17. — ODs and ironies.
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Chicago, Illinois
Frankie, Sybaris Hotel
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A soft snore to Frankie’s left hammered straight through whatever dream she couldn’t remember as she woke up. Her eyelashes fluttered, and flashes of a bright pink sign against gray metal blinked back at her.
Neon Rage.
The more she blinked, the farther that sign moved. Until her vision cleared to distinguish the pillow smooshed against her face. That snoring, strange and not familiar, continued beside her. She tried to move, but her limbs felt heavy.
Somewhere, a bang echoed.
“Room Service!” someone shouted.
Now when she blinked more, she fully remembered the sign at an underground club in Lower Lower Wacker.
She stepped off the plane in Chicago with Nico, and a world she hadn’t known existed just fell into her hands.
A city made up of old buildings and modern life.
It didn’t stink like New York. A grungy undercurrent existed here that she had not found at home.
He asked what she wanted to do. She said anything.
The sound of trickling water filled the room, reminding her of the private pool attached to the suite Nico had brought her to some time...she couldn’t remember. The sun had come up, peeking between towering buildings, and exposing the city to her for the first time in the light.
The hotel was—
The banging started again.
Frankie’s head snapped that way, over the body beside her in bed.
“Room Service!”
Hadn’t Nico told her that the hotel staff wouldn’t bother them unless they called down for something? His cousin made the reservation, and it wasn’t even under their name.
She hadn’t called down.
“Just open the fucking door,” demanded another voice.
Darker. Male.
That made Frankie panic.
“Nico!” she hissed, grabbing his arm and shaking it.
With his head turned away from her on the bed, he continued snoring. He never snored.
She heard the electronic click of the lock on the hotel door and her panic turned to dread.
The same way she’d done in the early hours of the morning when she turned a circle on the rave floor and realized she couldn’t see Nico.
He hadn’t gone far, but the crumbs of a pill that he’d allowed her to share made the room swirl and the faces blur whenever she tried to stand still.
A guy stepped in and touched her; he wanted to dance.
Punches got thrown. The spinning room became a spinning Uber shorty after. And then a hotel she hadn’t seen because they headed straight for Neon Rage right off the plane.
“Room Service!” came the call into the room as the door opened.
Frankie outright grabbed Nico to pull him over onto his back, determined to get him to wake up. Except as light spilled into the dark room, with paneled walls, mirrors overhead, and dark bedding to match the furniture, she could finally see why he didn’t.
Why he couldn’t. His lips were blue.
“Nico!”
She shook him so hard, but he didn’t blink. He didn’t twitch. Nothing.
“Nico, wake up,” she cried, tears already falling.
“I’ll take it from here, thank you,” came the second voice again.
She barely registered the door closing, or the well-dressed man with dark hair that approached the bed. She was too busy tapping Nico’s cheek and squeezing his bloodied, bruised hand that hadn’t even gotten the chance to heal before he beat it into someone else’s face.
“Sorry for the lack of introduction, kiddo. Could you cover up?”
It was only then that Frankie realized she didn’t have any clothes on.
The rest of their first early morning hours in Chicago filtered back to her as the seconds turned into a minute, and the man now slapping Nico and holding his head back so his mouth would stay open rapid-fired question after question at her.
“Where did you go when you arrived?” he asked her.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Do you want him to die?” the man asked.
“I, uh...”
“Where did you go?”
“Neon Rage.”
The man peered down at Nico again, asking, “And what did you take? Or what did he take?”
“Um, he said molly. MDMA? I didn’t have a lot, not like he did.”
“Fuck,” the man snarled. “You’re sure it was Neon Rage?”
Frankie nodded wildly, tears flying everywhere as she sobbed. “Yeah.”
“Where’s his bag?” the man asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t—”
“Find the fucking bag!”
He roared the words at her a second time just before dropping down to blow two breaths of air into Nico’s mouth.
Frankie’s legs were Jello, and she still didn’t have any clothes on, as she stumbled around the hotel room.
It felt like forever, but it didn’t take her too long to spy the black bookbag Nico hadn’t let out of his sight.
“Inside the bag, check for a goody pack,” he demanded, his head falling to Nico’s chest for a second.
“A what?”
“A fucking bag in the goddamn bag! You’ll know what I’m talking about!”
He put his head to Nico’s chest, listening there.
“Come on, kid, we are running out of time here,” he snarled.
Another two breaths went into Nico. Frankie found the bag.
