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Dakar. A year ago, seventeen-year-old Deangelo Alinari hadn’t had a clue it even existed, but now, standing among the hustle and bustle of the sidewalk outside the American Embassy, Kyle Aspen felt like the African city could become home.
As he walked out of the building, his passport and official documents safely tucked away in his duffle bag, he exhaled his first relieved breath in what felt like years. He still had a long way to go in terms of settling into his new life — finding a job and a permanent residence, for example — but at least he felt free of his family’s clutches. They’d never think to look for him in Dakar of all places.
Leaving the United States had been one of the hardest decisions of his young life, but Deangelo had felt he’d had no other choice. Changing his name was just one countermeasure against being found by his uncle, Giacomo Alinari; as much as he’d hated to give up his name, he’d known it was necessary.
That night, lying on sheets that scratched his skin if he moved even the slightest bit, he closed his eyes and remembered.
~*~*~
Deangelo smirked as he took a drag of the cigarette in his hand, his light brown eyes tracking the movements of his best friend Bobby as he walked toward him. Deangelo leaned against the side of a building, the only illumination the street lights lining the deserted boulevard. Their eyes met; Bobby reached out to take the cigarette from Deangelo’s mouth, lifting it to his own lips and taking a long pull before letting his hand fall back to his side.
Deangelo exhaled a quiet laugh as Bobby’s other hand came up to cup the back of his neck; their lips met in a gentle caress, a calm, welcome familiarity that eased the nervousness of getting caught in Deangelo’s chest. Sneaking out to meet in clandestine surroundings had become a nightly ritual for them ever since Bobby’s father had caught them kissing in Bobby’s bedroom. He’d gone into a rage, swearing and threatening to kill Deangelo for tainting his boy.
They broke the kiss, letting their lips linger for a moment before Bobby looked away and took another pull from the cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the night air. His arm slid around Deangelo’s waist, drawing him closer, and Deangelo tucked his face into Bobby’s neck, just breathing in the spicy cinnamon scent of his cologne. He smiled, lips parting to pose a question; they both tensed as they heard a sharp crack followed by a pained yell coming from inside the building.
They pulled apart, Deangelo’s eyes wide and Bobby’s forehead wrinkled in concern. “What was that?” Bobby whispered. “I thought you said this place would be empty.”
“Because I thought it would be!” Deangelo hissed, panic coiling in his belly. “Uncle Giacomo uses this as storage for his export business. There are usually only workers here in the daytime.”
He flinched as he heard another sharp crack, and he swallowed hard as Bobby moved away from him, moving toward a window that was cracked open a few feet away. “Bobby, no! Let’s just go, okay?” He tried to grab Bobby’s arm and frowned deeply as Bobby shrugged him off.
Bobby peered into the window and motioned Deangelo forward. “C’mere. It’s your uncle and that thug guy that always follows him around.”
“You mean Dominic?” His curiosity getting the best of him, Deangelo moved forward, stopping beside Bobby, their shoulders pressed together as they both tried to peek into the window without being seen themselves.
Deangelo frowned as he recognized the striking, dark-haired man in a charcoal gray pinstriped suit, a bored expression on his face as he adjusted his diamond cufflinks. What was his uncle doing at the storage warehouse so late at night?
As his eyes shifted to the left and settled on the taller dark-haired man standing in front of his uncle, Deangelo had a sinking feeling that his question had been answered. He recognized that man as Dominic Puzitello, his uncle’s right-hand man, and he towered over a man seated in a chair in front of him, the man’s arms tied behind his back. Dominic tugged on the wrist of his black leather glove, flexing his fingers, and then brought his hand up.
Deangelo flinched as Dominic’s hand swung down hard, the crack of leather meeting skin reverberating through the small space, and the man’s head jerked to the side.
The man spat out blood before raising his head to look at Giacomo. “I swear to god, I don’t know nothing about the missing shipment, Giacomo.”
Giacomo seemed unimpressed, lowering his arm, his cufflink straight again. “Just seems funny that you’re the one who signed for it, Mickey, only to have it mysteriously disappear two hours later. You were the only person who laid eyes on it, Mickey.” His face softened. “Listen, Mickey, you’re a good man, a hard worker, and I really hate for it to come to this. Just tell me what you did with the cargo and my friend here won’t have to keep beating you.”
