Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) (17 page)

“What?”

I nodded to his pocket. “Give me your roll.”

He grumbled as he reached into his pocket and took out a wad of hundreds. We both looked at the young hooker as her eyes lit up at the money. Ralph grumbled even more as he took the time to try and peel some of the hundreds off then decided to just hand it to me altogether. He was slow getting up. His left eye had completely swollen shut. His bottom lip was big and his nose was still spurting little streams of blood that he did not wipe just yet. He briefly looked at me and then looked away. If he thought about asking for his money when I finished paying the girl, he didn’t voice it. If he thought about making a comment of our very short fight that I won and he very much lost, he didn’t bring it up.

It was the best thing he could’ve done for himself.

***

Once out of the stuffy hotel room, the young girl took a deep breath. She glanced at the stairs not too far from her and appeared like she was ready to bolt. I tightened the hold on her hand and brought her close to me. She did not protest, and in that instant, I found a kinship with her. She was trash and she knew it, but she expected not the big house or dreams of marrying rich or a trick wanting to make her life better, but accepted who and what she was. If I slapped her she wouldn’t flinch from it and probably wouldn’t wipe the blood until after I left or if I insisted she do it while I watched and sneered.

I began the conversation between her and me, with, “Look, I’m your friend, okay?” It might have been the wrong choice of words but I had to get a point across. She flinched but instantly got a hold of herself. I peeled off two hundred dollar bills and handed them to her. “You’re my friend, too, okay?”

She nodded and said nothing. I handed her another hundred.

“How did you end up in there?”

She looked at the closed hotel door. “Fat guy wanted a party.”

“Just him?”

She nodded again. “He said I might have to do his boys, too. No extra charge for ‘em.”

I handed her two more hundreds for Ralph’s blatant stupidity. You don’t stiff a hooker and make her work your crew and then have her witness your crimes and expect her to be quiet about it. He might have killed her and she might have known that.

I handed her another hundred just at the thought.

“Keep going,” I told her.

“He paid for the room. I did him and he said I could stay the night there. I wanted a shower, he sweats too much. He left and not even an hour later he came back with the guys and the guard and the guy in the bathroom that died. I wanted to leave but he wouldn’t let me. So I staid and the fat guy did what he did to the guard.”

“Anything else?” She eyed the wad in my hand. I did not hand her another bill. “You’re still being my friend, right?”

“That’s it.”

I handed her three more hundreds and put the money away. “Look, sorry you had to see that in there. We’re friends now and friends don’t tell on each other. You weren’t here, okay? You didn’t see any of this so you have nothing to talk about, okay? If I hear one thing about tonight anywhere then I’m coming after you. I will find you. And when I do get a hold of you, we’re not friends anymore, okay?”

I released her hand and she scurried off into the night.

Don’t flinch, you saw it coming way too early to move now…

The hand raised, palm out, fingers straight and stiff.

I tried not to wince, knowning it would hurt.

Slap!

My eyes watered – not in my control – and my vision blinked in and out, flickered slightly, from black to my father’s angry scrowl, his ever watching eyes on the prowl for a shimmer of weakness.

The tears were threatening to make its debut on my cheeks. I gulped and the burn eased. I breathed through my mouth and the tears slowly crept back to wherever they came from.

I raised my head, gulped again, breathed once more, and set my jaw for the next hit that I was sure would come.

Slap!

My father had reversed his tatics and used the back of his hand this time. Same cheek, already on fire and burning hotly, caught the second slap and my mind wavered, my vision did too.

No tears building this time, none at all. What was at first astonishment and pain slowly eased away and anger and embarrassement at being a grown man and slapped by another man in the pressense of other men, settled in my gut and twisted until I almost gagged. I locked my jaw, my teeth grinding loudly.

To my assumption, I looked like a man itching for trouble.

My father took a step closer, his nose almost touching mine – a man that was ready to snub out the trouble I would arise.

We stared at each other, long and hard, angrily and defiantily. We did not speak, and neither one of us breathed.

My compuser loosened when I felt the sting under my left eye and the first little droplets of blood down my cheek. The back hand had opened my skin, his ring had cut me.

I had refused to cry in front of my father.

Instead I bled; tears of blood running down my left cheek.

I lowered my eyes; defeated, quietly and violently, put back in my place.

“Don’t you dare, Tristan, you be a fucking man and look me in my eyes,” my father said through his gritted teeth.

I did as he asked and he slapped me again. Same cheek, more force than the previous two. I grunted in pain but I did not look away.

