Peyton Riley's blazing eyes scanned over his body, a mingled expression of disgust, approval, and anticipation kindling behind the blue.
"Take off your shirt."
Jack cocked one eyebrow at her. The breathless blonde groaned in exasperation.
"Oh please. If I wanted to fuck you I'd have shoved my hands down your pants by now. You need to look sharp when you meet with Johnny or he won't take you at all seriously, and no offense Jay, but right now you look like you just crawled out of a trash can." She strode forward and reached for the hem of his shirt. Jack knocked her sharply filed fingertips away.
"I can undress myself."
She threw her hands up and said, "Fine. Here, make it quick. I want to look you over."
Riley tossed him a bundle of clothing and then stood watching as he pulled his shirt over his head. Jack did not miss – could not miss – the appraisal of her eyes as he pulled on the "acceptable" clothes she'd given him. There were no sly looks or timid peeks from underneath thick eyelashes – her stares were blatant and bold and completely unapologetic. It felt to him as though she was testing him, trying to push his limits and make him squirm, make him uncomfortable, make him blush.
It didn't work. He buttoned up the shirt, hiding his naked abdomen from her avid gaze. She'd have to do a lot more than stare at him with her smoldering eyes to make him fold.
"Are you kidding?" Jack plucked at the hem of the shirt she'd given him, a black silk button-down. "I look like I'm from Jersey."
"Better than looking like you came from digging for your dinner in a dumpster outside of a restaurant that Johnny owns. I think you need a necklace."
"If you come near me with jewelry I'll strangle you with it."
Riley stopped in the midst of rifling through her shiny crocodile skin handbag and smirked up at him. He hadn't been kidding, and Jack realized that she probably knew he wasn't. Why this made her smile, he wasn't sure. If she had been that girl she would have looked up at him with that unnerving expression of disbelief and worry that made him feel like such a monster whenever he said something like that. But around Riley, those things were acceptable. Those things were, in her book, a positive sign. There were moments, split seconds it seemed, when he would wonder which girl was correct – was it his girl, who made him feel like he should be a better person and who seemed to want to shine bright lights into all of his dark, shadowy corners; or was it Riley, who seemed to think that how he was would get him everywhere in life, and that his dark corners were what made him strong?
But such self-doubt never lasted very long in Jack's mind – he had other things to worry about.
"I need to stay here for a while. After this." Jack did not phrase it as a question; as a request. He stated it definitively, as if he had already claimed ownership of the place.
Riley tilted her head to the side and stared up at him with a mocking smile tugging at the edges of her full lips. "All right. There's a comfortable little room you can have that Daddy set up a bed in. He slept here for two whole months once, when him and Mom got into a bad fight . . . So why are you in need of a place to stay?"
"I don't see how that's your problem," Jack snapped, avoiding the question. Telling her the truth would never be an option, no matter how closely they worked together.
The strands of her blonde hair caught the light as she stepped towards him. And Jack was suddenly acutely aware that he was, all at once and quite unexpectedly, horribly uncomfortable. He was furious at himself for it. Riley, who had sidled up to him and stood hovering with her body just millimeters away from brushing his own, had in some way gained the upper hand. Maybe it was the surprise of it all, or maybe it was the line of her neck as she tilted back her head to look at him, or maybe it was the look in her eyes that told him clearly that though no part of them was touching now, she wanted them to be. And so much more than that.
Most likely it was what she said next, purring out her words with such smoothness that Jack felt he finally knew just how velvet would feel, listening to it.
"Maybe you have no real reason. Maybe you just wanted to come here for me. Are you hoping to catch me alone some dark, steamy night, Jay?"
Riley stood in front of him, a masterpiece of a woman with her lips pouted sultrily and her body relaxed into an inviting posture, and all Jack saw was the face of that girl just as he'd left her – unearthly beautiful and hurt and his. No amount of genuine sex appeal in the world could measure up to her innocence.
"You have a pretty high opinion of yourself, don't you?"
His words stung her, just as he'd meant them to, and though it was a risky thing to do he didn't regret it. Whatever it was she was trying to pull – trying to break him, trying to get him to fall to his knees and let her take complete control, or just trying to get him into bed – he was having none of it. And most significantly, he didn't want her. Besides the fact that he was far too wrapped up in that girl to desire anybody else, Jack saw something inside of Riley that repulsed him, something dark and cruel and animalistic – something that he recognized and hated in himself.
It didn't matter how beautiful she was, because the darkness obscured it all.
