Page 20 of Nico

“You don’t need anything, and the Boss didn’t tell us to stop.”

“If I were you, I’d do what I asked. Who do you think he wants to fuck? Me or you?” I glanced into the mirror at the barrel-chested man with the large head and small hands. I hadn’t planned on Nico doing anything to me. I thought I could talk Nico out of that until I could get away. That’s where the adage, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men can go astray.’

The driver did a detour, and dropped me in front of my rundown hotel. I had time to think about how to get out of this, and I felt more optimist about life than I had before, but I didn’t see what was to come and it wasn’t pretty.

“Hey, Jim. I got a job,” I said with a voice of delight and disbelief.

“Did you tell the manager Jim sent you?” Jim questioned. I narrowed my gaze and slanted my head.

“No. I didn’t know I had to.”

“When I send my laundry out, then I can tell them that they did me a solid by giving you a job—”

“What do you mean laundry? Mr. Bonetti runs the bar. I thought you said there’s a bartender job available.”

“I meant there’s a job at the laundry located near the bar. A senior moment.” Jim wiped the sweat from his brow, and that was when I realized Jim was much older than I thought. But his hair was black. Well, maybe a little too black now that I’d taken a closer look. His senior moment may get me killed, I thought. “You have to forgive me. Go back and tell Bonetti that you don’t want that job—”

“But it’s not for a bartender but a bookkeeper, and he said we could negotiate the pay.” Well, he didn’t exactly say that, but I took it as that.

“Look, boy, you don’t want to work for Nico Bonetti, or his brother, Dante. Dante could be more dangerous than Nico. He carries out the things Nico orders him to do.”

“They are ruthless criminals and have their hands in everything, and that Nico is a psycho, and when it comes to their money, you make the wrong move, or a dollar is missing at the end of the night, they’ll find you in a dump in New Jersey, that is if they find you at all.

“There was a bookkeeper missing who worked for them. Just read the New York Post headlines.” Well, the headlines are wrong. I was in no way a bookkeeper, I was a boy for a day not even a night.

Bookkeeper Gone Missing.

Worked for the Bonetti Crime family. If you take this job you do it at your own risk. There are worse jobs where you go missing. You have a better chance as a soldier in a war zone, but not at the risk of working with Nico Bonetti. Or writing about him and his brother Dante.

The article, a long one, continued, but I didn’t want to read anymore because there was nothing I could do about it now.

I thought at the time Jim was trying to scare me, and that good-looking dude would never hurt me. That was because I discovered he wanted to fuck me instead. A man could tell because there was a light in his hungry eyes that drew me in. I hadn’t had a man inside me for maybe a year or more, so I forgot everything I’d learned about some heartless men.

All I saw was being sexually satisfied, and not living in a homeless shelter where I probably had to fight for everything and not being able to get a job. I saw little else, and I didn’t want to hear anything about the joys of pulling myself up by my bootstraps. I was sure Jim had been from my father’s generation, where they thought such nonsense. It didn’t go off well with my generation. We wanted what we wanted now and we didn’t want to wait.

“Jim, I’m taking the job, and I’ll take my things and I’ll see you around.”

“You won’t last a month before you’ll be on the missing person’s list.”

Oh fuck, I didn’t need those words playing around my head space.

You would think I would pay attention to Jim’s dark words, but I wouldn’t. I thought I was too smart to get caught up in anything that would put my life in danger. But that was what young men would do. It was in our DNA to fuck up our lives one way or the other. It was what we would do. It was all that we would do—fuck up, and then fuck up some more. And if one time wasn’t enough we tried and tried again until our balls were caught in a vise, or until we learned how to get them out, if we ever did. Then maybe we were satisfied then.

Well, I hadn’t felt the tightness yet, and I was too smart to let that happen, or so I thought.

Chapter 15

Romeo

The bodyguard dropped me back at the bar with all my possessions and clean underwear in a large satchel. Nico Bonetti greeted me and placed his arm around my shoulder as several guys looked on. “I need you to take a look at my books.” He reached for my satchel and handed it off to one of the men standing on one side of the phalanx.

The formation of three men on one side, and three on the other had me unnerved, especially the way they glared at me. I tried not to look at them as I passed, so I lowered my eyes, but it was impossible to maintain that posture because they looked like wolves or attack dogs waiting for their evening meal. But first the leader of the pack, Nico, of course, had to get his portion first.

As we passed one of Bonetti’s soldiers said under his breath, “That’s not all he wants him to take a look at.” I glanced back.

“Don’t pay them any mind. They’re just jealous,” Nico said with a chuckle as he led me down a dark passage heading to his office.

Once he opened the door and walked inside, and jerked me in with him and closed it, then he conveniently locked the door. However, I felt safer than I had with his six men surrounding me, because he controlled them and as long as he deemed me an asset and valuable to him, then no harm would come to me. Well, that was what I thought.

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