Whatever was left of my face would look fucked up in the morning.

My father turned his attention to Ralph. “You were careless,” he growled and Ralph flinched and his nose instantly started bleeding again. “While you were busy fucking, your shipment was almost pinched and you lost one of your crew.”

Ralph nodded and averted his eyes.

“I would hit you if your own little brother hadn’t fucked you up first,” my father went on. His voice was steady and calm, his body not completely relaxed, but suited well for the conversation of predator and prey – my brother the latter.

Ralp nodded again, quicker this time, raining down streams of blood from his busted nose. His eyes were on the floor, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders low and slumped. I watched as my father shook his head, unable to hide the disgust at my brother for two very good reasons: he had been sloppy, and he wasn’t able to look him the eyes and own up to the sloppiness.

If Ralph wasn’t my father’s son, he would’ve been killed.

You never do business with a man who couldn’t look you in the eye.

My father continued, “They weren’t even your men; they were borrowed hands like always and you had a mole.”

“They had a mole,” Ralph corrected, stupid for even thinking it was okay to talk when Ricardo Rogue was speaking, despite if his sperm created you.

Ralph was slapped. He cried out, tears rushing and falling down his bruised cheeks. His eyes were back on the floor, his lip quivering and his face flushing.

…Weak men were dead men…

My father spit at Ralph’s feet, utterly revolted.

“No.
You
had a mole. It’s your job to make sure things are right. You handle the operation; hands on, upclose, overseeing it all. You always be suspicious of the paid hands from another family,
always
.”

His dark eyes went a few more shades darker as he stared at Ralph. “Wipe those fucking tears.” He waited as Ralph used the sleeve of his jacket to clean his face. “My shit holds together better than you.”

My father took a step back. He glared at both of us, but mostly Ralph received the attention of his heated, disgusted, gaze.

I licked my lips. “Do you think Lacone had anything to do with this?”

He ignored me and took out his cigar, ran it under his nose. A lighter was fished, a flame flickered and he was smoking. He softly puffed, encouraging the flame to soak into the tip of the cigar before the lighter was put back in his suit jacket.

He finally answered. “I’m almost certain, but I can never be sure.”

My father closed his eyes as he inhaled a wallop of smoke, the taste lingering on his tongue for a few more moments before he blew it out into our faces. When his eyes opened – black, focused, and so wrapped and secured in reserved rage -, I internally jump, my insides screaming, warning me for another hit that would hurt whether I prepared for it or not.

My eye had only managed to catch a flash of flesh towards my face. I felt his ring burying into my skin, tearing my lip open. The slap had collided against the same cheek and I was on the verge of murder if my father touched me again tonight.

“You don’t ever shoot a gun in this family unless I say you do,” he said, “you shot a guy from a partner family, and you could’ve started a fucking war.”

I could feel my nails puncturing the inside of my palm as I squeezed my fists tighter. “And we would have ereased Lacone and his dirty ass thugs even before they had the brains to lift a gun, or even the balls to look at us as if there was beef to be had.”

The beginning of what seemed to be a smile tugged at the corner of my father’s lip. “Hard words.”

“No, just hard truth.”

What was an attempted smile vanished and my father nodded towards the door
.

I looked at Ralph who was still sniffling through his broken nose and still trying not to cry, but had his arm half way up to catch any tears that happened to fall. I glanced at Papa, who had said nothing through the entire ordeal, but sat comfortably drinking brandy with a face of stone that only gave way to a sly smile when my father waded into my face.

I walked out, trying to keep my pace at an even stride and not stop at the nearest mirror to inspect the damage to my face. My intentions were to make a stop at one of my father’s bars. I wanted to drink until my face felt numb, or numb the part of my brain that registered pain. Then I was going to go home and drink until my world tilted, spinned, and then finally drained away.

This was why I never took on life sober. Life was too cold, too brutal. You wear a condom first, and never fuck life raw.

I was almost down the stares when Papa called out to me.

“Here, Tristan.” He handed me an envelope. “Your pay for tonight.”

Trudging back up the stairs to face Jarred Rogue had been slow and agnozing. I had my head slightly turned to the right, so if he thought it was his turn to lay some blows, he would have a fresh cheek to work on.

I slid envelope into my jacket pocket, trying not to think about the thickness.

Papa took another step down the stairs, coming closer to me. “The operation is back on hold until we know more about Lacone’s involvement. You’ll get word when we start it back up again.”

“You still want me apart of the gun operation?”

“I don’t, your father does.”

