26. Chapter Twenty-Six—Carlotta #2
“You got it.” Cass smiles, extending his arm out for me. Like a gravitational pull, I’m helpless but to slot myself into his side, laying my hand over his clutching my hip. “Genie, I want you to meet someone special. This is Carlotta.”
Clasping her hands together, Genie, surveys the two of us, her eyes ping ponging back and forth until she breaks out in a grin so big I can see the back of her teeth.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise,” she coos. “It’s so lovely to meet you, Carlotta. I’m Genie.”
I smile. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
Genie flicks her attention back to Cass, seemingly unbothered about the sets of eyes all around the bar space, watching us with interest. “I’m not quite how you did that, boy, but you better hold on tight. She’s a special one, I can tell.
Cass’s grip tightens on me, sending a thrum of pleasure and a signal of safety to my brain. “That she is. We’re gonna grab some food, so—”
“Back table is free. Alessandro!” I turn to peer over my shoulder just in time to see a young man, tall and lanky as if his body hasn’t quite caught up with itself yet, hastily clearing a booth table at the back until it’s devoid of empty glasses and a used ashtray.
“Go. Sit.” Genie wafts her hands in the general direction. “I’ll bring you two lovebirds some menus. Father Time is cooking tonight.”
“Father Time?” I whisper as Cass and I cross the open space. “Who’s he?”
“Nice to see you back, Angel. No mask tonight?” Cassiel’s response to my question is interrupted by a tall beefy looking man, the wifebeater he’s wearing straining across his large chest.
“Not tonight, Dallas.”
His size-of-a-fucking-dinner-plate hand reaches out to clap Cass on the shoulder. “Good for you. Nice to meet you, girlie.” He nods at me before he stalks off, lumbering between the pool tables and disappearing through a door I hadn’t noticed before.
“Father Time is the best cook in town,” Cass begins to explain, gently hooking his fingertips in the collar of my cropped jacket and pulling it from my shoulders.
I slip my right arm and then my left from the sleeves before I slide into one side of the booth, feeling the worn leather dip and soften under my weight.
Cass shrugs out of his own leather jacket coming to sit opposite me, shoving the salt and pepper shakers and napkin dispenser out of the way so there isn’t anything between us but the table.
I trace a swirl of wood markings shaped into semi-perfect rings with my eyes, wondering how long that particular tree had stood for before it was ruthlessly cut down and sanded into the table, when Cassiel taps the top of my hand to get my attention.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, are you?”
“Never better, Princess. I hope you don’t—”
We’re interrupted for the second, or is it the third, time this evening by more patrons of the dive bar who know Cassiel.
I watch him talk to them, smiling easily, the lines around his eyes relaxed. Even his broad shoulders rest loosely; a sure sign that wherever the hell we are, this place isn’t a threat. Not to Cassiel. And not to me, so long as I’m with him, I guess.
Although one look at the place would tell me otherwise.
Groups of hard-faced looking men sit together, leather jackets with the same skull patches as on the flanks of the bikes outside, dangle from their shoulders or the backs of chairs.
The scent of stale nicotine and synthetic flavored vapes hangs in the air, mingling with the smell of frying onions and meat from the saloon door Genie flits back and forth through.
A handful of scantily clad women—their legs and the flat expanse of their torsos exposed in their short skirts and crop tops—hover around the men, some sitting, perched on laps.
One particular girl, a fiery redhead like myself, proudly sports a bruise painted on the side of her neck.
Her whole outfit looks a little worse for wear, I notice, her blouse wrinkled as if it’s been crumpled up, thrown in a corner and then put back on.
The bright pink lipstick she wears on her lips is smeared too, but she doesn’t seem to care as she strokes the upper thigh of the man beside her while sucking a straw into her mouth lewdly.
“Ignore Pandora,” utters one of the men standing beside our booth. He’s younger than the group of men I’d been staring at, closer to my age I guess, mid-twenties or so, with a shock of floppy brown hair and electric blue eyes I bet the girls go mad for.