Mickey shook his head. “I didn’t take it, Giacomo, I swear. It wasn’t me!”
Dominic snorted, shaking his head. “You might as well give it up, Mickey. You were seen on the Strip trying to sell the cigars. Made a lot of noise about how easy it would be for you to get more. Just tell us where you’ve got the rest stashed, Mickey. It’ll make this a whole lot easier on you.”
Mickey’s shoulders slumped, his head falling forward. “I’ve got a storage locker over on Flamingo Road. The rest of the cigars are there. It’s locker 22-C. The key’s in my jacket pocket.”
Giacomo nodded, rubbing his finger over his chin. “Thank you, Mickey. I appreciate you being honest.” He glanced at Dominic. “Take care of this little problem; then go fetch my cigars, would you?”
He turned and headed for the door, and Deangelo swallowed hard, his body tense. He expected Dominic to untie Mickey and let him go, and he touched Bobby’s shoulder, his eyes sliding away from the scene before them. “We should-“
He cut off at Mickey’s cry of “No, no, y-“ followed by two muffled pops, and when he whipped his head back around, he saw Mickey slumped awkwardly in the chair and Dominic carefully unscrewing a metal cylinder from his gun barrel.
“Oh my fucking god,” Bobby hissed before ducking down out of sight, and when he saw Deangelo failed to do the same, he grabbed Deangelo’s arm, yanking him down. “Okay, we really have to get out of here now.”
Deangelo shook his head, numbness creeping through him, straight down to his bones, and he couldn’t quite get his mouth to work. He dimly felt Bobby tug at him, and he let himself be pulled to his feet, stumbling in whatever direction Bobby pulled him.
~*~*~
Deangelo found himself unable to meet his uncle’s eyes the next day, felt his stomach twist every time Dominic entered the room, and he just kept picturing Mickey slumped over in the chair. He hadn’t known the man all that well, but he’d seen him at company picnics. He’d been nice, had a beautiful wife and a sweet baby daughter, and Deangelo’s uncle had casually ordered his death like it was nothing, like he’d been asking Dominic to pick up his dry cleaning.
His brother and he had joked about their uncle being a mob boss because he was Italian and wore Armani suits and just generally had that Mafia vibe about him, but Deangelo had never thought it was true. After what happened at the warehouse though, well, then he was absolutely convinced, and that scared him. He began to wonder if his uncle knew. Had Bobby and he left some kind of clue that they were there? The cigarette they’d been smoking, what had happened to it? Had they just dropped it where they stood, too shocked by what they were witnessing to worry about it being found?
“I can’t stop thinking about it, Bobby,” he muttered around another cigarette. His hand trembled slightly; they’d met at the cemetery and were seated with their backs against his parents’ gravestones. “Dominic’s like a fucking older brother, and he’s a hired gun for my Mafia boss uncle.” He shook his head, still feeling dumbfounded and confused, a band of panicked tightness across his chest. “What if he knows we were there? That we saw?”
Bobby shot him a skeptical look as he’d taken the cigarette. “How could he? There’s no way he saw us. We were quiet and he left before us. Dominic couldn’t have seen us either. He was busy.” He grimaced as he took a drag off the cigarette.
Deangelo swallowed hard. “The cigarette butt. They might’ve found it, and they’d know somebody was there.”
“Yeah, somebody, but they wouldn’t know it was us. You’re being paranoid, Angel.”
Bobby drew him close, placed a tender kiss on his lips, but it did nothing to alleviate his worry.
~*~*~
By the end of the week, he’d stopped sleeping, begun picking at his food during meals and taken up chain smoking, all the while trying to figure out what his uncle knew. He’d known it was a bad idea, known that he probably wouldn’t like what he found and that curiosity killed the cat, but he’d snooped in his uncle’s study, looking through his personal folders. He hadn’t found anything that came right out and said that Giacomo was a Mafia boss, but it had given him the impression that maybe his uncle’s export business wasn’t limited to just legal items.
He started wondering if his uncle had rivals, and how many other men had he ordered Dominic to kill? How much blood was on Dominic’s hands? At night, he lay awake, staring at his ceiling, too afraid to close his eyes because he knew that just behind the darkness of his eyelids lurked the image of Dominic’s expressionless face as he’d removed the silencer from his gun.
It finally reached the point where he couldn’t stay in the house anymore, where he jumped at the slightest noise and Francesca, the housekeeper who’d been his nanny since his birth, had begun to notice something was wrong and started asking him questions.
