Chapter 19
NINETEEN
MIRABELLE
Outside of Vegas, the convoy rolled into a vacant lot behind a small strip of shops.
The quaint street was lost in time, the prelude to a ghost town on the cusp of charming and sweet.
Safe behind the car’s tinted glass, Jack leaned over the center console.
His lips swept against Mirabelle’s, and a calloused palm caressed the inside of her bare thigh.
“Someone might see,” she said and lifted a hand to his chest.
Jack fumbled with her underwear. “You said that this morning.”
“No, I said someone might hear.”
She had woken up to his mouth between her legs, and while the pillow muffled her moans, that didn’t matter in a house that echoed.
Jack hadn’t cared and always took whatever he pleased.
Sometimes he’d pull her into an empty room, and their lips would crush together, and his hands would tremble, and it was all a dizzying rush of beating hearts and limbs entwined.
“I want you,” he whispered.
“I’m wearing lipstick, and we need to be careful.”
Mirabelle nudged him away. Sure enough, his lips were red and dick was hard. She tossed him a napkin from her purse but couldn’t do much about the rest.
“Jesus, Miri, who fucking cares? It’ll come out eventually. You know what I’ll say when it does?” Jack pointed to a sun-bleached fence post beyond the car’s hood, a stand-in for Emory, perhaps. “Fuck you. She could be with a scumbag but ended up with me.”
Mirabelle crossed her arms and dropped her eyes. There was nothing to say that she hadn’t already, and they only ever fought about that.
“Alright, you got me,” Jack sighed. “Consider me careful.”
Mirabelle tapped the tip of his nose, crooked for having been broken too many times.
“I consider you cute.”
“Don’t call a grown man cute.”
Jack craned his neck to the rearview mirror and wiped his lips with the napkin. He’d always had boyish good looks, a veritable dreamboat with baby blues, sandy hair, and a blinding smile of straight white teeth.
And he hated it.
His tattoos were something like dousing a clean canvas with dirty dish water, anything to wreck the pristine gleam.
“Get your fine ass out of the car,” he commanded with a throaty laugh and stuffed the crumpled napkin into his pocket. “Slow,” he added when Mirabelle opened the door.
She bent over and let her red-thonged bottom peek from beneath her black skirt. Jack always liked that, the naughty exploits when no one was looking.
“I’m not a whore,” she’d told him their first night together as she slipped out of a silver dress as glitzy as a low-hung moon.
Only a whore would say something like that while doing her own undressing. Jack had prowled across the room, and she’d told him not to get too excited. She wasn’t a virgin, either.
Over the years, she’d heard from the girls in the inner circle that he liked it rough.
Those girls were the chosen ones who earned their keep for more than just a night.
A few married into the organization. A few more held out hope.
All had stories they swapped as eagerly as the men they sometimes shared.
But Jack was deliberate in his conquests. There were certain things he wouldn’t do. Mirabelle was one of them. For years, she’d nursed the bitter sting and rebuffed him when he finally came around. She didn’t need his pity, but it wasn’t pity, and his redlines were only business, not personal.
He’d been gentle that first night, more lover than madman. Either the other women had lied or Jack had assumed she was fragile. Maybe both were true. Mirabelle never asked.
She approached Emory’s car across the lot.
Her duty was simple—mind Amelia. The ease of the task depended on the mood he’d left the girl in.
The journey was long and their misunderstandings plenty, but Emory climbed from his car and strode to the passenger side with a lightness uncommon in him.
When he opened her door and offered his hand, Amelia took it without reservation.
Men weren’t observant of these things, so the others didn’t notice the break in the clouds. They’d say Emory was only being polite, but Mirabelle saw the sleight of hand; Emory’s fingers that lingered, Amelia’s soft little touch.
The group headed for the front of the building. Pete, the captain of Los Angeles post, occupied Amelia a few steps ahead. In the sunlight, her hair gleamed like peaches and gold, and she glanced over her shoulder at Emory who smiled in response.
“I see the Cold War is over,” Mirabelle said and kept pace with him. “How’d you manage that?”
“Maybe I was sweet.”
“For the right ones, you can be.”
“And the wrong ones?”
Mirabelle laughed. “They come crying to me.”
Yes, with giant tears and mascara staining their cheeks.
God, how they blubbered. To hear them tell it, Emory was cold to the touch and out of reach.
They said he was unknowable, but most enigmas weren’t one thing, so Emory was, at times, witty with dry humor then guarded and aloof.
