Chapter 19
Dario “Dash” Mangiacavallo
Tyler was slouched low in the leather chair, smoking a cigarette while scanning the monitors.
When I noticed Violetta on the camera hysterically crying herself to sleep while he stood outside in the hallway, listening, I’d decided to throw him a life preserver and called him upstairs.
Using the excuse that my eyes were tired and I needed a break, it gave him something to do other than suffer in her misery.
An arm across my stomach, my elbow perched on top, I was relentlessly chewing my nails, my insides knotted and tight.
I was pacing back and forth, having so many questions I wanted to ask, but knew I had no right.
We weren’t friends, I busted his knee, made him a permanent cripple, and helped destroy his life.
What right did I have to pry or question personal tidbits?
“What, Dash? What?” he blurted out of nowhere.
Damn near jumping out of my skin, I scoffed, right away defensive. “Nothing. Damn. What’s wrong with you?”
He snorted and sat up, peering over the back of the chair. “Me? What’s wrong with you?”
“You’re really uptight. Do you talk to your fans like this?”
He rolled his eyes and sat properly, shaking his head. “My fans love me,” he grumbled.
Curious, I stopped pacing beside the chair and leaned into one leg. “You fuck your fans?”
“Once in a while,” he answered flippantly with another drag.
“And yet, you claim to have never stopped loving Tiny.”
Clearly, I struck a nerve because he very slowly turned his focus back to mine, fire flickering in his blue eyes. “Are you for real, here? What does sex have to do with love? Please don’t tell me a hardened, criminal gangbanger is so sentimental and old fashioned.”
Heaving a sigh, I dropped to the corner of the desk, my fingers tapping my sides. “No. Absolutely not. I just…you never dated after her?”
“Not really. Well, once, but it wasn’t exactly my choice.”
I snorted and smirked. “What?”
“Well, I had a friends with benefits type thing when I was still a teenager. When I got discovered by my uncle—”
My pulse skipped a beat, the subject I was truly curious about naturally coming around on its own. “Your uncle.”
“My uncle’s husband. So, he’s my uncle, too.
Anyway, the agent we got said it would be best if me and Leah looked like we were a full-blown couple, madly in love,” he mocked, wiggling his fingers.
He took one last drag and smashed it out in the ashtray, exhaling on his next words.
“I never wanted it, told her no from the get go. But, my agent had me believing my career would crash and burn without her, so I did it. Played that game for about a year. Didn’t know at the time he was saying that cuz he wanted to fuck her. ”
“Wait, wait. Leah. She’s the one who started all those rumors about you at the beginning of your career, huh?” My jaw fell and I snapped, pointing and wagging the finger. “Holy shit, bitch. The woman she said you cheated on her with…that was Tiny, wasn’t it?”
Arching a brow, he shot a hard expression. “We tried to tell everyone we were still in love. No one would listen, or they just didn’t care.”
I heaved a sigh and turned my profile to him, stewing in my thoughts.
Guilt tried to plant roots but my mind kept reminding I had no reason to doubt Jackyl at the time and, even if I had, I would have been the brunt of his anger along with Tyler.
Not wanting to dwell on that, for there was already a long ass line of bullshit crammed in my head, waiting for attention, I moved the topic along.
“She tried to trap you with a baby, huh?”
“Yup, but I knew better. My dick ain’t touch ass or pussy without a rubber since Letta.”
His words right away brought my thoughts around to the night Violetta violated him three ways to Sunday with a cucumber, and I snickered, wrinkling my nose. “Ass. I ain’t never met a guy who likes to be fucked in the ass that ain’t gay.”
“So, you know gay people, huh?”
Bristling, my jaw clamped, my throat constricting. “Your uncle’s gay. You okay with gayness?”
“Gayness? Homosexuality. Yes, perfectly fine with it.”
“You gay?”
“You’ve seen the videos. You watch us almost nightly. Does it look like I’m gay?”
Heat rose to my face, a muscle flexing in my jaw. “But you like it in the ass.”