“You’re panicking over nothing, Angel!” Bobby snapped when Deangelo expressed his concerns. “God, I feel like every time we get together, you keep bringing this shit up! Let it go!”
Deangelo pulled away, stung by the harsh words, and he frowned, shaking his head. “I can’t, Bobby! A man died! How am I supposed to just let that go?” He crossed his arms over his chest, his hands gripping his upper arms. “I can’t stay there anymore. I’m gonna leave town. You should come with me.”
Bobby let out a snorting laugh that faded as he glanced at Deangelo. “Oh Jesus, you’re serious? Angel, we’re fucking teenagers. We just graduated high school. We can’t just leave. Where are we gonna go? How are we gonna pay for stuff?”
Deangelo shrugged. “My parents left me a trust fund. I gain access to it when I turn eighteen, which is six months away. We could get jobs and earn money to live on until then.”
“Or you could just stay here. Come on, Angel, you’re just being paranoid. You just gotta relax, okay?” Bobby took a step toward Deangelo, his hand settling on the side of his face, but Deangelo sidestepped the inevitable kiss.
Deangelo shook his head, his hands dropping away from his upper arms. “No. I just told you, I can’t stay in that house another second. If you won’t come with me…” He let his voice trail off, his teeth clenching. “Then I’ll just have to go without you. I’m sorry.”
He walked away, leaving Bobby staring at him in amazement. He went straight home, threw as many of his clothes and things as he could fit into a duffel bag and took the midnight bus out of town. Nevada gave way to Colorado, and he ended up in Aspen, bussing tables at a diner. The cook, an older man by the name of Kyle, befriended him, letting him crash in the loft above his garage.
The day of his eighteenth birthday, he’d been nervous as he’d tried accessing his trust fund for the first time. To his surprise, there hadn’t been any problems, and he grinned, his chest feeling lighter as he exited the building, significantly richer than when he’d entered.
His good mood lasted two days. Then he came home to find Dominic seated on his couch, those black leather gloves covering his hands. His entire body went numb; his spine feeling like it had been plunged into ice.
Dominic flexed his fingers, offering Deangelo a thin-lipped smile. “Pack your bags, we’re going home.”
Deangelo shook his head, stumbling back a step as Dominic rose to his feet. “No way, I’m not going back there.” His hand fumbled on the bookcase beside him, his fingers closing on the first book spine he could find. He snatched the book off the shelf and heaved it as hard as he could at Dominic’s head, then turned and ran out the front door, tearing off down the street.
He ducked into a ski rental shop, sequestering himself in one of the changing rooms until he felt his heartbeat return to normal. When he felt enough time had passed, he made his way back to the house, relieved to find Dominic gone. He had a feeling that Dominic would be back though, and with shaking hands, he packed up his belongings, left Kyle a note thanking him for his hospitality and headed down to the bank to withdraw his money. Aspen wasn’t safe anymore, and he had no set destination; he just knew he needed to get out of town and fast.
Somewhere in Ohio, as he handed his fake ID to a bartender, he came to the realization that he needed a new identity. The ID had been a gift from Dominic on the eve of his seventeenth birthday, and he hadn’t questioned it at the time; he’d just been thrilled to have a way to get into clubs.
He tapped the plastic card against the edge of the bar as he took a sip of his beer, his eyes tracking the movements of the bartender as he moved along, serving drinks to patrons. He licked his lips, figuring that the bartender might be able to help him out, and he waited until the man walked back over to him.
Shifting on the stool, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bed and nodding at the bartender. “So, if a guy potentially wanted to lose himself in a crowd and not run the risk of being found, how would he go about doing that?”
The bartender’s eyebrows rose, and his hand stilled on the spot on the bar he’d been wiping. “What, like disappear completely? New name and everything?” His eyes cut downward to the plastic card in Deangelo’s hand. “Why don’t you ask your buddy who gave you that card, kid?”
Deangelo grimaced. “Yeah, that’s not really an option. Look, can you help me or not? I can make it worth your while.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a crispy fifty dollar bill and gave the two ends a sharp tug in opposite directions before laying it on the bar and pushing it toward the man.
