Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) (25 page)

Papa pointed at me. “You’re still working with Ralph. You’re just be taking a bigger cut. You’re not in charge, Tristan, but you ain’t no golfer, either. If you’re needed, we’ll use you for other ventures.”

The words they were speaking, were words I had wanted to hear for the last two years. Dominique had explained that if I wanted a chance, I could have one, but that had been before I defied my family again, once more breaking an important rule.

She had said that it was a chance to be to each other what we had always wanted. It was a lie and I wasn’t entirely sure exactly what truth she was covering up.

Still, I had broken a rule.

Now, it appeared that I was being rewarded anyway.

“Dominique and I,” I started, feeling a cold stream of sweat move down my spine.

The men waited for me to continue but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I was not going to profess that I loved her because I knew it didn’t matter for two reasons: her mother who was recovering because of my destruction and the two men who saw human emotions as a personal gain for their business lives.

“Why?” I finally said, “Why did you allow her to follow me? Was it to test if I would make the same mistake again?”

“Which you did,” Papa agreed.

“Still,” I interrupted, “was it a test for me?”

My father waved me off. “Truthfully, we wanted you to make the choice you did.”

“Then I don’t understand?”

Papa snapped his head to his son - his lips curling at the beginning sneer appeared on his face. “Have I taught you nothing? Hold your cards close until it’s time to lay your hand.”

Never, had I ever seen Papa berat my father, or lecture him as business was being conducted. My father grunted, uninterested by his father’s sharp tongue and my slack jaw.             

My father puffed softly on his cigar, ignoring my astonishment of the transation between him and Papa and his father’s angry scowl.

When he finally felt enough silence had been given, he turned to Papa. “Leave me with my son, dad.”

Papa took his time setting his glass down. He stood, his wrinkled hands brushing his lint off his jacket. He left, closing the door softly and I listened to his heavy footsteps moving away – holding my breath the entire time.

My father’s voice startled me when he started speaking. “Lougotti’s wish was to see his daughter married and pregnant to seal a deal and merge our families instead of raging war.”

“I understand, dad.”

“Do you?” He glared at me. “See, I do not except you to understand and neither do I care. My concern is this family. But, if it makes you feel better to know, I do not care to have another wife. I have been in love, had my children and I do not want another. Dominique is the perfect fit for this family, and for that, I will do as I’m asked to fufill an agreement. I allowed her to lay with you because that what she asked, in confidence that her father never know.”

“And you said yes?”

He nodded. “I did. And you are not to breathe a word of what transpired or I will unleash my father on you, do you understand?”

“I do.”

“And, despite that I do not love her. I will screw her to give her the damned child but I do not want her for a lover. Yes, she’s young. Yes, she’s beautiful but my time of prowling is long over. And, despite all this, Tristan, she will become my wife and you may have wilted her flower but as she bares my name as my wife you will not touch her.”

“I would never,” I began. I stopped talking when my father held his hand up.

“But you have. You did because you love her and I see it. She asked for you because there’s something in her eyes when your name comes up. If you take a deeper involvement in his family then you have to learn this very hard lesson. Love does not matter. It is not a safe corner you shall fine refuge in. Love is a burden, a curse and it can help your life and destroy it.”

My father seared me with his hard eyes. He didn’t blink until I gave some indication that I understood what he said. My lips pressed together as I nodded.

He glared at me for a moment more than sat back in his seat. “As I said,” he began, carefully, “you now have a more comfortable place in this family.”

He tossed a folder to me.

“There,” he pointed with the burning tip of his cigar, “is your information on a safety deposit box. There is money already in it. Understand, Tristan, for now on things will be gravely different and you will live a certain way.”

“Yes sir,” I replied obidently.

“After this shit with Lulina, I need more men on the compound if this is a much bigger threat than she is trying to lead this family to believe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Zander is to know nothing. You are to end your ties with him. You may have proven to be better than the shit work I threw you into, but he hasn’t.”

A knot formed right in the middle of my chest. I swallowed, hard, and made it worse. The relationship between Zander and I had been screwed horribly but he was still my best friend, my cousin, my partner in crime. Being a part of the family had been both our dreams and now I had caught mine while he would still chased his.

If my father saw the conflict in my face as he said those words, he did not care.

“Now it’s time you learn what it really means to be a working man in the Rogue, Tristan.”

My father had blown his cigar smoke, and his lips curled as he did so, and immediately made a perfect circle in the haze of smoke. “Never dress flashy. Suits, Tristan, suits, nice ones, but not flashy, must be worn. Flashy suits bring attention and we don’t want that.”

He had begun the list with that and I was hanging off of every word. I had wanted this moment so long that my heart stilled one second and thundered the next. He had continued on and I dared not to interrupt him. These were not secrets that a man
in business
should know.

“Women
,” he had said a few times, while he puffed on his cigar. “Women are trouble. Of course we’ll have plenty throwing themselves at us.

“Love your women,” my father explained, “but you are one person to them and someone else to the Rogue. They will not know who we really are. And if it came to them to know a little, then we give them a little but the little given would be approved. She would have to understand that her life would end in a very nasty manner if her mouth opened about any of the little she was told of the Rogue family.”

“If a hit was to be done, then only two men – four at the limit – are needed, Tristan; the more hands, the more eyes to the hands, and the more mouths that could be opened in the long run when shit hits the fan and your men are trying to cover their ass. Loyalty has changed since my father’s era, and no one goes a quietly like they used to.”

