LUCA_Her Ruthless Don Read online

  I don’t know. I guess. I type back to Talia.

  Have you been to his place yet?

  My place is closer to school and set up exactly to my specifications, I type back in lieu of a no.

  But you like him, right? Even though the Voiceover reads the words in a completely neutral monotone, I can sense Talia trying to put a cheery spin on what must sound like a couple of huge red flags to her.

  Do I like him? It’s a question I’ve never had to think about before—okay, if I’m honest, it’s a question I’ve been doggedly trying not to think about since Jake and I first hooked up back in February. Graduate from law school. Pass the bar. Go to working kicking all the ass for handicapped people in need of justice. That’s my three-point plan. My entire life’s plan.

  Relationships aren’t a priority. Being Jake Ferra’s girlfriend definitely shouldn’t be a priority. But…

  I answer Talia honestly. I don’t know. It’s like my wall’s still up. But instead of knocking it down, he crawled over it and made himself right at home. Without permission. In my apartment. Just about every night except Sundays.

  Sounds like you like him, she types back.

  Yes, it totally does, I admit to myself.

  We text our goodbyes. And since Jake’s not here to crow about it, I cave and tell Siri to put on the Come Fly with Me album by Frank Sinatra. Moments later Frank is taking me on a romantic tour of the world, from “Autumn in New York” to “April in Paris.”

  Listening to Sinatra sing his worldly songs, I think of my father…who’s still out there somewhere in the world. And my chest pangs with the same old ache to see him… even though he’s obviously less than interested in seeing me.

  I will myself not to do it. I’ve resisted doing it for weeks now. Make that months. Ever since that morning when Jake took me out to breakfast.

  But by the time Frank starts singing about the “Isle of Capri,” the computer’s male voiceover informs me that I’ve opened a new Incognito window in Google Chrome. And that I’m signing into a Yahoo account.

  I take a deep breath…and start typing as Frank tells me about the moonlight in Vermont.

  The Voiceover spells it out as I type, “D-e-a-r SPACE D-a-d-d-y, SPACE I SPACE m-e-t SPACE a SPACE b-o-y.”

  5

  Call Me Irresponsible

  Luca

  Most of what I’ve got going on with Amber is a lie. But a little bit of it ain’t. And that little bit soon starts fucking with my head.

  Proximity + frequency + duration + intensity = friendship. Listening + observation + vocalization + empathy = love. Put ‘em both together and you got a relationship.

  According to The Like Switch, aka—the only book I bothered to actually read for the Law and Psychology class I took at Princeton, these are the main formulas for getting somebody hostile to like you. Of course, the FBI agent-writer was talking about enemies of the state—but when I compare enemies of the state with Amber Reynolds nee Bella Peretti, there’s not much difference in those hostility levels.

  At first, I stayed close. Listened, watched, and observed until she needed help. Then I gave it to her—though I had to risk the goodwill from my empathy move to make sure I could get and stay in her proximity. After that, it was a matter of frequency and intensity. Always being where she was and fucking her better than any of those do-gooders she preferred to date before me ever could. I put in the time, not just in our Public Health Seminar, but by making sure I’m around for about every spare minute she’s got outside our one class together.

  As far as Amber is concerned, Jake Ferra doesn’t have opinions outside of Frank Sinatra. We do what she wants to do. Go where she wants to go. She thinks I’m a challenge because of the way I fuck her, but that’s misdirection. Me challenging her on one thing, so she doesn’t notice how accommodating I am in every other aspect of our relationship.

  Plus, spending all this time with her also gave me the chance to put a tracking device inside her mobility cane. I also installed spyware on her laptop and smartphone, so that every message she sends and gets appears in a dark net mirroring app on a burner Samsung Rock set up for me. I watch her in this way, tracking not just her general mood, but also her comings and goings and how she’s feeling about her relationship with me overall. I watch and machinate, waiting for her to trust me enough to tell me about her past, along with everything else I want to know.

  So far, everything is going to plan…except it isn’t exactly.

