Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
ALESSIO
I check my watch as the elevator creeps slowly upward.
This has to be the slowest elevator in the city.
Maybe Salvatore talked to the building manager and had it specifically set to a slow speed just to annoy anyone trying to visit him.
I wouldn’t put it past him. I tap my foot and shove my hand into my pocket, glaring at the slowly increasing numbers, like maybe a good, hard look will convince the damn thing to hurry the hell up.
There’s no way I’m going to be at Wild in the next ten minutes for the weekly sit-down with Lorenzo and his inner circle.
But fuck it, it’s fine. Being late only plays into the non-threatening, goofball persona I’ve spent years cultivating.
Lorenzo will be pissy that I made them wait, and he’ll chew me out a little to make a point to everyone else, but that’ll be it.
There really wasn’t any way around it other than straight up asking Sal when he would be out of his apartment so I could come talk to his husband, Dante, alone. He’ll be at Wild already by now, sitting at our usual table with the boss, so this was my best bet.
The elevator dings and the doors slide open.
I wonder if my mystery cat burglar has ever robbed any of the apartments in this building.
It would be ballsy as hell, but that doesn’t seem like an issue for him.
A smile makes my lips twitch, and I walk a little faster until I reach their door.
I straighten my tie and then knock. For a minute, I don’t hear anything on the other side.
That would be just fucking perfect if I went out of my way to be late to the meeting and Dante isn’t even home.
I’m about to turn around when the door swings open.
Damn, that’s some impressive soundproofing.
I’ll have to ask Sal who made the door. It’s not the fiery twink who kidnapped Salvatore last year and forced him to get married at gunpoint standing on the other side though. It’s a different feral twink instead.
Sparrow’s blond hair flops over his forehead and he cocks his head at me, a curious smile twisting on his lips as he looks me up and down.
There’s something in his eyes that immediately sends my thoughts back to my intruder last night—the cold look as he stared down at me on my knees.
Not that he’s looking at me like he wants me to blow him, but that defiant, overly cocky expression is eerily similar.
“Shouldn’t you be at Wild?” He arches an eyebrow at me, then looks over his shoulder to shout into the apartment before giving me a chance to respond. “Hey, Dante, you think Sal would like Alessio showing up here, sniffing around when he isn’t home?”
My stomach drops. Shit. I hadn’t thought of how it might look if Sal found out I came by here on purpose when I knew he wouldn’t be home. Just because I’ve been friends with him for years doesn’t mean he would hesitate to shoot me if he thought I had my sights set on his husband.
“Shit, no, it’s not—”
Sparrow cuts me off with a laugh. “I’m fucking with you, man.”
Dante appears over his shoulder with a curious look on his face. He looks like an old Hollywood starlet, wearing a sheer, flowing crimson robe with feathers around the collar and wrists, and red lipstick that matches the deep shade of the fabric.
“Les? What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at Wild?” I almost laugh at the exact same question being asked again, and again I don’t get a chance to answer. “Come on in.”
I dart a glance at Sparrow and then back to Dante. I suppose it won’t make much difference if he knows too. And I already came all the way here, so I might as well make it worth my while.
I follow them inside, closing the door behind me.
There are a couple of other familiar voices echoing down the short hallway, so I’m not surprised to see Anders and Orion when I step into the living room.
There’s a pitcher on the table, along with four martini glasses.
Orion looks slightly out of place; a gruff MMA fighter hanging out with three vicious twinks.
“What is this, a mob wife book club?” I laugh, my nerves creeping up the back of my neck. Asking Dante and Sparrow for an embarrassing favor is one thing, but including two more people might be more humiliation than I’m willing to bear.
The feeling of my intruder’s fingers tugging roughly at my hair, and the memory of his deep, rasping voice in my ear heat my skin and steel my resolve.
“We’re reading Eat, Pray, Love,” Orion says flatly, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
“Murder, Sin, Fuck.” Anders giggles. He’s the newest addition to the Moretti Mafia Wife club, having fallen in love with Salvatore’s nephew, Luca, a few months ago.
And spending his nights leaving bite marks all over the low-level soldier clearly agrees with him.
There’s a light in his eyes that definitely wasn’t there the first time I met him.
My stomach does a little flip as I look around the room. I never thought twice about settling down until everyone around me started finding their own fucked-up happily ever afters one by one, but I have to admit, they make it look damn appealing.
“Drink?” Orion holds up the glass pitcher.
I shake my head. “No, thanks. I’ve gotta haul ass to the meeting, I just…” I clear my throat and glance over at Dante. “I had a question I needed to stop by and ask real quick.”
“You could have called,” he says.
“I didn’t exactly want Sal to know,” I confess with a tight smile.
“Oh shit, you’re not actually here to try and seduce him, right? Because Sal will legitimately kill you,” Sparrow says.
“Yeah, I swung by to ask him for a quick blowie, but now that you’re all here maybe we can organize a circle jerk instead,” I say sarcastically. Sparrow rolls his eyes and Orion chuckles.
