Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) (12 page)

“You aren’t the only one who’s suffering because I’m making you wait,” she said, “I told you that it has to mean something to you. Until you can tell me how much it will mean then I’ll kiss you.”

And may I taken me to a dream where I wasn’t screwing my dead brother’s wife, and may there be somewhere in a life where I wasn’t so awestruck at the prospect of kissing my dead brother’s wife’s’ daughter.

I used my thumb to rub over the smooth skin of her chin. She released her bottom lip then, and it touched the tip of my finger. I felt the moist warmth and shuddered. I sagged my head to the side, my eyes closed as my heart seemed suddenly too fast.

Not kissing her seemed like hell’s worst punishment. 

Dominique asked, “Will it mean something, Tristan?”

Using real names was bad but I hardly cared. I eyed her soft, full lips then I truly looked into her eyes before lowering my head to rest my forehead against hers.

“What will it mean,” she asked again.

“My first breath and my last,” I answered.

Dominique’s hands moved into my hair, pushing away the baseball cap. Her breasts pushed roughly against my chest as she inched away any distance we may have had. Her mouth opened against mine, not yet touching, not yet ending me. I felt her warm breath against my mouth, the slight moisture of her tongue as it rubbed over her bottom lip.

And then, by the grace and mercy and the favor of God, she kissed me.

The kiss was slow and tender. I felt her hands moving around my neck, pulling me forward. I did my best to withstrain as much as I could. Although you may not assume at first glance, I did have some respect. I wanted to respect this couple that was watching us. But soon their presence had dissipated in my mind as I felt her tongue move into my mouth. Dominique’s tongue tasted sweet and I devoured it more and more. She whimpered as I took her bottom lip into my mouth and slowly sucked on it. 

Before I knew it the elevator dinged.

It was our floor.

The couple had left and we hadn’t noticed. Relunctantly, I let Dominique go and we exited into the hallway. My face felt hot and I my tongue sizzled inside my mouth. The closer we walked to Lulina’s door, the more I felt like a weight was bearing down on my shoulders. Kissing the daughter of the woman you had been sleeping with for years was sucidial.

Lulina answered on the second knock. She was back to the woman I had always known in her make up and tight clothing. She threw her arms over Dominique and squeezed. Dominique’s hug wasn’t as tight, I noticed.

“Thank you, Tristan,” Lulina smiled at me and leaned over, giving me a peck on the cheek.

It was a funny peck; a
sister-in-law
kind of peck. I found it funny that not even twelve hours ago her mouth had been pecking on something else other than my cheek. Dominique walked into the room and did not turn around to give me one last glance. With that, I was in a mix of sadness and relief. If she had of looked at me, and if I had of seen the want in her eyes I had seen in the elevator, I might have torn the door down to get to her.

Fire is better left alone.

Yet my clothes were still smoking from how close I was dancing around the flames. I mumbled something to Lulina that I didn’t remember and left. I felt exhausted and alive in the same instant.

I didn’t make it any further than the bar once I made it back to the lobby. I pushed a fifty dollar bill towards the bartender while I lit a cigarette from the pack I bought at the twenty-four hour gift store I had passed to get to the drinks.

I didn’t have time for foreplay with mix drinks and skipped straight to the hard stuff. I was lapping at my fourth drink like a dog, who’d hadn’t had water in days, when Mr. Black appeared at my side. He ordered one beer, took a sip, and then placed a five on the counter and a ringing pre paid phone before leaving.

I grunted into the phone and waited for someone to respond.

It was my father. “Theres two plane tickets, for you and Zander, at the airport for a flight back home in two hours. Johnny’s funeral is tomorrow, Tristan. You need to pay your respects.”

Money left on the bedside table… a thank you note too…

Johnny’s death hadn’t been
that
quiet
.

The police had found his body in an abandoned apartment duplex with a gag in his mouth and a bullet tearing the back of his skull open. He hadn’t been beaten, which would have been mandatory for any other who had done what he had done. Somehow he had managed to suck away almost five million dollars from the family’s accounts. It had taken years of patience to pull out that kind of money without anyone noticing.

And that’s where I wondered the absurdity of Johnny’s demise. Johnny was greedy, yes, but he was patient. My brother was smart – well enough to secure a B.A. in accounting and business management – and I, relunctantly, had to give him enough credit, that if he wanted to steal from the family, he would be smart enough not to get caught at it. How my father had stumbled upon the missing funds and finding it in Johnny’s account was something he wasn’t willing to discuss – and I wasn’t willing to ask.

My father looked like he had aged considerably since the last I had seen him. My father was a very strong man, but I figured nothing could prepare anyone for the death of a child, and the death’s responsibility resting very much on your shoulders.

My fathar’s head was down with his hands deep in his pockets. One of his men held an umbrella over his head as the sky opened up and rained over his eldest son’s funeral. I did not wish to have an umbrella held over my head. With the rain, the tears that weren’t on my face couldn’t be seen. I glanced at the dark skies, wishing I didn’t have to sober for this.

