“We’re not engaged.” Glaring, I shucked Seven’s hand from my back.
“Wow, you knocked her up and aren’t getting married.” Seven laughed and leaned against the aisle of cookies. “And I thought I was coldhearted.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I have a business proposition for you; you handled your last one so well. Quite masterfully, I’d say. Some of us had a bet going on whether or not you’d pull it off.”
“I’m out of that life.”
“Really?” Turning from me, Seven started to peruse the cookies and candy for himself. “You don’t even want to know what my proposition is? It’s pretty lucrative. High reward, low risk.”
“Fuck that.”
“Well, then…” Seven grabbed a chocolate bar, shoving it into his jacket. “I guess this is the last time we’ll see one another. Enjoy love and babies an
d all that shit.” Like the fucking Boogieman he was eponymous for, he nearly vanished out the store door. In and out of my life in less than ten seconds, but almost ruining it in five. I couldn’t help what came out of my mouth next.
Because fuck Seven and everything he stands for.
I smirked and called after him, “I hope you fall in love, Seven. Not because I want you happy, but because I think it would be pretty fucking funny to see someone like you react to that. Like watching Mentos in a coke bottle.” His body was halfway out the doorway when he stopped. Hand on the frame, Seven cocked his head. Slick hair fell over his face when he looked back and I could see the smirk fall.
It almost looked like he was going to say something, but then he knocked on the wood, smiled, and kept going.
Seven had touched a nerve. A throbbing, exposed nerve. Years ago Lenny and I had talked about marriage and babies and shit and decided it wasn’t for us. It couldn’t be for us. She seemed happy with it, and I’d accepted it. As much as I might have wanted the picket fence, the only fences in my life were barbed and electric.
Still, about a year ago, I’d found the ring.
Not just any ring either—a fucking one of a kind, massive, extraordinarily hard to come by ring. According to the woman who gave it to me, it was legendary. I’m sure Lenny doesn’t care if her engagement ring is big, sparkly, or expensive, and at the time I wasn’t even sure if she would wear the fucking thing. Still I wanted a ring, and I wanted her finger to get heavy wearing the damn thing.
I was on a mission in Venice when I found “the ring”. An old woman was giving me food and shelter above her shop. GEM had a lot of setups like that around the globe. They didn’t put you up in fancy hotels; they shucked you on the locals like quartered soldiers. By all outward appearances it was a humble shop, the woman even humbler. Of course by then I knew better than to trust outward appearances.
On the third night the woman sat me down. She held a ring between her fingers and looked at me in earnest while I shoveled minestrone into my mouth.
“My name is Lucia Pavoni. Sixty years ago my brothers left to America. They left me with nothing, but they couldn’t take this ring. It’s priceless. The stone unique. You could ask any gem master.” I wiped soup from my mouth, looking from Lucia to the ring. I wasn’t sure there was such a thing as a gem master, but that really wasn’t the point. I leaned back into the wood chair as Lucia told me her story.
It was a sad story, but it was complete shit. From the moment Lucia told me her name, I knew she was after something. Forget the fact that her English was flawless, the Pavoni crime syndicate was the biggest crime family in the world. Maybe she was a sick old lady abandoned by her brothers, but more likely, she was some kind of Pavoni Matriarch holding down the fort in Venice.
The ring gleamed under the low light, the colors shifting from teal to midnight to Egyptian and finally to Atlantic blue, but never staying the same. I’d never seen anything like it, but it was just like looking into Lenny’s eyes. Later I’d come to know the stone was one of the rarest sapphires in the world.
“All right, how much?” I asked.
The old woman looked shocked, pulling it against her breast. “This ring is not for sale.”
“Of course not,” I remarked. “But I leave tomorrow.”
“Get a message to my great niece Isabelle and keep the ring. Keep the ring and don’t give the message…” Her sweet demeanor vanished, and I saw the cool, cruel face of a Pavoni Matriarch. I left the next morning with the rest of my crew, ring in tow, but took a detour to New York.
I delivered the message the old Pavoni woman asked. It ended up being a bit more complicated than giving someone a piece of paper, but that’s a story for another time. In the end, I kept the ring.
Then, well, you know what happened.
Shit got complicated with Lenny and me, even more complicated than before.
I was never happy with our arrangement. In the beginning, we weren’t exclusive. I used to come back to her every few months knowing she’d been fucking some dude while I was away. Sure, I’d been doing the same—well, not with a dude, but yeah. Even after we stopped all that and moved in together, I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t enough.
I wanted to make an honest woman out of her or some shit.
So driving back from the store with Seven’s niggling little words in my ear, I was pissed.