My cell phone ringing distracts me from the moment. I pick it up from the desk, not bothering to look at it as I answer. I know who it is from the sound it makes alone. "Yeah."
"Ignazio!"
Ray's already three sheets to the wind. His voice doesn't betray it, strong and steady as always, but he called me by my first name. He doesn't do that when he has his wits about him.
"Yeah," I say again, sitting up straight, dropping my feet to the floor.
"We're over at Cobalt," he says. "Come on over for a bit."
"Yeah," I say, standing up. "Okay."
I hang up, slipping my phone in the pocket of my black slacks. I could tell him no… I'm probably the only person who could deny an invitation from him without serious consequence… but the air in the house is too stifling for me to stay here. She needs space to get over whatever it is that has her so upset today. I know she'll be here when I get back.
She'll be here, because she knows if she isn't, I'll just track her down and drag her right back.
Slipping on my shoes, I fix my tie before grabbing my coat from the chair. I put it on, fastening the button as I start for the door. "I have things to do."
Karissa says nothing, doesn't even look at me, but she heard. The way her face twitches tells me so, as she bites down on the inside of her cheek.
"I might be late," I say, strolling over to the couch, stopping right beside where she sits. "Or I might not."
Another twitch. More silence.
I stand there for a moment, contemplating, before leaning down and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. I don't bother trying to kiss her lips. She won't resist me, she never does, but I'll get nothing in return today.
"Call me if you need me."
A grunt, soft and throaty, like she fought to restrain words and instead only offered the sound of annoyance. Annoyance at the fact that I'd dare think she'd ever need me? Or annoyance, because deep down, she realizes she already does?
Either way, I smile again, laughing to myself as I walk out.
The Cobalt Room is an upscale social club deep in Manhattan, not far from the campus of NYU. It's the sort of place people admire from the outside, a grand old structure that belongs in the pages of a historical magazine, but very few ever get to step through the door. It's membership required, by invitation only, and to get invited these days, you have to get through Ray.
He doesn't own it, but he certainly controls it. He runs most of his business out of a back office, tucked away behind the elaborate bar and swanky entertainment rooms. He hangs around out front, commanding the crowds with his open personality, but when you get pulled into the back, you know there's hell to pay.
I don't bother to flash my ID when I step inside. Kelvin, the man working the door, knows me—he's one of us, after all. He works here most afternoons for Ray, moonlighting weekends a few blocks away at the little nightclub called Timbers. He was working the door that night, the night Karissa went there with her friend, the night I decided to make my move.
Kelvin sent word as soon as she showed up that night. He recognized her face and knew she was my mark. They all knew, frankly… every one of Ray's men know exactly who Karissa is.
Kelvin nods, bowing his head as I pass, maybe out of respect but more likely because the guys don't like to look me in the eyes.
Few people do.
The street soldiers, cruel thugs who lie, cheat, kill, and steal, shy away, whereas little Karissa, half my size with barely any physical strength, never hesitated to stare me straight in the eyes, like she was reading my soul with just a glance. I thought at first she just didn't see it, didn't see what I was, but after a while I realized she saw it—she just didn't mind it so much.
Didn't mind that there was enough darkness inside of me to rid the world of every stitch of light.
Nobody ever looks at me that way, with that sort of openness, that sort of trust and affection.
Not even Ray.
Except for when he's drunk, maybe. And drunk he is tonight. He grins when he sees me approach him in the private bar area, grins like he's the Cheshire cat and he found an Alice to fuck with. "Naz!"
I nearly flinch when he says it. He catches himself right away and doesn't apologize, instead shrugging his shoulders and scrunching up his face as if to say, 'ah shit, you caught me.' He waves his hand, wordlessly telling the guy in the plush leather chair beside him to vacate, and I slip into the seat the moment he's gone. I motion toward the waitress, telling her to bring me my usual—a bottle of cold pale ale, still sealed. She brings it without question, without hesitation, and I use the bottle opener on my keys to pop the top off.
