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2024-10-29 19:42:56ANDRE
When finally he woke, he woke gasping.The dreams had taken him again, but this time, they were fiercer. More palpable. They made to hold him and keep him with them. Keep him asleep. The dreams, they had taken the same form that they often did, but at the same time, they were different. Again, he was in the overseer's office. Again, she lunged at him. But this time she had got a hold of him, her snout full of lethal teeth just an inch away from his face, dripping saliva, and Andre had screamed and shrieked until he fell the other room. The one with the pounding and the wailing at the other side. This time, however, when he threw his shoulder into it, the door came down for him. This time, he charged out into what was supposed to be the living room. Only that it was not. It was, instead, a world of pitch black, of total darkness. And worse still, there was no ground beneath his feet.Andre fell and fell and fell and fell.He
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Dante's Fire Chapter Thirty: Andre
ANDREAndre dreamt, for the first time since was a little boy, of Molly.Molly was the first of many firsts for him.She was the first girl he knew that could outdrink any man. The first girl he knew who could beat even the strongest men at arm wrestling. 'It is all about technique, Andy, not strength,' she would tell him after winning a bet he had thought she was sure to lose. Molly was the first girl he knew who could outfight anybody, man or woman. Even himself. She always carried on her person a pocketknife with a scratched blade; she claimed it was her granddaddy's, said it was him who thought her everything she knew. How to fight, how to arm-wrestle, how to flip a blade out faster than a heartbeat and end a potential altercation.Oft, she liked to mention how the old man had taught her how to fuck, too, and although Andre was absolutely certain that she said it only to make him squirm so she could get a good laugh, she did know how to fuck. He could tell. T
Dante's Fire Chapter Thirty One: Dante
DanteOrlando stood to his feet and pulled his fur coat tighter around his frame.'I am honoured to have been chosen to mediate today's poll. I believe we all know how this is to go even though it may be the first time we have found the need for an election since the inception of the motherfucking organization. RWD For Life!' He raised the forefinger and middle finger on his left hand, curled them so they almost lay in his palm. Light danced off his rings.The boardroom deteriorated into a cacophony of hoots and hollers, and in that small second, anyone looking would have deduced that these were not corporate men at all, no matter their suits and expensive shoes. Those formal shirts and perfectly laundered trousers hide tattoos, burns, bullet marks and sins. Take them off and you saw them for who they were.Shouts of RWD For Life! and We run the city! could be heard. Andre wondered briefly what he had gotten himself into. Orlando smiled as if he was having
Dante's Fire Chapter Thirty Two: Dante
Dante'He intends to give you more of what my father gave you.' Dante told the gathering, calmly. 'I think by that he means territorial expansion. He means more supply. More everything. And by everything, he must mean everything. My father made a lot of widows. Do you want more of that? More death, more soldiers in funeral homes long before their time.''The boy is asking you all to be cowards.' Amir sniggered, but there was no follow-up. Only very few joined him in laughter this time.Dante straightened himself to his full height. He had not worn a tie, so there was no tightness at his throat, no want for air. His voice filled the room.'Coward, he says. It is actually very funny that he uses that word. He talks about his love for my father and their friendship. But my father has been dead for weeks now, soon to be months, and Amir Bageria never once reached out, never once tried to avenge his death. Coward, he says.' Dante chuckled. 'I do not intend to make w
Dante's Fire Chapter Thirty Three: Dante
DANTEHis uncle, Orlando, looked the part, if any thing.The man wore a grizzly fur coat over a formal shirt and suit pants. His fingers were fat with gold bands. Dante held the door to the Wrangler open for him. He had begun to use the car again since after he paid Natasha that visit. The house staff had returned from their leave and things were going as they used to preceding his father's murder. At least, at the surface, they seemed to be. He had visited his club, Ambience, twice already. As always, his manager was on top of things.Dante and Orlando settled into the backseat and the driver, Imani—a woman his uncle had personally referred for the job—fired the engine. Soon they were grinding off the gravel driveway and out of the mansion.Dante adjusted and readjusted his blazer. A Rolex encircled his left hand and a Cavier encircled his left. If you glanced at the two of them, the contrast between them, you would have thought that it w
Dante's Fire Chapter Thirty Four: Big Jack
BIG JACKJoaquin returned from the drive-by shaken, his fingers numb.It was a sight. Joaquin trembling, his hands shivering from much more than the cold. It was a very frightful sight. Joaquin who moved with a gracefulness that any ghost would envy. Joaquin who could, at fourteen, whip and twirl guns round and round his fingers like a gunslinger out of a western-style movie. Joaquin who had no qualms about leaving the province in which he had been born, breed, and raised into a young adult, to babysit another oblivious, somewhat entitled young adult, a job which other young RWDs would have balked atThere he was, at a bar a few clicks away from the motel, drinking Old Crow with shaky fingers.Big Jack had nearly began to forget that the boy was, at the end of the day, still that: a boy. Barely as old as his own daughter. Big Jack liked to think of himself as a sort of father figure to the men he and Raymond had taken off the streets. He had been so, had he not?