The bartender stroked his chin a moment, giving Deangelo the once over with his eyes. Then he glanced around before casually reaching down to pick up the fifty, folding it over and palming it into what Deangelo could only assume was his pocket. He hadn’t actually seen the guy’s hand disappear into a pocket or anything, but the fifty had vanished and he seemed to be warming up; that was all that mattered. “Tell you what, kid. Hang around for a while; I know a guy who has a friend that might be able to help you out.”
Twenty-four hours later, Kyle Aspen took the first steps into his new life.
As he walked out of the building, his passport and official documents safely tucked away in his duffle bag, he exhaled his first relieved breath in what felt like years. He still had a long way to go in terms of settling into his new life — finding a job and a permanent residence, for example — but at least he felt free of his family’s clutches. They’d never think to look for him in Dakar of all places.
Leaving the United States had been one of the hardest decisions of his young life, but Deangelo had felt he’d had no other choice. Changing his name was just one countermeasure against being found by his uncle, Giacomo Alinari; as much as he’d hated to give up his name, he’d known it was necessary.
That night, lying on sheets that scratched his skin if he moved even the slightest bit, he closed his eyes and remembered.
~*~*~
Deangelo smirked as he took a drag of the cigarette in his hand, his light brown eyes tracking the movements of his best friend Bobby as he walked toward him. Deangelo leaned against the side of a building, the only illumination the street lights lining the deserted boulevard. Their eyes met; Bobby reached out to take the cigarette from Deangelo’s mouth, lifting it to his own lips and taking a long pull before letting his hand fall back to his side.
Deangelo exhaled a quiet laugh as Bobby’s other hand came up to cup the back of his neck; their lips met in a gentle caress, a calm, welcome familiarity that eased the nervousness of getting caught in Deangelo’s chest. Sneaking out to meet in clandestine surroundings had become a nightly ritual for them ever since Bobby’s father had caught them kissing in Bobby’s bedroom. He’d gone into a rage, swearing and threatening to kill Deangelo for tainting his boy.
They broke the kiss, letting their lips linger for a moment before Bobby looked away and took another pull from the cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the night air. His arm slid around Deangelo’s waist, drawing him closer, and Deangelo tucked his face into Bobby’s neck, just breathing in the spicy cinnamon scent of his cologne. He smiled, lips parting to pose a question; they both tensed as they heard a sharp crack followed by a pained yell coming from inside the building.
They pulled apart, Deangelo’s eyes wide and Bobby’s forehead wrinkled in concern. “What was that?” Bobby whispered. “I thought you said this place would be empty.”
“Because I thought it would be!” Deangelo hissed, panic coiling in his belly. “Uncle Giacomo uses this as storage for his export business. There are usually only workers here in the daytime.”
He flinched as he heard another sharp crack, and he swallowed hard as Bobby moved away from him, moving toward a window that was cracked open a few feet away. “Bobby, no! Let’s just go, okay?” He tried to grab Bobby’s arm and frowned deeply as Bobby shrugged him off.
Bobby peered into the window and motioned Deangelo forward. “C’mere. It’s your uncle and that thug guy that always follows him around.”
“You mean Dominic?” His curiosity getting the best of him, Deangelo moved forward, stopping beside Bobby, their shoulders pressed together as they both tried to peek into the window without being seen themselves.
Deangelo frowned as he recognized the striking, dark-haired man in a charcoal gray pinstriped suit, a bored expression on his face as he adjusted his diamond cufflinks. What was his uncle doing at the storage warehouse so late at night?
As his eyes shifted to the left and settled on the taller dark-haired man standing in front of his uncle, Deangelo had a sinking feeling that his question had been answered. He recognized that man as Dominic Puzitello, his uncle’s right-hand man, and he towered over a man seated in a chair in front of him, the man’s arms tied behind his back. Dominic tugged on the wrist of his black leather glove, flexing his fingers, and then brought his hand up.
Deangelo flinched as Dominic’s hand swung down hard, the crack of leather meeting skin reverberating through the small space, and the man’s head jerked to the side.
The man spat out blood before raising his head to look at Giacomo. “I swear to god, I don’t know nothing about the missing shipment, Giacomo.”
Giacomo seemed unimpressed, lowering his arm, his cufflink straight again. “Just seems funny that you’re the one who signed for it, Mickey, only to have it mysteriously disappear two hours later. You were the only person who laid eyes on it, Mickey.” His face softened. “Listen, Mickey, you’re a good man, a hard worker, and I really hate for it to come to this. Just tell me what you did with the cargo and my friend here won’t have to keep beating you.”
