Page 7 of The Taker

The car pulls up before I can make up my mind. Giuseppe opens the door, and a woman about my age with chestnut colored hair beams at me from the sidewalk. Her teeth are white and straight, framed by mauve lips. “Mr. Vettore is waiting for you inside, sir.”

The idea of anyone calling mesiris laughable, but I smile at her. “Thank you.”

I follow her through the gold-framed front door, passing immaculately set tables. Each has its own floral centerpiece and gleaming silver cutlery atop pristine white table cloths. The booth chairs are upholstered in a buttery leather, and the chairs match with a cream brocade patterned fabric with a gold threading. Even without dinner lighting, the ambiance is hard to miss. It feels wrong for me to be on the customer side of the house, especially when it’s this bougie.

She leads me into another similarly decorated room, through a curtain to a private dining space. Although it shares design elements with the previous two spaces, it has a crystal chandelier. Each piece of shimmering, shining glass catches the light in a totally unique way, with no two looking exactly the same. It’s breathtaking.

Rocco sits at the only table in the center of the room. He wears a dark gray three-piece suit, with a white dress shirt and white gold cufflinks. His handsome face is hard and cold, as if it was carved from stone. I sit in the already pulled out chair across from him and try my hardest not to stare. I’ve never looked at him directly before, nor had his full attention on me.It’s unnerving to make eye contact with him, but I hold my own and even manage a small smile while I wait for him to speak.

“Thank you for coming to meet me today, Leo,” he says in a cursory manner as he flicks his napkin open and lays it across his lap.

“I didn’t feel as if I had a choice, given how you had the invitation hand delivered to my exact address. It was really more of a summons. You even sent a car for me.”

He narrows his eyes at me before giving me a wide grin. “I’m not used to asking. Or wasting time.” His eyes roam over me in an appraising manner and a shiver races down my spine.

The woman from before comes back to our table with a decanter of ruby-red wine and two glasses. She pours us each a glass before another woman brings us two personal antipasto platters on miniature charcuterie boards with various olives, cheeses, cured meats, and marinated peppers and artichokes. Rocco takes a piece ofSoppressatafrom his board and pairs it with a piece of aged provolone before popping them into his mouth.

I pick at mine, too nervous to eat and unsure of why I’m even here. He takes a few more bites, then sips his wine.

“Thank you for saving my life.” His words sound stiff, hollow in their delivery. “That was brave.”

At first I wanted him to thank me, but now that he did it seems like too little, too late. A wave of confidence swells inside me, and before I can stop myself, I say, “I certainly didn’t feel brave. It was a careless knee-jerk reaction, one that got me a bullet graze.”

He glances at my left arm, right where the wound is. “I remember seeing it in the hospital. The blood was bleeding through the bandage a bit, but now it seems almost completely healed.”

Holy fuck, I didn’t imagine it! He did come to visit me in the hospital.

“I’m going to cut to the chase, Leo,” he continues on, glazing over my stunned silence. “I want you to come and work for me, as a member of my crew.”

I open my mouth to say something—anything–but nothing comes out. This is not what I expected. At best, I thought this was going to be a thank you lunch. At worst, I thought he was going to murder me for some random, crazy reason. An offer to work for him seems like a crazy, out of left field option.

The sip of wine I take doesn’t seem to buy me much time, and I’m no closer to processing what he just asked me, let alone making a decision.

“What exactly would I do, if I worked for you?” I manage to mumble, trying to look anywhere but at the handsome man before me. His eyes are like some kind of magical hypnotism, the way they suck me in and hold me in his orbit.

I can’t break how our gazes lock together, or the sizzling heat I see deep in his eyes. It’s such a one-eighty from the coldness I found there earlier.

“Whatever I say…”

4

ROCCO

The thing I find the most interesting about Leo Costa is how expressive his face is. In the few social media photos he posted of himself, I can clearly see how much he dislikes being out and about in public. How his thoughts are a million miles away and he’d rather be anywhere else.

I felt the same discomfort rolling off him as he walked toward our table. His posture was stiff and his face was pinched. But that innate awkwardness wasn’t enough to sate my need to watch him unravel—to break him down and make him cry.

Eventually I’ll see his angelic face stained with tears again.

The sunlight streaming through the window next to us hits him just right, giving him an ethereal glow. Like a real life, innocent angel. But as he sits across from me, picking at hisantipasto, all I see is his blank face, void of any clues that can tell me what he thinks about my offer. Or how it makes him feel.

It doesn’t matter in the end, because he doesn’t really have a choice.He will take my offer.There’s no other option I’d accept. Because whether Leo likes it or not, the day he took that bullet for me, he became mine.

My toy to do with as I please.

I need to see his face twist in agonizing pain, and know I’m the one who makes him feel something. I need to watch him break down, then build him back up again. Corrupt him over and over, until my pure innocent is as dirty and fucked up as I am.

“Excuse me?” he asks, as if he didn’t hear me quite right, despite knowing that he did. His medical records mentioned nothing about hearing loss.

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