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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
Dante's Fire The Bird: Chapter Seventy Four
It was night. The silvery sort that held in it more moonlight than darkness, that was more indigo than it was soot. Ayo hung at the corner, his hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie. Like every other night, he watched the people passing with an intensity that was to be expected of him. You did not slack off when you were working hours as a corner boy. One moment slackin’ could cost you your head in the streets, he used to hear grownups say when he was littler. One moment was all it took.So Ayo kept a good grip on his piece and stayed on the look out for trouble. For him, trouble could show up in the bodies of two white officers in a car, wanting to know what a boy his age was doing on the streets at that time of the day. It could show up in the bodies of other trigger-eager black boys, with clothes just like his—a concealing hoodie, loose jeans and good sneakers for running—and staged swagger, just like his. Trouble sometimes showed up coiled tight in
Dante's Fire Dante: Chapter Seventy Five
DANTEIf he was being honest to himself, Dante thought, the contract killer was more likely to be a server at an Italian restaurant than he was to be a man who killed other men. But Dante did not say that. He had seen the man's work. It was clean and efficient work. Had none of that gangster, reckless brutality going on for him, and that, in Dante's books, was next to perfect.So instead when Dante shook the man's hand, he said, 'Dante Bianchi. It is a pleasure.''The man's grip was stronger than he had expected for a man who gave off an air of such fragility.'The pleasure is mine.'They were in what had become his office. Dante had taken up his father's former work station, a room at the top floor of Bianchi Enterprise, so wide that it could fit the entire bulk of most of the houses Dante had seen in downtown New York. He had done some renovating, which mostly involved him taking out majority of his father's things. None of it was useful to him. They were mostly memorabilia from wha
Dante's Fire Dante: Chapter Seventy Six
The news was late in reaching them.It had happened a full night after the party, so, understandably, Dante had been a bit distracted. An RWD had been shot to death by the police. It might have started a protest if he had not been identified as a known dealer, if the gun had not been found on him. That doused the movement with immediate effect.Natasha came storming into his office, eyes flashing. Imani was right behind her.'Have you seen the news?' Natasha demanded.He eyed her. 'No.''You need to.'The RWD's face was all over the news. A blown out photo of him was trending on social media.DEALER SHOT DEAD BY POLICE.Dante grimaced. 'Are you sure he was one of ours?''He was. I put him up to this job. They say the cops tried to buy from him. He would not sell, so they followed him when he tried to leave. They tried to have him arrested. He ran. And they put an end to him.'Dante decided that he did not like her tone, but see
Dante's Fire Big Jack: Chapter Seventy Seven
BIG JACKOne would think that since Big Jack had danced with death so often, the knowledge that it was coming for him would not faze him even a little. Yet, when Neil called to say that he was sure Dante had ordered a hit on him he nearly had a heart attack.The killer's name was The Marksman, and Big Jack knew him well enough to know just how efficient he was. This firsthand knowledge came from the fact that, on previous occasions, he had employed the man's services himself. The Marksman did not do his work like other contract killers, people who tended to leave a mess in their wake. People like Rat. The Marksman was the sort of man you called when you needed a job done so cleanly, the police would not have a case. His job, he treated like an art. He left no traces. No clues to be found. Only dead bodies.But if Big Jack was going to die, he did not wish to die an unremarkable death. He did not wish to be the dead man in an elevator, eyes rolled ceiling
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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