That wild savageness flashed across Riley's features. But just as quickly as Jack saw it, it was gone, replaced by the smooth, carefully controlled expression of a woman who was far too used to men spurning her.
"Come on. Johnny hates it when anybody is late." She cast him one last, blank stare and then turned, her only comfort in the knowledge that Jack had no choice but to follow her.
They drove through the narrow streets in a small but shiny black BMW, something that didn't look new but was in near perfect condition nonetheless. Willie drove, silent and watchful, and Riley and Jack sat at opposite ends of the backseat. Jack tapped his fingers restlessly on the interior of the door and against the cool glass of the window – Riley said nothing, and for some reason this annoyed Jack. It brought to mind how much he wished it was that girl sitting next to him. He could think of a thousand things he could be doing with that girl in the backseat of a car like this, with the soft smell of leather and faded cigar smoke lingering in the air.
He'd always had a sort of understated attraction to cars – he figured it must be because he so rarely rode in one. In fact, Jack couldn't quite remember the last time he'd been in a car. It must have been years and years ago, when his mother had rented a car – a beat up old Chevy – to drive Lola and him out to a hospital in hopes that they could help his sister. The treatment there had cost too much and the staff had been unwilling to help since they didn't have insurance or health care, but the ride itself had been worth the wasted time. He remembered that on the way back, when his mother had sped through the streets in a flurry of agitation because of the bad news she'd received, he had wanted to roll down the window and hang out of it like he saw dogs do sometimes, the wind whipping hard against his face. Jack couldn't think of a better physical demonstration of the feeling of freedom.
There wasn't any desire inside of him to do that, now. Riley's sulking presence sucked all of the elation out of him and infused him with anxiousness instead. The desire to do a tuck-and-roll right out of the moving vehicle was very strong. He longed for the quiet, solitary walk he was so used to taking. Riding in an expensive car with a woman you'd just insulted in more than one way left him wishing for aching knees and blisters on his ankles, instead.
After several more minutes of silence, she finally spoke.
"It should be just Johnny and a couple of others – Sabatinos, mostly. None of the thugs – they're not important enough to have any sort of say in who gets in. You're not going in with me. We're dropping you off a couple streets over. You wait thirty minutes and then come in, got it? He can't think that I brought you, or that you're conspiring with me . . . he'll shoot us both dead on the spot."
Riley examined the tip of one shiny heel.
"So who exactly, uh, suggested this little get together? If it wasn't you or big black up there."
Willie grunted and his thick fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The day must be a bad one – Jack couldn't seem to stop insulting the people around him, the ones whom it was imperative for him to work with. But that was no surprise – he was great at ruining things.
"If you must know, we have a sort of . . . spy, I guess you could say. Johnny thinks they're real chummy. He suggested you, which endears you to Johnny right off the bat. But you're going to have to show that you can bring something to the table." Riley sniffed in his direction, rather imperiously, and continued, "If you have anything at all to offer. I'm starting to wonder."
Her coldness had broken, split down the center, and Jack had gotten a glimpse of the boiling anger and injured pride that teemed just beneath her cleverly constructed surface. It sealed over quickly, but he wasn't about to let it end like that. They still had another five minutes in that car together, at least, and he knew that without any sort of entertainment each minute would feel like a century. And there was, of course, the problem of his nerves, which he needed to find an outlet for. What better way than taunting her? Regaining the upper hand that he had lost so unexpectedly back at that warehouse?
"Don't sound so bitter, Peyton." Her head tilted infinitesimally at the mention of her name, and Jack grinned. "I think it's good for you to experience wanting something that you can't have. I'm teaching you a lesson. Maybe it'll, uh, build character."
The laugh that followed his sentence was short and sharp, and it made Willie's knuckles lighten as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. From the corner of his eye Jack saw Riley's jaw stiffen; saw her fingers clutch spasmodically at her purse. When she turned to face him the raw underbelly of her emotions was exposed and that was the way he liked it, the way he liked her – no façades; no pretending. Just her, every last unscrupulous, cynical, greedy bit of her. He could relate to that side of her; he could deal with that easily, almost too easily.
"And why can't I have you?" Her face was shadowy and unclear, but Jack knew that if he could see her eyes properly he might be able to point out each and every one of the seven deadly sins, stamped clearly across her retinas. "Who are you? What do you need all this money for? Why don't you tell us your name, or where you live, or –"
"You managed to find out where I lived pretty well, yourself," Jack interrupted sharply. "Sent Willie after me in the dark one night, huh? Followed me home? Left that little note to advertise who had the upper hand? Why doesn't he tell you all about the other things he saw while he was tracking me?"
