Jace
“There was a robbery in China Town, a liquor store. Owner’s all up to date on their payments, so they gave us a call asking what good our protection was,” said Lorenzo.
“We know who did it yet?” I asked.
Sitting back in my seat, I watched the world go by through the tinted window of the car as my driver drove the two of us back from an afternoon meeting to my office tower. This was some low-level crap that I was trying to delegate more and more these days, so I wasn’t prepared to give it my full attention.
Of course, like in any job, there were times when shit pissed me off. Unlike most other jobs for most other people, things could piss me off enough that I let myself get a little bit… hands-on with enforcing my rules.
That’s the thing in this world. You go for too long without fucking somebody up and some assholes start to get all uppity. They start losing respect, and that’s a death knell for somebody like me.
It was as true at the top as it ever had been when the Picollis used to send me to be the reminder about
their
rules. You knew you fucked up if you had me knocking on your door.
I built up a reputation, almost a
legend
. I had to laugh when I heard some of the stories come full-circle and get whispered back to me in hushed tones.
Did you know the Picollis have got a guy who cuts off peoples’ heads and uses their skulls to drink their blood?
What a load of shit. I used the head to beat the truth out of a second guy, not to drink blood. That’s just fuckin’ weird. Not that I ever denied anything. No. The smart play was to
use
that reputation to get what I needed.
“No. I’ve got a couple of guys putting the word out. Are you happy for me to give the owner whatever he needs to rebuild? They trashed the place good.”
“Yeah. You handle it. When you find the dumb fuck who did this, we’ll see what assets they have that can be appropriated.”
Lorenzo laughed. “Look at you, Mr. Businessman with the fancy talk. You’re really getting used to the high life, aren’t you?”
Once, there was an Emperor who hired a servant to follow him around and, every time the Emperor received a compliment, the servant was supposed to remind him “you’re just a man.” Well, Lorenzo was about as close to that as I had.
The guy was old school, showed me the ropes when I first graduated from running packages to becoming a soldier for the Picollis. If I had a job that was too much for one person, Lorenzo was the first person I ever went to for backup.
I shrugged. “Gotta put the degree to use sometime, huh?”
A chuckle made Lorenzo shake a little bit, but the laugh didn’t quite make it all the way out. He never thought much of my business degree from a correspondence school, but it was certainly helping to keep us afloat with our legitimate fronts.
When I was studying, in between making people disappear or just very sorry, I was amazed at the parallels between business theory and the crime family. Corporate hierarchy, organizational culture, supply and demand, it was all there.
Of course, not
all
the rules were the same. There were family complications, and parts of it were like a cult, but once I grasped the business side of things, that was the first time in my life that I was able to envision the Picollis as a single entity. That was the first time I had anything more than a vague idea about how to fulfil my destiny.
You can
kill
a single entity.
“So, we’ve been avoiding something all day,” he said.
“Hmmm?”
“Don’t play dumb. We’ve got Santino duct-taped to a chair, running his mouth while the guys wait for you to get there. He’s right fuckin’ here, in Port Magnus.”
“So tape his fuckin’ mouth shut. We can afford it,” I said.
Santino Son-of-a-bitch Picolli. When I took over this city, I put the word out that anyone who’d been lucky enough to get away, better
stay
away. Port Magnus was off limits to them.
In reality, I had no plans to stop at Port Magnus, it was just easier to consolidate my position if they weren’t around fucking with my business. The fact that he was
here
was a real thorn in my side. It felt like a backwards step.
The car pulled into the underground parking lot and paused while the guard checked the ID of my driver and opened the security doors. After a moment we continued.
“Well, let’s just go there, work him over and see what we can get out of him.”
“Pick up Roydon and head over there yourself. I’m going to sit this one out,” I said.
Lorenzo raised an eyebrow. “You serious? You’re not going to handle this one yourself?”
“What’s the matter, don’t think you can crack him?”
Lorenzo puffed himself up a bit, and I knew already that the argument was over before it had even started. My empire was built on fear and paying off the right people, but a little manipulation of ego went a long way too.
“You got someplace more important to be?” he asked.
“Dinner with that sexy little journalist that visited this morning,” I said.
Just mentioning her got my blood pumping. I wondered if she already knew she was getting fucked tonight or not. I could hardly wait to rip those panties off her, feel my cock sliding in, and watching her squirm.
“That’s an about-face on the media policy,” Lorenzo said.
“She won’t get anything she can use.”
“Well, you’re the boss. So, boss, how do you want me to play Santino? The reality is that he might not
be
crackable.”
I brought my hand up and rubbed my jawline as I thought about it. Lorenzo was right, guys like Santino had been brought up their whole lives being told to shut the fuck up about family business, or else.