When life seemed so low like this, acohol only seemed to soften, and cushioned the decent to the pits of the bottom.

“Oh, God no! Johnny!” Lulina shrieked.

She stumbled from her chair into the mud, using her hands and knees to get to Johnny’s pitch black casket. My father’s men moved for her, trying to help her up but she tore herself away from their hands. I, myself, was too scared to lend a hand, too scared to touch her.

I feared that if my fingers secured even the smallest touch, whatever was whirling around inside of her would latch onto me. Or this could be a performance and I would feel nothing as I helped her up, and if it
was
all for show then I didn’t want to get mud on my suit.

Dominique had been sitting beside her mother. As the preacher mumbled his words, expressing Johnny’s
lovely
life and his
unfortunate end
, she had been rubbing her mother’s back, and the gesture seemed forced and very uncomfortable for both parties.

I closed my eyes and exhaled as I listened to the birds as they fled from the rain rather than the words of God. Men in this family tended to be very religious.

I chose not to be.

I believe in God very much and feared him, but my chosen profession was not of God’s intentions for His’ creations.

Praying to Him and thanking Him while you stole from others, robbed and killed, seemed like a slap to His face with a spiked glove.

I watched the back of Dominique’s head. Her hair was pinned up with a butterfly clip. I thought of the butterflies I felt in my stomach when I kissed her. And, as if feeling my stare, she glanced back and met my eyes. The butterflies were back as I stared at her, looked at her well formed pink lips up to her eyes. By far she was more than just
beautiful
. She was the type of woman who experienced either a luxurious life or a hard one by her face alone. Beauty like hers was a curse to most, maybe even more of a price than a prize.

Dominque looked away, back to the spectacle of her mother dragging her nice fingernails over her husband’s casket, her masscara marring her face, and I went back to looking at the sky, and wishing I was someplace else other than here watching my brother get buried and not crying about it.

***

After the funeral, I fled towards a titty bar with sorry female half covered ass strutting around and shitty lighting and watered down drinks. I didn’t even remember the drive itself to the bar, but remembered laughing to myself as my driver sped away because he didn’t like his very nice car being in a very bad side of town. Zander had elected to stay at my Father’s compound because the drinks were free there, but I had rathered pay for my drinks to get the peace of mind.

I hadn’t even realized how much time had passed while I was drinking away whatever I was feeling until Zander walked up beside me and leaned against the bar.

“You just fucked off back there, Tristan,” he said and lit a cigarette then ordered his own drink on my money.

I played with my drink, taking occasional sips from it before downing it completely and waited for another. It was too loud to talk, too loud to think, and this was fine.

This was my life after all.

I had worked too hard to be here in the gutter.

Zander squeezed my shoulder. “Outside, T, I wanna talk.”

I grasped my newly refilled drink and put it to my lips. I nodded to my cousin before tossing my head back and nearly crying when I felt the liquor move down my throat and burn.

The cold night’s air brushed and burned my cheeks as Zander and I stepped out of the smoke hazed, neon lighting, strip club.

Zander tucked his jacket a little tighter around his body. “I need to know we’re good on what happened back at the hotel room,” he said, meaning his little slip with the syringe.

“Your bullshit is your bullshit. Keep me out of it and don’t let it fuck up what we do.”

“It won’t and I’m done with all that. I was just screwed, man.” He chuckled to himself like I had told a funny joke. “So it seems apparent you got one hell of a hard on for Lu’s kid.”

I took a deep breath and saw it in the cold air when I blew it back out. “This isn’t what you wanted to talk about, is it?” I glanced around the rather deserted parking lot. “You were dropped off?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I guess we’re walking home since our car is in front of our apartment.”

We both started off into the deserted night, our hands stuffed in our pockets and I our heads buried deep into our coats. I thought briefly about Miami: the warm weather, the women, the sun, but mostly about how much prettier crime life was there then here where it seemed what we did for a living was much more dirty, colder and seedy.

“You think Johnny saw it coming?” Zander asked.

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

He lit two cigarettes and passed one to me. I fished out a bottle of rum from my coat and Zander smiled graciously as we passed the bottle back and forth between each other.

“I’m thinking about visiting my kids,” he said.

I used the palm of my hand to smooth the top of my hair. Zander took more sips until the bottle had a sliver of rum left in it before handing it back to me. I just hurled the bottle into the night and listened for the shatter and smiled when I heard it.

“That’s for my brother,” I whispered to myself.

My memories of Johnny hadn’t been good but he was still my brother. I hated him for almost all of my life, but he was still blood. Knowing that he was dead, and that his death had been ugly no matter if they didn’t beat or toture him, hadn’t sat well for me. I didn’t realize until now, in the dead silent night where all I could hear was my shoes scuffling against the pavement, that I preferred my oldest brother not dead.