Jack reached forward and slapped Willie on one broad shoulder. "Come on, Willie, secrets don't make friends. Let's hear all about my . . . . mysterious life. You find out my name?"
Willie said nothing.
"Nah, I don't think you did. Because if you had, you'd have told Peyton and she'd be sure to fling it out during some verbal battle between the two of us, just so she could throw me off my game. Right, doll?"
Jack threw himself back into the seat he had been leaning out of in order to antagonize Willie, positioning himself so close to Riley that strands of her golden curls rested on his shoulder. The nearness of their bodies visibly infuriated her, and to Jack it felt like an appropriate sort of revenge for her earlier actions.
"What's wrong, shy?" One arm snaked around her shoulders and pulled her closer, so close that their faces were nearly brushing and he could smell the expensive and musky scent of some overrated French perfume that all those upper-class women thought they were obligated to bathe in. If they had any idea how much more alluring a few sprays of the understated scent of violets was . . . "You didn't seem to mind getting close back at the warehouse. Change of heart?"
With deliberate care, Jack spun one strand of golden hair around his finger, the other four digits brushing against the nape of her neck. The thrill that shot through his limbs when, in response to his touch, she shivered, sent blood rushing through his veins. He knew all at once that he'd found something, discovered a feeling, that he had been unaware of until this moment. This wasn't the feeling he got when he drug his hands over the skin of that girl and felt her tremble helplessly against him, because in those situations he was even more helpless than she was, just hoping that it didn't show.
This was different – this was realizing that he could completely overpower a woman. Knowing that he could have her at his mercy, make her beg, and be in control all the while because he felt nothing for her – not love, not desire. This was him and him alone, powerful, and that thought alone was enough to be arousing.
Whether she noticed the shift of control in the atmosphere or just had enough of his proximity, Jack wasn't sure, but the next second she had snapped her fingers and Willie had stopped the car.
"Get out," she ordered coldly, shrugging off his hand from her shoulder and straightening the folds of her blouse with fingers that were somewhat less than unwavering.
Jack laughed, his mind swimming with the remnants of the euphoria that had just rushed through his veins. "Come on, sweetheart . . . you aren't afraid of doing something you might . . . . regret . . . are you?"
"No," Riley snapped. "This is just where you need to leave. Walk straight until you hit the liquor store, turn right, walk straight until you come to a warehouse. That's Johnny's place. It'll take you thirty minutes or so. Now get the hell out."
He was still laughing as the door swung shut behind him and Willie pressed the accelerator, wheels squealing and the slumped form of a blonde woman visible through the tinted back windows.
Johnny Sabatino's demeanor was severely standoffish. Haughty and sneering, he sat with his posture relaxed and his fingertips pressed together, making a steeple out of his hands. His black hair was coiled in tight black curls and shining in the dull light, and when Johnny spoke it was with an exaggerated Italian accent, thicker than it would be had it been totally authentic – Jack discerned immediately that Sabatino used the accent to separate himself, in Johnny's eyes elevate himself, from the people he was surrounded by. Jack was immediately disgusted by him, more so when he saw Peyton Riley sitting demurely beside him, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes staring off unconcernedly into the distance. The fire that was usually kindling behind them was burning low, subdued beside the man who she wished to unleash its whole fury on the most.
But the worst of it was that Riley had dressed him up to be Sabatino's clone. His shirt – that silk monstrosity that Riley had forced him to wear – couldn't be more than two shades of grey different than the one Johnny had on underneath of his suede jacket. It would have been better if he could go bare chested. The only thing that lessened Jack's feeling of revulsion was the knowledge that Johnny was wearing a thin silver chain around his neck – jewelry.
All at once Jack knew that this, all of it, any of it, would be a piece of cake. Because how hard could pulling one over on a guy who wears jewelry be, anyway?
"Take a seat . . ."
There was a pause as Johnny gestured to a seat sitting opposite to him – it was rickety and the cushion was badly stained with unidentifiable substances, a stark contrast to all the other chairs around the warehouse, most particularly Johnny's, which looked like they were made out of expensive leather. Jack suppressed his smirk at this move – a simple, elementary mind trick. Sabatino wanted Jack to feel inferior right from the start.
But Johnny didn't seem to grasp the concept that it wasn't the chair the man sat in that indicated his worth. It was all about the posture.