Lorenzo hit hard, and I knew Roydon wasn’t going to lose any love on the Picolli family, but it
was
tough conditioning to break. Still, we had to get something out of this.
“Work him for an hour, two if you think he’s getting close to talking. Get what you can, but don’t touch his face. When you’re done, empty a few clips into him and leave him in front of the old Picolli place. Make sure he’ll be found and recognized. The six o’clock news will send our message. How’s that for a fuckin’ media policy?”
Lorenzo took it all in stride. “That’ll do the trick.”
I pressed the button to speak to my driver over the intercom. “Drop Mr. Marchetti off at his car, then we’re heading back out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kendall
After a brief hurricane of panic from everybody back in the office, I spent the entire afternoon on a computer researching Jace Barlow, determined to make part two of my interview infinitely less embarrassing than part one. I’d known he was secretive, but I didn’t realize just
how
little of his life had made it on to the internet.
Mr. Kinsley sent me some lines of questioning the brain-trust back in the office thought would be important to go through, but not until after trying to replace me at the dinner with a more experienced reporter. Barlow’s people shot that idea down.
This was my big chance, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to show them what I could do. Everybody at
The Weekly Enquirer
, my family, everybody back home who thought I would live and die in Woodville, I’d show them all.
I couldn’t afford the kinds of things that most people who dined at
Luc Monette’s
wore, but I dressed up as well as I was able to. Even so, when I arrived early, the woman behind the counter looked down her nose at me until I said I was here to meet Jace Barlow.
After that, I was royalty as far as she was concerned. She even brought me a complimentary glass of wine while I waited.
It wasn’t easy to keep a level head. This was as exclusive a restaurant as existed anywhere in the city, the whole country even. Everywhere I looked, I saw faces I recognized from the news, from the magazines, even from the paper I worked for.
The instant he walked in the room, he caught my eye. He had so much presence it was like the universe revolved around him, the complete opposite to me.
It didn’t take him long to spot me either, as if I drew his eyes as much as he drew mine. He headed straight for me and I had this image of him picking me up and carrying me off into the sunset.
There I went again. What was it about him that made me forget who I was?
“Mr. Barlow.” I began to stand.
He held out his hand, halting me, before he sat down on the opposite side of the table. “Please. Just call me Jace for tonight.”
“Oh. OK. You can call me Kendall too.”
“A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”
I glanced down at my glass of wine for a second, fighting off the shy blush that seemed to blossom anyway whenever he looked at me. Lines like that didn’t help my predicament.
Eventually, I managed to raise my eyes to his with a goofy smile on my face. “Thank you.”
“Have you ordered?” he asked.
“No, I was waiting for you.”
“Well, now you’ve got me, what are you going to do with me?”
It was an innocent question, but the way he said it and the look on his face gave me the impression that he was implying something. I didn’t know if it was just my imagination running wild again, not out of the question when I was around him, or if I was getting hit on by a multi-millionaire.
*****
“But enough about me. What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”
The whole dinner was like that. A question from me, a dodge by him, followed by thinly-veiled innuendo. I got the impression that the veil was only put there as part of some game he was playing with himself. With me.
No, there wasn’t any doubt about it. Jace Barlow was flirting with me.
Me
!
“Me? No. Nobody…”
… ever noticed me
.
“… I just don’t really have t-time for that,” I lied.
“I know the feeling.”
Jace leaned forward across the table as if he was going to tell me a secret, fixing me with those eyes of his with the game of cat and mouse playing out behind them. I couldn’t help but lean forward, drawn to him like he had me on a string, and I caught a hint of his cologne over the aroma of expensive food.
“There’s one thing people like us have time for. Don’t you think, Kendall?”
Leaning forward as I was, he took a slow and purposeful look down my top and I was caught off guard by a jolt of excitement between my legs. I’d never felt anything quite like that before without even laying a finger on myself, and I gasped quietly at the sensation as his gaze returned to my eyes, holding me there almost like I was spellbound.
No man had ever seen me naked. The very thought of it had always made me want to run and hide, but I found myself having to mentally argue with my own hands to stop them from unbuttoning my top right here at the table. After all this lonely time, I was soaking up this attention like a sponge, and I wanted more.
I also didn’t want to let this opportunity, this scoop, slip through my fingers. Struggling to regain control of myself, I thought back to my research this afternoon, the things I read between looking at pictures of him on a beach, with his top off and that chiseled body on display.
“I… um… Mr… Jace. I… uh… read that you went to the group home when you were six. Do you remember anything about your parents?”
For the first time since I’d laid eyes on him, Jace’s mask of confidence cracked for a moment. Through the seams, as he pulled away and leaned back in his seat, I caught a flash of anger and a slow river of sadness flowing underneath.
