Untamed (4 page)

Most of the men try to buddy up with him, shake his hand, do the fighter’s double-fist-tap as if the mere gesture somehow extends the line of inclusion around them, makes them one with the fighters.

They clap him on the back, but in the same breath test him with exclusive in-jokes, or a privileged wit that he does not understand. They do their best to show that they can one-up him whenever they like, as if through words of marginalization they can tease from him some thread of insecurity, before latching onto it and pulling.

It all rolls off his shoulders like rain water.

The wives… well, they look at him differently, in a way that I don’t like one bit. But I try not to think about that. I can’t control what other people do. And without a doubt, I trust him.

I’m sitting at the bar in the most dangerous room in the state. Politicians, police captains, and fat cat businessmen mill about, rubbing shoulders with the bosses of every major crime family and organization in the tri-state area. At the head of it all is my father, Johnny ‘Glass’ Marino.

He booked out this whole hotel, a new and modern all-glass eyesore that sits like a reflective pimple on the countryside. They had to relocate all the guests at just a moment’s notice, and it was only the out-of-towners who put up a fuss. But they didn’t know any better.

Once they saw the cavalcade of limousines spilling out bodyguards in black, it became clear it was time to fall in line.

Dad’s the man who took basement-dwelling underground cage fighting and made it the biggest money-maker in town… and the biggest money loser, for those who bet incorrectly. Dirt and grime and dusty basements are a thing of the past. Now… now it glitters.

Duncan ‘Creature’ Malone is the star of the show, the man whom the sharks circle. Dad’s always wanted to show off his family ‘pedigree’, even if Duncan is not
real
family. Heck, he didn’t even take Dad’s last name.

Everybody else knows that he was adopted and didn’t formally join the family until he was twenty. But in the interest of diplomacy, they never mention it. Dad’s temper is legendary, and they allow him the useless indulgence of believing Duncan is actually his son, and actually following in his footsteps.

Wrong on both counts.

At twenty-two, Duncan handles the hostile social atmosphere, all the snarls behind smiles, surprisingly well. It’s his own easy smile, those perfect teeth set within that iron jaw, and his reticence to speak too much that pulls people into the orbit of his natural presence. And when that fails to win hearts, his dark and sharp good looks, and piercing blue eyes do the rest.

There’s only one person who doesn’t smile at him in this room, and that’s Dad. He stands apart, watches Duncan out of suspicious eyes and trembling lips pulled tight across his teeth.

At once he wants to show Duncan off, but keep him all to himself. At once he wants everybody to meet and greet his champion fighter, but his unending mob-paranoia makes him see snakes and shadows where there are none.

No, maybe that’s wrong. There probably are snakes and shadows. I wouldn’t trust a crook, even if he comes clothed in a
Brioni
bespoke. And for Dad… well, it takes one to know one.

But, even more than that, he wants to be recognized as the man who discovered Duncan, as the man who groomed him into the fighter he is today.

As the man who tamed a feral street boy.

But he’s kidding himself if he thinks he’s tamed Duncan. If anything, Dad was a handicap, and even if he won’t admit it to himself, he knows the others see it.

He’s bitter. In his twisted thoughts, he thinks that Duncan is stealing his limelight. And it gets worse with each fight won, with each two-to-five million pocketed in betting profits every week.

He comes over to me at the bar. The suit jacket he’s wearing strains at his shoulders. It was cut for him when he was a younger, slimmer man. His dimpled bald head beads with sweat, what I imagine a dinosaur egg in the early morning might have looked like.

For a moment he looks at the glass in my hand, as if weighing whether or not to ask me if it’s alcohol, but decides not to. His gaze wipes slowly over the crowd, resting on each face for sometimes seconds at a time, before eventually returning to Duncan.

Dad grunts. “Think he’s spilling our secrets? Saying things he shouldn’t be?”

“Of course not, Dad,” I say, not bothering to hide the contempt in my voice. How could he doubt Duncan now, after all the money he’s made off the fights? Duncan’s spilled red in the cage so Dad could line his pockets with green.

Dad fires an angry look at me, but I know the public setting, in front of all the other families especially, grants me precious immunity to his wrath tonight. I intend to take advantage of it.

