Chapter 12 Tamayo
TAMAYO
My knee twinges as I rise from the bed. Zarina curls into a tighter ball against the cold air my exit leaves behind.
I tuck the blankets in around her, and she sighs in her sleep.
Her face is buried too far beneath them for me to see the warm pink of her cheeks or the bite on her shoulder that I can’t stop refreshing whenever it begins to heal.
I wish I could press my thumb into it, watch the color fade and then rush back in.
But I don’t have time. I pad into the bathroom to shower then into the closet to dress, yanking on my brace to hug my knee tight.
The surgical scar itches as if it’s fresh again, but I ignore it to pull on a pair of trousers then a shirt and suspenders.
I clasp my watch around my wrist as I exit the closet. Zarina’s rolled over and watching me, face poking out from under the blankets and hair fluffy across the pillow. I snort in amusement at the image of her curled into a blanket burrito.
“Where are you going?” Her voice is gravely with lack of use. “It’s too early.”
“It’s eight.” I grab a bottle of cologne off the console table and dab it at the pulse points on my neck.
“Exactly,” she grumbles.
I tamp down a wave of fondness. “I have a meeting and then we have the second mediation.”
“Ugh.” Zarina hides under the covers.
I would much prefer to slip back under them with her, to wrap myself in her warmth and keep her there all day. Instead, I stuff my hands in my pockets. “You don’t have to go.”
She peeks back out. “I know.”
“It might be more…” I consider my next words carefully. “Beneficial if you didn’t.”
Her eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You and Marcus are flint and steel. Every time you come together, you spark. And not in a good way.”
She purses her lips, as if deciding whether that was insulting at all. Her eyes trail over me, navel to nose, her jaw relaxing with a hitch. “And what are we?”
I step forward and slide a hand over her cheek, into her hair. “We’re already on fire, princess.”
“Then why am I so cold?” she pouts.
“Do you need another blanket?”
“I need you.” Zarina sits up and lets the blanket fall to expose her naked torso. The cold air immediately pimples her skin, pebbles her nipples. She brushes her hair over one shoulder to hang down her chest. “Blow it off. Stay with me.”
My hand still cups the side of her head, my fingers flexing into her scalp. “Princess,” I groan.
Her pout deepens. “Please.”
“Last night wasn’t enough?” My voice is low and gruff as I recall tying her hands to the headboard, strapping a vibrator to her pretty, pink clit, and edging her as I rode her face until I came. Only then did I finally let her climax. And now she’s asking for more.
Her brown eyes darken. “Last night only stoked the fire.”
I really shouldn’t. Can’t, actually. But I also can’t move away, my feet stuck, muscles clenched.
I want to pull up a chair and conduct a symphony of her moans, tell her where to touch herself, make her ask permission to move, to come, to touch.
My face is blank as I flip through all the ways I could stay and indulge myself in Zarina Gallo, but inside, I’m burning. Alight with the fire we set between us.
God, I want to, but I really can’t.
I force my hand to relax and drop from her hair, my feet to step back. “After the meeting.”
“Now.” She reaches for my wrist.
I snatch hers first, thumb stroking the tendons there. “You’re making demands now?”
She snorts. “Obviously.”
I shake my head and finally move. I slide my free hand over her legs, still under the duvet, up her bare ribs, across her naked chest, avoiding her breasts, to her neck. Her breaths are heavier, expectation filling her lungs.
I grip her jaw tight. “After. Be a good girl and be patient, hm?”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re such a tease.”
I drag my thumb across her bottom lip. “Don’t touch yourself, okay?”
“And if I do?”
“Waiting half a day will feel like a piece of cake compared to what I’ll do.” I release her lip. “Or not do.”
She tries to bite my thumb. “Mean and a tease.”
I only smirk before angling her chin to kiss her. “I’ll be back this afternoon. Let me know if you prefer to attend the mediation or abstain.”
“I prefer to come,” she grumbles.
I chuckle, endlessly amused. “Later.”
Zarina groans and falls back into bed.
I pull the door shut, smile plastered across my face, and head out alone.
Zarina hasn’t slept in her own bed for over a week now, ever since the engagement party.
It’s been easy to slip in beside her at the end of each day, easy to share pasts and presents in the dark of night, easy to slide inside each other’s wet warmth with whispered pleas. A blessing and a curse.
A blessing because Zarina Gallo was made for me. What she wants, who she is, the way she thinks and moves and fights—all of it, all of her, fits into my puzzled edges. We interlock without an ounce of force. Snug and easy.
Which makes her my own, personal curse.
The universe must think it’s fucking hilarious to lock us together. Her, the Gallo princess, daughter of the family that wrecked everything. Me, the gangster who has dedicated more than half of my life to ruining the Gallos. Ruining her.
And I’m about to spend the morning taking another step toward that end.
I park my car on Irving Street. This territory lies near the southeast border between the Falcones and the Gallos.
The D train rumbles overhead, black steel trusses shaking where they hold up the tracks.
My capo, Gemma, waits on the sidewalk with a thermos of coffee in hand, which I accept with a murmured thanks.
I lead us toward an early nineteenth-century skyscraper with white bricks and black-lined windows and extraneous cornices.
We stop in front of a door tucked between a corner mart and a Black hair salon, a sun-bleached poster of a Black woman with pressed hair and flawless skin staring out of the front window.
I dig into my pocket and toss Gemma a set of keys.