"So we cashed out the frozen food stock this morning," Ray says right away, lounging in his seat. "Almost a quarter million profit."
"That's great," I say, relaxing in the chair. "I take it my drinks are on you tonight then?"
"You know it," Ray says, holding his glass up—scotch, on the rocks—to clink it against the side of my bottle. "You keep it up and I'll buy you an entire brewery."
Laughing, I take a sip of my beer. "I'll hold you to that."
"I know you will."
Spirits are high and alcohol flows freely. Ray laughs and jokes, his mood infectious. I humor him, smiling, trying to relax and push everything else from my mind, but thoughts of Karissa keep seeping back in.
It looks like we're just hanging out, but this is work for men like us. Plotting, scheming, talking, socializing… it's the part of the job I hate. It's not that I hate people in general. I don't. Not really. I'm just happier when they're not around.
Except for her.
Goddamn Karissa.
Always my exception these days.
She never should have been.
It's past midnight when the women arrive. They're not usually invited, not allowed inside Cobalt, but when Ray gets a hankering to celebrate, everyone indulges him.
Prostitutes. They call themselves escorts. I call them whores. Most are nothing more than girls with too much make-up and not enough brains.
Brandy, Ray's meddlesome blonde girlfriend, shows up and squeezes into the seat with him, draping across his lap as she nuzzles into his neck. She once sold herself like the others, but Ray took a liking to her and kept her for himself.
His own little baby doll, he calls her.
Everyone else starts to loosen up, while my muscles grow tenser, the alcohol in my system doing nothing to quell my growing unease.
It doesn't help that Brandy's little friend perches herself on the arm of my chair. She's new, obviously, a first timer around here. She looks down at me, smiling, her pupils like black marbles. Stoned. "Hey, handsome, you looking to party tonight?"
I stare at her, my expression blank, as her leg brushes against mine, her foot rubbing my calf. Brandy takes notice and scrambles to stop her friend, drunkenly stammering, but Ray clamps his hand down on her mouth to silence her, his gaze fixed on me, that grin back on his face.
He wants to see my reaction.
Sometimes the man makes me feel like one of his play toys.
I finish my beer—my fourth, as it is—and set the empty bottle down on the table beside me. Sitting up, I motion for the girl to come closer. She leans down, smiling seductively, thinking I'm going to kiss her collagen-infected lips, but I bring my mouth to her ear instead. "I'll slit your throat if you ever touch me again."
Her expression must be horrified, based on the way Ray wildly laughs. I don't care. I stand up and head for the exit, not looking back. "See you later, Ray."
"Bye, Naz."
This time I do flinch.
It's not the name itself that bothers me. I've always preferred it to Ignazio. But hearing it reminds me of the man I used to be, the man I was before. Naz had hope. Naz was full of love.
Naz died a cruel death.
I told Karissa to call me Naz. I said it in a brief moment of weakness, because she looked at me with so much light in her eyes, so much innocence in her expression, that I thought
for the moment it might've been a reflection of the old me.
Blissfully ignorant.
I lost my way then, forgot who I was, and I still don't know how the hell to get back from there.
It's after one o'clock in the morning when I get home. The house is dark and quiet. I pull my jacket off when I step in the door and loosen the knot of my tie, sighing. The den is empty, television off, remote control sitting on the small table on top of Karissa's notebook. I push the remote away and grab the notebook, picking it up to read the top page. A recipe for some sort of potato dish with notes on the bottom: how to cook the perfect steak.
I toss the notebook back down when an envelope peeks out of the side of it. Curiously, I pull it out, seeing it's addressed to Karissa from NYU.
It's wrong of me, but I look; I pull out the paper and read through the letter.
Dear Ms. Reed, yada yada, whatever whatever, you lost your scholarship so we're going to need you to pay.
