Chapter 2
Luigi’s table was up in the gallery in the choicest spot right by the glass rails. It was perpetually reserved in his name and out of bounds for every other patron. It wasn’t a matter of influence or money. Luigi owned the place, so his word was law. It was that simple.
He sat now in the plush leather armchair that had ever only borne his weight, sipping from a glass of whisky cocktail and discussing an urgent matter with his consigliere and his right-hand man.
“May I ask why?” his consigliere asked. His name was Donald Silva, a small, perpetually bespectacled man who said little and yet saw everything.
“Something big is coming up,” Luigi told him and turned to his right-hand man.
“What?” the man asked. His name was Edouardo Manzanno, a stout man with the beginning of a paunch that failed to soften the hardness around his face.
“I’ll tell you when the time is right,” Luigi told him. “Not now. Sometime this week.”
Edouardo frowned thoughtfully. “Business?” he asked.
“Business,” Luigi replied. “Bigger and better than anything we’ve ever done.”
Edouardo nodded. For the briefest moment, his eyes seemed to light up, and the craggy outlines of his face softened into a smile.
“Any other thing?” Donald asked.
“No.” Luigi shook his head and took a sip of his drink. He set the glass on the table and turned his attention to the dance floor below. It was all the sign his men needed to know that he had no further need of them.
Donald was the first to go. He stood up and tipped his hat before leaving without a word.
“I’ll let the men know,” Edouardo promised before rising to his feet and taking his leave.
Luigi allowed himself a smile. It had taken him nearly 24 hours to flesh out the finer details of his plot to catch Weinberg’s informant.
It was a trap so carefully set it was like a green snake coiled up in the shrubbery.
Whoever was informing on him would not see it coming. Rather, they’d walk right into it.
Luigi took another sip of his drink.
There were more people in the club than usual tonight, gyrating on the dance floor downstairs, nodding to the loud music at the bars, or smoking in the booths.
There were so many that he shouldn’t have seen her.
However, after that first meeting in his house the previous day, it was impossible not to make her out even in the sea of faces below.
She strutted across the floor, a head taller than most of the other women, and caught the glow of the strobes in her hair: Camille Williams.
Luigi flicked a hand immediately to summon Dante. He sat nearby in the shadows, out of sight, yet not out of reach of his boss. He came at once and bent to listen to Luigi’s command. “That’s Camille,” he said and pointed. “Bring her up here at once.”
Dante picked her out from the crowd and nodded. He went across the gallery to the spiraling stairs. Luigi kept his eyes on Camille as she and her friends followed a host to a reserved spot.
At the head of the party was a man dressed in a loose multicolored shirt and weighed down by the endless layers of gold chains on his neck. His attention was solely on seating Camille next to himself.
On the other side of her was a girl in a crop top.
She hung on to the arm of a gangly male dressed in a similar fashion to the other man.
His attire was a polo shirt that seemed a tad oversized, a pair of fancy cargo pants that tried and failed to redeem his image, and a couple of bold chains around his neck that did him in.
Behind him, two other men dressed less splendidly followed. They walked with their attention on their phones, which acted as shields that hid their discomfort in a place that seemed to be way above their paychecks.
The last member of the party was a bear of a man dressed in black denims and a leather jacket, which he wore over a body-fitted vest—clearly the muscle of the group. He moved to block Dante’s path when he finally approached the group. Dante talked with him, and a moment later, he moved aside.
The scene made Luigi smile in approval. If it had been any of the hot-headed youths who flocked around Paulo, the confrontation would have ended in a fight.
They always felt the need to prove they were the strongest men in a room, often going for blows when words could have yielded the same results.
The man in the multicolored shirt watched as Dante spoke with Camille. This time, Dante pointed at the gallery, where Luigi sat. To his surprise, she shook her head.
Fortunately, Dante was persistent. Luigi would have laid down a grand to hear what he told Camille, for in a moment, she began to laugh. Still, she would not stand up.
At this point, Dante turned to the head of the party and said a few words to him. The man nodded at Camille and looked up at Luigi.
Luigi raised a palm in acknowledgement.
Soon, Dante and Camille were on their way, across the floor and up the stairs to him. This was the way of the world. The smaller fish knew to give way to the bigger fish so they could live another day.
Up in the gallery, Dante slunk back into the shadows while Camille made the rest of the walk alone to Luigi’s table. Luigi noticed heads turning to follow her movement. They snapped away immediately when they noticed her trajectory.
Even up here, among the VIPs, the affluent and the most powerful people in the city, it was well known that to look at Luigi’s woman was to invite trouble.
