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It becomes even worse when I realize that Matteo probably feels the same way if he’s been drinking too. The idea of his cock pulsing in his pants sends a wave of curiosity, hunger, and shock through me. My face flushes hard, and I see a glimmer in his eye the moment that he notices it.
Is my body turning on me? Am I unable to keep secrets from him now? This is going to become a problem if my feelings are exposed every time he looks at me. It’s one thing to take care of it in the refuge of my own bedroom, but the idea of himknowingabout it sends a chill through my veins that chases after the warmth.
As the food comes, I struggle to eat as the wine continues to hijack my mind. I imagine him bending me over the table, smacking me on the ass for asking so many stupid, invasive questions. I’d give anything to hear his Italian accent as he scolds me.
“Iris? Did you hear anything I just said?”
I feel my heart stop momentarily, shocked that it even had the will to start again.
“Yes, sorry, I’m just not much of a drinker. I think I need to pull back on the wine a little,” I lie.
He scoffs, shrugging as he motions for his waitstaff to take my glasses of wine from me. “Well, we can’t have that. People who can’t hold their alcohol tend to make choices they regret later.”
Suddenly, I’m craving just one more sip.
7
Matteo
Today is yet another day that I have not been excited to face.
Now that I know for a fact that there has been human trafficking happening under my name, I’ve been able to pinpoint exactly who it is who betrayed me.
Choosing men to run your business is difficult when you see so much cash flow, that much is obvious. I’d do anything for a reliable polygraph test that I can subject each of my men to taking before I take them on. There’s nothing more frustrating than having to take someone under your wing just because he’s your uncle’s favorite son. Family is family, but then there’s Vitale.
Vitale is barely thirty. We scraped him up off the streets when he was twenty-one, fighting for cash in alleyways and getting the shit kicked out of him to the point of regular concussions. Perhaps that should have been the writing on the wall, but I felt for him when I saw him bleeding from his left eye on the sidewalk. I knew he needed an easy out – nobody fights in the streets for fun. He was quick to take the job, and at first he was the hardest worker on my team. I was more than satisfied with his performance, increasing his pay and giving him more responsibility than even my longest-standing friends.
When he turned twenty-eight, that’s when things started to go sour with Vitale. He had developed a monster of an ego from the work and money he was raking in, and he was no different from any other young idiot with a fuck ton of cash. He became addicted to the game, to the sublime dopamine hit that came from feeling a fat stack of cash slap your palm after a successful deal. Nothing makes a man feel more accomplished than being able to provide.
Eventually, we’d reached a predictable plateau in our revenue when the accusations from Joe first came out in the press. It was a hard fucking year for us, trying to regain our reputation as protectors instead of predators. Vitale didn’t care about his public image anymore, not when he was blowing thousands of dollars a week on coke, hookers, and a downtown flat.
I’m certain that he had an easy in with all the sex dungeons he frequented. It must have been easy to convince the girls that they’d make double if they didn’t have to pay anyone for the space to do their work. He knew desperation when he saw it, and he hadfelt itjust like they were. Eventually, he found a willing partner, Blanco, and he began to sell sex under the table.
What he hadn’t considered was the fact that many of these girls were going to quit within months, possibly weeks. He didn’t know how to keep them safe or happy with the conditions he provided, and one of them even went missing and was eventually found dead.
He made too many promises too fast, and the girls were quickly disillusioned with him and his bullshit. When he ran out of willing girls, he had to turn to imported girls from the Romanian slave trade. The fact that he’s so willing to use humans to earn a profit when I’ve paid him so well makes me sick.
I took this person into my family when he was getting his ribs broken in the streets. I picked him up off the pavement and wiped the blood from his face. I saw so much potential in him, and he wasted it. Pissed it down the fucking sink.
It was tragic to learn about, of course, but I hadn’t even thought to associate it with Vitale. It’s not difficult for me to hear about how horrid the underbelly of the city can get, even if you don’t know anyone directly involved. Word gets around quick, and I believed that it was just another accident at the hands of a cruel and heartless world.
I was tipped off to Vitale’s involvement when one of the girls I knew in the clubs confessed her own involvement. She knew I was Vitale’s boss, and she told me that he was operating out of a warehouse near the bay. At the time, I had been suspicious that this particular warehouse was being watched by the feds, so I pulled my inventory and my men from that location.
He must have waited a while before beginning his little side business, because he never got caught by anyone. By this point, I’m both pissed that I changed my drop location for nothing, and even more angry that my property is being used to traffic young women. It sickens me to think about it.
So, today, I’m making my way to the warehouse to meet with Vitale. He has no idea that I’m onto him, and he only recently learned that Blanco was dead and not just in hiding. I was tempted to send him a photo of his face, but I needed him to cooperate with me, at least up to this point. Otherwise, he’s a flight risk.
As I park my car in the lot behind the warehouse, I see the singular, dingy lightbulb flickering in the window from a distance. Even with all the horrors I’ve seen in real life, something about this warehouse has always given me chills. I can’t imagine being sold into sexual slavery in a place like that. It would probably feel like you’ve reached a portal to hell.
It takes me a few moments to steel myself for the meeting. Vitale doesn’t scare me at all. This isn’t the issue. But I’ve never had to have a meeting like this with someone that I had trusted so strongly before. Whether he’ll walk out alive has everything to do with his conduct. Am I going to tell him that? Of course not.
Entering the warehouse fills me with a hollowness accompanied by a brief, pointed nostalgia. The scent of motor oil in the hallway brings me back to the days of my father’s chop shop, sleeping under the stairs late into the night while he worked. It’s a bittersweet memory, and certainly one that I don’t wish to revisit right now.
Vitale isn’t here yet, which comes as a surprising relief. I doubt he’s a flight risk, so it isn’t a matter of worrying that he’s disappeared. This way, I get more time to really go over what I’m here to say.
After around thirty minutes, I hear another car pulling up outside. The bass on his car is impossible to miss if you know it, and he’s spent more on his shitty subwoofers than the car itself.
He enters, head cocked back like he’s posing for a mugshot. “It’s not like you to meet in places like this. What’s going on?”
