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Dante's Fire Chapter Sixty Six: Andre
ANDREThe Torrents was still open when Andre left the masquerade ball—at least according to the crimson lights that still shone at the front and inside the bar. From outside, the CLOSED sign that hung at the door was quite visible.Andre pushed the door open and the door bell jangled_ announcing his arrival. He was quickly encircled by the tepid air in the bar, a temperate contrast from what was to be had outside the double doors. Andre had not walked five steps into the room when the almost noiseless tap of bare feet on floor came padding towards the front. There was a rustling and Gloria burst through the gaudy curtain that separated the main bar from the rest of the building.'You cant be in here now, I am sorry. The sign outside says we are closed, doesn't... oh.' Recognition light up in her eyes. 'Andre, it is you.'Andre had switched his formal clothes for street gear. He pushed down the hood of his sweatshirt. The weight of the fabric rested in his back.'Gloria,' he said simpl
Dante's Fire Andre: Chapter Sixty Seven
He took her in with his eyes.She was dressed as she often was at hours after closure: in loose but revealing clothes, that showed off her midriff and shoulders. A thin layer of sweat shone on her brow, on the bit of her chest that the clothes left bare to the eye. She was staring at him too, he realized, with something like contemplation in her eyes.Under the scrutiny of her gaze, Andre wanted to stand straighter, he wanted to be taller, broader, even ythough he already was those things. More than most people were. There was something about the bar-woman that made him want to be better, to be the things he was not. The only person in this world who had ever had that effect on him was Molly. Not Big Jack, definitely not Raymond Bianchi, both of whom he had admired at a certain point. Both of whom he still admired distantly.It was only Molly. Sweet Molly of blessed memory.He pushed the thought of Molly away. Because, look how it ended. Look how she ended. In an alleyway. Everybody
Dante's Fire Jackie: Chapter Sixty Eight
Jackie‘How many parts of this city have you been to?’ Jackie asked him once they were back in the car.'Most parts,' Dante answered, 'Why?'His face was illuminated by the headlights of a passing rickety truck, and for a short moment, he was as silvery as the moon.She shrugged. 'Just asking.''You want to know how many places I intend to show you before the day ends, so you know if you can make it back early enough to be ready for work tomorrow, is it not?''Touché.' She said.He grinned. 'Don't worry. This is the last.'His body guard again maneuvered the car around in silence until they got to the place. The place, as it turned out, was his father's corporation: Bianchi Enterprises.The building structure loomed high above them, towering into the sky and nearly disappearing behind the clouds. Dante pushed open the car door and stepped down. Jackie slipped through the other door. The howling wind hit her smack
Dante's Fire Spears: Chapter Sixty Nine
Spears The new commissioner of Police, Coleman Spears, was the sort of man who kissed God often.He was Catholic, and an earnest one at that. But he had one tragic flaw: like the commissioner before him and the one that came before that one, and the one that came years before his predecessor's predecessor, he did not mind taking a few wads of cash to look the other way. What else was he supposed to do? he argued each time his conscience chewed at him. It was logical. Regardless of what the police or any other person did, there would always be crime lurking in the dark corner a of the city. That was the thing about big cities and flashy places, they drew people to them en masse and since all people had their vices, they came carrying their shit along.The safest way to make sure that people did not get hurt, quite often, was to look the other way. To pretend not to see. But sometimes, looking the other way brought even more trouble. Sometimes, the best way to keep the city safe was t
Dante's Fire Nick: Chapter seventy
NickThe old man hated formalities and formal events. He reserved a special loathing for anything that a ceremony could be made out of.Why could life not be simple?He did not have the answer to that.Nick turned on the lights in the study. The room smelled as it always did, like PineSol and the aging books he had never gotten around to reading. He strode in and went straight for the ice glass.'I will be the first to admit,' Spears started, 'at first glance, I did not take you for a reader.''I am not.' Was the gruff reply that Nicholas gave him.'Yet, your shelf begs to differ.' The man slipped off his mask and put it away. Thankfully. He resembled an ox enough without an help. Spears had a bull's neck, a stern moustache and a trimmed goatee, and hooded eyes that seemed to miss nothing. The mask had downright turned him into an ogre. Nicholas had thought them a good idea until he spotted Spears trying to blend into the crowd.The man dumped
Dante's Fire Andre: Chapter Seventy One
AndreAndre woke up to the pitch black darkness of The Torrents.Disoriented, he tried to remember where he was. The hard floor beneath him pressed hard into his spine like a desperate lover, the lack of light sought to blind him. Together, they were nothing like his apartment which was often flooded with light from the streets, even at night.He tried to sit up and it was then he realized his body was intertwined with that of another. An arm encircled his waist, fingers were splayed across his rib cage.The events of the night all came rushing back in a sweeping current.A single name swirled around in the river of his consciousness: Gloria.Gloria's skin was warm next to his in sharp contrast to the cold floor. He came to his senses quickly after that.'Hey,' Her voice whispered into the thin air around them. She had awoken.Andre's eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness and with what little light remained, he saw that a satisf
Dante's Fire Andre: Chapter Seventy Two
Gloria's house was really an apartment crammed in between two stores, one of them a bookstore, the other an Indian spice store. Old fashioned and quaint in away that demanded Romanesque pillars and mosaic, her apartment was whitewashed and smelled of stale cigars, scented candle wax and lavender.She pushed the door open and it made very little sounds as it swung in. Andre paid attention to every little detail as they went, hyper vigilant.They got in and she flicked the light switch. The room flooded with light. There was not much to it. Work table and chair next to the windows. White leather sofa. Wardrobe for clothes. At the far end, a bed lay unmade, the sheets tousled comically as though someone had only just gotten out of them. A corridor lead down towards other rooms. 'You live here alone?' Andre asked her.She nodded in answer.He went down to the corridor and kicked upon the first door. It was the toilet and bathroom. The next was a kitchen. There was nothing out of the ordin
Dante's Fire The Bird: Chapter Seventy Three
The BirdLast thing you saw before you died was not the person who shot you, people liked to say. The last thing you saw before you died was a replay of all the things you had done in your life, good or bad, unwinding like a story before your eyes. Very often, it was people who had never taken a bullet, people who had never been held in the jaws of death that happened to think that. Ayo had not once believed any of that fake shit. There was nothing metaphysical about death. There was nothing spiritual about bolts ripping through flesh in a robbery gone wrong. It was all just science. And art.Ayo's mother was an immigrant. Nigerian-born, with sticks for fingers and a rib cage for a waist. She had her own peculiar beliefs about death, came carrying them across the Atlantic ocean like luggage, with him curled in her pregnant belly. Ayo had never seen the shores of Nigeria, but he heard its chatter in his mother tongue, and he had tasted its soil in her overly spiced food. The woman u
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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
