Page 14 of Tainted Princess
“Tisk tisk.” I held up a second finger. “I guess that’s number two. Then, you told me you would have my money for me by Friday, and now here it is, fuckin’ Tuesday already, and still, I have no money from you. That’s three, Harry. Three lies from you. That’s gonna cost you, ya know?”
I dropped my hands back to my belt buckle, and Harry’s eyes went huge as his face drained of color.
After all, my belt buckle was legendary around these parts.
It was a custom piece, designed for me by a master puzzle box maker out of Japan. It was stainless steel and about the size of a deck of cards, both in width and in depth, with a lotus blossom engraved on the front. The guy had looked at me like I was fuckin’ nuts when I ordered it, but the lotus was very symbolic to me. After all, the lotus began its life in the mud, buried under all kinds of shit, but grew into something incredible. Everyone knew the lotus was a beautiful flower, but no matter how great it looked on the surface, it still kept its roots way down in the dark and the mud.
I related with that shit pretty strongly.
But the real magic of the buckle was in the buttons. All along the top and bottom edges of the buckle were small buttons, six on each side. Pressing them in different combinations would release different tools and items from the buckle, like a Swiss army knife.
Seeking out the two I was after, I pressed, one on the top and one on the bottom, smiling when there was a quiet click as the item I wanted popped out of the side, like bread from a toaster. Snagging the end, I pulled, and when a set of brass knuckles appeared, my friend Harry went and pissed his pants.
Fuck.
Rocco burst out laughing again, and I was just about to lose my shit when my phone rang. Sliding the brass knuckles—which were actually stainless steel like the rest of the items in the buckle, but the termstainless steel knucklesjust didn’t really have the same ring to it—back inside, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and frowned when I saw my father’s name.
It wasn’t like we never talked, but it was a bit early for his once a month check in, so I hesitated to answer.
My relationship with my father was a complicated beast, and that was putting it lightly.
There was no real animosity; I knew he did the best he could with what he had to work with. Considering his ties to the Families in New York, I was lucky he was in my life at all. Kids outside your marriage were not exactly rare in their Organization but parenting them seemed to be. And considering all the posturing about being good Catholics that those guys did, it struck me as odd that they were all too happy to keep a mistress or two right under their wives’ noses. But hypocrisy and religion went hand in hand, didn’t they?
My father met my mother thirty-four years ago when a business meeting landed him at a seedy club on Freemont Street, a block or two from the Golden Nugget. Lita was a waitress, working three jobs just to make rent, and he was good looking and wore a diamond encrusted Rolex.
By the time he’d left five days later, she was set up in a decent apartment and down to the one job he’d gotten her, working the reception desk at a doctor’s office. She never worked for tips again.
Nodding my chin at Rocco to take over with Harry, I left the room and headed for the stairs, making my way out of the basement and back into the main room of the bar. This place,Deuces Wild,was one of my smaller clubs but it was also my favorite place to bring people who needed to be reminded how important it was to keep their promises.
Closing the basement door behind me, I was greeted by the smiling face and ample rack of my business operations manager, Amber. She helped oversee the day-to-day of the legitimate aspects of my business and graciously turned a blind eye to the not-so-legitimate ones. We had been working together for three years.
We had been fucking for one.
It was a casual thing, more out of convenience than any real like for each other. Don’t get me wrong, she was hot, and a decent lay, but the chick was boring as fuck out of the bedroom. But as my business began to grow, we started spending more and more time together, so it was inevitable that we wound up in bed together, I guess. I made sure to spell it out real clear for her that it was just fucking, and she swore to me she understood.
But judging by the hopeful glint in her eye every time I entered a room lately, I was starting to think that she might need a reminder about where we stood.
Relationships were not for me. I didn’t need the hassle of a needy woman wondering where I was, pissing in my porridge when I worked late or some shit. Having to answer to a woman? No, thank you.
That’s one of the things my father had taught me, one of the reasons he explained for keeping my mother the way he did. He said that a man needed a woman to understand her place in his life, and when you gave one the title of wife, it changed her expectations and cost you time and energy to keep her quiet and happy.
When he’d say things like that, you’d think he was a complete asshole, but Giuseppe was a good man, infidelity aside, and he treated my mother right for what the relationship was. And, after trying the whole girlfriend thing once or twice and failing miserably, I could see that he was right about keeping a woman out of your life.
My mother tried to convince me that what I needed was to find the right woman, that if I could find her, I wouldn’t need to worry about finding a way to fit her into my life, because our lives would mesh in a way that having her in it wouldn’t seem like an imposition.
So far, I thought my mother was full of shit, but I’d never say it to her face.
Speaking of faces, Amber’s was turned up at me, full of hope and adoration, and I stifled a groan as I held up my still ringing phone, indicating that I didn’t have time to talk to her. I could see the disappointment in her eyes, but she recovered quickly, instead reaching behind the bar and grabbing me the bottle ofPatrón Silver. Not my favorite tequila, but a passable enough bottle for the time being.
As I settled into one of the booths that lined the wall of the empty club, Amber hustled over with the bottle and a glass. I grunted out a thanks as she walked away, and finally answered my phone.
“Hey, Pops. What’s up?”
“Enzo,” he said, and I could hear excitement in his voice. “I have an opportunity for you, son.”
Grabbing the tequila bottle by the neck, I poured two fingers into the rocks glass and took a sip, savoring the clean taste. “Well, you know me, Pops. I’m a born opportunist.” I watched as Amber moved back toward me, and this time, I didn’t wave her away. Sliding into the booth beside me, she ran her long, red fingernails over my arm where it stretched out across the back of the booth, then slid her ass right up to me, pressing her tits against my chest. I could feel my cock growing hard in my pants, knowing that she’d be down for a quick fuck in the back office when I was done.
“I know you are, son. I know you are.” I heard the flick of a zippo and could just picture him, leaning back in his chair and sucking on a fat cigar. Some stereotypes existed for a reason, and it seemed that mobsters and Cuban cigars were exactly how the movies depicted them.
