Page 29 of Burn this City

The guy had blown the top of his head clean off and Sal had been both shocked and possibly embarrassed about how strongly he reacted. Getting pegged, sure, enjoying fucking his wife’s curvy ass, any day and any hour, but touching a man and getting touched that way brought his walls crumbling down.

Not once could he have dreamed that he’d ever act on those impulses and attractions—he’d never felt anything was missing, but Catia reasoned with him after breakfast that he understood how she felt with Julia now because part of him needed the same kind of freedom. He tried to explain to her that it was different, because he was a man, at which point she’d reached over the breakfast table and tapped his temple.

“All that is just in your head. Let it go. You can trust me.”

Unsettled over his own responses, he resisted a while longer, fought the desire to say yes because he was Salvatore Rausa and while he didn’t fear anybody, decades of taboos and suppression couldn’t be unmade with a blowjob. Of course, he gave his wife the freedom to do what she wanted, as long as none of his men got the sense that he was being cuckolded—and it turned out that Julia and Catia could get awfully affectionate in public with nobody picking up that they were more than friends. At the same time, he couldn’t allow himself the same freedom. Partly because he didn’t feel he was missing anything, partly because being too affectionate with a man was a no-go in his position.

Still, the same sex worker showed up again with a big grin and a clear set of instructions from Catia. And Sal might still have balked if Catia hadn’t sat all three of them down with a wonderful meal and a few bottles of white wine, which Sal had started to regard as her secret weapon. Then she’d skillfully interrogated the guy—Chris?—about being a bisexual man. Sal remembered he’d specifically chosen Chris not just for his various attributes, but also because he was bisexual and specialized in couples, assuming it would be easier for a rented body if he didn’t freak out if the husband was in the room, watching, or taking part.

They traded stories, and while they all drank wine, Chris answered Sal’s questions in good humor and with easy laughter. Sal felt himself relax during that long evening. It was no different from when they’d met Julia those first couple times to get to know her first. Chris seemed relaxed about whether he got paid for an X-rated chat or X-rated events, but things progressed quickly that same evening. The fact that Chris seemed into both of them helped.

Ironically, having Catia there made it easier to tolerate a man’s tenderness. She couldn’t know how often he’d fought down the impulse to fight, to shove Chris away, not because he didn’t want the closeness, but because he wanted it too much. He found himself wanting all of it, to taste the man’s skin, to feel the silken heat of his cock in his hand, and discover the ways to make Chris groan and squirm. But he saw that knowing light in Catia’s eye, and shivered when she touched them both and got the lube.

The morning after, Sal felt like he’d been stripped down to his soul, but also trusted that Catia would never regard him as anything lesser because he’d enjoyed everything that had happened the night before. She was right: he could trust her, and ithadbeen all in his head, and she liked watching him with somebody else. With every step they took toward total honesty and openness, he fell more deeply in love with her. Nobody else had seen those weak moments, or even the ugly ones, but with her, he could be naked down to the very fabric of his being.

Enzo had been a different case. Sal had assigned him to keep an eye on Catia whenever she left the house, especially as the War was heating up and he felt uneasy about her being out in public but would also never restrict her movement. After a few days, she’d laughingly declared Enzo the “subbiest sub who ever subbed”, and when he didn’t believe her, counted on two hands, and then on two hands again, the instances when Enzo had followed her orders without so much as a blink or a hesitation, even if they were playful or a little cruel.

It could easily have been that clichéd story about a boss’s trusted lieutenant getting too close to the boss’s wife, but over the next few weeks she tested Enzo and got to know him, clearly analyzed his weaknesses and strengths. And Catia never set out to hurt anybody when it came to love and/or sex. She had a way of coaxing people to accept their own desires and follow their fantasies, and those she paid, she paid and treated well.

Sal had known they were moving onto thin ice. The moment they involved anybody they couldn’t pay off, they were running a huge risk. And maybe he shouldn’t have half-jokingly confessed that something about Enzo attracted him, but their relationship was so strong and flexible that he’d left Catia completely free rein. He trusted her judgment and her decisions.

Besides, he didn’t feel his big fierce capo was particularly fragile.

In that, he’d been wrong.

Enzo proved a lot more brittle than Sal could have imagined, even when he’d agreed with Catia that Enzo responded well to a “firm hand”. Between those two, the game was a lot less equal, because Enzo only wanted to serve and hand over all responsibility. He was lucky that Catia was both strong and caring enough to rise to that challenge. To Enzo’s credit, when he broke, he accepted it and even offered up his weakness as a service and token of his submission. When he joined them both in their bed, Enzo was game for anything, and Sal didn’t catch on that Enzo wasn’t nearly as bisexual as Sal himself.