Mickey shook his head. “I didn’t take it, Giacomo, I swear. It wasn’t me!”
Dominic snorted, shaking his head. “You might as well give it up, Mickey. You were seen on the Strip trying to sell the cigars. Made a lot of noise about how easy it would be for you to get more. Just tell us where you’ve got the rest stashed, Mickey. It’ll make this a whole lot easier on you.”
Mickey’s shoulders slumped, his head falling forward. “I’ve got a storage locker over on Flamingo Road. The rest of the cigars are there. It’s locker 22-C. The key’s in my jacket pocket.”
Giacomo nodded, rubbing his finger over his chin. “Thank you, Mickey. I appreciate you being honest.” He glanced at Dominic. “Take care of this little problem; then go fetch my cigars, would you?”
He turned and headed for the door, and Deangelo swallowed hard, his body tense. He expected Dominic to untie Mickey and let him go, and he touched Bobby’s shoulder, his eyes sliding away from the scene before them. “We should-“
He cut off at Mickey’s cry of “No, no, y-“ followed by two muffled pops, and when he whipped his head back around, he saw Mickey slumped awkwardly in the chair and Dominic carefully unscrewing a metal cylinder from his gun barrel.
“Oh my fucking god,” Bobby hissed before ducking down out of sight, and when he saw Deangelo failed to do the same, he grabbed Deangelo’s arm, yanking him down. “Okay, we really have to get out of here now.”
Deangelo shook his head, numbness creeping through him, straight down to his bones, and he couldn’t quite get his mouth to work. He dimly felt Bobby tug at him, and he let himself be pulled to his feet, stumbling in whatever direction Bobby pulled him.
~*~*~
Deangelo found himself unable to meet his uncle’s eyes the next day, felt his stomach twist every time Dominic entered the room, and he just kept picturing Mickey slumped over in the chair. He hadn’t known the man all that well, but he’d seen him at company picnics. He’d been nice, had a beautiful wife and a sweet baby daughter, and Deangelo’s uncle had casually ordered his death like it was nothing, like he’d been asking Dominic to pick up his dry cleaning.
His brother and he had joked about their uncle being a mob boss because he was Italian and wore Armani suits and just generally had that Mafia vibe about him, but Deangelo had never thought it was true. After what happened at the warehouse though, well, then he was absolutely convinced, and that scared him. He began to wonder if his uncle knew. Had Bobby and he left some kind of clue that they were there? The cigarette they’d been smoking, what had happened to it? Had they just dropped it where they stood, too shocked by what they were witnessing to worry about it being found?
“I can’t stop thinking about it, Bobby,” he muttered around another cigarette. His hand trembled slightly; they’d met at the cemetery and were seated with their backs against his parents’ gravestones. “Dominic’s like a fucking older brother, and he’s a hired gun for my Mafia boss uncle.” He shook his head, still feeling dumbfounded and confused, a band of panicked tightness across his chest. “What if he knows we were there? That we saw?”
Bobby shot him a skeptical look as he’d taken the cigarette. “How could he? There’s no way he saw us. We were quiet and he left before us. Dominic couldn’t have seen us either. He was busy.” He grimaced as he took a drag off the cigarette.
Deangelo swallowed hard. “The cigarette butt. They might’ve found it, and they’d know somebody was there.”
“Yeah, somebody, but they wouldn’t know it was us. You’re being paranoid, Angel.”
Bobby drew him close, placed a tender kiss on his lips, but it did nothing to alleviate his worry.
~*~*~
By the end of the week, he’d stopped sleeping, begun picking at his food during meals and taken up chain smoking, all the while trying to figure out what his uncle knew. He’d known it was a bad idea, known that he probably wouldn’t like what he found and that curiosity killed the cat, but he’d snooped in his uncle’s study, looking through his personal folders. He hadn’t found anything that came right out and said that Giacomo was a Mafia boss, but it had given him the impression that maybe his uncle’s export business wasn’t limited to just legal items.
He started wondering if his uncle had rivals, and how many other men had he ordered Dominic to kill? How much blood was on Dominic’s hands? At night, he lay awake, staring at his ceiling, too afraid to close his eyes because he knew that just behind the darkness of his eyelids lurked the image of Dominic’s expressionless face as he’d removed the silencer from his gun.