“What, then?” Dante asks, picking up one of the martini glasses and taking a sip.
“You’re good at hacking and finding people and shit like that, right?”
Both of his well-shaped eyebrows inch up his forehead. “I guess. Why? Who are you trying to find?”
“That’s the thing… I don’t know his name.” I rub the back of my neck with a shrug.
“What do you have? Address? Names of people he associates with? Where he works? A picture of him? A reverse image search might work if you have a picture.” He rattles off some options, and it hits me just how hard I’m grasping at straws by being here.
I let out a tight laugh. “No, nothing. Shit.” I sigh.
Sparrow snorts. “You came over to ask Dante to help you find a ghost?” His eyes light up like a thought just occurred to him. “Oh, fuck, is this about that vigilante who’s been taking out the Reapers? Because if you’re dying to find him, I am so down to help with that.”
My recent obsession with the man the newspapers have been calling The Ghost—a vigilante who’s been taking out members of the motorcycle club the Sleepless Reapers for weeks now—is a hell of a lot less embarrassing than admitting that some random guy broke into my apartment last night, and instead of shooting him, I sucked his dick and let him steal my gun, so I nod.
“Yeah, I thought maybe we could try to track him down. But hearing all of that out loud, it sounds about as likely as finding DB Cooper.” I make a show of looking at my watch. “I really should take off. Enjoy your book club.” I wink before showing myself out.
The elevator ride back down feels just as slow, and my heart sinks with every floor.
I suppose I could take the glove he left to one of the cops we have on our payroll and see if he can get any fingerprints or DNA off of it, except it’s covered in my DNA now, and I have a feeling that he wouldn’t have given it to me if he thought there was any way to use it to track him down.
I’m willing to bet his fingerprints and DNA aren’t on file anywhere.
Sparrow was right, he really is a ghost. And he really is just gone.
GHOST
I bolt upright in my bed with sweat dripping down the back of my neck and my lungs burning for the air that I pull in with big, gulping breaths.
The dreams are all bad enough on their own, but this one was the trifecta of fucked up.
It started off with me shooting up, and fuck was it visceral.
I swear I can still feel the bite of the needle slicing through my skin and the way my heart raced in anticipation.
There’s nothing like that moment right before you push the plunger down.
It’s like those few seconds riding the edge of an orgasm, knowing it’s inevitable, right before it hits. Fucking incredible.
My hands shake and I reach for one of the candies scattered on my nightstand, unwrapping it with unsteady fingers and popping the butterscotch into my mouth.
A drug dream is always enough to fuck me up, but this one didn’t end there.
It faded seamlessly into a nightmarish memory; a twisted, gnarled version of that night with hands all over me and jeering laughs echoing in my ears while I gasped for breath.
And then his face was there, hovering just outside the violent fray.
That nameless face that haunts too many of my dreams. He didn’t bring me comfort tonight though.
No, he looked disappointed, horrified, his eyes full of pity and disgust as he watched them tear me apart.
I roll the candy around on my tongue for a minute and then crunch it between my teeth, finding satisfaction in the way it shatters.
And then I reach over and turn on the lamp next to my bed.
My apartment isn’t anything to write home about.
It’s an entire fucking universe away from the kinds of places I break into, like the Moretti place last night.
The wallpaper is faded and peeling, everything but the bathroom is crammed into a single three-hundred-square-foot space, and I had to add two extra deadbolts myself because the crackhead who lives next door kept kicking the door in, convinced I stole his shit.
I grab the sketch pad and pencil from the drawer in my nightstand and start drawing the face with familiar, absent strokes.
It’s not going to help me remember anything, I know that much by now.
I must have drawn this face a hundred times in the last seven years, and it never changes anything.
It doesn’t get it out of my head, and it doesn’t suddenly make me remember his name or who he is to me.
I guess it’s more of a habit than anything, but at least it helps to calm my racing heart and distract me from the cravings until they start to fade.
He’s preppy, with a crew cut and clean, unblemished skin. Young too, at least the way I remember him. He would be older now, obviously. Whoever he is. Wherever he is. I wonder if he ever thinks of me, if he knows what happened to me. Maybe he thinks I’m dead. I guess he would be right on that one.
I toss the paper back into the drawer and flap my sheets to find the cheap prepaid cell that’s somewhere in the bed with me.
It falls loose, and I open up the only app I really use.
It’s a chat app, and this one happens to be the favorite of the Sleepless Reapers Motorcycle Club.
If the dumbasses thought their chat was private, they were wrong on that one.
Honestly, the cops must be just as dumb as these bikers, because all it would take is one vice detective stumbling on this chat and the entire club would be locked up for life.
I’m certainly not about to tip anyone off about it though.
If I did that, then all my fun would end.
I can’t very well kill them if they’re in police custody, now can I?
I open the chat and find it buzzing with back-and-forth about a party going down at the clubhouse tonight.
A smile stretches across my lips, and the wisps of the dream are quickly forgotten.
I’m up for a party.