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Dante's Fire Chapter Fifty One: Jackie
JACKIE ‘You think she will pull through?’ A man's voice asked. This was years before, five to be precise. Jackie was at the top of the stairs. She was seated on the floor just outside her mother's room, slouched against the steel handrail, close enough to hear her mother call for her if she needed her. The nurse was there, but Jackie had gotten into the habit of staying close by, never straying too far. She had been listening to a Valerie June song on her walkman, with headphones, and the thrum of the guitar and the drum beats had swallowed up all the sound in the world. When Big Jack and Raymond Bianchi walked into the house, she saw them come from above, but in the place of footsteps and the click of the door opening and closing, there was thin silence and heavy music. She slid the headphones down and all the sounds of reality came rushing back. Raymond was the one speaking, asking if 'she' would survive. Jackie knew who he was referring to: the woman in the room that she sat faci
Dante's Fire Chapter Fifty Two: Dante
DANTEThe sign above his club was neon-lit in the night and its name Ambience glowed blue in the dark, true to its meaning. Ambience was packed to bursting. Folks had begun to return from their Christmas breaks and after a long stretch of chumminess, most people—people who had been locked up with their gregarious kids and aging parents, people who had spent the ‘holiday’ catering to the whims and wishes of others—wanted out desperately. The average New Yorker with an existing social life went to the nightclub to unwind, and without even trying to brag, Dante could comfortably say that Ambience was one of the top clubs in the borough.The music was lusty, ear-splitting like the crowd liked it. People danced, which mostly involved grinding against each others thighs and crotches and jumping, hair billowing away from humid skin, sticking to face and nape, and the party lights danced with them, throwing an array of blues and violets on the walls and the lustrous floor. A bevy of ladies hu
Dante's Fire Chapter Fifty Three: Dante
down. DANTEBy downstairs Natasha did not mean the ground floor of Ambience. As all other buildings of Ambience' calibre—enormous, designed for business purposes—there was a connecting door to a backroom*. It was this backroom* that had become the mafia's temporary storehouse. New consignment was always arriving at Ambience. New wine, new glasses, new people. Hiding the fact that a truckload of narcotics entered the building every now and then was not to hard a task to achieve.Natasha led the way there, and pushed the steel door open. It banged closed behind Dante after he had walked through it. A few men were gathered in the back. Imani was there too, but she towered above them and so was not easily mistaken for one. They were gathered around two people who had been blindfolded and bound. A Black man and a Latino woman. The woman was hysterically; the man was telling her to be quiet through gritted teeth, and if not for the upheaval* the club was making, Dante was fairly certain tha
Dante's Fire Chapter Fifty Four: Dante
DANTE The world outside the tinted glass windows of the jeep was blue, deep blue, just like the glass. It had been raining snow for days on end. Drizzling, to be precise. The snowflakes floated down daintily sometimes; some other times it was a steady descent of white, almost like showers in spring. Imani drove quickly, but meticulously. She weaved carefully through the streets of Brooklyn, waiting for the red lights to turn amber and the amber lifts to go green. She could almost have been mistaken for an upstanding citizen of society, if you did not bother to look closely enough. And most people did not, too busy were they, amove, rushing to school, to jobs or appointments, to their parents or their children. But if they did look, they would have seen the yellow, black-sripped bandana slung across her neck, and, immediately, they would have averted their eyes. RWD's black and gold colours were legend in the boroughs of New York, especially Brooklyn. They did not need to fly the col
Dante's Fire Chapter Fifty Five: Andre
ANDRE Nick Noah wanted to meet at a strip club. He no longer wanted to do business at the summit of a skyscraper, he told Dante over the phone. Andre was amused. That was the thing with people who had wielded power. They tried to pull weight everywhere they went, tried to always stay in control.This club was called Pose, and it was at the upper eastside of the city. He drove to the address he had been given, and when he came within sight of the building, he saw that it was made of hard, red and square bricks that seem to pop out of the wall. A neon light sign made of cursive letters spelt the strip clubs name. It glowed with seductive red light. There were very few people in sight, as it was broad daylight. Afternoon reddeding into twilight. Before the establishment stood a small man and a woman in skimpy underwear. She was so curvy that she spilled out of the scraps of fabrics that attempted to hold her together, her areolas a pinkish red, gleaming with body oil. They looked like a
Dante's Fire Chapter Fifty Six: Andre
ANDRE Andre thought how ironical it was at first, when Dante chose him to mediate with the Black Disciples on their behalf. It was not until Natasha thumped him on the back, smiling, that he understood.'Try not to get killed out there, soldier.' She said. It was then he knew that there was foul play. Why not? He was not in the least bit surprised. In fact, he was surprised that they had not tried to take him out already after his seeming complacence lead to Raymond's death. That was why he went everywhere strapped, even to amswer the door. He laughed with Natasha. If only they knew that it was him who had squeezed the trigger, they would have taken him more seriously. They would not have thought to eliminate him by crooked means. The idea, Andre knew, was that most times mediators do not return. Yet, this time, unfortunately for them, it was him who had orchestrated their troubles. It was him who was in league with the man. It was his intel that had caused their network so much harm
