Trophy 3

She came up from the water after swimming two laps submerged, gulping in air and trying to still herself. Underwater, thoughts of the future seemed as muted as whatever birdsong made it onto the manicured grounds.

Bella hoped they’d stay away. She didn’t like thinking of herself with wrinkles.

Her stepson, Vito Belucci, stood above her. He was a lovely man. Six-foot-three, all brawn and muscle—his workouts ranged from isometrics to yoga. His features were chiseled like granite from the strong Belucci genetics: clean jaw, patrician nose, wide mouth, and high forehead. Blond hair ran in graceful curls from dark roots, but his real strength was in his eyes. They were deep-set, light blue under twin ledges of dark brown eyebrows. And he was as bronzed as Bella, perhaps even more. He got his sun from the choicest of resorts.

Unlike his father, he hardly ever worked. His job was to play. To do all the things legitimate playboys did, only with Mob money. He stuffed bikini briefs on the Riviera and gambled in Monte Carlo, raced wherever the cars were fast and the speeding tickets were cheap. Daddy Vincenzo meant him to sow his wild oats now, like a hot-blooded man, before settling down to a Senate seat or CEO desk.

“Hello, sonny,” Bella cooed to him, folding her arms under her chin on the edge of the pool and kicking her legs under her. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation. The pool had cooled her off, but the hot itch of her neurosis was still there. She needed to burn it out. “What will it take for you to get that cock out?”

Vito could only chuckle at her shamelessness. Even naked in an outdoor pool, she found a way to be more brazen, more sensual with a body that was already the ultimate in voluptuousness.

Bella really didn’t want to mess around with a bunch of dirty talk. She didn’t need to tantalize herself. She needed to be fucked and they both knew that was the only reason Vito would show up at his father’s house.

“Do I need to kiss your foot?” she asked, rising out of the pool a little to lean over Vito’s leather shoes and kiss one. “Do I?” she continued, moving over to the other one and running her tongue up its already shining contours.

She could see she had him. Vito had no morals, no regrets. It felt good to fuck her, and he could, so he would do. Already his cock was growing in his pants. That was enough foreplay for her.

Bella wouldn’t quite dignify herself to stroke a soft penis into hardness. Part of the thrill of a fuck for her was to be able to compel such a performance with a look, a word, an invisible charge transmitted through the air.

It buttressed her confidence to know that she was so flawless; the error was only with her husband. Even his son was more of a man where it counted.

She rose up from the water, pulling herself out of the pool with one finely muscled arm, reaching her other hand out to Vito who gleefully took it. He drew her up beside him until her feet were on the dry tile, drops of water chorusing off her bare flesh like a virgin bride’s wedding veil coming off her. Slicks of black hair snaked down her body, tenderly anointing her bobbing breasts, drawing further attention to their proud weight.

Then he stepped back from her, picking up a towel from a poolside chaise lounge and tossing it to her to replace his touch. “Not here, you crazy bitch,” Vito told her. “All it takes is one picture from one cell phone…”

“And daddy will find out?” Bella teased. “Are you afraid of him? Afraid of getting spanked? Maybe he’ll even take his belt off.”

Vito sneered at her. “You’re the one who oughta be afraid. Dad can always get another wife, but I’m the only son he’s got if he wants to retire anytime soon.”

“Not much of a heir if he can’t fuck,” Bella said, beginning to pat herself down with the towel.

Vito stepped forward, grasping the towel and wrapping it around her throat in the blink of an eye. “Why you gotta get me heated? You just have to wait til Wednesday. Then we can do it nice and safe and as long as we want.”

“Maybe I don’t want nice and safe,” Bella gasped through her closed throat. “And I’m pretty sure you can’t give it to me as long as I want.”

Vito hissed and shoved her into the water. Bella went in tumbling, came out sputtering, water invading her sinuses and eyes and just as her senses were starting to clear, Vito stepped on her head and dunked her underwater again.

When she came up this time, Vito was kneeling beside the water.

“What you want isn’t important, ‘Ma.’ We’ve got a good thing going here, but don’t think you’re the only piece of ass I can lay hands on. At least try to play the good Italian wife until Wednesday. You’re gonna give my pops a heart attack one of these days. And how long you think I’ll be able to fuck you when I’ve gotta work for a living?”

***

The Mob had a million dollar bounty on Frank’s head. It wasn’t quite a dollar for every gangster he had taken out, but Frank spent every day of his life attempting to narrow the gap.

Outside La Cosa Nostra, opinions on him varied. There were those who saw him as a fascist, a serial killer, Trump’s id run amok. Others quietly supported him, the way they might approve of someone shooting a rabid dog. Not liking it, but liking the status quo of a dead dog a lot more than being bitten.

Still others not-so-quietly supported him. They congregated on the Internet, sometimes jokingly, sometimes not. Even on the Darkweb there were pockets of support. Frank had browsed his share of servers, looking for child pornographers, drug dealers, anyone deserving of his brand of justice.

He’d come across those that could be useful to him—willing allies in his War on the Warlike. It’d taken careful cultivation to develop them as sources and contacts, finding which he could trust and which were only after that million dollar bounty. But since he couldn’t smuggle his arsenal onto the airlines, Frank would be relying on a would-be supporter to arm him for the Belladonna operation.

He met her out in the desert, under the mountains that towered above like weights ready to come crashing down, in the parking lot of a roadhouse that had gone out of business. It was a couple of miles off the highway, down a two-lane county road that led to nowhere Frank could see before the turn-off to the meeting place.

He parked under three Joshua trees, their scraggly branches growing together in an incestuous tangle. The shade was spotty, but did the trick. He sat with the police scanner on, listening, but if they were making any move on his position, they weren’t talking about it.

After thirty minutes, she arrived in a beat-up pick-up. Agnes Moon was five foot seven, small-featured and fragile-looking. She gave the impression of being in motion even when she was still, like a hummingbird. Her chocolate brown eyes darted quickly over Frank’s body, barely resting for a second on his groin.

She was a goth, if Frank was keeping up with his subcultures. Her hair was dyed ink-black, separated into two braids that ran down to her breasts. Her skin was a milky white; the lacy Victorian hat she wore must’ve been at least a little to protect her from the sun. She had on a white T-shirt so close to her skin color that she seemed to be topless; only her nipples were visibly invisible, marked solely by the silvery piercings that studded them.

At her waist, she wore a black Lolita skirt that looked like taffeta. On her feet were button shoes, black on white stockings. The same bullseye coloring of her face. Black lipstick, white teeth, then her tongue, and even that was a dark red, a hue that felt like it was meant for the dusk and not any other time of day.

The moment she was out of the pick-up, she came towards him, disobeying the warning sign of his very hulking mass. Her dark eyes were paradoxically luminous, black lips parted, her already delirious physical assets further accentuated by her exotic garb and make-up.

Agnes undulated lusciously, maddeningly on her way to him. For a moment, it was hard to keep an eye on his surroundings, looking for a springing trap, rather than on the jiggle of her pierced nipples, the arc of her sculpted hips, the rhythm of her taut abdomen, the magnificent fall of her twinned hair.