Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
LUKE
By the time I walked into a bar in Havana later that day, it was well into the morning hours. Nightlife in the Caribbean mirrored Miami in more ways than one. Everything was open until late if it even closed at all. I was beyond exhausted, making my way into the place I frequented when I was in this city.
The bar was old-school Cuba, established in the early twenties. Dark mahogany wood coated the floors and ceilings and everything else in between with bright-ass exterior paint you could see a mile away. The ocean breeze hit my face as I nodded to the bartender Ricardo behind the bar.
“Hola, amigo.” He waved. “Bienvenidos a la Isla del Paradiso.”
I sat on the stool in front of me. Ricardo was a good guy. I’d known him for years. He was good at relaying information from inside sources that’d come into this bar and kept me in the loop as to what was going on through the streets and behind closed doors.
“Y que tienes para mí?” I asked him what he had for me.
I knew how to speak a few languages. It made it harder to get fucked over.
“Este noche no tengo nada pedo una Cristal para ti.” He replied he didn’t have anything but a beer for me tonight, sliding it over the bar to me.
I nodded again and took a swig of the beer, turning my attention to the laughter echoing from the corner of the room.
“Read ’em and weep, gentlemen!” she exclaimed, throwing a domino tile on the table in front of her.
Almost knocking me on my ass seeing her in the place I least expected.
DUCHESS
“No jodas, otra vez?”
“I don’t know why you pendejos play with me. You know I win every time.” I chuckled, flipping my hair to the side as I racked up another set. “Otra vez?” I asked them for another round to play.
They both shook their heads and got up from the table.
“Pussies,” I muttered under my breath before taking a sip of my rum bottle.
I wasn’t fond of girly drinks. I drank rum in Cuba because it was the best, but I drank bourbon in the States. Sometimes just for shits and giggles, I’d do shots of tequila. For being fairly petite, I could handle my own when it came to liquor. Men were always surprised by how much I could take down on any given night. Going toe-to-toe and sometimes drinking them under the table.
“Yo juego contigo,” I heard a familiar, husky voice say they’d play with me from above.
Arching an eyebrow, I greeted, “Mira lo que arrastró el gato.” I told him look what that cat dragged in.
“Puedo decir lo mismo por ti,” he argued that he could say the same for me.
I wasn’t surprised he spoke Spanish. Everyone in Miami did.
I gestured to the chair in front of me. “By all means, you know how to play Cuban Dominos?”
He sat, nodding. “I can hold my own.”
“Oh yeah? How about you put your money where your mouth is?”
“How much we talkin’?”
“Winner gets a g?”
He cocked his head to the side. “You want to bet a grand?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I’m assuming a bossman like you can afford it.”
“A bossman like me, huh? And what kind of man would that be?”
I eyed him up and down. “Look at you. Dressed in thousand-dollar suits and Louis Vuitton shoes in Havana? You asking to get mugged?”
He confidently spewed, “No one fucks with me.”
“Oh, that’s right…” I mocked. “You’re the big badass Jameson.”
“You know my name. It’s only fair I know yours.”
“Everyone knows your name.”
“And nobody knows yours.”
“I’m Duchess. That’s all anyone needs to know.”
“Alright.” He leaned into the table. “What are you doing in Cuba on a Thursday night?”
I was there for work. “I’m a jet-setter. You?”
“I’m a troublemaker.”
I leaned into the table, too. “And what kind of trouble are you getting into?”
“The kind that’s sittin’ right in front of me.”
“Oh, little ole me?” I grabbed my chest and fluttered my eyelashes. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
Curiosity got the best of him. “Darlin’, how old are you?”
“Old enough.”
“For what, exactly?”
I downed my drink. “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”
“Those are big words coming from such a little package.”
“Yeah… you must be used to holding little packages.”
He laughed, throwing his head back.
“I hate to break up this bonding moment and all.” I cunningly smiled. “But it’s getting past my bedtime. Are you in, or are you out?”
He met my eyes again. “I guess I have no choice but to say yes.”
“Listen, I’m a firm believer that no means no, so just say the word.”
“I’m in.”