“Very much. You should try it—”
“I ain’t no faggot!” I bellowed, lunging to my feet with a wave of panic.
Both brows lifting, he simply grinned. “No one said you was, Dash. And it ain’t an insult if you are. This ain’t the old days. Gayness,” he stressed. “Is perfectly okay in today’s society.”
Some of the anxiety waning, I frowned and sat on the desk again, recrossing my arms. “Yeah, well, the Serpents would say different, so don’t go even implying something like that again. Besides, I like pussy.”
“So, you’ve said. Can I ask you something?”
“Hm?”
“Why did you get rid of your wife?”
My insides plummeted, a frantic glare shooting out the corner of my eye.
For a split second, I thought about panicking, but dismissed it instantly.
One thing I’ve learned since being locked in this house with everyone was Jackyl was a habitual liar.
Nothing he said about Tyler was turning out to be true. He was a decent guy, loyal, even.
Groaning, I relaxed and shrugged. “She was fucking someone from a rival gang. I can’t have that on my rep. Besides, that puts all Serpents in danger. She had to go.”
He lit another cigarette, inhaled, and blew out the smoke with, “Yeah, that’s fucked up. I mean, it’s one thing to have an affair, but to involve enemies like that.”
Old habits dying hard, I tensed with resentment and snipped, “Kinda like you and Jackyl.”
Hardly even faltering, he was quick with a retort.
“Not in the slightest. I was never any threat to him or any of you. In fact, the exact opposite.” He tapped the bad knee and seethed, “Remember this? Who attacked who that night? And how many of you were against me? A kid against all you grown adults? And when the cops ragged my ass for over a year, did I say one fucking word? No, I didn’t. Jackyl was the threat, not me.”
Sighing, my head bobbed side to side. “Yeah, yeah. You’ve made your point there.”
“Holy shit, Dash. Was that an apology?”
I snorted and looked away, my thumb stretching out to rub the center of my chin. The real reason for this small chat resurfacing, I cleared my throat and tried to make a u-turn with the conversation. “So, your uncle. He always been gay?”
“Uh, yeah. Ain’t exactly a choice.”
My brows shot up. It wasn’t? So, if it wasn’t a choice, then that meant I didn’t have to feel guilty for the things I was feeling for Vincent because it was out of my control.
But if I was gay, wouldn’t I have figured it out by now? Until Vincent, I had been pretty adamant against homosexuality. I’d never even considered touching another man intimately.
Could my homophobia have been a subconscious way of trying to deny who I was? But I truly had loved Mary, I loved pussy. I loved everything about it, the way it look, felt, smelled, tasted. The sounds it made when my fist or cock pounded, and jesus! The ones that squirted only turned me on further.
More confused than ever, I dared ask, “I mean, was he always aware he was gay?”
“Oh, uh, n-no. I mean, he always knew he was different, but he didn’t figure out his feelings and what they were until he was in college, got drunk, and woke up in bed with his dorm mate.”
I ogled him again, both brows lifted. In college? That took a while to figure it out, then. “No, shit?”
“Yup.”
“So, what happened?”
He shrugged and tapped the ashes to the ashtray, scratching his jawline. “What do you mean?”
My insides racing, I circled my wrist, impatiently encouraging him further. “When he came out. What happened?”
“Nothing. Well, I mean, my dad had a conniption.”
An image of my parents flickering through my thoughts, I willed my voice to not shake when I urged, “What about his folks?”
“They didn’t really care. I think they always knew.” He cast a sideways glance, a brow lifting rather arrogantly. “Most of the time, family and friends know before the person does.”
My blood thinned and my veins collapsed, the air knocking from my lungs.
Chaos spinning my brain, I was suddenly coated in sweat, even my palms damp.
A knot clogging my throat, I gulped, bit by bit bringing my full focus to his.
This time, I wasn’t so successful at maintaining a steady tone. “Yeah?”
He took another drag, squinting an eye against the smoke.