Dante's Fire Chapter Fifty Seven: Andre
ANDREThe New Testament was right: the violent did take it by force.Except in this very instance, Andre was the one who had given and the same one who had taken away. As he sat in the front seat of the Jeep Wrangler right next to Dante Bianchi's beast of a bodyguard, he ruminated. Today, instead of his usual parka and military boots, he wore a suit, tailored to fit to his body snugly like a second layer of skin. Ankle high boots swallowed his feet up to the ridges of his ankles, and he was tempted to put them up in the dashboard just to see how they would look, if they would catch the kight. His dress shirt lay unbuttoned from the valley of his clavicle, almost down to the beginning of his stomach. A fragile gold circle gleamed around his throat.They navigated the city to the quieter parts, the part reserved for churches such as the one that now rose up before them, springing into view all of a sudden. It was tall and white, and a cross grew out of its peak like a plant's stem. It wa
Dante's Fire Chapter Fifty Eight: Jackie
JACKIEFirst, Jackie heard about it on the news, the violence that had spread suddenly and ferociously in the city. At first, there were rumours that there was a mutiny within the ranks of one of the city's biggest mob. From experience, Jackie knew that it was least likely. As a teenager, she had seen her father handle mutiny in the ranks. He was Raymond's right hand man and naturally, the task of meting out punishment and dispensing justice lay with him. Jackie could remember with vivid memory the day she woke up to the sound of flailing feet and arms. She peeked out of her room to see her father leading two men to the other part of the house, a bound man in their custody. He wore RWD colours —she knew their black and golds intimately by then—and he was trying very hard to scream, the sounds of his muddied voice barely making an echo in the vast house. The man disappeared and so did her father, until the next morning when she saw him washing red off his hands at the sink. She was ce
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- Dante's Fire
Jackie & Big Jack: Chapter One-Hundred
JACKIEDante drove as though he meant to frighten her, in that peculiar fashion that she had seen people do in movies sometimes, when they meant to frighten their passengers into silence or verbosity. But he did not ask any more information of her, or her continued silence, which would have been unlikely. This left her to wonder what his endgame was. Was his plan to orchestrate an accident? To kill them both? He was intense, she granted him that. But he never appealed to her as suicidal.'Dante, what are you doing?' She asked tentatively.He kept his eyes on the road, never blinking. 'Is it not obvious?''You can stop the car. Stop the car, let's talk. It doesn't have to be this way.' She said. Now he looked at her. The rage that had returned had now dimmed in his eyes. Instead, there was only exhaustion. Soul-swallowing exhaustion.'You know,' he told her, 'you were the one person in this world that I believed I could grow to trust. Really trust. The one person. And then you just h
- Dante's Fire
Dante: Chapter Ninety Nine
DANTEJackie's phone beeped to life on the nightstand in the dark of the room, bathing the wall in white light, and for the third time, Dante ignored it. That night, the moon was a phosphorescent thing, and it poured into the room through the windows, spilling onto the floors. Over Jackie's shoulder, Dante watched it creep further into the room as the night drew on. The clock on the nightstand read 3 A.M in ominous red letters bright enough to betray the pistol Dante had laid next to it. But it seemed like nothing more than a few hours had passed since they had sex. The room smelled strongly of semen, fabric softener and—this close to her—cheap shampoo.Time stood still whenever Dante was with Jackie. He knew quite well that reality awaited him outside the doors of the hotel, outside of her arms, but while he was with her, his many troubles shrunk and the world ceased trying to swallow him whole, flesh and bone included.Even in the gloom, he
- Dante's Fire
Jackie: Chapter Ninety Eight
JACKIEThe Aurthurson Hotel burned a harsh silver under the glaring moon. Although it was gigantic in its own rights, it was dwarfed by the corporate skyscrapers around it. What they had in height, the hotel had in width.Dante parked the car in the parking lot and shut off the engine. He let out a long, tortured breath. Jackie examined him in the quiet darkness. He slumped into the seat and stared back at her.'Your grand plan is to sit here all night? Or are we ever going to go in?' She asked, humorously.He snorted. 'Real talk? I wish we would. It's peaceful out here. It's almost never peaceful in New York.'They stared at each other in the dim, contained silence of the car. It was the first time since the raid a semblance of calm had returned to him. He was composed again, the Dante she was accustomed to. Jackie knew caged rage intimately. In part, because she was Big Jack's daughter. In part, because she had felt it for herself. After the
- Dante's Fire
Nick: Chapter Ninety Seven
