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Dante's Fire Chapter Forty Two: Andre
ANDREHe had just nicked himself over the sink with a razor, while shaving, when his phone began to ring. Blood was rushing down the side of his face, dripping down into the white bowl of the sink beneath him. He made to grab at the towel on his side and his phone nearly slipped into the pool of suds and bubbles that filled the ceramic.'Sodding hell,' Andre cursed with all his might and will power. He had slept badly the night before, his dreams filled with one-eyed girls with hair the colour of dirty straw and curious smiles. He had woken up even worse, teetering at the edge of his bed, flailing, embittered, almost falling over. Now he had nicked himself with a blade he used with precision every other day. It could not get any worse.Andre pressed the towel to his face to staunch the brisk flow and the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He spat into the soapy water and watched as the red of his blood dripping down his jaw stood out sharp against the backdrop of white, whirling
Dante's Fire Chapter Forty Three: Andre
ANDRE At the surprise on Andre's face, Nick laughed. 'Yes, I know. I know you brought your henchman to every meeting we have had on this rooftop. If I make a wrong move, you drop me—that was the logic, was it not? Tell me, was that why you always wanted to talk here, in this godforsaken place?'Andre had not the words. It had been Trent on the roof all those nights, all those times. The reminder was an every moment, unrelenting agony. He was finally beginning to understands why Big Jack had refused to run even after he had lost everything so fast and so violently. The man just could not. He could only fight. That was the only option this raw feeling in his chest made available.He could only fight. He would find a way to climb back to the top, not for Nick or his sodding self interest, not even for Trent. For himself. He would make quick work of Dante. It was the bosses—Natasha, Sean, Amir, Blythe —it was them who were his biggest problem. Dante was not streetborn or bred, like he w
Dante's Fire Chapter Forty Four: Big Jack
BIG JACKAs a child, Jackie was a small bundle of soft. Dimpled fists and fat legs were her lot, and she had a nest of hair that remained untamed despite her mother's best efforts. You picked her in your arms and she formed a knot from her hands which she wound around your neck, her grip vice-like. She held on to things like a child who had been greatly deprived of good things in her early life, like a castaway. That was how her mother described it. She would have known better than anyone else. They both did. They were castaway children, you see. She had lived at an orphanage for a long time, perhaps most of her childhood, or at best, as long as she could remember, and if anyone could tell you the truth of it, she could: orphanages were no place for a child without any parents. It had been frightfully easy for him to connect with her and more so for them to become an item, a steady thing. Big Jack— who back then was just Jack—knew what yearning was and knew how to sustain it without
Dante's Fire Chapter Forty Five: Jackie
JACKIEIn the summer, the cemetery where her mother was buried was a place of stone and manicured grass—although there were small thickets of undergrowth here and there—a place of beloved and, sometimes, forgotten people. Now, a layer of weighty, white blankness that befitted the place's purpose and mood had covered the field.Jackie ambled through the flaky snow. Headstones made of hard, indestructible concrete grew from the soft ground, jutting from the floor like hands of stone. Hands, reaching for something, perhaps the sky. Always reaching but never touching it. A forlornness pervaded the atmosphere here even though the place was obviously tended to almost as well as some museums were, even though there were always people around, weaving between the reaching stone hands, wiping dust off them affectionately, whispering to long dead parents and nieces, weeping softly too, sometimes.The groundskeeper asked Jackie if she needed help finding someone, but she told the woman that she di
Dante's Fire Chapter Forty Six: Jackie
JACKIE Her father was still as tall as she remembered him to be, perhaps even taller than she remembered, thick as a tree truck and just as unyielding. He was more than seven feet away, yet the distance did nothing to diminish his stature. The years had not been kind to him though, she could see. A new tiredness had flooded his eyes and poured out over his entire being, soaking the furnace he once was. It showed. At a glance, it showed. His skin was beginning to gnarl and wrinkle. 'Jackie,' her father said. One word, and she heard his voice break a hundred times over inside the syllables. That too—his voice—was as she recalled. Heavy with timbre. Sonorous as music. The man was not meant for the life he was involved in. She had wanted to say that to him so many times, but had never worked up the courage. In another life, her father could have been something. Could have amassed his wealth cleaner.'Dad,' Jackie answered carefully. She did not trust her voice not to break, too.'You are
Dante's Fire Chapter Forty Seven: Dante
DANTE Trouble, like a thundercloud, is often heavy with pregnancy. This Dante found soon enough. He had thought the greater majority of his problems had been solved when he won the polls, but it turned out that they were only just beginning. For him, they began with the courier.The driver was hunched over and she held a hand to her stomach, clutching her ribs tightly. She limped, leaning on her left leg just slightly. It was nearly imperceptible, but she still had to be helped to the chair. Dante sat at the other side of the table, across from her, while Imani, his ever-present, ever-irritable hulk of a bodyguard sat a table behind him, her hand in the slash pockets of her denim jacket, probably palming her gun for all he knew. Imani was his second as much as she was his bodyguard. She handled small affairs by herself and had proved herself adept at the job only a few days in. The woman kept on a stoic demeanor that could have passed for a serial killer's, but once, he had seen he
Dante's Fire Chapter Forty Eight: Big Jack
BIG JACKAt the flora shop, Big Jack bought a wide bouquet of chrysanthemums—they were Elle's favourite; all things flora were. The inside of the shop smelt like plants and crumbly earth and Big Jack had never felt closer to his wife than in a place that felt like this.He was not leaving the city for good, he told himself. He would probably die here, he told himself, never too far from the bright lights that were New York. To leave this stretch of land would be, for him, to cease to exist. And when he went to the flora shop for a bouquet of chrysanthemums, he assured himself that they were not a parting gift. Goodbyes did not always have to be creatures of permanence.Few shops were open during periods of festivity, especially at this time of the year. Those that were were often in a hurry to close for the day. Most people had families and wanted to be with them when the New Year rolled in. Must be nice, thought Big Jack. Must be nice to have a family, whole, waiting for you to retur
Dante's Fire Chapter Forty Nine: Andre
ANDRE Mole.Snitch.Informant.Tattletale.Turncoat.There were many names for the thing Andre had become. Many, many names. Snitch was the one that resonated most in these streets. It was the one that hounded him wherever he went.It was a whisper in his ear. It was the running of water from the shower. It was the crunch of his tyres on the driveway gravel. Snitch, snitch, snitch. Sometimes it was Trent's voice; other times, he could swear that when he heard the word and turned around, for an instant, a split second, he caught sight of Molly, hair like dirty straw, one eye gone. He was trailing ghosts now. But Molly's ghost was easiest to accommodate. Time had made it easier to carry the weight of her passing, and when she skirted at the periphery of his mind, he did not recoil. Instead he looked out for her. When he caught glimpses in the rearview mirror, he parked the car. When he saw her in the shopping mall's mirror, he checked. These sightings were what drove him, what kept him
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