Then it was gone, and Jace Barlow, the living enigma, was back. He looked at me through slightly narrowed eyes as he ran his tongue over his teeth inside his mouth before taking a deep breath.
Before he could let out whatever it was he was going to say, a ringtone came from his pocket and the air puffed out of him wordlessly. He pulled his phone out without saying anything to me, looked at the caller displayed on the screen and then answered it.
“Get anything important?” He asked without greeting, then paused for a moment. “Oh, that
motherf
...”
He looked at me and from side to side at the other diners. “I’ve got to take this. I’ll be back in a few. Order some dessert if you want it.”
“Everything OK?” I asked.
“No. Business.”
He stood and began talking in hushed tones as he stalked between the rows of tables and past the woman at the front desk, who was dealing with a younger couple, and out the front door. Instead of perusing the dessert menu I pulled out my own phone and called my boss, feeling shaky from the rollercoaster of Jace toying with my emotions and his sharp withdrawal.
“Hello?” said Mr. Kinsley.
“Mr. Kinsley, it’s me, Kendall,” I said.
“How did it go? Is it over? Did you get everything?”
“I’m still at the restaurant, he’s just stepped out to take a phone call.”
“How is it going?” he repeated.
“It’s… um… Mr. Kinsley,” I looked around and then held my hand over my mouth and the phone, speaking in a harsh whisper. “He’s
flirting
with me! What do I do?”
A stunned silence was my only response for a while. “Flirt
back?
” he finally said, disbelief evident in his voice.
“That’s not, like, unprofessional or anything?” I asked.
The sound of his voice went distant for a second before I heard a few muffled curses. “No, Kendall. Use it if you’ve got it. All the greats have done it.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Go ahead. You nail this interview and you’re set for life at
The Weekly Enquirer
, you know that, right?”
“Oh my gosh… OK. I won’t let you down, Mr. Kinsley!”
“Great, call me as soon as it’s over,” he said.
“OK. Bye.”
“Bye.” I put my phone away and looked for Jace, but it seemed that his call was more involved than mine.
OK. Flirt back. Easy, women have the upper hand on that front, right? Except… I had no idea what to do. My sisters had tried to explain the art to me, but it just never clicked.
The fact that it came so naturally to them, apparently to every woman but me, had always made me feel almost less than human, like there was something special missing from me that made me worth less than everybody else. They could do more with a flick of their hair or a bitten bottom lip than I could ever do.
Yet, hadn’t Jace been looking at me all night, like I was just as appetizing as the masterfully crafted meals that had been placed in front of us? At his office too?
Butterflies fluttered in my stomach when I remembered him looking down my top as if he liked the view. I glanced furtively from side to side and then looked down myself.
My breasts were on the small side, not like his receptionist, not like all the girls he had his photograph taken with. But he
did
look.
Clearing my throat quietly as if that was a good distraction I brought my hand to the top of my shirt, near my neck. I could feel it shaking as my inhibitions fought tooth and nail with my need to do what it took to prove myself in the big wide world and my desire to have Jace’s eyes on me.
I undid the top button and pushed the sides of my shirt open a little. It was, possibly, the bravest thing I ever did.
Nobody eating around me seemed to notice the shameless hussy in their midst and I laid my hands flat on the table to keep them steady while I braced myself to pour on whatever charm I could muster.
The young couple who had been at the front desk walked between the tables, led by a waiter, talking loudly and all puffed up with self-importance. They both looked a little on the merry side and the woman stumbled on her high heels as she was passing our table.
Her thigh bumped the edge and my glass of wine toppled straight into my lap. I yelped at the sudden cold on my thighs and scrambled for a napkin.
The woman regained her balance and brought her hand to her mouth, looking like she was going to say sorry for a second. Then she looked me up and down, and seemed to decide that you don’t need to apologize to people below your station or something.
“Be careful!” I said.
Well, she didn’t like that. “What’s your problem?”
“What do you think? You just spilled my drink all over my skirt!”
She laughed. “Well, it’s not like it was a very nice skirt. It looks like it came out of some bargain bin.”
I could feel all eyes on me, but not in a good way like when Jace looked at me. All that attention drawn to my cheap clothes. I
had
got the skirt from a bargain bin.
“It
was
a nice skirt,” I murmured, already certain of defeat.
“Hey, don’t disrespect my fiancé,” said the man with her.
I looked up at him and then between the two of them. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, the shame of it all. All around me, people were watching, some of them looked uncomfortable, some of them merely interested. A few seemed to be enjoying the way the riff-raff was being put in her place.
I was
going
to flirt with the hottest guy I’d ever seen in real life. I was
going
to have fun, let myself pretend he really wanted me, and get the interview of the century all at the same time.
Instead, I thought I was probably about five seconds away from running out that front door sobbing.