Wasted (Dirty Boys of Chicago #1)

W
asted

Copyright © 2016 Morgan Black

Cover Design: Kasmit Covers

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places or events are entirely the work of the author. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or places is entirely coincidental.

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S
he was so fucking beautiful
.

There was no question about it—with her stunning dark hair and intoxicating hazel eyes, she was gorgeous. She had a unique look about her, unlike any of the other girls that I had slept with. Large doe eyes, with an innocence that I hadn’t ever encountered before. Nobody around me was that innocent. We all had our deceptions. Lies we told people to get by. But not Farrah. But I guess that was why I wanted her so badly.

She was forbidden.

I remembered my father telling me that once. I wasn't allowed to mess with any of the women in the family. Not that she and I were blood relatives. We weren't even related. But her mother worked for my dad, and that made her a part of the family, which meant she was untouchable. But it didn't mean that I didn't think about her. Her small hips swaying as she walked away from me. The way she flirtatiously glanced over her shoulder. She knew exactly what she was doing to me. She just didn't care. But I did.

I wondered what she looked like now. So much time had passed. Was she still so thin? So fragile? Or had she filled out?

I imagined she had. Beautiful curves that I could touch. Taste. Breasts that would fill my hand when I grabbed them. But fantasies didn’t satisfy me like the real thing.

I heard the clanging on the outside of the bars that startled me out of my restless sleep. I never slept well in jail. I should've gotten over that by now, having been in here for four years, but I hadn't.

I hadn't had one good night’s sleep since I had been locked up.

I opened my eyes slowly, trying not to appear disturbed by the noise outside, but I knew that the guards were just trying to get my attention. It was always one of the guards trying to assert his power. Dumbass. I could own them in a second if I wanted to.

I was part of the Santini family. No matter what the guards liked to believe, they didn't have full control over me, even if I was in jail. My father did. If he ordered a hit on somebody inside this prison, it would be my job to get it carried out, no matter the cost. If some stupid asshat guard tried to stop me, I’d have to take care of it, and quietly.

Luckily, my father hadn’t asked me to do any jobs lately. He just wanted me out of this hellhole. I didn’t think it was out of love or because he missed me—that wasn’t my old man’s style. I suspected it was mostly my mother putting pressure on him. She had convinced him that I deserved to be out, after all that I did for the family. The only reason I was in here was because of them, anyway.

But that was how it was in the Santini family. You did as you were told.

I waited for the noise again, but instead, I just heard the sound of someone clearing his throat.

“Santini, your lawyer’s here. Get your ass up.”

My lawyer? I wasn't supposed to have a meeting with him for another week. My parole hearing was next month, so there was no need for him to be here now. I wondered if this was some sort of message from my father. Shit, I hoped it wasn’t an ordered hit. While I was good at what I did, I didn’t want to risk fucking up my parole meeting.

“What the hell are you talking about, guard? My lawyer’s not coming today.”

I heard the keys jangling against the bars as he started to open up my cell. “Well, he's here now, so unless you want me to turn him away, I suggest you get your ass up and out here.”

I nodded as I wrapped my hand around the metal bedframe of the bunk above me and pulled myself up. I smiled at the empty bunk. I hadn't had to share a cell with anyone in a few weeks; I think they were scared to put anyone new with me. It wasn't my fault that the last guy had gotten a broken nose. If he hadn't been such a dick about taking up the mirror all the time, we wouldn’t have had a problem. I just let them know that taking up the mirror wasn’t going to help him with his looks.

The guard cleared his throat in annoyance.

“I'm coming, I'm coming.”

I turned around and stuck my hands behind me through the bars, which was the protocol. I knew he would have to cuff me, not that it mattered. If I really wanted to overpower this twerp, it wouldn't be that hard. All it would take was a swift knock to his head with my own, and he would be out like a light. It had been about a month since I'd last gotten tased, but I wasn't really in the mood to relive that experience right now. It wasn’t worth it to start anything with him. After he cuffed me, he attempted to assert his dominance over the situation and held me tightly by the uniform. You do that, bro, act like you’re the man. I didn’t really give a shit about this guard and his power pissing contest. All that I wanted to know was what my lawyer wanted.

I let my thoughts wander as we walked through the sterile halls. I hated the way this place smelled, like sweat and old piss. So instead, I thought about how she used to bake, how she and her mother would make pies and bring them in once a week. My favorite was the apple pie. I missed the warm, sweet aroma filling the office.

The office was where we held all the business. It was located under a strip club that the family owned. Growing up, I’d always gone with my father to the office; he wanted me to learn the family business when I wasn’t in school, so seeing naked women was never a new thing for me. The strippers didn’t take too much interest in me until I was in high school. That was when I finally filled out into my large frame. Several of the girls offered to teach me how to please a woman, and being a stupid high school kid, I took them up on their offers. Sure, those women were hot and always ready to go for a ride, but as I grew older, I realized that they were just assets of our family business. They weren't real people.

They certainly weren't Farrah.