Jack sat, and Johnny stared down at the set of playing cards that were spread out in front of him. From where he was positioned Jack surmised that Johnny was entertaining himself with a game of Solitaire.
Olive fingers flipped a card over and a sneer tugged at Johnny's lips. He held up the card face out for Jack to see. It was mostly white with a single uncomplicated figure dead center dressed in lurid red and yellow. Two identical words were stamped down each side: JOKER.
"A useless card, eh? I tell my boys to leave it out but somehow . . . they always forget." Johnny whipped the card out and Jack followed its progress as it spiraled through the air. It landed at the feet of Peyton Riley. "And you see? It's completely ruined my little game. Worthless."
"I guess that all depends on the, uh . . . game you play," Jack replied, feeling antsy. He hadn't walked a mile through the dark Gotham back streets to sit around and discuss card games.
Johnny Sabatino smiled slightly. "True, true . . ."
The man licked his lips and let silence fall between the three of them. Riley's eyes, perplexed and visibly uncertain, shifted to the unmoving form of her husband beside her to Jack, who sat relaxed and waiting for the chips to fall where they may.
"What game are you playin', Jay?" From the inside of his jacket Johnny pulled out a silver revolver. It rested in his hand like an extension of his fingers, the way smokers hold their cigarettes or alcoholics hold their drink bottles.
"Uh . . . pre-ferably not Russian Roulette." Jack sat back in his wobbly old seat and let his fingers drum on the armrests. "I hear that one can end a little . . . unfortunately."
Sabatino laughed wryly and set the gun down in front of him, resuming his former posture, with the tips of his fingers pressed together. This time he pressed his hands to his lips and stared at Jack's slumped and casual form with a piercing gaze. Jack knew enough of those to recognize that on anybody else that gaze would have been chilling.
"You're a sharp one. Yeah, I see that. What do you want from me?"
Jack clicked his tongue against the side of his cheek and then responded, "Employment."
"Why?"
Another click, and Jack decided that those eyes were asking for the truth, and the best he could do was hope that it wasn't followed up with a bullet.
"The money."
Johnny sat back in his chair, one hand curled up against his jaw and the other outstretched and resting near his gun.
"We got some 'problems'," Johnny's relentlessly hellish eyes smoldered in the direction of his wife as he spat out his next words, "with loyalty 'round here. You wanna know what I did just before you got here, Jay?"
Jack narrowed his eyes and replied hesitantly. "Yes . . ."
"I used three rounds on one of my boys. Me 'n him were real tight. Like two peas in a pod." Johnny's fingers stroked a trail down the barrel of the gun in front of him. "Can't trust nobody these days, you know? Thought he was one of the good ones . . . one of the loyal ones . . . and then I find out he's been workin' with this . . . this stupid bitch . . . sittin' on my left."
Jack raised his eyebrows in an expression of shocked but abject interest, even as Peyton Riley tensed and inhaled sharply through her nose. This information came as a surprise to her. This meeting was nothing more than an ambush.
"He was the one who said I oughta meet with you, Jay. Ain't that a funny coincidence?"
All at once Jack thought of Lola, and that girl, and somewhere deep inside the prospect of dying loomed dark and terrifying in front of him – not, surprisingly, because he was afraid of what came after, but because he was afraid of what he wouldn't have accomplished before he left everything behind.
"I wouldn't say it's funny . . . but then again, I've never had much of a sense of humor."
The composure in his own voice shocked him, but he was grateful for it. Johnny picked up the gun and, once again, cradled it in his hand. Would the shot be fast, unexpected? Or would he let it drag out, taunt him, torture him even, before he finally did the deed? Could there be a chance of escape? If he could intimate to Riley that they work together to make a break for it –
"You know why I brought my wedded wife in here tonight?" Johnny interrupted Jack's frenzied line of thought. He paused and glanced over at Riley with the deepest expression of contempt Jack had ever seen on the face of a man. "I wanted to test you out before I considered letting you in."
Johnny placed the gun down onto the table in front of him and then, in a move quite unexpected by Jack, pushed it across the table to him. Jack reached out and stopped it with his own hand.
"I know you said already that you don't wanna play Russian Roulette, Jay, but the first rule of my game is that sometimes you gotta do things you don't wanna do."
Jack looked up at Sabatino, uncomprehending but wary nonetheless. Did he expect him to put the gun to his own head and pull the trigger?
"I used three rounds on that traitor . . . three rounds left. Random order. Aim it at my girl here and take your shot. Let's see if today's her lucky day."
