14. Alek
ALEK
Ilay in bed at the Bianchi estate staring at the ceiling. I can still feel his lips and teeth on my skin…and the marks on my neck and shoulder remind me that it was real. I lift a hand and rub along my neck, feeling the red and purple bruise encased in the fresh marks of his teeth.
There’s a part of me that wishes I had stayed while he slept, instead of getting dressed and sneaking out like it was some cheap hookup.
Perhaps it was. Maybe that’s all Tommy wanted it to be. He had told me we shouldn’t do it again, and then pulled me right into him. Kissed me. Laid on top of me, and let me feel his body against my own until we came undone against each other once more.
Maybe it was meant to be the last time, and we weren’t supposed to talk about it. Just move on. Move onto bigger and more important things.
“Damnit,” I grumble under my breath.
I don’t want it to be the last time. The idea of never feeling his body against my own, never tasting his lips again… It’s unbearable. I haven’t felt this way about a man before, but I know it can’t be wrong.
Before, my guilt was clouding my judgement, but right now all I can feel is a rush of emotion and desire for Tommy that tells me it has to be right. With everything going on in our world, there has to be something good for both of us. Maybe we’re it.
I sit up in bed just as there’s a knock at my door, and Butch is the one standing there when it opens.
“You’re gonna miss the birthday party,” he tells me with a grin on his face. “We’ve got a big surprise for Dante, remember?”
I search my memories for anything related to Dante Bianchi’s birthday but it’s so trivial that I can’t remember anything besides Stephan asking me to make sure there were double the number of guards set up around the perimeter for the party. Did I actually do that? I can’t remember.
I sit up in bed and look directly at Butch as he leans against the doorframe. My hair is a mess around my head and I still need to shower after the night before.
“I’ll be down in fifteen minutes,” I tell him.
He shrugs his shoulders. “Alright. You might miss it.”
I eye him curiously, but decide whatever it is I don’t need to skip showering for. It’s probably a new gun or something for Dante. I don’t care about this party in the least…but I need to act like I do.
“I’ll be quick,” I say.
Butch closes my door and I sigh the second that I’m alone.
Everything I’ve been doing for the last few weeks feels like it’s building up to something…
intense. Obviously, my goal is to kill Stephan and his whole family, but with the Dresvanni included in this, I can’t help but feel like there’s going to be more.
Something closer to an all-out war. More than just the people I want to are going to get hurt.
Perhaps Tommy was right to tell me we can’t see each other again, at least other than professionally.
If we’re caught, it could throw everything off.
My entire plan. Still, I can’t help that I want to see him again.
I want to go right back to where I was at his apartment in his bed with him. Naked and satisfied.
I shake my head. I can’t think about that right now.
What I need to do is get out of this fucking bed and into the shower.
So I do. I take a quick shower, washing all of the dried sweat and cum off my body before I get dressed in dark slacks, a dark blue turtleneck sweater and comb my hair back away from my face.
By the time I get downstairs, there’s already people flooding the entryway and into the living room. There’s a few stragglers on the stairs that I have to shove my way past, but most of them see the displeased look on my face and move out of the way before I get to them.
“Trevor!” Stephan says happily as he sees me from across the room. “I almost though you weren’t going to make it.”
I chuckle softly, making myself more approachable and interested in this whole event.
“As if I could sleep through this music,” I comment.
Stephan smiles at me, and as a member of the staff passes by with a tray of drinks, he grabs two.
He hands one to me. I take a heavy sip, especially glad for it tonight.
I don’t plan on going anywhere other than this party, since all eyes will be on the inner circle of the Bianchi family.
Maybe I can make some use of this party to get more information on their plans for the future.
“Let me guess, you didn’t get Dante anything for his birthday?” Stephan asks me.
I shake my head. “I figure some time at the shooting range together is enough,” I say. “What does the man need that he doesn’t already have?”
The older man smirks at me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I forgot, this is your first birthday party here,” he says. “You don’t know the tradition.”
“What’s the tradition?” I ask, my eyes shifting away from him and out of the room to the rest of the party.
Men and women dressed in scantily clad clothing, far more than I would have assumed for a party at a Don’s estate.
The tension in the air suddenly rises as I notice the edge of a metal bar in the corner of the living room.
“Oh, you’ll see very shortly.” He smiles at me, though it’s slightly subdued.