A bill for damn near twenty-five thousand dollars.
I let out a low whistle as I shove the paper back into the envelope, returning it where I found it in the notebook.
No wonder she was in a bad mood.
"Do you want—?"
"Nope."
I stall, mid-question, and stare at where Karissa sits on the couch, notebook on her lap as she watches yet another cooking show. Same shit, different day. I can faintly hear music playing from the earbuds draped around her neck, making it possible to talk to her for the moment.
"Can I at least finish my question before you answer?"
She says nothing, jotting something down that she sees on the screen, acting once again like I don't exist.
Taking a deep breath, I ask, "Do you want to go with me to—?"
"Nope."
I try to push back my frustration, but it comes pouring out of me in a groan.
The woman is unbelievably infuriating.
Shaking my head, I walk out of the den, not bothering to ask for the third time. Grabbing my keys, I head out of the house, slamming the door behind me.
She got to me.
I try not to let her.
I try to stay calm and collected. I'm trained to keep my emotions from showing. But she alone knows how to get under my skin.
Once again, she's my exception.
Always a goddamn exception.
The drive into Manhattan seems to crawl by this afternoon. I crack my knuckles and my neck as I sit in the busy traffic, trying to work the stiffness from my body, tension that seems to grow more and more every day. Instead of getting better, instead of things settling down, it feels like we're stalled at the starting line.
Patience has always been a strong suit of mine—I spent almost two decades tracking down Carmela, waited years to try to get back at Johnny—but I'm nearing my tolerance limit with their daughter.
I head to Greenwich Village, parking the car in a garage near Washington Square, before making my way around the block. NYU student services, on the first floor of the building: Office of the Bursar.
The building is brightly lit, surprisingly busy for it being summertime. I wait a few minutes to be acknowledged, stepping up to a middle-aged woman sitting behind a large desk in the lobby of the office.
"I need to speak to somebody about paying a tuition bill."
The woman starts rambling about how the student can make payment arrangements online, giving me the usual spiel, but I cut her off. "No, I need to make a payment, and I'd like to pay it all. Today."
An hour later I walk back out, twenty-five grand poorer with only a printed out receipt to show for it, the words 'Paid in Full' stamped on the top beside Karissa's name.
It's nearing dusk already when I make my way back to Brooklyn, parking in the driveway of the house. I head inside, the sound of loud music greeting me before I even open the door. I make it only a few steps into the foyer, calling out Karissa's name, when animated laughter cuts through the racket.
It's female, and familiar, but it's not Karissa.
Melody.
My pulse quickens, my fingers twitching at the sudden swell of irritation. I clench my hands into fists to stop them, but it does little to help. I want to squeeze the life out of that laughter, smother the insufferable chatter to make it stop.
She gets under my skin and claws at me.
The noise is coming from the den, the one room I feel most at home. The only fucking place I ever feel safe.
Inviting someone into my house is like letting them touch my food or pour my drinks: for me, the trust is damn near impossible to come by. I've been bugged before, had my phones wiretapped, and it's all too easy for something to slip by, skating in right under my nose. I don't let people into my life, and she opens up my sanctuary to someone I hardly know.
Melody Carmichael. Her father works on Wall Street. Her mother is a homemaker and runs a book club. It's the picture perfect family, but it's an image I don't trust. Deeper, beneath the surface, there's always another story, buried secrets that a man like me knows how to unearth.
There's a downside to everything, a dark side to everyone, and those who willingly walk in the shadows are a hell of a lot more convincing than those who only acknowledge the sunshine.
My best friend shot me in the chest, but at least he had the decency to look me in the eyes when he did it.
I avoid the den and head to the kitchen instead, seeking out a strong drink to calm my nerves, but my footsteps falter right inside the doorway. It's an utter disaster. Dishes and trash are everywhere, pans still on the stove with leftover food stuck to them. It smells grotesquely burnt, another failed dinner, this one abandoned based on the half-filled pizza boxes on the counter beside the charred mess.
