lay my head on her shoulder. A part of me wanted her hands to rub through my hair and touch my face as I cried, and a big part of me wanted her to tell me that it was okay. That eventhough the kids were mean that I was better than them, and the only reason they were picking me was because of that.

I placed another cigarette in my mouth and lit up. “You told Dominique a secret, didn’t you?”

“Nothing should be kept a secrect between mother and daughter, Tristan. You see how secrects and betrayel and destroy.”

I chuckled around the smoke. “Suck my dick, Lu.”

“Suck your dick? Oh, I’ve done that.”

“Yea,” I said, “And your daughter was better.”

Lulina started to hit where it hurt. “You know she did love you?”

“I saw in her eyes when I was fucking her,” I responded.

“Telling her that you raped me did something for that, now didn’t it.” Lulina motioned to her face, around the lips, indicating my busted lip that had stopped bleeding all of five minutes ago. “I gave her a wake up call.”

“Silly bitch,” I sang, “Tricks are for hoes.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, extremely pleased by my retort. “Reember that secret, Tristan?”

“Is it time already, Lu?”

Lulina tightened her arms across her chest. “Our child would have been beautiful, Tristan. He or she would have been the one running this family.”

I laughed harder, walking past her and into the middle of the gazebo. I brought my hands up and motioned her to keep going, beckoning her to keep tossing daggers.

“Let’s have it, Lu,” I goad her on, “Let’s talk about this imaginary kid you wished you had of mine. We all know you can’t have kids. We all remember you miscarried a ways back.”

I laugh at this because I know I’m hurting her, but instead all I had done was set the stage for her.

Lulina walked into me and I felt her hot lips on my cheek. “That’s the thing, Tristan. Our child wasn’t imaginary, but very much real.”

She kissed my cheek again, longer this time.

I was frozen as her lips were on me.

She leaned in and her lips touched my ear. “When will you realize that I’m the most important woman in your life, Tristan? Katie was fucking happy that she was going to be the first to make you a father, but she didn’t know what I knew.”

“And what didn’t she know,” I mumbled, my insides clenching and twisting together.

“That I could’ve made Tristan Rogue a father when he was nine years old.”

I felt her smile against my cheek.

“That’s right,” she said, “our very first time made you a father. I protected you eventhough Johnny wanted children. It could’ve been his, but I was eighty percent sure that it wasn’t so I got rid of it.”

I put the cigarette to my lips and inhaled long and hard. I choked on the smoke. The truth she was scratching in the sand was too ugly to really want to see.

My mouth twitched as Lulina leaned in and kissed my cheek again, longer still this time and closer to my mouth. She touched my chin and pulled my mouth to hers.

I was too frozen to pull away and gag.

She pulled away and rubbed my face with the back of her hand. “See, Tristan? I was right; it tastes so much better when you let secrets have time.”

She patted my cheek, used her thumb to wipe her lipstick off my mouth and walked away.

Running into walls as fast as I can…

Eddie had looked like he aged so many years since the months I hadn’t seen him. His face had thinned out and the dwindling hair he had was now gone and he wore his head bald.

He nervously palmed his shaven head, “The fed thing.”

I looked up and met his eyes. “We took care of it.”

He nodded, his face not showing the relief that I thought it should. I thought maybe he feared that my father would send him away again if the Feds were still sniffing around, or kill him because of the same reason.

I was smoking out in the cold next to the outdoor pool. I had a glass with ice and a bottle of acholo that I couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of, and I was dangerously too sober.

I lowered my head and put my cigarette back to my lips. I heard the music, laughing and talking from inside the compound and the happiness of crime life was making me break out in a sweat.

The ceremony had been completed and Dominique was working the crowd with her soon to be husband and they were being congradulated on their soon to be child, and Lulina was hanging on Dominique arm, smiling ear to ear.

Even I had to admit that Dominique had been the perfect for the job my father and Papa handed to her. She knew how to smile and conjole and swapped the banter wisely to leave the men in the Rogue pockets still in the Rogue pockets.

My father kept her on his arm, walking her around the room, greeting the men who had made the Rogue family what it was. It was these men who did the dirty work, the grunt work, the nasty work behind the scenes while the rest of us called shots and cleaned up messes. Dominique smiled as she greeted them. She wore a stunning red dress that was open in the back, allowing her creamy tan skin to gleam. More than one stare was lingered on her after she had left a conversation and my father led her to another. Besides the curve of her ass the men gawked, I knew what was next on their mind:
What would the Rogue family expect by allowing the daughter of a Lougotti taking the reigns?