My father had waited on the last line to the conversation. His tired eyes, but still sharp eyes, pondered me for what seemed like forever.

“The benefits of the life,” my father started, finally, “are great but everything you will get, steal, or offered, comes at a cost.”

Prices… Was the fine print to the statement.

And Dominique flashed in my mind so hard that my knees shook.

Dominique had used me.

In a way, so did my family, because I was their special gift to secure the loyalty of the woman they wanted to run their family.

And the fact that I loved her didn’t have a ground to stand on – it meant nothing, and if I didn’t like it, well, it didn’t matter.

Rogue life was important, far more than family and God. My father had made sure he was clear that I understood that.

***

I should have been preparing for a war between myself and my sister-in-law, instead of celebrating my new promotion in the Rogue family.

I didn’t care for Lulina’s threats enough to shake in my boots. I had, indeed, been afraid of her when I was sitting across from her while her vitals beeped and she considered my gun next to her thigh with a single bullet – meant for me - but that fear was leaving as the acohol was pouring inside.

It was hard to fear a woman that you had been inside of, kissing and listening to her scream out your name while she cut your back with her nails.

Zander slurped angrily at the last drops of liquor from his glass. His hair had gotten much longer since Miami, and now it hung over his eyes. He pushed the hair hanging in his front of his eyes up and back, but the hair slid right back in the same place it had been before he touched it.

We had been at the local bar near our apartments for over an hour and not much had been said since I sat down. I hadn’t expected hugs or knuckles taps with my cousin since our fight less than twenty-four hours ago, but I had expected the reunion not to be as cold and distant as it was.

We had an unspoken language between us, and I figured if I called him up and offered to buy him a drink and take him for a spin in my new car I had received from my father after he handed me the folder with my money, that I wouldn’t have to actually voice my apology for me losing my temper with him.

But, slowly, I saw that no matter if I bought Zander a drink and drove him around, or said it verbally, that my apology was not needed, or sought after.

There are just things that ‘I’m sorry’ can help what you tore down and made sure it was destroyed.

Zander finished his drink and grunted at the bartender for a refill. I leaned closer to the bar, crowding my glass, trying to think how to explain to him that after we leave this bar, that I was not to see him again, oh, and that I was sorry for breaking his nose.

I was ashamed that my entire mind wasn’t on trying to make things right between us. Most of me was still light headed from happened at the compound. I felt so important, so in place, that it scared me. Life would finally go back as it had before Katie walked into my life and turned everything upside down.

I glanced at Zander and watched as he carefully didn’t meet my gaze. He forked a handful of beer nuts in his mouth and chewed hard – too hard because his nose released a sliver a blood that coated his top lip. He wiped the blood from under his nose with the back of his sleeve and then motioned for the bartender to bring another round of drinks and chugged down pain pills in between sips of the hard stuff.

Zander and I had started out with beers, but now that time had passed with nothing resolved between us, we were drinking heavy to avoid the awkward silences. The clinking of the ice smashing against the glass was all the language we both could stand at the moment.

Zander glanced at me then nodded for the bartender again. “Nice car out there.”

I took a healthy sip as the unpleasant conversation was due to begin. “Yea.”

“Papa?”

“The family, I guess.”

“What do you mean
you guess
?” He asked.

I shrugged and added nothing for an explaination.

He pushed his drink away and clasped his fingers on top of the bar. “You’re in.” It sounded like a question at first, but he did not wait for a reply or a simple gesture as an answer for the rough question. “Hell must be freezing over.”

It was a long moment before we said anything else. I went back to drinking. Zander did not. The liquor was finally burning a hole through my brain, and I almost felt as good as I used to when I drank to escape.

And I wanted, needed, to escape this part.

The sunlight was peeking through the dirty windows. Soon new heavy acoholics would be coming in. I decided to end the conversation – get the hard part over with and deal with the bad feelings later that would come.

And the bad feelings would come.

“We’re gonna have to take a break for a while, man,” I started.

He breathed a heavy breath that looked like it hurt him. “You’re now gold and I’m still the shit. You don’t need to get your feet dirty on me.”

I decided not to say anything to this.

I would regret that I didn’t correct his assumption of himself and the new assumption of me.

“Will I still be getting jobs?” He asked.

“Not my department anymore.”

“You’re done dealing with the dirty secrets?”

“I may get calls for it. If that happens then I’ll call you, but it won’t be consistant.”

“We barely lived on the jobs they pushed our way. No way to make it off any of this shit now.”

My drink had been downed. The bartender moved to refill it but I dismissed him. I pushed a hundred dollar bill for our tab, and enough for Zander’s continued drinking.

Zander did not move a muscle from this bar stool and I did not expect him too.

“This is goodbye for now, I guess, man,” I told him.

“How long you staying in the apartment?”

“Couple of days, maybe a week, but I won’t have long there.”

“I’m proud of you.” His words were like bullets that were shot at me and had hit.

If he had of said nothing I would have handled it better. I wanted him to be bitter about what was happening. If he had followed me out and spit on my new car, I would have felt easier about the situation. He did not look at me like I had betrayed him, but glanced at me – half his face still bandaged – and smiled the smile a man would give to another man who was able to live a dream that they thought they never could.