Zander pulled the collars up on his jacket. “My girls are growing up without me, Tristan.”

“How old are they now?” I asked.

“Five and eight,” he asnwered, but stopped and thought about it a little more, “Seven and nine.”

Zander’s two girls were being raised by a mother who worked two jobs and had a nasty drunk for a boyfriend – not much better than what Zander had been but better because he wasn’t beholden by the needle. And it was now, when even your own thoughts couldn’t keep your mind from wandering, that you visited your past with a bitter taste in your mouth. He was thinking of his children, and I found myself thinking of the child I had lost and been happy about the departure.

“We weren’t raised to be good men, T, but I think we are, really I do. I think we’re good men,” he said, more to himself than to me.

And I disagreed.

We weren’t good men at all. Good men don’t beat the mother of their children, make them cry because their crying on the inside, and good men don’t lead a woman to swallow a handful of pills because he allowed her life to get so agonizing, and so painful, that tomorrow just wasn’t worth seeing.

We were nearing the apartment when Zander stopped and looked at me. “Papa wants you to come by tomorrow. He wasn’t happy you didn’t stay long. He said he needed to talk to you.”

I turned to keep going but he grabbed my arm.

“Would you have ever wanted to be boss?” He asked.

I tried not to answer him; he wouldn’t handle it right.

“Just give it to me straight, Tristan,” he told me, as if my very thoughts had appeared all over my face.

“No. I don’t ever want to be my father. That job is way too much for a fuck up like me. I respect my families’ business too much to walk into a train wreck I know I would cause.”

“That’s bullshit, Tristan. That’s Papa talking and you know it.”

“And what if it is? But he’s right, Zander. I don’t have what it takes for this business. I sure as hell wouldn’t have the balls to have one of my kids killed.”

“Johnny was a traitor to the Rogue. He knew what he was doing.”

“So did me with Katie, Zander.” Again I saw those pure blue eyes. I felt the way her smile widened against my neck when she nuzzled. “So did you when you sunk a needle into your arm and pushed the plunger.” My eyes met the dark sky and I wasn’t surprised not to see one star. “We’re in a shit hole. And it’s too good for us, man. This shit hole is too good for us for what we’ve done.”

Zander’s face was deadly serious and I couldn’t remember ever seeing him this way, this fierce, and this careful about what he said. “You do have what it takes to make the right calls, Tristan. You not being enough for this family, thinking you’re your past is your chain tied to cement, and your right to life’s fucking scraps that has already been chewed, is Papa’s talking. That’s his fucking definition of you.”

“And what if I had to have you killed you, Zander? Do you think I would do it?”

“Yea, I do,” said, “If you had to, Tristan, and I wouldn’t hate you for it. You’re not like me. You were conditioned to be the boss. Your father knows this.”

“I was six when he broke my jaw for the first time,” I argued.

“And you think that doing what he does calls for an upbringing that deals out happy memories? You have to be strong. You have to be mean and you have to be tough. You can’t just walk into this family and run it and not have tribulations or demons. It didn’t make sense then in Papa’s days and it don’t now in our days. Papa tried with Johnny – good memories, hugs and pats on the back – and he made one greedy bastard who got himself killed.”

He wasn’t finished talking but I was finished listening. He thought he could pull me out my downward spiral but the belts were fastened and I wasn’t going anywhere. I made bad decisions. One of those bad decisions had blue eyes and blonde hair, was twenty-six years old and dead.

Zander called out after me. “The past is gone, T. When are you going to let it go?”

And he was right, the past was gone. What we did was too far behind to correct any of it. You just couldn’t walk a straight line when there were too many kinks in the road.

The past is gone, and whatever that was good in us was gone too, and I didn’t have the remorse for the man I could’ve been.

***

Ally snuck a kiss on my lips and snickered about it, her bright smile was burning in the dark room. My arms were propped under my head as I glared up at the ceiling with the fake, plastic glow-in-the-dark stars. We were stuffed in her twin size bed, which proved to be a good reason as to why I never would stay too long after I fucked her.

Her soft fingers drew circles on my chest. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

I shuffled into my pants and could feel her eyes watching me curiously. I had said nothing more than the sweet nothings to get her to open the door and take me to her bedroom, and now it seemed my lack of conversation explained to her that something was off.

“I’m not coming back here,” I told her.

She sniffled behind me. She was most likely fighting away tears that I sure as hell didn’t deserve. “Why, Tristan?”

I shrugged causually. This wasn’t going to be a
warm
moment.

“I don’t want to do this anymore with you,” I answered.

And after that, her fight with the tears was lost. Ally cried and cried and I didn’t comfort her, help her to slow down and breathe – I gave her nothing that would make this easier.

Then she took to begging.

“Tristan, you said you would never leave me.”

“I never said I was with you from the beginning.”