Page 6 of Vice

3

Dele

Bella spends the entire week helping me work on my Italian. While Dele Martin was born and bred in the Midwest USA, Addy Bianchi just moved to New York City a little over six years ago. While it’s reasonable enough for her to have lost some of her accent when speaking English over the years, it’s totally unreasonable for her not to be fluent in Italian. Just in case Stephen Pray, who is fluent in the language, decides to indulge me.

After spending so much time with Bella and her family over the years, I’m almost fluent in the language. But every now and then, I trip over a sound. Don’t roll my r’s just right or pronounce a word with an ‘s’ sound instead of a ‘z’ sound. And sometimes, I completely confuse everything and start talking in some bastardization of both Italian and English. Something that Bella, for her part, just laughs at and says is the most easily realistic I sound when trying to speak her people’s language.

“Pray may not notice the difference,” Bella assures. More for herself than for me as we get ready to take her family’s private jet to Denver. “It’s been so long since he’s associated with any of the Italian families or even his own that he might have forgotten some of the nuances of it.”

At least that’s what she hopes. What we and our entourage hope as we make our way to Denver. And not just about the nuances of Italian. But also exactly what Dele Martin looked like back before he obliterated the Soles. If for one second I was sure that he would recognize me, I would have chosen to send an agent as a decoy in my place like I discussed with Bella and Bond from the beginning. But the more I thought about, the more I came to the conclusion that I was never around Pray or even in the media enough for him to remember what I look like.

The one time Viper brought me around the man, then just a mayor, I was fifteen with blue and white streaks running through my short chin bob with bangs, and I’d been so unimpressed by the man and vice versa that Viper always dropped me off at the Soles base before going to discuss something with the drug war with the man. And when I was older, I would just wait at my apartment or his and Phae’s.

Even if Pray did remember what I looked like back then, I’ve long since abandoned the short and often shaved hairstyles of my youth when I was going through my edgy and rebellious stage. I don’t think he’d have recognized me as adult Dele Martin with my long wavy, almost black hair who traded in all her holey denim and crop tops for leggings and oversized t-shirts and motherhood. Let alone me as twenty-seven-year-old, blonde Addy Bianchi.

No one who hasn’t known me in the last six or seven years would.

I’m pretty sure.

I hope.

I’m about to find out.

Alarms and sirens don’t go off as soon as I walk into Pray Drinks’ clean, precise, and exquisite headquarters. A security guard does speak into his mic before we even get to the desk, but Pray was expecting us, and it’s not a stretch of the imagination to guess he told people to be on the lookout so he and his own entourage could come down and meet us.

Like a prey who spots a predator before the predator spots them, I’m on high alert as soon as I spot Stephen Pray walking off the elevator with his security and associates. My fight or flight instinct automatically kicks in and I have to stop myself from subtly shifting my stance to be ready for a fight, even in fucking stilettos.

And then, like a planet that can’t help tilting toward and orbiting around its sun, I spot dark blonde hair and mesmerizing blue eyes. Viper. Or, more specifically, him as the legal persona, Adrian Blake. He spots me at the exact same time as I spot him. Or maybe a little before that. His blue eyes meet my hazel ones. Only briefly. Because we can’t draw attention to ourselves or my identity. But the split second is long enough for me to see the disbelief that flashes through his eyes, followed by confusion, followed by fury. But ever the actor, Viper hides it well behind a mask of aloofness and indifference, typical of him when he’s around a bunch of people he’d prefer not to be.

A perverse jolt of excitement runs through me at knowing I’ve undoubtedly caused him some ire.

But Viper isn’t the only one who recognizes me.

One of the men standing with him, a stocky bald man with a full goatee and probably in his late thirties or early forties, recognizes me too. I can tell by the way he glances at me, looks away, and then does a quick doubletake. His eyes widen, and for a brief moment, he looks like he’s seen a ghost. Then he schools his features and no one who didn’t catch the brief second he was caught off guard would have been any the wiser about it.

I recognize him too.

Revnor. The man who almost ended up my mentor if not for Wyan taking a special interest in me, one of the few girls seeking to become one of their field members.

Where my relationship with Viper was always nebulous at best, Revnor, or Rev as I called him, was very firmly an older brother figure to me. An older brother who raised his eyebrows but never said anything when he noticed my relationship with Viper wasn’t as platonic as I played it off to be. An older brother who left the Soles not long after I was framed because it was the straw the broke the camel’s back after a long history of hypocrisy, betrayal, and disloyalty from the people we were expected to be unquestionably loyal to.

He tried to get me to go with him too. Just like my sister tried. But unlike my sister, he didn’t judge me for my obvious attachment to Viper. He’d just smiled, told me to take care of myself, and then I never saw him again.

Until today.

I should be concerned that he recognized me. But just like he was prone to keep his observations to himself unless pressed back then, I can tell he plans to do the same now. He’s somehow made a life as one of Pray’s men. And to him, I’ve made a life as a member of the Uccello-Bianchi family.

I recognize one other person in Pray’s entourage. Tall. Dark hair and eyes. Objectively handsome. He, thankfully, doesn’t recognize me. Even so, I want to get away from him more than I want to get away from Pray. I don’t know his name, though. Just instantly remember our one and only encounter. I thought he was dead.

I thought Viper killed him.

I refuse to let fear overtake me and control me, though. So I put on the persona of Addy Bianchi. A woman who isn’t supposed to have a complicated history with any of these men.

“Mr. Pray,” I say, striding forward because Addy Bianchi is ever the socialite. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I was excited when Bella told me about your proposition.”

Pray makes a show of dismissiveness as he says, “No need to be so formal, my dear. We’re practically family.”

Then he knocks my outstretched hand aside and pulls me into what I imagine a warm hug from a grandfather would feel like if I didn’t know what kind of man Pray truly was. That if he knew who I was, he’d want to kill me. That after we take away everything he holds dear and ruin his public reputation, Viper and I plan to kill him.

---