She stopped at his table, now looking cross.
“Camille, hi,” Luigi said and offered her a smile he hoped was inviting enough.
“Hello, Mr. Frazetta,” she replied.
He waved at the sofas on both sides of his table. “Take a seat, join me.”
She took the seat across from him. “I don’t appreciate being yanked away from my friends by your…” she stopped and turned to look for Dante. The dim blue lights of the club hid him well, and the strobes didn’t do enough to pick him out in the alcove where he sat, watching and waiting.
When she saw no sign of him, she turned back to Luigi.
“My what?” Luigi asked.
“Your… friend.”
“I don’t think your own friend was keen on keeping you company, though,” Luigi pointed out. “If he was, he’d have said no when Dante asked if you could come over here.”
“What choice did he have?” Camille asked.
“The choice of saying no, like a man,” Luigi said.
Camille regarded him for a long moment. Luigi held her gaze.
“I don’t think that would have ended well for him,” she said finally, in a low, subdued voice.
“I do not encourage violence here,” Luigi told her and signaled a waiter to approach the table. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“Do I have the choice of saying no?” she asked.
Luigi stared at her. There was no defiance in her gaze, only a raised eyebrow and a half smile. He laughed. “No, you don't have a choice.”
Camille laughed, too. “Why does he have a choice and I don’t?”
“Well, for one, he doesn’t have your hair,” he said and reached across the table to touch it. A few locks hung over her shoulder, hiding the spaghetti thin strap of the short black gown she wore.
She smiled. “And?”
“And your eyes,” Luigi said. “They are beautiful.”
“And?” she pressed further.
Luigi stared at her. He knew what she wanted to hear now but decided it was too early to say it. Still, it was all the sign he needed to know that she probably wanted the same thing he wanted.
Down below, the man in the multicolored shirt was leaving. His shoulders were not as squared as they were when he walked in. Behind him, his friends brought up the rear, still holding each other or busy on their phones like they didn’t just see him get stripped of his partner.
Luigi felt a pang of regret. However, it melted away when he looked up at the woman seated opposite him. She was a perfect specimen, worth the transgression. “Your friends are leaving,” he told her.
“You’ve ruined the night for them.”
“I saved them,” Luigi told her.
“From what?”
“The war that would have been fought for your hand this night,” he replied.
Camille’s brows furrowed in puzzlement. “A war?”
“Some people’s necks got twisted and damn near fell off as they turned to look at you when you walked through the door,” Luigi confided. “Some broke their spines gawking.”
Camille’s laughter rang out, louder than he expected. She caught herself a moment later and stifled it.
“Now do you imagine they were happy about that?” Luigi asked.
Her mirth, which she had fought valiantly to tamp down, rose again.
“And there was your friend,” Luigi continued, “Holding your hand, his head still on his shoulders and his spine straight and unbroken. You don’t think that won him any favors among the men here, do you?”
Camille shook her head, still laughing.
“So I swooped in to save the day, taking from him the very treasure that would have put him in danger. And what do I get from her?”
Camille reached across the table to grab his hands and stop him from going further.
That didn’t work. “Not one word of thanks!” Luigi said.
She laughed harder, louder, drawing brief glances from curious clubbers.
For the rest of the night, as they shared drinks and Cuban cigars, Luigi wrung more laughter from her. By the time they rose to leave, she was comfortable enough to hold on to his hand as he guided her down the stairs and out of the club.
Dante had the car waiting by the entrance. Luigi opened the door and helped her in before getting in after her.
“Where are we going?” she asked, a little breathless.
“Your place,” he told her.
So she gave the address and relaxed into the plush leather seat, very close to him.
Not much was said afterward, until Dante pulled up at an apartment complex.
Luigi went up the elevator with her to the fifth floor to see her safely to her door. After she unlocked it, she turned to him with a smile. “Do you want to come in?”
He was taken aback by the question and searched her features for any hint of mischief that would tell him she was pulling his leg. There was none.
Her eyes were big, blue, and guileless, her lips slightly parted and inviting. Her—
Luigi kissed her.
He had wanted to do it for a while now, to taste those lips, to explore them and to claim them.
And he did just that, teasing her first with the tip of his tongue, tracing a path along the curve of her lower lip, drawing a gasp from her, and then taking her full lips, sucking on them lightly, one after the other, the bottom and then the top, plunging into her mouth with his tongue and tasting the champagne on hers before withdrawing and leaving her breathless.
“Do you still want me to come in?” he asked.
“Do you want to?” she replied in a husky voice.