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However, I was afraid of what I would have to face later, but I had been standing here to satisfy my curiosity, therefore, I continued my trek down into the dank dark room. But first I turned the small light to my right, but all that showed were shelves with jars of canned food and some fresh vegetables and fruit. That didn’t look like something Dante had time to do. Canned tomatoes, and placed them down here.
Maybe he brought his girlfriend here for a vacation and she’d done all this canning. Somehow that caused jealousy to well inside me. Jealousy was a strange animal. It would make you do stupid things like think you could compete with a woman for a man’s affection. That was exactly what I’d fallen into. Another stupid move on my part. Why not let her have the psychotic prick?
How could I let her have him when he was mine? At this point I wasn’t thinking clearly. All I thought about was him making love to me and me taking him in that shower. That had been the sweetest sex I’d ever had with a man. None of the gay men had bent over for me, but this self-styled straight dude had, and because of that I had second thoughts about him. Maybe there was something to redeem after all. Maybe there was something they’re worth... I paused. No nothing was worth dying over, not even love.
When I treaded up the first step on my way back to the kitchen, I glanced up, and there was Dante looking down at me. Oh shit, was he testing me by pretending to be asleep to see what I’d do next?
“Did you find what you were looking for? Are you satisfied now?” I climbed up and edged myself around him to get into the kitchen. That root cellar had me unsettled because I still hadn’t searched the entire room, because I didn’t have time and the small flashlight had been of no use to me.
That root cellar could be hiding all kinds of secrets, and I wanted to discover them before I became one of the many secrets I thought Dante would hide.
“You need to go back to bed,” I said, turning around to see him staring at the cellar door, peering down as if he had to forget something buried. His chest moved up and down as if he was exhaling memories. “If you won’t do that, then you should sit outside with me. There won’t be much sun for days and you should try to get as much as you can, and eat your fruit I prepared for you.”
To change the subject and to prevent Dante from asking more questions, I opened the back door and stood outside and waved my hand. I held my hand out and touched the chair next to me. “Come on and get some sun with me. You’ll feel better and you need Vitamin D.”
Dante reluctantly strode out and stood on the porch, then with an uneven weak movement, he plopped down on the cushion in the wicker chair, and we took in the beauty of the lake. And I took in the beauty of this wicked handsome dangerous dude.
“Are we going to fish before you kill me?”
“Can’t you stop with that, Rome.” He never said that he wasn’t serious about getting rid of me. Not once did he say that, and that was why I couldn’t think about anything else but that.
“You haven’t said you wouldn’t.”
His eyes and body turned to me. “Do you think after what we’ve been through I would? What kind of man do you think I am?” Now he was asking me a question about how I perceived him. Was that his way of gauging my weakness?
“This is the second time I’ve had to answer that question, and I’ll answer it like this— no one really knows anyone, Dante. You don’t know me. I could be a killer and I’m waiting for my chance to take care of you. Did it occur to you that I could be a hit man, and someone put a hit on you, and I took the contract?” I said with a sinister grin, and my eyes darting around like a second-rate stand-in actor giving a clichéd performance.
Dante turned to me with a pensive serious glare, and slanted his head to see if I had been serious. “Well, what the fuck are you waiting for?” he barked. “I have no weapons and I’m still weak from all that medicine shit you’ve been making me swallow.”
I wanted to laugh because it appeared he thought about I could be one after all. I didn’t know whether I should be flattered, or I should take a bow for my convincing portrayal of a hit man.
Then it occurred to me that Dante had been fucking with me and didn’t see me as a threat after all.
“See what I mean. You actually believe that I could be a hit man, and that dude whose brother Nico killed, could have hired me.”
“Yes, he could, but then why did you fuck me first? Why didn’t you just do what you’d been paid to do?”
“Maybe that’s my way of claiming my trophy. Hit men, like regular killers, like trophies too, like the rest of the killers walking around, we don’t have a clue what they see as trophies. I pretend that I’m weak and let a man fuck me to get his confidence, and after that, I take what I want. Did you ever take a trophy when you offed some guy?”
“This isn’t about me now. This is about you. It’s your story, now convince me that I’m in the presence of a killer and I have something to worry about. We already know what I’m capable of, now tell me what you’re capable of doing.”
Not much, I thought, but he didn’t know, and right now I wasn’t telling him. Then it occurred to me this shit I was pulling could work against me. I wanted him to have some respect for the man he’d put his trust in for this little while, and who he had terrorized for the time I’d known him.
Dante stood ready to leave, but he stopped, when I said, “You know I could have killed you with that soup.”
Dante laughed hard until it reached his eyes and tears streamed down his cheeks with laughter. Pausing to look at me with a serious look, he said, “That I can believe because it had enough salt that for a man in his late thirties, I could have gotten a stroke so I can see you cooking for me would be dangerous indeed.”
“That’s good, you think so little of me being a killer that you’ve underestimated me. That’s what killers do, they underestimate the next man. Remember when you left me in Nico’s room? You underestimated my ability to get away from you.”
“Why didn’t you make your move on me then?”
“Because I hadn’t gotten my trophy yet. Nico’s head and your ass.”
“This is all amusing and you’re a good storyteller Rome—"
“ You think so?” I wiped the smile from my face and shot him a serious glare. Then slanted my head and stared at him until I made him uncomfortable as his hands wrapped tight around the arms of the wicker chair.
“Well then, if you think that was funny, then I could have killed you in your sleep. Put a pillow over your head, and the way you were out of it, you wouldn’t have felt a thing, and I could have buried you in that cellar. You know where you’d dug a hole for me.”