Dante's Fire Chapter Thirty Five: Big Jack
BIG JACK Joaquin returned to Big Jack after a wad of cash had passed hands between him and the contract killer, after Andre Diaz had slumped to the ground of the bar. They met at another bar at the far, more quiet sides of the borough. Joaquin already had his Old Crow in hand, grasped tightly. The bottle shook like it was giving his hand a lap dance. He swallowed to deeply, shut his eyes too close. Big Jack knew the feeling. It was one that would last a lifetime.'I told you to let Rat do it.' He said, settling into the stool next to Joaquin's at the buffet table. He put his hand briefly in the young man's shoulder and he did not even seem to notice his touch. Big Jack knew the feeling, too. Joaquin laughed. It was a ghost of his laughter. 'I should have listened to you.' He said.'You should have.'The bartender came around and asked Bug Jack what he would be having. 'Same as him.' Big Jack said.To an ordinary eye, they could have passed off for a father and his son. Their heights
Dante's Fire Chapter Thirty Six: Andre
ANDREIt was two days to Christmas and he was at a hospital, but he did not know it yet. The Christmas part that is. He damn well knew he was at a hospital. He was reminded every time the doctor lumbered in to check up on him, every time a nurse shuffled by, every time the day turned to night and the only glimpse of New York he had, of snow, was the one he saw flutter outside the windows.In retrospect, it was his obliviousness that kept him whole.When the dreams released him from their tight, underwater grip and he resurfaced, Doctor Ingrid admitted that Trent had died. Passed on, were the exact words that she used. 'Passed on'. Passage implied smooth locomotion. It implied fluidity. It implied willingness to go. There was nothing willing, even remotely, about the way that Trent had 'passed on'. There were tyres screeching, screaming their displeasure at being maneuvered so. There were shots and shouts and shattered shot glasses. Nothing about the entire affair came close to fluid. T
Dante's Fire Chapter Thirty Seven: Andre
ANDRE You live in hostile environments like the ones that he had been forced to and you learn how to read body language, you perfect the art of eavesdropping. The skill kept him alive. It was, quite often, the literal difference between life and death To Andre, the man-cop said, 'Just yet, we would like to know what exactly happened.' His facial expression had gone from nonchalant to concerned in a second. Did they teach acting at the precinct? Andre wanted to say. Because you have to be the most convincing sodding actor I have ever encountered.The gimmick could have fooled another person. Not Andre.Officer Ridge, huh? What a charmer, Andre thought. Less than three sentences and the man was already pissing him the hell off. He told them what they wanted to hear, what he wanted them to hear. A tale of innocence and half truths. The parts where he had a gun and was a member of the RWD were neatly edited out of the conversation.'I only wanted to share a drink with my old friend.' He
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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
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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
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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
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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