“Sorry?”
“I said, ignore Pandora. She’s just a bike bunny.”
“A bike bunny?” I repeat, tearing my eyes from the group. “What’s—”
“God, man.” The blond by his side shoves Cass. “Didn’t you tell her anything before you bought her here?”
“I was gonna… but then you four assholes showed up.”
“Oh, that’s right, blame us. A bike bunny,” the blond turns to me, his eyes fixed firmly on mine, not once straying to the curves of my breasts exposed in my lace up top. Interesting. “Is someone who hangs around us bikers hoping to catch a ride… if you catch my drift.”
I blink at him, peering at Cassiel to ensure I’ve heard correctly. He nods once while mindlessly rubbing the pad of his thumb over the valleys of my knuckles. “I catch your drift, alright. And this place…”
“I grew up here, Princess.”
Oh. Oh.
I chance another glance at the sticky floor, crowded bar and the cracked booths. Pandora has carved out herself at space at Genie’s bar, sweet talking to a different man then before.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask Cass if he’s slept with her or any of the other ‘bike bunny’s’ I see strutting around the place, but I decide it’s best not to.
Out of my peripheral vision, I notice a few of the old timers nod in greeting towards Cassiel, but they don’t get up to amble over unlike the group of four young men who hover, ribbing into Cassiel and each other with every chance they get.
“Who’s the new guy?” I turn to hear Cassiel ask, tipping his chin towards a loner sitting right at the end of the bar top, nursing a single cold beer.
“Tyler.”
“Tyler who?”
“We don’t know,” answers the floppy haired brunette. “He’s been here, what, two weeks, Lake?”
The blond—Lake—bobs his head. “Yeah. Showed up outta the blue with nothin’ but a birth certificate. Says his mom was Rose. Do you remember her?”
“Kinda,” Cassiel answers, spreading his knees wide beneath the booth and capturing my foot with his own. “Didn’t she have that massive—”
I wince at his words. “Please don’t say rack while we’re on a date, Cass.”
The boys, Cassiel included, burst out in loud laughter.
“Oh, god, my stomach!” complains the taller of three brunette’s, hunching over with laughter.
“I never saw her rack, Princess.” Cass smirks. “I was gonna say she had a massive tattoo of a rose on her neck, so everybody gave her the nickname Rose. No clue what her real name was.”
“Oh.” My lips twitch at the corners. “Why doesn’t somebody just ask her.”
“Can’t. She’s dead.”
“Holy shit.”
“Shit just about sums it up,” agrees Lake, wiping at his eyes.
“Which is why it’s so surprising that her son would turn up here, out of the blue.
He says he hardly remembers his mom and has no clue who his dad is, but with her name scribbled on his birth certificate, we’ve got no other choice but to take him in. ”
I frown. “Take him in?”
“To the compound, Princess. It’s where the members of the Dolce Reapers live if they don’t have anywhere else to go, which is most of these bastards.”
I nod slowly in understanding, holding back the shiver that threatens to wrack through my body. I’ve thought often about what would have happened to me when I finally escaped home, if I hadn’t had found an apartment almost straight away.
I’d spotted it in the local newspaper days before I made my break, ripping the advertisement and stashing it under my mattress so I wouldn’t forget the address.
I called the number from the maid’s phone, which I stole from the front pocket of her kitchen pinafore and was instantly soothed by the familiar sound of the Italian Nonna on the other end of the line.
A fierce born Italian grandmother, she told me I was the only candidate showing interest in her apartment.
It was fully furnished, albeit a tad old fashioned; the pipes rattled loudly in the walls and sometimes the water wouldn’t heat.
But she was happy for me to pay month to month, without a deposit up front and that was good enough for me.
I found a job at a coffee shop around the corner a couple of days after. I’d been the only candidate to turn up for the job offer too—thank God for small mercies—and I started right away.