When he finally noticed, it was after the fact, and while he might have shrugged that off with anybody else, he liked and trusted Enzo too much to ignore it. He didn’t feel guilty so much as worried that he’d pushed Enzo too far. But Catia explained it to him—it all fed into Enzo’s submissiveness. He might not be very much into sex with men, but if he was if ordered to, or if it pleased whoever was filling the dominant role, he got off on it. It didn’t compute for Sal, but he accepted it. He’d noticed that same obedience before and it all made sense, but he was definitely wired differently. Enzo got pleasure and orgasms out of it, and also didn’t want them to stop, so while some unease lingered, Sal did overcome it in the end, and accepted Enzo’s different take on sex the same way he’d accepted his own.

At the same time, Enzo’s chaotic life settled down. He had been erratically flipflopping between multiple girlfriends for as long as Sal had known him. Catia had probably ordered him to get his shit together. He took fewer risks, was less reckless, and, Sal noticed, less cynical. Old Enzo would have played Russian roulette if the stakes were high enough, and he’d insist on putting two more bullets into a six shooter. New Enzo was calmer, more cunning and better at anticipating the ultimate backlash.

Some of the guys had commented Enzo was “growing up”, but Sal knew that for much of his time, Enzo was wearing a chastity device under his clothes that either Catia or Sal held the key to. Maybe it was that reminder, that very noticeable claim of control and ownership that made Enzo calm down. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to be taken in by cops while wearing that contraption. Whatever the case, they’d been happy.

Till death did us part.

Sal took a fortifying breath at the thought. He was glad to catch a red light and take a moment to wipe a hand over his eyes. For the first couple years after her death, just remembering her hurt. Maybe that was the strongest indication that her guidance had made Enzo stronger, because while Sal fell completely apart, every bit of his strength washed away like the walls of a sandcastle annihilated by a storm-whipped sea, Enzo didn’t. Sure, he suffered like an animal, but his prime goal had shifted from serving Catia to supporting Sal.

Enzo had been there those first few days when Sal was so numb and anguished and beside himself that anything could have happened. He accepted that Sal screamed at him, wrestled with him, and not in play, watched Sal when he raved and ranted, and was there when Sal broke down. Sal could not say in all honesty what would have been more likely—that he’d blow his own head off or go on a killing rampage because only blood could drown the sheer agony of losing Catia. The person who’d dug up layers of himself he’d never have dared to examine on his own, and made him okay with them. More than okay. She’d made him whole. The one person who’d loved him unconditionally even in his weakest, ugliest moments.

She hadn’t deserved to die, surely hadn’t deserved to be murdered, and identifying her body had been the hardest thing Sal had ever done in his life. After that, everything was child’s play—the war that was now on the horizon meant little compared to that, except that it was his revenge for her death. And still, his current game moves were to protect himself from unnecessary losses. He wouldn’t put Enzo’s life at risk, for example.

He’d wade through the guts of a thousand Jack Barsantis for that.

17

Bethany Grace Howard. It had been Enzo’s cop buddy who’d come through with the driver’s license. The photo was definitely older—it showed her as a bleached blonde, and with the lack of contrast, she looked like a ghost except for her wide-set dark eyes. She lived in one of two apartments above a nail salon, front door toward the sidewalk, which made it easy to observe from where Sal had parked a bit further down the road. Nearby were a dentist and a physiotherapist, and unless somebody paid him close and prolonged attention, Sal could have been a bored husband waiting outside for his wife or children.

He still had to wait too long, so he pulled his tablet from its padded sleeve and pretended to work. It took only about an hour for Miss Howard to appear in the door with a bag slung over her shoulder. Her dark hair was gathered in an untidy ponytail, and she looked rushed and preoccupied. He dropped the tablet underneath the seat. Port Francis was pretty safe, but it was still the kind of city where some people might be tempted to grab a piece of tech if all it took was to bash in a window. The professional criminals would never touch a made man’s car, but some amateurs might not be so wise.

He checked his reflection in the car mirror, but he looked fine. If his eyes were still slightly reddened, he could always claim allergies.

Sal stepped out of the car and locked it remotely, then walked parallel to Miss Howard on the other side of the street. She vanished into a supermarket on the corner, but instead of chasing her, Sal leisurely crossed the road and waited on the corner, peering at his phone like a dozen other people within sight were doing. Once he pretended to make a call, acting as if he’d been stood up, or whoever he was planning to meet wasn’t answering the phone.

There she was again. She came dashing out of the shop, carrying a gallon of fresh milk in one hand, and a bag of sliced bread in the other.

“Excuse me?”

Sal slipped his phone into his pocket, forced to give chase because even though there were no people between them on the sidewalk, Miss Howard maintained a hectic pace. She either hadn’t heard or was ignoring him.

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