The only thing in Nico’s backpack that weren’t his or hers was a plastic Ziplock bag with the Neon Rage logo stamped on it.
“Keep cutting this fucking shit with Fentanyl all the fucking time,” the man raged under his breath after snatching the bag from Frankie.
He found whatever it was he needed, something that looked like a nasal spray.
He continued to bitch about the supply on his streets and things she didn’t understand as he opened the package and put the contents under Nico’s nose.
He looked at Frankie, saying, “This is not going to be nice, okay? Sorry, but if you wanna play with drugs, this is what can happen. Either go in another room or just keep quiet for the next couple of minutes.”
“What?”
He didn’t give her the option to choose. He released whatever was in the spray.
At the same time, he pulled a silver phone from his pocket. By the time he finished dialing, Nico’s eyes had opened. His lips paled to a soft pink, and he gasped hard.
“Yeah,” the man said into the phone, “Joey boy, I need a drip girl in Suite 202 at Sybaris in the next twenty minutes. Tell her it pays well.” A second passed and he muttered, “Thanks.”
He hung up. The phone fell to the nightstand.
Right before Nico rolled to his side and vomited so much it made Frankie turn away. She couldn’t escape the sound though, or how he continued to heave and gag between struggling words.
“What t-the fu-fuck,” he mumbled. “What the fuck, man.”
“That’s what you get when you don’t party safe, kid. And I know damn well you know how to party safe,” the man replied, the sound of his hand hitting Nico’s back making Frankie shudder each time it landed. “How come your little friend here didn’t know you had a pack with Narcan in it for this?”
“Why—” Nico vomited more, eventually managing to ask, “Why does your rave club have bad drugs?”
He promptly started vomiting again.
“Come on, better out than in your lungs. Had that happened, you’d have been dead for sure. Wouldn’t that have been a fucking sight for your little girlfriend to wake up to, huh?”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Neon’s always been safe,” Nico argued through another gag.
“Nothing’s safe here anymore. You’d know that if you came around any, but you haven’t shown your face in my city in a while, Little Nicky.”
“Fuck off!”
The man turned to Frankie, but she refused to look at him, then, saying, “See that, that’s the Narcan. Sometimes they wake up fighting, puking, or they can wake up mean. He doesn’t mean that when he says it.”
“No, I do, Carmine.” Nico coughed himself into a fit, but that didn’t stop him from bitching more when he finished. “I mean all of it, you prick.”
“Mmhmm, you’re gonna need a new room.”
Nico gagged again, but it sounded like more vomit found its way out of his body. Frankie wished when she closed her eyes and covered her ears, it helped. Except closing her eyes meant seeing the night and morning come back in flashes and black and white blips.
They’d had sex.
Right where he almost died. High and laughing together. It only stung a little, for a short while, and she remembered the small bloodstain left behind when it was done. Proof.
It would still be there. Like he was still on her, now, messy between her thighs.
She could still feel his lips at her throat as he urged her on top, promising slow, letting her ride, and then showing how good he would make it feel. And he had.
She would never know fumbling, awkward sex, or a bad lover with him. He’d made that promise, too, and kept it.
She finally snatched the hoodie he’d left on the couch, and shrugged it on, acutely aware of her body and the tale it probably told if someone cared to look. Carmine, looking Nico over as he sat him up straight in the bed, passed her a concerned glance.
The man arched an eyebrow. “Are you gonna puke on me next?”
“No.”
“Leave her alone,” Nico said, sounding better.
Stronger. Alive.
“Oh, don’t worry. Unlike some of us, I know better than to fuck the consigliere’s daughter.”
“I didn’t fuck—”
Frankie’s gaze snapped to Nico’s for the first time since he took that gasping breath back into reality. The look on her face stopped him from saying anything else. She could tell, just by the way his expression dropped.
Her heart sank to the floor. He couldn’t remember.
···
“You need to call your father,” Carmine Marino told Frankie two hours later.
Nico sat on a couch in a new hotel room, avoiding the conversation and the people having it. He also continued to act like the travel nurse who showed up to give him an IV of fluids wasn’t still checking the bag to see how much remained.
“I don’t need to do anything,” Frankie replied.
“Okay, then here’s the message I have from your father to you,” Carmine said, smiling coldly. “You have until Monday morning to be back at the estate, or he will come and find you.”
At that, Carmine turned to face Nico at the other end of the room. “You also have a message, if you care to hear it.”
“Tell me how you found me, first.”
“Salvatore.”
Nico rolled his eyes. “Real helpful, seriously.”