  I like girls. I like the way they smell and how they look and how they feel bouncing up and down on my dick. But this thing with Amber is different. First, she’s singular, not plural, which is not the kind of deal I’ve ever been interested in as Luca Ferraro. I initially set up my weekly family dinner story so I can escape across the river and satisfy my usual need for variety without Amber finding out.

  The first Sunday away, the twins and I go down to one of Dad’s clubs after doing the dinner dishes, and we get our knobs slobbered by three of the prettiest girls there. It should feel like a relief, but instead, it feels…I dunno…weird. Amber’s got this way of sucking me off with hard tugs. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s different from what I’m used to, and the stripper’s mouth feels too little in comparison.

  So, I invite her to let me play with her fake tits while she bounces on my lap. Contrary to what I’ve been doing with Amber who needed training to trust me, this is my usual M.O.—sit back and watch lazily while the girl does all the work. With a face and body like mine, most girls don’t need much else. And the stripper doesn’t prove any different.

  “You’re so hot…” she moans, her hips writhing as she moves up and down on my condom-covered dick. “So hot…”

  She must not get many customers in this backroom who look like me because she starts coming a few seconds later. Usually, that’s my cue to get mine. But instead, I watch her moan into orgasm with total indifference. Distant, like I’m watching her on a screen and not riding my dick. And instead of thinking about getting mine, I’m thinking about Amber and how despite that cool front she likes to put on, she completely loses it when I start fucking her good.

  The stripper sighs happily when she’s done, then tries to kiss me. I don’t realize I’m jerking back until my head bangs into the booth behind me, even though, I’ve never been one of those guys with a Madonna/whore complex. Both amateurs and pros are invited to the party in my pants, as far as I’m concerned, because I’ve got no plans to settle down with either. And kissing makes my favorite activity that much more fun.

  Usually.

  But not with this stripper. Instead, I find myself thinking about how Amber kisses, her mouth and body pressing into me hard as her hands move all over me, pulling, unbuttoning, and pushing away my clothes until she gets to skin. She likes to feel my body against hers when we kiss, and that chick is all-encompassing. Most girls don’t think about whether guys like to be touched, and I don’t think Amber does either. Nonetheless, she touches me everywhere, and somehow that makes it even better. I know she’s doing it because it brings her pleasure, not the other way around. And a lot of times when I push her hands away, it’s not a part of the mind games, but because I know if she keeps at it, I’m going to end the party embarrassingly early.

  This stripper ain’t Amber. And the next Sunday, I find myself telling the twins to take me back over the river to our apartment on the Upper East Side instead of hitting another one of Dad’s clubs with them.

  Technically I used Ferraro family money to go halfsies on the apartment as an investment with Zahir. But now that he’s done with B-school, Zahir only uses the apartment when he’s in town for business, so I’m sharing it with Rock and Stone—who probably won’t be coming home any time soon. Ending the night early might not have been so bad if there was anybody to shoot the shit with for a while, but I’ve got the apartment all to myself, and I can’t fall asleep even after a few drinks. Without Amber in my arms, I toss and turn in my hug
e bed. Until eventually I’ve got to grab a pillow and wrap both my arms and legs around it just to get to sleep.

  When I finally do, her father immediately strings me up in his basement, then beats me within an inch of my life for everything I’ve dared to do with his precious daughter. Like he’d been waiting that whole first week with Amber to get to me. I wake up, sweating and breathing hard. And it’s hard not to notice how well I sleep the next night in Amber’s bed, even though she’s on her period and we can’t have sex.

  Despite the nightmares I know I’ll have to face if I don’t drink, drug, and fuck somebody other than Amber on my night off from pretending to be Jake, I tell the twins to take me straight home to New York the next Sunday. And the next Sunday after that, until eventually, they stop asking.

  And that’s how for the first time since smashing my introductory girl at thirteen, I’m suddenly in a monogamous relationship. Not because I have to be to keep the story running, but because I’m not feeling anyone but Amber. Smart, gorgeous, and sexy as fuck Amber. That’s the little bit that’s true.

