Page 22 of Caged Bliss

“He wasn’t important.” I gather up the papers and shove them back into the folder. “Tommy’s got backing from someone. You should see the fucker. He’s got half a million dollars in jewelry on his body at any given moment, plus another half a million on that junkie he calls his girlfriend. He’s doing something, Laura. And when I figure it out, I’m going to nail him.”

She shoves the goggles back on her face. “Too complicated. You should just stab him.” She turns back to her big stone tongue and I sit there watching my sister work for a little while.

In all the years I was away, I doubt she let a single person into this basement. Which is a shame, because my sister is a genius. Tortured and difficult, definitely, but incredibly brilliant with her chosen medium. She moves around the stone block ruthlessly making little gashes and breaks to the main structure, slowly bringing out her vision. Right now, it looks like a lump of slimy gray emerging from a rough stone, but I know it’ll soon look like the other finished sculptures she keeps scattered around.

They’re tongues, but they’re beautiful. One’s abstract, lines and shapes hinting at the greater structure. Another’s hyper-realistic to the point of having little bits of fake spit glistening. Two others are cartoonish, almost garish, while the last is horrifying, a twisted monstrous slug-like creature that I have to assume is a nightmare version of a tongue.

“You really should show these.” I run my hand down the realistic version and can feel the minute bumps and scrapes. “They’re incredible.”

“That’s not why I do it.” She barely looks at me as she works.

“But still, are you really going to keep this stuff hidden down here?”

“Do you want to carry it up?”

“Yeah, okay, that’s a fair point, but come on. That’s just a logistical problem.”

She stops and faces me again. My sister’s strange by all measures, but she’s got her reasons and I stopped trying to make her fit into the perfect little box of normal a while back.

“Are you done?”

I wave a dismissive hand in the air. “Just saying you should share your gifts with the world.”

“You may go now.”

“Goodbye, sister, you’ve been ever so helpful.”

She doesn’t bother answering, just returns to her work.

I head upstairs, my head filled with tongue sculptures, and pause in the kitchen. I grab a beer from the refrigerator and drink it slowly while thinking about Claudia, wondering if Tommy watched our little movie yet, if she’s safe, if everything’s okay. I could call since I used Famiglia resources to look up her number, but I’m trying to take things slow.

The girl orgasmed in my lap. I watched her come as she ground herself down against my cock, and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed. I’d happily go to prison for another five years just to watch her do that all over again—but hopefully, I won’t have to do something so drastic.

Her taste lingers on my lips. Her moans fill my head. They’re all I can think about, which is a problem. I’m obsessing over this girl I barely know, a girl that’s supposed to be a means to an end, except she’s more than that now.

She’s a need. She’s a hunger.

I thought I had conquered this shit back in prison. The first few months were hard. No women, no access to anything but my memory and my fucking hand, and I had to learn to live without sex and without relationships. I dealt with it, figured out how to cope, but now that I’m back on the outside I’m suddenly deeply in lust with the first beautiful girl I came across.

It’s a fucking problem.

But I don’t know how to make it go away.

I toss the beer away and head outside. As I walk down Laura’s stoop and turn toward my house, my burner phone vibrates.

It’s Seamus Quinn. He texted me an address along with one simple message: Found Vito. Working on the others.

I text back an acknowledgment and look up at the sky. It’s a beautiful day in Chicago, and now I know where one of my former crew mates lives, and soon another traitorous fuck is going to die.

But first, I have to do something about that girl.

Chapter 12

Claudia

Back in the cage. I swear, Tommy puts me in here because he knows I hate it. I keep asking Rodrigo to let me do table and drink service but they keep throwing me in here and telling me to shake it for the club kids.

That’s how they see me. I’m basically a fancy lamp.

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