NickColeman Spears was the sort of man who did not give a sailing hoot about anyone else's sensibilities. Nick figured this out the day that he met him. A man who cared little for politics, but paid attention to it anyway, just like himself. So when he heard that the man had gone out of his way to go after Dante Bianchi, he was pleasantly surprised.It was in the tabloids, the raid. Not the police commissioner's involvement in the raid, but the raid itself. Bluish photos of Ambience taken from a distance showed dark police vehicles blocking off the main entrance from the street. Passersby stopped and stared in the snapshots. Were he younger, the old man would have been damn near ecstatic. But now, he only thought it would have been even better if Spears had finished it, had brought the goddamn Bianchi out of his precious night club in handcuffs. But hr had not. He had found nothing. This part did not leave Nick surprised. Impressed, but not surprised. Th
- Dante's Fire
Andre: Chapter Ninety Six
ANDREThe snow that gathered at the top floor of his building had melted with the coming of spring, and the water that it had left behind formed shallow puddles at the corners of the roof. Damp wetness was everywhere you looked on the roof, every surface you touched. Andre had not been here for a long while. He had forgotten what a view Brooklyn was at the darkest hours of night, and how much better the view was in the light of day. He had forgotten the rows and rows of buildings, some as tiny as pebbles in the distance, others skyscrapers, bursting through the cotton wool clouds.Memories are feeble things. But it was all coming back to him as he stood there, staring out into the day. It did not seem so long ago now, since he had been there with Nick Noah, Trent in a building some distance away, with a sniper trained on him. A much needed precaution.This time, however, like the last, Andre was not alone. Gloria was at his side. She was dressed as she oft
- Dante's Fire
Spears: Chapter Ninety five
SPEARSThe team of officers came through the front doors like an avalanche, breaking the mountain slope. This, at least, was what Spears imagined it would have seemed like to Dante Bianchi.He had taken the rear, coming in as the last man, his hands deep in the pockets of his Police parka, the handle of his firearm protruding like a leathery bone from his utility belt. Ambience was a tall building, and the lower floor could be traced with the eyes to the VIP section in the upper floor. Only staff were in the building at the time, and one of them, a woman was descending the stairs when they charged through the front door unannounced. She stopped, clutching the steel railing in a fright. Leo Daniels was ascending the steps, talking to the Oman as he climbed. The bartender was startled, too. Spears did not blame him. Cops were never bearers of good never.Soon Dante Bianchi answered them. He came rushing down the stairs, in a suit that distinguished him, gave him t
- Dante's Fire
Jackie: Chapter Ninety Four
JACKIEWhen Dante called again, asking if she would come to his club, Ambience, Jackie had said yes without pause. There should have been that fear of sounding desperate, that apprehension that he would hear her rapid, almost desperate yes, and wonder, and maybe even guess correctly that she wanted to be there only so she could go through his things so she could get into his head.But there was no fear. That gave her cause to worry. Neil had warned her many times already. The last time was the day before the call. He had picked her up from work the other day. She came down after a long, grueling shift to find him waiting in his car outside. Even though she would much rather had taken a taxi, she let herself be talked into entering the passenger seat.'Dante is dangerous.' He had told her. 'Volatile.''Oh, and you are not?'Neil ground his teeth together. She could tell he wanted to pound the steering wheel. 'Not like this. I watched him shoot a man in
- Dante's Fire
Big Jack: Chapter Ninety Three
BIG JACKHe cut the frizzly beard he had grown on the journey. In the mirror, when he looked he had become another version of himself. A man who was familiar in a distant fashion, but who was still a stranger. Big Jack washed the shaving cream off his cheeks and chin and felt the smooth, new flesh there. Another thing Joaquin would never be able to do.The fight at the motel had left him with a limp, slightly imperceptible, but still there. He limped out of the bathroom with its ornate mirror and shiny ceramic, back into the room that had been allocated to him. The windows in the room were open, and a gentle breeze played with the shutters. For there, Big Jack could catch a glimpse of the street. A row of palm trees lined both lanes on the road, the early morning sun was the colour of a cob of corn. He was leaving, finally. Everything felt distant in a way already. Like he was never there, like he was just passing through.McCoy had made his staff leave him some clean
- Dante's Fire
Dante: Chapter Ninety Two
DANTEColeman Spears was just as punctual as he had expected. The bloody man was correctness itself, what with that firm jaw, those self-righteous eyes that seemed to have the ability to make anything he did not approve of combust if he fixed them with a stare for enough time. Which was what he looked to be trying to do to Dante when he spotted him in the midst of the festivity.Dante took his hand in a firm grip. The man's giant paw of a hand almost swallowed his. 'Finally,' he said through a smile that was more clenched teeth than it was actually excitement. 'I get to meet the man running the city.'Spears snorted. 'I could say the same for you. The people seem to believe you are the one in charge.'Dante's arm was in grave danger of being crushed. Flattery and subtle violence? One handshake and a sentence and he absolutely loved this guy.He managed to get his hand out of the vice grip and smiled. 'Well, this is New York. The people think what they