  And yeah, I’m hitting that relationship formula like an all-star secret agent. But somewhere along the way it stops feeling like a plot and starts feeling real.

  Like, after years of avoiding Broadway like the plague, I’m looking up the TDF times for new shows I think Amber might want to go to. And I’m consistently getting good grades these days because instead of casing out girls to do my homework in class, I’m studying most nights with Amber like I actually give a shit about grades and don’t already have a position lined up with my crime family as soon as I graduate.

  Amber works like a dog with a suite of technology tools to keep up with her sighted counterparts, and she cares about getting a law degree for reasons that don’t have anything to do with how much money she can make or becoming the face of social justice. She really wants to help, and not to sound like Rock or anything but I’m not just fucking her or spending time with her, I’m also admiring the hell out of her. Which is a strange look for me considering I am also checking every single email and text she receives or sends.

  A few times I even intercept invitations for coffee from those Do-Good fuckers who are always scoping her out and delete them before she has the chance to read them. One guy from her Psychology of Racial Justice and Profiling seminar asks a second time when she doesn’t return his first email. But not a third after I send Stone to talk with him about not making moves on my girl lest he ends up in the news as that scholarship kid they found in the East River.

  Mostly the threat is to remove a potential obstacle out of my way. But a little bit of it ain’t. A little bit of me feels green and poisonous when the guys Amber can’t see let their eyes linger on her too long. And I get the feeling that threat might not be my last.

  Because a little bit of me likes her. Likes her face. Likes her body. Likes her cynical personality and her big-ass brain. Likes the way she responds to me. Likes the audiobooks she prefers to movies. Likes the way she listens to music with her whole heart and without thought to what anyone else might think. Kate Bush, Beyoncé, One Direction, Angelique Kidjo, Drake, and a scary amount of Swedish death metal. She wrinkles her whole face when I connect my phone to the Jawbone speaker and tell Siri to play Frank Sinatra. But if the artist is still living, it’s equal opportunity on her playlist.

  One Sunday night I call her after dinner with my Jersey fam, while I’m trying and failing to fall asleep. “Heya, Reynolds, just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “How late is it?” she asks, her voice husky with sleep. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “I am in bed, but sleep doesn’t come so easy when I ain’t with you.”

  That’s true, too. One of the little bits.

  And those little bits start adding up by the time spring rolls around. Amber still hasn’t said one real word to me about her pre-Amber history. She hasn’t sent one text or email to her dad. And worst of all, the more time I spend with her, the more I begin to understand the entire plot of Donnie Brasco. Because I’m getting too close to the person I’m trying to take down.

  “You’ve put three months into this girl, and she still ain’t said nothing,” Rock points out. “Maybe she doesn’t know anything. If you ask me, we’d probably have better luck with the sons.”

  I didn’t ask him, and I’m pretty fucking sure he’s wrong.

  Danny Jr, the oldest Peretti son, is on his way to becoming an enforcer, just like his father—but for a rival Boston crime family, which is pretty much the biggest flip off a mafia kid can give his dad.

  The younger son did Peretti even worse. He went on to become a lawyer, just like Amber wants to, but get this—he’s clerking for the same U.S. Attorney who’s indicted at least twenty crime bosses over the year, including both my Uncle Tonio and my grandfather. According to my sources, he disavowed Peretti, so fast you would have thought he was adopted. Anyway, I can tell neither of the sons are in touch with their Dad just by looking at their career choices.

  I can’t see Peretti coming out of hiding for either of those fucks. But I saw firsthand how Amber was with that fuck who beat me. Bringing him a protein shake and cup of coffee downstairs after his workout. Calling him upstairs for lunch, voice sweet like he was a king and she was privileged to have him in her house. He called her Bel, and the only softness in his face was his eyes when he thanked her for his shake and coffee. Those two sons of his? Whatever. But Bel acted like he walked on water, and you don’t just give up the child who thinks you hung the moon.