The party had been dangerously close to the party two years ago when I seduced Katie, and there was times when I was in the crowd that I looked for her, waiting for her to awe the men and make the women hate her for the way she pulled you in with her eyes and smile.

Katie had never showed.

Still, my demons were just as thick as ever.

Eddie took a seat in front of me. “Let me get one of those, Tristan.”

I handed him a cigarette and waited until he had lit up and puffed his first few puffs before I spoke. “You know, unc Eddie, Zander isn’t doing too well.”

Eddie fanned me away along with the smoke hovering around his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper that was yellow with age. He took care with opening it, his eyes glistening with tears as he turned the paper so I could see it.

“You know what this is, Tristan?”

I glanced at the paper then looked away. “My IQ scores.”

He nodded as tears dripped down his cheeks. “You were thirteen and you were said to be a genious.”

He pushed the paper back in his pocket. Eddie pointed to my bottle and I nudged it toward him. He put the rim of the bottle to his lips and took a long hard gulp.

“You’re every bit the man your father raised and more,” he said, wiping his face and still crying as he did it. “You may have fucked up, but those mistakes are forgivable. The mistake that’s not is the one where you stopped knowing how smart you are.”

Tears of my own dripped from my eyes. I covered up by dropping my head and smoked hard on my cigarette. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes that aren’t forgivable, Uncle Eddie.”

He touched the top of my head and I cried harder. “Tell me,” he whispered.

And I did. I bared my soul, confessed my sins. I gave everything I had and the more I talked the less I cried. Eddie listened silently and nodded to my words.

I drank hard on the offered bottle he handed me when I was done - thanking God that I finally felt the burn of the liquor going down.

“My son is dead, Tristan,” Eddie said.

I shook my head. “He’s not, he’s just lost. We can still save him. Me and you.”

“As far as the family, he is,” he said, no tears this time.

I handed him the bottle and he drank.

He handed it back and I did the same.

“I can’t lose him,” I whispered, “If he’s gone then so am I.”

“You are not my son, Tristan.”

I argued, “but I am.”

Eddie patted my knee and stood. He closed his coat, patted his head once more. “You aren’t my son, Tristan.”

I watched as Eddie slowly walked towards the small guest house, further and further away from the party.

I leaned back in my seat and chugged the rest of the bottle, the burn getting less and less hurtful with each sip.

The world had been cruel enough, and it was still dropping in temputure.

The doors to the compound burst open. One of my father’s men staggered out, his shirt ripped and his busted lip dripped blood. He was pissed and his muscles strained in his neck. The party goers crowded behind him as his eyes met mine.

He pointed a finger at me. “He’s crying for you.”

Who
he
was didn’t matter. Something deep inside told me it was Zander. It was that feeling that most get when bad news is delievered that you already knew just what the hell it was.

I pushed the through the bodies. Every face was turned towards me but I didn’t see them because they were like a blur, just faces in a crowd. I followed the man out into the front yard, and in that span of me wading through the bodies, it had started raining and it had gotten colder.

And when it starts to rain, it soon will pour.

Zander was lying in the mud. A car was behind him, blaring lights down on his broken and crumpled body. He had been crying but the rain had welcomed his tears and masked them with their rain drops. I knew he was barely hanging on but he was fighting strong to the very end.

He was surrounded by my father’s men. They had done this to them and my mind muddled as I tried to understand why. One of the men stepped forward and landed an ugly blow into Zander’s jaw.

I pounced and jumped into the mix.

I grabbed the man that had hit Zander and threw him against the car. My fist pounded into his jaw, his bones in his face broke as I hit him. Hands soon grabbed me, dragging me away from him but I fought them even harder, doing my best to get back to the man who had slugged my cousin – who had no problems hitting a man when he was down and could not hit back.

Soon I realized I was screaming. It was a delayed moment before I understood I was screaming the word:
Why
.

“He’s a rapist!” One had screamed back at me as I was drug away.

Ally was my fist thought.

Then Lulina was my second thought.

The second thought had been correct.

If this had been because of Ally, there would be no reason for my father’s men. My father stood at the front door while his guest surrounded him. Dominique hung close to his side, laying her head on his shoulder. The look in his face was hard and cold and dangerous as he looked at my cousin who was damned near drowning in his own blood.

Lulina was beside the happy couple and was staring at me with a crazed smile that no one seemed to see. I stared at Lulina but she stared back. Her left eyebrow cocked up as if to say that I could intervene with the truth at anytime.

I turned my look to Dominique. She knew the truth. And, she looked back at me with the same look as her mother.

Feel free to correct the wrong assessment, Tristan.