Stephan takes a drink and then turns to talk to someone else for a moment, leaving me behind.
I walk around him and others until I make my way into the living room where I see a cage.
It’s similar to a dancing cage that might be at a strip club, but the locks on it look very real.
I look away from the cage and notice Dante sitting on the arm of the couch with a drink in his hand, he’s talking to Butch and another man who I recognize vaguely as one of his friends from outside of the estate, Matthew.
As I sip at my own drink I wander over to them, while listening to what everyone around me is saying. They’re all on edge, I notice. Excited for something, but for what I don’t know.
“You’re overdressed,” Dante tells me as I approach.
I raise a brow. “For what? Your father wouldn’t say.” I sit down on the couch next to him and watch as he grins at me and tilts his head to the side slightly, angled toward the cage.
“Oh, you really don’t know, do you? You’re going to have a lot of fun, I know it.” Dante clicks his glass against mine. He’s far more jovial than he usually is, and for some reason that makes me nervous.
I laugh softly and pretend like I’m not increasingly concerned with whatever surprise they are planning for Dante. How it’s a surprise if he seems to know about it is beyond me.
“So, no plans for getting back at the Dresvanni’s today, I see,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “No, today is the one day where I don’t want to hear a single word about them. No kidnapping, no bombing, no nothing. You got that, Trevor?” He narrows his eyes.
I nod my head. “Of course. Wouldn’t want to upset the birthday boy.” I tease him and slide off the couch. Talking to him clearly isn’t going to get me anymore information.
“Where are you going?” Butch asks me. “Stay and have a little fun.”
“Yeah, we know hardly anything about you,” Matthew remarks. “Now’s the time to get to know each other.”
My heart races in my chest. The last thing I want to do is get to know these guys better. At least on a personal level. They don’t need to know anything about me, but I need to know everything about them.
I straighten my shoulders but try to untense a bit, breathing out slowly through my nose.
“My life isn’t exactly all that interesting,” I tell them. “I kill the people I’m told to kill; I move on.”
“That’s way more interesting than you think, dude,” Matthew says with a chuckle. “You must have…thousands of bodies under your belt.”
I take a sip of my drink to give myself a moment to think. “I could have a couple more tonight.” I smirk.
Butch laughs. “Come on, tell us about the first kill,” he insists. “We all have one.”
“Yes, we all have that first blood we felt on our hands,” Dante mumbles. “Tell us about yours.”
I blink at them, but quickly pull myself together. “You really want to know about that?” I tilt my head to the side, my eyes narrowing slightly.
“You’re new, you owe us a story or two,” Dante insists.
“You don’t trust me?” I ask.
Butch scoffs. “This ain’t about trust. Lighten up a little.” He smacks me on the shoulder. “You’re as hard up as ever. Maybe you need a little fun tonight.”
Dante’s crooked smile says he agrees with his brother.
“Alright,” I say slowly. “If you really want to know.”
“We do,” Matthew says and his pale eyes scan my face expectantly.
“He was a friend of my father’s,” I tell them.
“He was planning on taking some of my father’s money and blowing it on a gambling debt; course, he didn’t plan on stopping afterward.
My father wanted to teach both of us a lesson.
He put a gun in my hand and told me to use it.
No lesson, no preparation. He just told me who I was going to kill and sent me on my way. ”
“What was the punishment if you didn’t?” Dante asks, his voice quiet, curious.
“He never told me, but the look in his eyes said that someone was getting shot that night,” I explain.
“So, I found his friend…while he was drunk off his ass and paranoid that one of the loan sharks were there to kill him. When he saw it was me, he laughed his ass off. He didn’t think I’d really do it. ”
They’re all staring at me now, waiting in anticipation as if the ending to the story isn’t obvious. Even while I talk about it, twenty years later, my chest tightens and I can still see the look on his face in my memories.
“I shot him point blank in the head. A lucky shot, but a shot nevertheless,” I say. “Blood was everywhere. I wanted to throw up, maybe I did, I don’t remember. I was barely eight years old and the recoil was like a kick to the chest, but he was dead.”
“Damn,” Dante says slowly. “Eight? That’s younger than me or Butch were.”
“That’s not the end,” I tell them. “Someone else was there.”
“Who?” Matthew asks. I’ve got them on the hook now.