“Even if I was the one who saved the shipment and got the guard talking and found the mole,” asked, damned right appalled that his look of usual disgust and disappointment in me had not given way – even if it was a little bit. “You still look at me like I’m shit?”

I hated myself for my voice cracking, but the lack of acohol, the berating in my father’s office, and now Papa – one man who I could never please, but never gave up trying – looking at me as if had been the one to pay for a hooker instead of making sure a quarter million dollar shipment didn’t get stolen from under the Rogue nose, and in the Rogue backyard, was weighing on me so heavily that I wondered how I didn’t just sink into the dirt, and be as little as everyone saw me.

I hated myself for how little my voice sounded. And hated how much I sounded like the boy growing up looking for love and receiving none.

What I hated most was how I sounded like all these things, and, yet, my Papa looking at me as if I was nothing.

He shrugged. “Every nigger has their day.”

***

I leaned against my car, still outside my father’s compound. My head was spinning, the left side of my face throbbing, and I still couldn’t get in my car and leave.

Driving away would do nothing. What I felt now would be in the car with me, inside my apartment and inside the bottle I planned on drinking.

Where I went, my problems did too.

I lit a cigarette, pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled. I had decided to forgo drinking inside the compound, and life was still rubbing raw on my skin, still sinking in deep, still cutting off my breath by tightening my throat.

I briefly wondered if I would dream tonight; take a mental vaction from the bullshit. I never dreamed when I was drunk. Never went to bed, but fell asleep only to wake up confused and empty.

I pulled myself up on the hood of me and Zander’s car, and dropped my head into my hands and breathed, deeply and soundly, feeling the air run through the length of my body. I figured I would get in my car and drive away when the world made more sense.

I also figured that if I waited for the world to make sense then I would be waiting forever. If it wasn’t for the money inside my jacket pocket, I might have been up for the wait.

I inhaled another lung full of air, smoked the last of my cigarette and then slid from the hood of my car, prepared to leave my father’s home and come back when I was too drunk to have better judgement.

“
Pssst
… Tristan.”

The night was silent and sad, still and vacant – except for the few guards patrolling the outer borders on the property – but, somehow, I had failed to have one single, solitary, moment to consider my life and be completely, and utterly, disgusted without anyone watching.

Dominique took one, almost hesitant, step down from the darken gazebo. She flipped her hair out of her face and smiled.

“Leaving so soon?” She asked.

My keys went
clink
as they fell to my feet. I picked them up, weighed them, tossing them from one hand to another, as if I was weighing my options and seeing which side felt like the heaviest.

Stay or go; go walking like a commanded puppy when she called me over, or jerk my head away, open the car door, use the keys to crank the car and drive out of here, and away from temptation like a man who already had a mountain to move and wasn’t looking to move anymore.

The smile lingered on Dominique’s lips. What was once a self assured smile – the look of a woman who only had to curl her finger to get your feet moving, walking swiftly over a cliff – dropped and made way for a tender,
not so sure,
smile.

It was that smile - that tender, soft, sweet and gentle, smile that tugged almost barely at her lips, which got my feet moving towards her.

Dominique stepped back into the dark gazebo and I stepped inside with her, and watched as the light dwindled away. I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the lack of light.

She reached and touched my face. Her fingertips reading the marks my father had made like brail.

And… I… crumbled…

My breath hitched, my head dropped into her soft touch, the warmness and inviting feel of her hands. I crumbled well into Dominique’s palms, and allowed my world to shatter briefly.

“What the hell happened, Tristan?” she whispered the question and her voice was so sweet, so curious and so warming that I leaned into her touch.

I shrugged, feeling tears welling up in my eyes. “The Rogue family in it’s finest. Welcome Dominique Lougotti, welcome to the Rogue family. Welcome to hell.”

The talking is good. The talking is building the walls back up around me. I grabbed her hands away from my face, stepped around her and walked deeper into the gazebo. I shook out a cigarette, lit up, and blew out a stream of smoke.

The talking was a good start, but the smoking was working even better for my self composure. I realized it was bad to be here, alone with Lulina’s daughter - without supervision, at least.

“We have to stop this,” I say. I took a pull, inhaled, my eyes closing at the joy of the cigarette – the poisonous taste is numbing; familiar, and I let the smoke out slowly.

Dominique was back in front of me again. She removed a napkin from her robe and dabbed at the corner of my mouth. There was blood on the tip. She folded the napkin, licked the corner this time and started wiping the blood from under my left eye.

It was so very dark in the gazebo, but her eyes were like separate glow sticks – glowing orbs of gray.