For the next thirty minutes, we played an intense and concentrated game of dominos and just when I thought I was going to win, I lost. I was never one for losing, but I kept up my end of the bargain and pulled out my cell phone.
“What’s your Venmo? I can send it when I’m back in the States.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“A bet’s a bet.”
“I’ll take something else instead.”
My eyebrows pinched together, dropping my phone.
“I get to pick out one of your tats and have you tell me what it means.”
I scoffed. “You’d lose a grand to know what a tattoo means? Now that’s just bad business.”
“I like to live life on the edge.”
He stood, gravitating toward me like a magnet. His feet moved on their own accord. Each stride brought him closer to me before he finally broke the distance between us. Slowly, he skimmed his thumb down my clavicle bone, never losing contact with my skin. For a second, he ran his fingers back and forth along the date that was tattooed in Roman numerals.
“This one,” he simply stated. “I want to know about this one.”
He just stood there, waiting for me to share a piece of my soul with him as if it were nothing, when it was everything. His stare followed the movement of my tongue, watching me lick my lips—my mouth suddenly dry.
“What’s the date mean, Duchess?”
Time stood still for a moment, but the memory was relentless. It played out in front of me like it did anytime someone mentioned this tattoo. Maybe that was why I got it to begin with. I needed the punishment of it.
He must have noticed something was off about me. Rubbing the back of his fingers along my cheek, he questioned, “Where did you go?”
Those words were all I needed to shake off the daze and step away from him. “Those weren’t the rules, and since you won’t give me your Venmo, I’ll get it from someone else.”
“I already told you—I don’t want your money.”
“There’s a lot of things we don’t want in life, Jameson, but money is never one of them.”
With that, I turned around and left, jumping in my car. I made it a few blocks down the road before slamming on the brakes. The tires of my car slid across the pavement as I drove with a heavy heart and a guilty conscience. My thoughts were as unrelenting as I started moving again, needing to slow the fuck down, but I couldn’t do it. The adrenaline of what I wanted to feel began to kick in.
The high.
I rode the euphoria that was my memory, needing something, anything other than what I was feeling.
Emptiness.
Darkness.
Burying me alive.
Faster and faster and faster I sped.
Ninety-five miles per hour…
One hundred…
“Stop it!” I screamed, breathless and on my knees. “Please stop!”
Scenes played out in front of me again like they were happening right then and there.
“Please stop!” I begged with my hands out in front of me, bawling my eyes out.
It was beyond my control, it had always been beyond my fucking control, so I pretended as if this was another time, another life, one where this wasn’t my life.
Where there was no past.
No present.
No future.
I lost count of how many times those words flew out of my mouth like they were acid, leaving a hole in my heart.
A hundred and fifteen miles per hour…
One twenty…
My car started to shake, and before I gave it another thought, I slammed my foot on the accelerator until the pedal hit the floorboard. The vibration from the motor rumbled through me, making the hairs on my arms stand straight up.
I suddenly felt cold all over, chills running down my spine. I didn’t even know where I was going until I rounded another hill. I white-knuckled the steering wheel, emitting a new high I had yet to experience. Resting my head back against the headrest, I let it take over.
My thoughts were bleeding off me now, right onto the cliff I was speeding up on.
A hundred and thirty miles per hour…
One thirty-five…
I sucked in deep breaths, heaving for air. My heart beat so fucking hard, I thought the pounding would knock me over the edge from the force of my own rage. I closed my eyes to allow fate to run its course.
And then…
I slammed on the brakes, jolting me back to reality.
“Fuck!”
My car spun out of control, whipping around into several three sixties with all the memories tossing and turning as I just held on with wide eyes.
All I could smell was rubber.
Gasoline.
And my own fucking fear surrounded me as my car abruptly stopped, forcefully yanking my body with it.
I couldn’t move.
I just sat there in shock, looking out over the city with the hood of my car inches from going over the cliff's edge. My chest was rising and falling, gasping for my next breath.
My next anything.
“What the fuck?” I breathed out, heaving. Quickly realizing what could have been.
I used to do this when I was a kid.
I knew better now.
Or so I thought I did…
No more thoughts.
No more words.
No more memories.
There was only silence…
And I thrived in that.