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At least I don’t have to get changed, I think, looking down at my dirty server’s uniform. Miraculously, there’s only a few faint spots of blood on the actual garment. I guess most of it got on my skin instead. How lucky.
The paramedics had washed me off with disinfecting wipes last night, but they didn’t get it all. If I had any hot water, I’d be looking forward to a hot shower right about now. Instead, I have to pump myself up enough to plunge into the icy cold waterfall that stutters out of my shitty nozzle.
God, I hate being poor— there’s no break to it. Things just keep piling up on you until one day you disappear and it’s like you never even exist at all. Why can’t it just be like I don’t exist now? Ghosts don’t have bills. The nursing academy ain’t going to charge no spectre. I could live wherever I wanted if I could walk through walls.
The cold water that sputters out of my shower nozzle slaps me awake like a frigid bully. I swat at the stream and get jealous when my fists pass right through it. This water is living my ghost dream...
It only takes a few more seconds under the cold water to snap out of my foolish ravings. Fuck being a ghost. Fuck being water. I’ve got to be hard, because that’s the only way I’m going to survive in this world.
I shiver and wash off the dried blood that still stains my dark skin. This’d be a whole lot easier if I were white.
I feel crazed again when, as I wash the last bits of the strangers blood off of me, I bite my lip. Even if the water is cold, the current suddenly seems to be running down my body in just the right way.
That dude who fell through my window was hot, right?
I close my eyes and go back to my memories of last night. The beast I envision slowly morphs against the black void in my mind until I can make out his steely blue eyes again. They’re cold, but there’s something in them that’s calling me closer—a fire that promises warmth just as much as it does pain. Slowly, a more human figure starts to form in place of the beastly features that I had been imagining on him. Veiny bulges turn to chiseled muscles; cracked skin turns to pale marble. Was his hair black or a dark shade of auburn? Well-trimmed facial hair grows around his sharp jawline, not too long and not too short; he’s just... perfect.
My hand wanders down between my legs. I’ve been in the water long enough that I can bear its frigid temperature. I remember the warmth of his burly arm under my trembling hand.
The steamy stranger becomes clearer and clearer as I keep my eyes wired shut and lean my head against the white plaster shower wall.
The vision of him I’m seeing now is far more detailed than the one I had managed to muster up for the police last night—they could probably use a revised draft.
Well, too bad. This vision is mine, I decide. I’m the one who had to suffer through what it took to get it, and I’m not about to give him up so easily.
I bite my lip so hard that I can almost taste my own blood. My heart beats like a jungle drum. The warmth inside of me cancels out the freeze that runs over my skin.
This stranger is mine, I repeat to myself, my fingers making due for the desire his absence creates—after all, I could use a little more excitement in my life.
5
Ronan
He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father, but if he scolds me in front of the family one more time, I swear I’ll make his real kids orphans.
I’m already seething mad enough at myself for the failure that was last night. I don’t need to be piled up on. Not now. I’m in bad enough shape as is. My left arm is barely hanging onto my body; I’ve spent most of my day in a vet’s clinic uptown getting stitched up
while caged dogs bark at me; I’ve got a booming headache, and I feel like I’ve been branded by a warm hand that I didn’t ask to have touch me. I’m liable to explode if I’m pushed even a little bit further.
Luckily, Gianni Barone also seems to want to shift gears. The old patriarch of the Barone crime family runs his shrivelled hand through his thick white hair. That hair used to be jet black, but not even the great don can fight back father time. His jet-black eyes, though, haven’t changed a bit since they first laid eyes on me all those years ago. No matter how big I’ve grown, no matter how hard I’ve gotten, the endless darkness under his permanently-furrowed brows always stirs up a pond of dread somewhere deep inside of me. This man controls me, and we both know it.
“Luca,” the old man gestures, pulling on the white cuff links of his finely pressed black suit. The Barone family’s oldest son steps forward. He looks just as mad as I feel. He fucked up too last night. He told the wrong Triad member about his intentions with Santino Costa, and word had gotten out to the greasy scoundrel before we could.
Luca is dressed much like his old man. An all-black suit hugs his husky frame; underneath, a crisp white shirt frames a thick black tie. He pulls on his cufflinks just like his old man, too. His movements are more jittery, though. Luca is the oldest of Gianni Barone’s sons, and he’ll take over when his father passes. It’ll be the biggest mistake Gianni’s ever made. Luca is big and tough, but he doesn’t have the brains to run an operation like the one his father’s put together. The stress of trying to punch well above his intellectual weight has worn down the once handsome Italian stallion’s features to the point where he looks like a younger, sickly, overweight version of his old man.
Luca wipes what’s left of his thinning, black hair from his forehead and nods to his father. He’s probably already been thoroughly chewed out in private—that discretion is only afforded to family members. Lowly non-Italians, like me, get to be publicly tarred and feathered.
“What are our sources saying?” Gianni asks. His voice is low and gravelly, like the devil come to life.
Luca hesitates before he starts. I tense in expectation of bad news. “There’s no word on Santino yet. But... But if he’s still in the city, we’ll find him. We have to.”
Gianni’s scowl deepens. He stares at his son with nary an ounce of love in his expression. “IF he’s still in the city?” Gianni’s voice echoes around the vast oakwood lined office of his penthouse suite. Books on law and philosophy and war and peace line the great bookshelf behind the don. His big, black looming chair lifts him above everyone else in the room. Luca’s a large human being, but even he looks like a child next to his father.
“We don’t know where he is...” Luca clarifies. I can almost feel the room start to shake. Gianni is good at controlling the full wrath of his anger, but even I fear he might break this time. There’s so much at stake.
The old man’s balled-up fist slams against the varnished oakwood of his expansive desk. The documents and folders that surround him jump off the table, before collapsing back down into place in a huff. Even the war medals and hand grenades, which Gianni keeps on his desk to remind everyone that he can fight just as well as he can lead, stir in the commotion. I almost flinch—is Gianni crazy enough to have live grenades on his desk? I almost wouldn’t put it past him. The godfather is stronger than he looks, even after all these years. “We meet with the Russian’s in three days,” he reminds everyone present. “If we don’t have this situation with Santino figured out by then, everything falls apart. We can’t have that now, can we?” He’s not looking at me, but I can still feel his stare. As much as Luca fucked up, this is still my fault. I had a chance to put Santino in the ground last night, but I got distracted. I never get distracted... but that woman did something to me.
A witch, I joke to myself. It isn’t a funny joke. I make a mental note to stop trying to make jokes.