“You should appreciate him more,” I tell him. “You push him too far, and he may just push back. You’ll lose your goose if you’re not careful.”

“What the hell would you know?” he snaps at me, before stalking back off into the fray.

Despite being used to his cruel outbursts toward me, I’m still stung by it every single time. I can’t remember the last time my father said a kind word to me, and meant it.

I return my attention to Duncan. The other mob bosses rattle off questions at him:
How do you do it? What’s your secret? Will you train some of my guys? Are you taking supplements? What’s your training regimen?

Duncan sidesteps every question as though he were dodging rookie jabs in the cage, and continually, as if by magnetic force, his eyes are pulled to me.

I grin at him from the bar, offer him a quick flash of my eyebrows, and sip from my pear martini. I’m only twenty, but no bartender who knows my father is going to say ‘no’ to me.

And I actually kind of hate that.

Duncan shoots me a strained look. It says, ‘
rescue me
’, but I just laugh at him, shake my head. Hey, he wanted to be the best fighter, he wanted to own the cage. This is what he gets.

Mass murderers, drug suppliers, and glorified pimps competing for mere seconds of his time. Dissatisfied wives eyelashing him. Everybody wanting a piece of him, like he’s just some hunk of meat to be carved up and doled out.

Be careful what you wish for.

I sigh. At least it’s better than the hordes of girls who attend his fights and throw themselves unendingly at him.

All Duncan cares about is the fighting, not this bullshit, and
I
hate the politicking even more. Mob politics are about as tortuous as it gets.

I used to think it was cool, being a mobster’s daughter, having a name that ‘rang out on the streets’, as Dad likes to put it.

But I quickly realized that all it did was erect walls between me and everybody else. No friends, and until Duncan came into my life, no lovers…

“Your brother looks in over his head,” the bartender says to me. His voice is shallow and wheezy. “I know a ‘save me’ face when I see one.”

My brother
.

I’ve never called Duncan that before. He’s my
adoptive
brother, came into my life when I was just eighteen like a tornado ripping through a barn. He carried me off with him.

I meet the old bartender’s eyes, then tilt my head to the side. He looks… familiar, but from a mental distance. I know him from somewhere.

“You don’t remember me, do you, Deidre?” he asks.

“No,” I say truthfully. “But your voice is familiar.”

“I’ve worked for your old man before. I ran the bar for him at a couple of his birthday get-ups. You were just a little girl, though. Oh, it must have been ten years ago now.”

“I’m sorry, but I really can’t remember,” I say, smiling politely. I do vaguely recall my father having birthday parties, but he stopped when I turned about ten.

“It’s no problem, honey,” he says. “You’ve grown up a lot.”

“Everybody’s been saying that to me.”

I look quickly around the large function room. I met a lot of these people when I was younger, when Dad would take me to ‘work’ with him.

I used to love it when he brought me along for a ride in his limousine, what he called his ‘office’. It wasn’t until I found out what he actually
did
that I stopped asking if I could go.

Truth be told, I hate it here. I just wear this sham smile, maintain this pretend poise, so Dad doesn’t get on my case about it later. Ironically, I’m just doing what everybody else is.

The women, of course, do it best. It takes an especially skilled woman to survive a marriage to a gangster. These are the kind of men who can go from placid indifference to boiling rage in just half a heartbeat. These are the kind of men who are
never
wrong. These are the kind of men who all keep girls on the side.

The bartender clears his throat. “Why don’t you rescue him? Duncan, I mean.”

I notice that some of Duncan’s easy charm is starting to fade as his patience frays. Soon he’ll get bored of this.

“Nah,” I say to the bartender. “He looks fine.”

I stick my tongue out at Duncan, bring a big grin to his face.

Eventually the crowd around him disperses as they pick up on his signals, and he swaggers over to me, his wide shoulders swaying, and a sexy smirk prying his lips to the side.

He’s got a soft but neat shadow on his face tonight, lining the iron cut of his jaw. His black, careless hair only serves to emphasize his brilliant blue eyes, but also brings out something of a boyish quality in him, something that can’t be quashed by the fighting scars.

