Dirty Look - Dark Desires

The guy turns around and fixes me with a stare I wasn’t planning on encountering until I returned to Calabria, and I stop dead in my tracks.

Piero Russo is standing in my bedroom, and he has two questions in return for my one.

“Where is my daughter? Why do you have her name in your naked mouth?”

Oh. Fucking. Shit.

My phone rings from the bedside cabinet. We both stare at it. I’m frozen, trying to work out if I should try to pull some clothes on, answer the phone, or find out where the hell Mia is.

“You goin’ to get that?” Piero prompts me, cool as hell.

I grab the phone and answer it.

“Yeah?”

“Enzo!” Emilio shouts down the line, loud enough for everybody in the room to hear clearly without the need for a speakerphone. “Piero’s making a surprise visit to see Mia, so get your dick out of his daught…”

I cut him off. Far too fucking late. Piero is looking at me the way I’ve seen him look at our most unfortunate victims. Somebody’s going to die today, and I don’t think it’s Davo.Mia

I get a cab to the warehouse, which is all the way across town. The place isn’t hard to pick out. There's a bright red sports car out front, as conspicuous as can be. There's nobody around, but the big doors are open wide, inviting me in.

I walk into the warehouse, knowing what I look like. A slim teenage girl with a cute Prada bag, matching shoes, and a naive look on her face. Some might say I look like bait. I hope Alejandro Ramirez thinks I’m not a threat.

“Davo?" I whisper his name to the darkness. “Davo!” I call out louder. “Davo? Are you in here?"

The door rolls down behind me with a loud metallic banging sound. I jump and let out a squeak as bright lights suddenly flood the space, illuminating a man standing at the very center of the warehouse. This must be Alejandro Ramirez.

He turns around slowly to face me. I hold my breath, and reach for my bag. I've never shot a person before, but I will make an exception for the bastard who tortured and maybe killed my friend.

“Hi, Mia.”

Holy shit. I recognize that voice. And the accent. That's not Spanish. That's Australian.

“Davo! You’re alive!" I’m so fucking relieved. I thought for sure he was dead, and I thought equally for sure that his death would be all my fault. “They let you live. Are you okay?”

My relief at seeing him is already starting to give away to confusion.

He beams at me, all happy and shit. He’s unfathomably proud of himself, standing there like he just won the Olympics, the lottery, and American Idol all in one fucking go. He’s completely unharmed. He doesn’t even have a bruise on him. The same face I saw all beaten to shit in the pictures is just grinning like an idiot. There’s just a little trace of smudged shit under his eyes, which I am now close enough to see is just make up.

It takes me a full minute of staring at his goofy face to process what has happened. He faked being taken by the cartel.

“What the fuck, Davo!? What’s going on?”

“I tricked you!” He laughs. “I used make up and shit and I was all like Ola senorita….”

He trails off as he realizes I am not actually laughing. I am staring daggers of disbelief at him.

“Pretty funny, huh?” He finishes weakly.

He thinks this is a joke. This idiot. This moron has lied to my family and made me an accomplice in his stupidity. I sneaked out. I stole Enzo’s gun. I… holy shit.

“Uhm. No, Davo. Not funny at fucking all. Enzo is going to kill you. My god. Enzo’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me and then kill you twice. Holy shit, Davo. Don’t you know how serious he is? How could you be this stupid?”

“Ah, relax,” Davo grins.

I am not relaxed. I am not even a little relaxed. For the second time in almost as many days, some idiot has made me fear for my life. “I lost my virginity because of you!”

“Oh really? Congratulations,” Davo smiles, pulling out his weed pipe and sparking his lighter. Ok, so maybe he is a junkie, goddammit. He puts his finger over the far end, breathes in deep, holds it for a second or two, then exhales a cloud of puffy smoke into the air with a satisfied sigh.

“Not congratulations. You have no idea what you've done. Enzo is going to be So. Fucking. Angry.”

“He must have a sense of humor somewhere in there,” Davo smiles serenely, like a buddha in a haze. “He forgave that friend of his for doing basically the same thing. This is just how those guys roll. After this, I’ll be one of the team.”