As we walked the rest of the way to the conference rooms, I wondered what she was doing. Who she was with. Was she safe? I had spent hundreds of nights dreaming about her. Dreaming about what I would do when I saw her again. How I would take her and make her mine. It was one of the only things that kept me sane in this place. I would give anything to have those hazel eyes on me again.

“
W
elcome to the Starlight
, what can I get for ya?”

I said that same phrase at least fifty times a day. I hated working at a restaurant, but at least for the most part, people were nice. The smell of fryer grease on my clothes, however, I would still be able to smell once I was dead.

The elderly gentleman smiled up at me. “The regular, darlin’. You on your own today? It's busy in here.”

I scribbled down two eggs, white toast, and three slices of bacon on my waitress pad before I smiled back at him. “Yep it's just me. Leah will be in later though, so when you come back for dinner tonight, you'll see her.”

“Nope. It's Wednesday, I’ll eat at the senior center. Then we get to play bingo.”

Mr. Herman, I loved that old geezer. He always tipped the waitresses well, and he was sweet to us. Sweetness to a waitress could go a long way, especially in our diner. We treated him like family.

“That's right, I didn't even realize it was Wednesday. I'll get your breakfast for you.”

I brushed my hands on my apron as I walked into the back. “New order!” I yelled as I slapped my order paper down on the counter. “It's Mr. Herman's, so make it quick.”

Chevy waved at me with the spatula. “You got it.”

I went back out to the front and noticed the empty coffee pot. I walked up to the station and grabbed the coffee grounds from the cabinet below. The smell of the fresh grounds wafted over me as I waited for Mr. Herman’s order. I looked around the diner and sighed. The rest of my customers already had their meals. If more customers didn’t come in, today was going to be a very long day.

My eyes trailed over to the booth in front of me. In it sat a middle-aged gentleman reading the newspaper and quietly mumbling to himself.

“Anything interesting?”

He pulled down the paper just enough so that his eyes looked at me over the newsprint. “Just some gang banger being let out of prison. I don't even understand this. How do they let some asshole in prison who killed somebody out? Isn’t he a danger to society?”

I shrugged. “I guess it's not really our choice. Or maybe he had a good reason for killing someone else.”

I knew as soon as the words left my lips that I shouldn't have said it. The man looked at me with wide eyes. I hadn't been raised like this man. I was used to people killing other people for sport.

Sometimes I wondered if that made me a bad person.

My mother was an accountant, and she was very good at her job. Especially at covering up money that was not supposed to be there. She had handled the books for a very famous mob family in Chicago. The Santini family. She had done all of their accounting for most of my life. Growing up around the mob made me have a very different perspective.

And then one day, it was all over, and the life that I knew completely changed.

I remembered it like it was yesterday. We were sitting in the office below the club that the family owned. I was eating candy out of a fancy box by some famous chocolatier. It was the most amazing chocolate I had ever tasted. Each bite practically melted in my mouth. My mother and I would've never been able to afford luxuries like that had we not worked for the family. So I knew, even back then, that my mother working for them was a precious gift. I just didn't realize how precious her life was. I was licking excess chocolate off my fingers because it was a hot day, and they were melting in my hands when I heard the commotion outside the door. At first, it sounded just like any other argument, and I had heard them a thousand times before. I remembered not even reacting until my mother told me to climb under the desk.

“Why?”

Her face was so serious. “Farrah, just get under the desk right now.”

I dropped the box of chocolates on the floor and scurried under the desk, hiding next to her feet. Someone broke through the door just a minute later.

“I'll kill you for this, Santini. I'll kill you and your whole fucking family. Especially that bitch.” I heard a man's yell from just a few feet away. And then the loud pop of a gun. I smacked my hand over my mouth so I wouldn't scream. They always taught me not to scream. There was another pop of the gun, and this time, I saw my mother’s legs lose tension as she slumped in her chair.

I didn't come out from under that desk for hours.

I sat there watching the crimson blood pool at her feet. I had never been that close to death. I hoped that maybe they could save her. But I was fifteen, and I knew better. There was nothing they could do. She was gone.

The cops arrived, and they found me huddled in the corner underneath my mother's mahogany desk hugging my knees to my face. I don’t know who called them. Who let them into the Santini den. Why they didn’t just clean it up themselves, like they had a hundred times before.

Maybe that time was different.

I didn't even cry. I was too terrified to do anything but breathe. She was gone.

It changed my life. Everything I thought I knew was suddenly ripped away. Including Xavier Santini, the son of the mob boss. I had spent nights sitting alone with him, talking about every part of our lives. I held my breath when he spoke sometimes, because I was just so entranced. He told me all his stories, and even some that didn’t belong to him. Horrible things people had done to keep others safe. But that night, no one kept my mother safe.

No one.

I remembered them taking me away in the back of a cop car, and the last face of the Santini family that I saw was Xavier. He was just standing there with his hand up, waving goodbye. If only I had known it was forever. If only I had known that that was the last time I would ever see Xavier Santini, I would've told him.

I would've told him that I was madly and irrevocably in love with him.

But I couldn’t tell him that now. I finally knew the truth, and he needed to pay.