I started walking towards my father, my strides long and hard. One of his men stepped in the way, his arm out and his hand pushing me back.

I took a step back like I was about to back off then I leaned back and let my fist fly. It connected with his jaw and he fell to my feet.

“I’m the one you want. I did it,” I said.

My father turned his head and looked down at Dominique. He kissed the top of her head, his small slips smoothing against her skin – reeling in the feel of her.

I shook my head at this, my eyebrows furrowing as I winced my eyes at the image in front of me. My father, with all that he had expressed about not wanting or needing another wife, and not caring that he had allowed me to take her for my own, he was falling in love with her.

He was in love with Dominique Lougotti, and she had dug in deep, way too fast and way too deep.

He turned back to me. “Dominique said you would do this. You can’t protect your cousin, Tristan.”

“I’m not protecting him.” I’m yelling, my voice raw and ragged as I’m screaming at my father’s calm stance. “I raped my sister-in-law. I’ve been screwing her even when she was married to my brother. I’m sin in the family. I committed the sin. Me. Not him.”

My father patted me on the shoulder. “You can’t protect him, Tristan. We know the truth.”

The world shifted, wobbled in front of my eyes. My mouth opened but there were no words to say, at least, not anymore. All I had was the truth and now I did’t even have that.

I was not absolved; my soul was not even clean.

I confessed my sins and nobody cared to have them.

Lulina took control of the situation. “Tristan pulls the trigger,” she said.

My father looked at her and so did everyone else.

Lulina kept going, gaining steam, “I still love Alexander like my son and he would want it from the only person he loved more than anything. Give him that,” she voiced the reason and everyone was listening.

It had made sense to the crowd that I be the one to pull the trigger and a gun was passed to me.

I was frozen stiff. The blood in my body had drained and I was cold from the rain. The color in the world washed away. I couldn’t remember if I walked to Zander or if Lulina herself had led me to him, but when I could see and when I could focus, Zander laying in front of me.

He was about to die for something I had did and I couldn’t look him in the eyes, but I knew that he knew that I was guilty of what he was about to be excuted for.

Zander had deserved better than this.

He would not get it. What he would get was a hot bullet to the head.

By now he was wishing for it and I shared the same sentiment.

I gripped the gun, the cold metal and felt the deadliness in the palm of my hand.

I did not want this.

“Do it, Tristan,” someone said to me. I knew the voice but couldn’t remember who it was.

I could feel the drops of the water running down my face, down my cheeks – I was crying but no one would ever know.

I wished Zander hated me.

When he looked at me, I was prepared to see nothing but hatred and betrayal, but he couldn’t even give me that. When stared at me, it was with love – love of a cousin, a friend, a partner in a crime. We were drunks, sex addicts, outcasts from a family that we hated. Years between us, mixed deeply in a pain we both shared.

Our bond had been sacred.

He coughed and blood flew from his mouth. The men standing around seemed to grow in numbers by the second. It was dark, but the head lights gave light – a burning glare that seemed only directed at me.

Zander’s face was barely a face anymore, barely held together from what the men had did to him. How he made it here I would never know, but he made it.

Zander smiled at me. I saw it hurt him immensely as he did. He knew this was end. “I called this ending a while ago, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, Zander, you did.”

“And I’m not mad at you for it, just like I told you I wouldn’t be – you have to do it.”

“I got I kid on the way, man.” The talking made this much worse but it postponed the inevitable. “And no one will know it. My father is going to raise it as his son, and my son will be my brother as long as the Rogue has anything to do with it.”

Zander attempted another smile that pain wiped away almost immediately as it came about. “It’s the life we live in, man.”

He dropped his head and took a deep breath that never fully makes it and he coughed a violent cough. “Won’t be in pain anymore, Tristan. Thank God. If you see Ally, tell her I’m sorry, okay?”

I nodded slowly. The cold gun started to burn in my hand – now it was time to finish this. I took a step closer and pressed the gun to his forehead and he leaned into it. A sigh of relief escaped his lips.

“It’s finally over, man,” he whispered.

Yes it was.

I pulled the trigger. Never heard the shot; everything seemed to be turned down low, just the breathing from my own mouth and the crunch of Zander’s body when he hit the ground.

It was finally over.

My entire life I had felt like I was dead, but I wasn’t. The world around me was very much alive and very much ugly and cold and I was apart of it. Zander didn’t even get a blanket, but what he got was smiles like had been a burden that had finally flew away. My father barked orders of the disposal of the body. It would be a job that I would be excused from. Someone else would have to cut into Zander’s face and pour acid into it. It would someone be else that would bury this secret – a secret that was mine.