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10
I was waiting for her by the front door. I still couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was marked for life and death by this woman. She’d be my end, but she was also my beginning.
Sex was fun. I’d had a lot of it, but whatever happened earlier between Catherine and I was something radically different. It left me hungry for more and desperate to hold her, like some kind of force was pulling her away. No woman had made me feel anything remotely close. A nagging voice in the back of my head keep telling me that Catherinelle Nucci had put a leash on me, and the chain was in her hands.
She appeared at the top of the stairs, wrapped in a long, elegant fur coat that was covering the dress underneath almost entirely. All I could see were her satin gloves, a part of her skirt and the tips of her boots. The coat was mink with an extravagant white fox collar. Her grandfather had it made in Russia for his little princess’ birthday last year. It cost him over 30 grand, but if Cat wanted, Cat got, no questions asked, at least when her grandfather was concerned. The old man was still feared and respected across two continents, even if now his eyesight was too weak to aim a gun, but he had no chance in front of his granddaughter.
“You’re going to be hot in that. Freddy has a heated tent, Cat; it’s going to be 80 degrees in there.”
She rolled her eyes and stopped next to a mirror hanging on the wall by the bottom of the stairs to check her hair. She had washed it and fluffed it with a round hairbrush. Her pink frosted tips were hanging over her shoulders slightly curled, getting lost in the fur coat.
“It’s just for dramatic effect. How’s my make up?”
She turned to me in one move and waited for my input.
“You look hot.” The dark, thick eyelashes made her blue eyes seem even more whimsical, and the flaming red lipstick was calling for me to bite her lips. She was a fucking siren. “Can we go now?”
She smiled and touched my face with a gloved hand.
“You’re handsome too,” she said and then fixed the collar of my black silk shirt. “You should wear Versace more often.”
I didn’t dress up. It made me feel phony, like the ugly duckling who kept trying to be a swan or however that stupid story went. I was still an orphan from a family of Albanian immigrants that were killed in their own house. I starved. I slept in the sewers. I ate from trashcans and pickpocketed the rich to survive. The pile of cash I was sitting on now could never erase that. Gino, Roman? They were born into this privilege. I’d be surprised if Roman ever touched anything that didn’t come from a designer store. I was fine with jeans and a t-shirt that I could burn if I got blood on me. Of course, there were nights like tonight when I couldn’t show up in old jeans and insult Freddy, but I wasn’t willing to stuff myself into a suit, so dress pants, patent leather shoes and the silk shirt had to do it. She was right about the tag though. In the past twenty years, the Nuccis had rubbed off on me enough to make me buy Italian or not buy at all.
I drove us to Freddy’s estate and parked the car on the street because his driveway was already full. He had an impressive house here in The Hamptons, the size of a damn bed and breakfast with a large back yard with tennis courts and elaborate gardens. It was easy for him to fit a tent for a hundred or so people.
“We’ll have to walk. Are you ok in those heels, Cat, or do I have to carry you?”
“I can walk, Hugo.”
She rolled her eyes at me, but there was nothing I could do about it. Whatever this was, it had to stay behind closed doors and shut blinds.
I only got to take a few steps when Cat’s voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Hugo?” I turned to see her still next to the car with her hands on the hood. “There’s ice on the pavement.”
Ah, so she couldn’t walk after all. I went and picked her up without a word, and she put her hands around my neck.
“You should have worn winter things.”
“Pretty hurts, Mustafa, but thank you for being so sweet. I could kiss you right now,” she said and leaned in to do so, but I pulled away right on time.
“Don’t. Stop talking.”
A few feet away, Roman was just getting out of his sleek ’61 Lincoln Continental, putting on his hat. The man was a textbook gangster. The suit, the fedora, the long scarf over his coat, the leather driving gloves, he was the classic Italian-American mafiosi. I had never seen a wrinkle in his clothes in all my life.
After fixing his fedora and picking out some invisible lint on his sleeve, he looked up and saw me.
“Ah, Mustafa!” He stopped under one of the street lamps. “I see you have some precious cargo.”
“Yeah, she can’t walk because she can’t see the ice in the dark.”
I liberated one hand to shake his.
“Hugo doesn’t get the sacrifice one has to make to look good, Roman. Don’t mind him.”
“If I’m not used to this grump right here, no one is. Come stai stasera, Carina?” How are you tonight, beautiful?
“Sorprendente. Non vedo l'ora di vedere tutti, bere un bicchiere di vino.” Amazing. I can't wait to see everyone, have a glass of wine.