I can feel myself growing hot as I clench my jaw. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, trying to keep my anger at bay. Relax. Don't worry about it. I count to ten to calm down, but it's senseless. Because the moment I reopen my eyes and see the mess again, my vision gets cloudy, and it takes every ounce of restraint I have to keep from losing my cool.
My patience is officially gone.
Grabbing pans from the stove, I knock them against the trashcan, dislodging the food before tossing them on the counter, not caring about the noise they make as they bang against the marble countertops.
I fill the sink, the bubbles nearly overflowing as steam rises from the scalding water. I toss the dishes in, my mind a flurry of dark thoughts as I tear off my coat and shove my sleeves up to my elbows.
I scrub, and scrub, and scrub, the blistering water scorching my skin. I grit my teeth, trying to distract myself with the pain from it, trying to focus on the sting to internalize it, but it's counterproductive. Every laugh, every sigh, every syllable that reaches my ears from the den is like hitting the reset button, my resentment escalating again and again.
She has a lot of nerve.
The world around me falls into a haze, my hands moving on their own. I scour everything within sight until my hands are raw, scrubbing so hard with a steel wool pad that my fingers bleed, cleaning in the darkness to try to purge the vindictive thoughts, but they're all that exist.
They eat me up when I get like this.
I'm so lost in the anger, so consumed by the rage, that I don't hear her footsteps, don't sense her presence, until the overhead light flicks on. The brightness momentarily stalls me. I clutch a glass so tightly that the knuckles of my reddened hand turn as white as cocaine.
I'm damn lucky the glass doesn't shatter.
I almost wish it would.
I'd take a shard and slash a fucking vein.
"Naz?"
Her voice, so close, uttering my name, is like throwing gasoline on already raging flames. I drop my head, feeling myself violently shaking.
A lot of fucking nerve.
"Turn around," I say, my voice low, so cold it's almost unrecognizable to my own ears. I need her to go back to where she was and give me time to calm down, to clean up this mess and bring ord
er back to my world, before I take this out on her.
"What?"
"Turn around, Karissa. You don't want to do this right now."
"Don't want to do what?"
I don't answer her, and she doesn't go away.
No, instead she comes closer, her footsteps finally registering as she strolls through the kitchen toward me, her steps measured. She treads lightly, but her approach is an ominous roar to my ears. I breathe deeply to keep myself from reacting, standing as still as possible, closing my eyes when she speaks again.
"Ignazio?"
Her hand is on my back, her touch tentative, but it's enough to set me off. The glass slips from my hand, crashing into the sudsy water as I spin around. Karissa is caught off guard and starts to pull away, to back away, but I snatch ahold of her wrist and yank her to me instead.
She flinches, eyes wide, as I shove her back against the counter in the corner, pinning her there.
"Is this what you want? Huh?" I stare straight in her dark eyes as I lean closer. "You want to mock me? You want to provoke me?"
"What?" The word shakes as it spills from her lips. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about what you're doing," I say. "What you're doing to me."
"I'm not doing anything to you."
Her eyes water. I have enough sense to loosen my hold on her wrist, in case I'm hurting her, but it makes no difference. A tear streams down her cheek as she stares into my eyes, body tense like she's holding her breath having to be so close to me.
Me.
She can't fucking stand to be near me.
I split myself open for her, exposing the vulnerable parts of me, the parts nobody else gets to see, and she accepts it. She accepts it, and loves it, but she doesn't understand it. And when I finally explain it to her, explain how I'd be victimized, how I'd been hurt, how my life had been destroyed, she acts like I'm the one in the wrong.
"I give you space, Karissa. I give you space, even though everything in me tells me not to, because it's what you want. I give you space, and how do you repay me? By goading me. By inviting people into my home, into my space, without even consulting me. You want your space? Then give me mine, too, and stop disrespecting it!"