“Yup. You know, it takes a really brave man to admit who he really is. It’s hard to be true to yourself these days when everyone has an opinion and thinks they got a right to tell you who you can and can’t be.
” His mood sank, his lips pulling into a frown. “My dad was like that.”
Relieved by the distraction, I managed to swallow properly. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you saw what Letta looked like when we were kids.”
The memory of the first night I met Violetta surfaced and I snickered.
Despite her miniature, demure stature, she had put me in my place within two minutes, proving, even at sixteen, she’d been a force to be reckoned with.
“Yeah, I couldn’t believe she was related to Vin.
Man, who knew under that frizzy braid, baggy clothes, and coke bottle glasses was one of the smartest, bravest chicks I ever knew? ”
“Exactly. She was brave to stop being what everyone thought she was.”
“What does that have to do with your dad?”
A shoulder lifted as he rolled the tip of the cigarette on the bottom of the ashtray to form a point on the cherry.
“He thought, since I was the most popular boy in school and the MVP with a future in pro basketball, I should be with the most beautiful girl in town. The school nerd did not fit his picture of what he expected of me.”
“But you dated her anyway.”
He gazed up at me somberly. “No regrets. Still the best goddamn decision of my life. Still, it put a wedge between me and my dad that we never got past.”
A long breath pulled through my nose as I twisted my waist to search the monitors.
Now that we knew for sure Jackyl was here, everyone was on alert and there was no room for any mistakes.
Yet again falling victim to the cloud of confusion that was my brain these days, I muttered, “I don’t really got a relationship with my folks.
We ain’t got no beef between us, but once I was of legal age, they kinda just forgot I was their son,” I lied, stretching the truth a bit.
He didn’t need to know I, too, was a discarded, has been, washed up athlete.
It would only make what I did to him even worse.
“You okay with that?”
I shrugged, my mouth twisting to chew the inside of my cheek. “Dunno. Never really gave it much thought. They send money every once in a while for my kid, but ain’t never met her.”
“And what would you do one day if she came to you, thinking she was gay?”
A second time, my insides dropped with a flush of iciness. Coughing, I sat forward a bit, swallowing repeatedly with the possible images painting in my head. “I dunno.”
“Would you stop loving her? Stop being her dad?”
“No,” I snapped with a heated glare before he could finish the question.
His head bobbing, he was checking the cameras at the far end, the ones near the cave. There weren’t any pointing directly at it, unfortunately. The closest one was about fifty yards away and around a bend, so if he really was hiding out in it, we wouldn’t know for sure from the cameras.
“You should probably talk to Vinny about this.”
I flushed cold yet again, my heart racing wildly with anxiety. Panting, the fear grew to a dangerous level in a split second. Did he know something? Had he figured things out? How would he know? “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
He sat up and cleared his throat several times, behaving nervously.
“Uh, I…ahem. I…I just meant…he-he’s your friend, you know?
Me and you ain’t friends, so all these questions you got might be better for someone you trust. Besides, with Jackyl being gone soon, he’ll probably take his rank, won’t he? ”
Somewhat relaxing, that was a very believable answer, one I prayed with every fiber in my being was legit. “Yeah, yeah, he will. And just for the record, I ain’t asking questions for personal reasons—”
“No, no. I got it. You’re just curious, is all. Nothing about you, at all.”
“It ain’t got nothing to do with me,” I barked, slicing a hand through the air.
“Got it,” he said with a firm nod.
Frustrated, I bounded to my feet, the panic rising once more. “Hey, man, I’m serious.”
“I believe you,” he chuckled, fanning his hands out. “Honest, wasn’t insinuating nothing.”
Tense, I glared, nostrils flaring. After an extreme stare off, I nodded curtly once and pivoted to head for the door.
Swinging it open, I paused but didn’t look back at him for the shame circling my chest. My shoulders curling upward, my voice was almost too low to hear.
“By the way, bitch. That was an apology.”
Not waiting for a response or reaction, I quickly stepped out and closed the door.