  “If he’s still in contact with anybody, it’s her,” I answer Rock.

  “But how do you know?” Rock asks.

  I shrug and change the subject. Stone, Rock, and I don’t talk any further about it, but I can tell even Stone’s getting nervous about how long this plan is taking to unfold. I can’t say I blame them. It’s a plot…a long con that will end with her daddy taking my nine-iron between his eyes.

  But the little bit true parts…they’re spreading. Fast. And if she doesn’t give me something soon, I’m beginning to wonder how long it will be before the little bits take over and make Jake Ferra forget all about Luca Ferraro’s ultimate plan for revenge.

  “So, you got a fancy girl up there in New York you don’t want us to know about?” Ma asks me as she and Aunt Peg set Sunday dinner out on the table a few weeks before the end of the semester.

  I look up from the text I’m sending to Zahir, one of my two best bros, while Ma and Aunt Peg set the table. “Ma, c’mon…” I say.

  Did she pull me aside after church in the old neighborhood or take a break from cooking all afternoon with Aunt Peg in our Elizabeth mansion to ask me this question? Course not. Ma being Ma has to wait until we’re all gathered around the table with the aunts and the cousins and various members of the Ferraro crime family all looking on to see how I’ll answer.

  Guess that’s what I get for violating her rule about using phones at the dinner table, I think as she pointedly sets down a platter of pot roast for the only person at her Sunday table who refuses to eat Italian food. The rest of the dishes are Italian, Italian, and really Italian, which is why I’ve been eating the same meal every week since I started coming around regularly for Sunday dinner after I launched the Amber plan. According to Ma, it ain’t her job to accommodate her picky son, and if she’s going to make a whole extra meal, it’s got to be something she and Pop can nibble on for the rest of the week.

  “I’m just saying, a few of the old neighborhood ladies were asking after church because none of their sons have seen you in a while at any of our clubs.”

  Yeah, bet those suck-ups were missing their free ticket into VIP, I think, weirdly not missing that life at all.

  “And when we came to your building to drop off that ziti for your cousins last week, the doorman told us he hadn’t seen anybody but Rock and Stone on a weekday for months now,” Aunt Peg adds, setting down a huge plate of chicken parm.

/>   “And that got us to thinking…maybe that’s why you decided to transfer to Columbia when you were almost done at Princeton,” Ma continues like she and her incarcerated brother-in-law’s wife share the same hive brain.

  And Aunt Peg finishes with, “Because you’ve got a girl you’re staying with in the city?”

  Before I can answer, Mikey, Greggi Deltano’s younger son, snorts. “It ain’t just one from what I hear. If he ain’t ever at his place, that means he’s probably going through them in New York like he was going through ‘em here before you sent him to that fancy boarding school.”

  Everyone snickers, but I can feel Dad’s dark eyes on me, analyzing my reaction while his face goes through the motions of laughing along. That’s why he’s the boss and the rest of these guys ain’t. No matter how much they think they might’ve been the better choice after my grandfather and Dad’s older brother, Antonio caught life sentences—which they’re currently serving out in Midwestern prisons far from the East Coast action.

  But I keep my eyes on Ma, checking the impulse to exchange a look with the twins, the only two people who know why I really transferred to Columbia.

  “Yeah, you wish he had just one, Kath,” Greggi calls out, coming over to the table to make himself a plate. “You can kiss the thought of grandkids goodbye. The only thing this one’s committing to is them suits he started wearing when he got into law school.”

  My blue-eyed mother pushes at her hair, still long, silky, and black thanks to monthly visits with Dino, her best gay friend from the old neighborhood. Smart guy. He took an early-90s interest in derma-fillers and extensions for rich white women along with a loan from my then young Mafioso father. Now he owns one of the most profitable full-service salons in New York. Because of him and a very discreet Manhattan surgeon, Ma only looks a few years older and a little cheekier than the nineteen-year-old in her and Dad’s wedding pic.