With him, it was either keys to his kingdom or quickly shown the door.
To be fair, Emory was his own contradiction. Their mother raised him to love and cherish women; not just the treasure between their thighs, but their feminine mystique. From their father, Emory inherited not just handsome looks, but also his brooding and blustery self-reliance.
The odd amalgamation meant Emory revered the women he loved as if they hung the moon.
The women he took home were different. They were his queen for the night, but by morning, the cold came in again.
Less than a handful ever reaped the benefits of his absolute love and devotion, but those women had bailed when his world became too much.
The group gathered in a store marked M.L. Berneski and Sons Prescriptions. Liam secured the spot decades ago and assigned a retired captain, Giovanni, to handle the front-facing business.
An outsider would rightfully wonder how a place like that still existed.
Its checkered floors were well-worn but kept free of dust. Red-topped soda stools lined a laminate counter that ended in a pie case offering slim pickings.
Only a few shelves with basic medical supplies gave the place any legitimacy as a drugstore.
A tenor bellowed from a record player behind the counter, and Gio beamed as the crowd filled in. A broom tumbled from his age-spotted hands and he approached Mirabelle first.
“My girl,” he said and embraced her with strong arms despite his old age. “You waited too long to visit. You got taller, yeah?”
“Doubtful, but I’ll take it.”
Gio’s fingers—nearly as crooked as his back and the knuckles swollen into knobs—slipped from Mirabelle’s shoulders. He stared at Amelia doing her damnedest to go forgotten in the corner.
“Who is this girl?” Gio hollered at Emory propped against the soda counter.
“This is Amelia,” Emory said as Gio approached her.
“Ahh-Melia. Your name sounds like music. You like music?”
With all eyes on her, a blush painted Amelia’s cheeks. She ought to get used to it. Girls like her never went unnoticed for long.
She nodded and cleared her throat. “Very much.”
A buffeting fan swallowed up her voice, so soft and sweet, music in its own right.
“Roberto Murolo. You know him?” Gio asked, but Amelia shook her head. Like pledging blind allegiance, he closed his eyes with a hand over his heart. “Oh, he’s wonderful. He sings ‘Malafemmena.’ It’s about a beautiful woman, a heartbreaker. You’re too sweet to break a man’s heart, yeah?”
Amelia’s lips curled in a playful smile. “Can’t say I’ve tried, so I guess we’ll see.”
Gio roared with laughter and turned to Emory, who looked on with a swell of pride. The others would call it amusement. Mirabelle knew his subtleties, though, and the shades of emotion that bridged stoic restraint and fevered passion.
“She’s funny,” Gio said and pointed at Emory. “She’s your girl?”
Mirabelle buried a smile and averted her eyes. Jack did the same. He wouldn’t dare look at Emory in a time like that. The room was divided as the oblivious gawked and the wise looked away.
Even Amelia stared at the tips of her shoes.
She wasn’t a damsel, though, and delicate fire like hers burned with slow heat.
No wonder it tempted Emory. He had a taste for her kind and surprisingly soft finesse that’d dote endlessly on a woman like her.
Rattled, Emory crossed his arms and shook his head.
Gio ambled over and clapped him on the back.
“Sing ‘Malafemmena’ to her every day, and maybe she’ll go easy on you. Amelia,” Gio called out and picked up his broom, “if he gives you trouble, ring your friend Gio, and I’ll come straighten him out.”
Gio mimed a one-two punch that sent a wave of laughter through the store.
“I’ve got business in the basement,” Emory told Gio when the ruckus died down. “You get to spend time with the girls. Try to behave.”
Gio shooed Emory away with the broom’s bristled end, and all but three men retreated downstairs.
At the counter, Gio served up pink lemonade and cherry pie and hummed along to his records as he swept the floor.
When “Malafemmena” came on, he abandoned his chores and insisted they dance.
Each in turn, he twirled Mirabelle and Amelia around the room and chuckled when both stepped on his toes.
After a few songs, he excused himself to the back room with a newspaper and a hand-rolled cigarette but let the records play on.
Mirabelle suggested they sit outside, and Amelia followed her to the door, but one of their minders shot from his perch by the window. A young one, he could barely fill out the patchy mustache sprouting from his upper lip and did his best to look intimidating.
“Oh, keep your dick in your pants,” Mirabelle said. “We’re just sitting outside.”
“Stay where I can see you,” Scumstache replied and returned to his post.