So it was Riley, not him. At least, not yet. He knew instantly that he couldn't falter, because this was the test Johnny had spoke of – if he waited an instant he would die. And after all, Peyton Riley meant nothing to him. Not more, certainly, than seeing his sister again. Not more than seeing that girl again. No, never more than that.
He'd never shot a gun but it didn't take a genius to know how to do it, and Jack had seen them used enough to figure it out. Without thinking, the cold detachment he had felt at the sight of his father's dead body spreading throughout his limbs once more and separating his mind from his conscience completely, he raised the heavy sleekness of the cold gun up and aimed it directly at Riley, who sat upright and dignified in her chair. Her hard, expressive eyes would not beg or plead with him, not even then, and Jack thought briefly that if things turned out badly it might be a genuine shame that such a woman would be wiped off of the map.
An instant had passed by the time his finger pulled the trigger, and he did not close his eyes as he did it. If this was his first murder, he figured he ought to see it.
Nothing. The gun emitted one loud click as the cylinder rotated past an empty round.
Jack lowered the gun and set it on the table, numbness still hanging on his limbs as his eyes met Sabatino's and the Italian man searched for some emotion that he could tie back to sympathy or feeling for his wife. He found nothing, which was unsurprising to Jack – nobody but that girl found anything worthwhile in his eyes. Had he been sitting across from her with his life on the line and his lies up for examination, he would have considered himself dead already. But that girl was, mercifully, home in her own bed. Safe. Peaceful. The way he liked her. The reason he was doing all of this.
"Well, well, sugar. I guess you live to see another day."
Jack pushed the gun back across to Sabatino, who picked it up and hid it inside of his jacket, oblivious to the look of disgust that passed across Riley's face.
"And you, Jay, managed to pass my little test." Sabatino looked met his eyes again, orbs as black and unyielding as hunks of coal. "See, you probably think I'm cold. But you gotta keep order . . . . without order, everything falls apart. And then ain't nobody wins."
Winning wasn't exactly what Jack was after. The most he wanted was fairness; even a sliver of it would be sufficient for him, he thought. Maybe if things were a little fairer he wouldn't be sitting across from a trigger-happy, egotistical mobster who, by some slip of fate, had fallen into a position of power that he did not deserve. The order of things now wasn't fair, but if things went according to plan . . . well, maybe Jack could rectify that.
"I like you. I like the way you didn't hesitate when I told you to do something. My other boys would have whined a bit. Asked me why. If they really had to do it." Johnny leaned forward and smiled an oily smile, and it was then that Jack knew that he had broken past that surface – the same cold surface that his wife used against Jack so often – and reached the real Johnny Sabatino teeming just underneath, all fake charm and slimy charisma. It was then that Jack knew he was in. Somehow the triumph felt hollow to him. "They don't seem to understand that they gotta do everything I say. 'Cause I'm the boss."
If that girl had been sitting across from Jack and staring at him like Johnny Sabatino was, she would have read the unspoken response in his eyes as clear as day:
Not for long.
"Welcome to the fold, Jay."
A/N: SO. Johnny Sabatino, eh? What'd you think?
A huge thanks to: crystalstars88, theatre-gypsy, Cullenista1, peacefulgrace, Misplaced Levity, V Evey, Ignatius J Reilly, Simplelover15, Jack's girl, xXSarcasmIsMyWeaponxX, Janice, NicoleDesFetes, liVe-yOur-fAntasY, RedWatch, Isabeau de Foix, Strawberry Flames, I. Am. Doll. Parts., mandya1313 and my new reviewers truelove221, jananesane, Lavender Rain, Black-Sakura-44, Jezebel, Ellie-Ohhh and psychadelicious for being THE MOST FANTASTIC READERS IN THE WHOLE WORLD, and leaving a review. I heartily thank you all. And those of you who haven't reviewed - please do! Regardless, though, I love all my readers/people who favorite and/or add my story to their story alert.
Two questions: I'm not very familiar with this site's etiquette – is it common practice to respond to the reviews you get? If so I'll definitely start. I used a different site that responded directly under the review instead of through the inbox, and I responded to every one I received, but I wasn't sure if people did that here.
Another: When writing stories I often search Google images to find actors/actresses or other people who remind me of the characters I'm writing. Works as a way to better visualize them in my mind. Anybody want me to include the link for who I see as Johnny Sabatino & Peyton Riley?
Jeez, I ramble too much! Sorry!