He sits down beside me, and then tucks his head my way conspiratorially. “Never thought I’d fucking get rid of them, Dee, Jesus Christ.”

“You wanted this,” I tell him, raising my eyebrows.

“I never wanted
this
,” he says, gesturing at everything in particular.

“Don’t lie to me, Duncan. You always wanted to be the best.”

“In the cage,” he grunts. “None of this sparkly shit. I don’t need it to fucking sparkle.”

Idly he fiddles with his cufflinks; he’s unused to them. For his first time wearing a full three-piece suit, he looks damn fine in it, though.

The suit slims his muscular body, streamlines him, smoothes him out. It’s the inversion of his usual, rougher, less refined and more boxy dress sense: An old leather jacket that highlights his broad shoulders, jeans and boots.

“You look good,” I tell him. “Seriously. You should wear a suit more.”

“You look better,” he says, meeting my eyes. I feel zapped by energy still, every time our eyes connect. He leans into me and whispers, “You look very fuckable in purple.”

I roll my eyes. “I thought you’d been working on your adjectives.”

“I’m a fighter, not a writer.”

“Yeah, well keep your voice down, the bartender knows Dad.”

Duncan spins around, eyes the old man who asks him if he’s having anything.

“No,” Duncan says. “Nothing for me.”

“Don’t drink?”

“Got a fight coming up.”

“What, tonight?” the bartender jokes.

“Alcohol affects your body for days after consumption,” Duncan tells him matter-of-factly, his voice low and uninterested. “I’ve got a fight in days.”

“Right,” the bartender says, moving quickly up the other end of the bar.

“So, how are you liking your big night?” I ask Duncan.

“I never fucking asked for this. This is for your father.”

“I know.”

“He wants to trot me out like a fucking show dog.”

“I know, Duncan,” I say. I touch his arm briefly, quell the turbulent tide. “I don’t want to be here, either.”

“He wants to show
you
off, too.”

“No he doesn’t,” I say, shaking my head. “He only wants me to be here because if I’m not, everybody will talk. They’ll ask him where his daughter is, and he’ll get embarrassed he doesn’t know. Now, he knows. He can point at me when they ask him that.”

“You’re the brightest fucking person in this room, Dee, even if your father doesn’t see it. I caught Falcone’s boy looking at you.”

“Shut up,” I say. “Stop teasing me.”

“I’m not. He was staring, had a dirty fucking look in his eyes, so I had a word with him.”

“You what?” I ask in disbelief. “Duncan! You can’t fuck around here.”

I scan the crowd, pick out Falcone’s boy, a short man with his father’s cuboid head, and a neck that swallows his chin like quicksand. He meets my eyes, then catches Duncan’s, and looks away instantly, ears burning.

“What the hell did you say to get him so rattled?”

“I told him not to fucking look at my sister,” Duncan says in something of a growl. “I didn’t need to say anything more. But that’s not what I
really
meant.”

“Then what did you
really
mean?”

“My girl,” he says, pride in his voice.

“Shush!” I hiss, looking up the bar. Thankfully nobody is near us, and the old bartender is milling about at the other side.

“I like your dress tonight,” Duncan says, looking me up and down. His tongue darts out to wet his lips.

“It feels a little snug,” I say, my hand coming across my waist unconsciously. “I think I’ve put on a bit of weight recently.”

“Don’t even think about getting self-conscious, Dee.” It’s spoken to me like an order. “You look fucking amazing tonight. Hell, in old sweats and that soy-sauce stained hoodie, you bring me up with just a look, let alone this beautiful dress.”

“Oh, wow, thanks,” I say sarcastically, reaching out to flick his chin, and not a moment’s too soon snatching my hand back.

That was close.

He brings his face closer to mine, and his full, soft lips are an invitation I have to force myself to ignore.

I want to kiss him, want to feel him, want to smell him.

But not here. Not now.

It’s our secret. If it ever got out…

“I want to kiss you,” he whispers, his eyes on my lips. “I want to feel you.”

“Stop,” I say. It’s too big of a risk. This is reckless, but Duncan always was like a skydiver that assembles his parachute on the way down.

“I want to smell you.”

“Duncan…”

“Taste you.”

“Shut up!”