She snatches them out of the air and twirls the keyring on her finger as she drags her gaze up to the offices above and down again to the patrons ducking out of the mart with Styrofoam cups of coffee in hand.
“What do you think?” I ask.
Gemma considers the small skyscraper, face pulled in a grimace. “It’s not really mine.”
“It’s your responsibility, your profit.”
She shakes her head. “But it’s yours, Tamayo.”
“Ours. Think of it like employee shares—you own a stake in the success and failure of the family. This building is stock.” Stock and insurance.
Not that I allow disloyal people to rise up the ranks, but in this way, we make a mutual promise to each other: I’ll continue to provide wealth and protection, they’ll continue to provide labor and loyalty.
“I get it, just…” Gemma stares at the keys in her palm for a long breath. “I never thought I’d own anything, let alone a whole building.”
Another reason I do this for my family. Most of us have come from so little, pushed to desperate action by loss, poverty, both, or worse.
It’s not free, and it’s not without strings, but being able to provide them with their own wealth that is theirs to manage, theirs to profit from, is one of my favorite things about this life.
“I felt that way, too.” And I did. Amassing wealth like this felt foreign before and still does, even now.
Gemma shakes her head. “And now you’re building a fucking kingdom.”
“Which I can’t do without all of you,” I say.
“Ergo, stock.” She waves a hand at the building.
I nod, passing her a manilla envelope stuffed full of paperwork that marks this building as hers. “The shell company belongs to you.”
“And I belong to the family.” She accepts the envelope.
“Exactly.” I sip my coffee and stuff my other hand into the pocket of my wool coat.
Gemma clutches the papers that prove her new status as owner to her chest. “Thanks, Tamayo. This is… wild.”
I only nod, watching pedestrians walk past on their way to wherever at nine o’clock on a Wednesday. I say to Gemma, “It’s a lot of work.”
She snorts. “No more than what’s already on my plate.”
“Do you need more hands?”
“I could use a few more associates.”
“Talk to Darius.” I tilt my head to indicate the entrance. “Shall we go inside?”
Gemma doesn’t answer, simply walking forward to unlock the door between the salon and the corner mart.
It leads down a narrow hall to a small, dim elevator lobby.
We’re not in the heart of Louredo where office buildings are mini fortresses with audacious opulence meant to showcase the self-importance of the companies and CEOs who work there.
We’re barely within the downtown limits, surrounded by walk-up apartments and offices leased to smaller businesses.
The grandest things here are the cornices on the facade of the building.
We pile into the elevator, heading for the top floor with a series of creaks and groans. Gemma winces. “Couldn’t have bought me a nicer spot?”
I chuckle. “You know how it works.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she sighs. “We snatch up whatever’s available and affordable.”
I hum in confirmation.
She stares at the floor indicator as I continue to drink my coffee. Her brows are furrowed, like she’s deep in thought, until she asks, “Does she know?”
I don’t ask who or what she means, because there’s only one interpretation. My expression shutters closed, replaced with my gangster persona. The floors climb slowly, and I don’t reply. Which is an answer in itself. Because no, Zarina Gallo doesn’t know, and I would like to keep it that way.
“She’ll find out, you know.” Gemma tests the boundaries of my patience and understanding. I like her, she’s a good capo and a good person. But she’s not my friend. “They always do.”
The last part is murmured like maybe it’s not meant for me. Like maybe Gemma has her own experience with explosive secrets that could wreck everything I have and everything I hope for. Even if I never let myself speak, let alone think, of the things I hope for.
I cock my head to the side and stare at her, increasing the vibration of the violence always sitting under my skin until I’m practically humming. “Brave, today, hm?” I ask, my voice a low, warning rumble.
Gemma straightens her spine and averts her gaze. “It’s none of my business.”
“No. It’s not.” I let my gaze roll over her like she’s beneath my notice. Like she didn’t rattle me.
She clears her throat. “Sorry, boss.”
I mentally shake myself off, ignoring the discomfort emanating from Gemma in this small metal box. The elevator dings. “Let’s tour your new problem child.”
“Yes, boss.”
I step out onto the top floor, Gemma behind me, and spend the next hour stuffing the urge to shred soft skin under the weight of my knuckles back inside the confines of my body.
We end back outside on the sidewalk, the salon now open and the sun shining bright and cold.
I don’t say anything as I duck into my car.
Gemma shuts my door for me, still trying to make up for her overstep, but it only serves to annoy me.
I peel off before she’s fully out of the way, almost side-swiping her.
My knuckles whiten on the gear shift. Fuck.
I can’t go to the mediation like this, can’t let Marcus and Alonso shove me into violence.
It’d take one snide remark right now, one wrong look, and I’d finally let loose the improper gangster they want me to be.
It’s been too long since I bled, since I made someone else bleed.
I haven’t felt the need, not since taking Zarina to bed.
I wish she was in the passenger seat right now.
I’d slide my hand up her thigh. Make her spread them wide.
I’d dig my fingers into her skin, over her pants—whatever she’s wearing.
I’d make her sit still while I played with her, lest she distract me from the road.
She’d huff in annoyance, and I’d smirk in satisfaction.
She’d try to get me to blink—to grind the gears, to miss a traffic sign, to pull over—and I’d chuckle at her failure.
I groan and hit the steering wheel.
Zarina isn’t here, and I’m minutes away from Casa Nostra to meet the man who wants to cage her. And rather than being focused on our next battle of wits and idiotic posturing, all I can think about are Gemma’s words: She’ll find out, you know. They always do.