It finally reached the point where he couldn’t stay in the house anymore, where he jumped at the slightest noise and Francesca, the housekeeper who’d been his nanny since his birth, had begun to notice something was wrong and started asking him questions.
“You’re panicking over nothing, Angel!” Bobby snapped when Deangelo expressed his concerns. “God, I feel like every time we get together, you keep bringing this shit up! Let it go!”
Deangelo pulled away, stung by the harsh words, and he frowned, shaking his head. “I can’t, Bobby! A man died! How am I supposed to just let that go?” He crossed his arms over his chest, his hands gripping his upper arms. “I can’t stay there anymore. I’m gonna leave town. You should come with me.”
Bobby let out a snorting laugh that faded as he glanced at Deangelo. “Oh Jesus, you’re serious? Angel, we’re fucking teenagers. We just graduated high school. We can’t just leave. Where are we gonna go? How are we gonna pay for stuff?”
Deangelo shrugged. “My parents left me a trust fund. I gain access to it when I turn eighteen, which is six months away. We could get jobs and earn money to live on until then.”
“Or you could just stay here. Come on, Angel, you’re just being paranoid. You just gotta relax, okay?” Bobby took a step toward Deangelo, his hand settling on the side of his face, but Deangelo sidestepped the inevitable kiss.
Deangelo shook his head, his hands dropping away from his upper arms. “No. I just told you, I can’t stay in that house another second. If you won’t come with me…” He let his voice trail off, his teeth clenching. “Then I’ll just have to go without you. I’m sorry.”
He walked away, leaving Bobby staring at him in amazement. He went straight home, threw as many of his clothes and things as he could fit into a duffel bag and took the midnight bus out of town. Nevada gave way to Colorado, and he ended up in Aspen, bussing tables at a diner. The cook, an older man by the name of Kyle, befriended him, letting him crash in the loft above his garage.
The day of his eighteenth birthday, he’d been nervous as he’d tried accessing his trust fund for the first time. To his surprise, there hadn’t been any problems, and he grinned, his chest feeling lighter as he exited the building, significantly richer than when he’d entered.
His good mood lasted two days. Then he came home to find Dominic seated on his couch, those black leather gloves covering his hands. His entire body went numb; his spine feeling like it had been plunged into ice.
Dominic flexed his fingers, offering Deangelo a thin-lipped smile. “Pack your bags, we’re going home.”
Deangelo shook his head, stumbling back a step as Dominic rose to his feet. “No way, I’m not going back there.” His hand fumbled on the bookcase beside him, his fingers closing on the first book spine he could find. He snatched the book off the shelf and heaved it as hard as he could at Dominic’s head, then turned and ran out the front door, tearing off down the street.
He ducked into a ski rental shop, sequestering himself in one of the changing rooms until he felt his heartbeat return to normal. When he felt enough time had passed, he made his way back to the house, relieved to find Dominic gone. He had a feeling that Dominic would be back though, and with shaking hands, he packed up his belongings, left Kyle a note thanking him for his hospitality and headed down to the bank to withdraw his money. Aspen wasn’t safe anymore, and he had no set destination; he just knew he needed to get out of town and fast.
Somewhere in Ohio, as he handed his fake ID to a bartender, he came to the realization that he needed a new identity. The ID had been a gift from Dominic on the eve of his seventeenth birthday, and he hadn’t questioned it at the time; he’d just been thrilled to have a way to get into clubs.
He tapped the plastic card against the edge of the bar as he took a sip of his beer, his eyes tracking the movements of the bartender as he moved along, serving drinks to patrons. He licked his lips, figuring that the bartender might be able to help him out, and he waited until the man walked back over to him.
Shifting on the stool, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bed and nodding at the bartender. “So, if a guy potentially wanted to lose himself in a crowd and not run the risk of being found, how would he go about doing that?”
The bartender’s eyebrows rose, and his hand stilled on the spot on the bar he’d been wiping. “What, like disappear completely? New name and everything?” His eyes cut downward to the plastic card in Deangelo’s hand. “Why don’t you ask your buddy who gave you that card, kid?”
Deangelo grimaced. “Yeah, that’s not really an option. Look, can you help me or not? I can make it worth your while.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a crispy fifty dollar bill and gave the two ends a sharp tug in opposite directions before laying it on the bar and pushing it toward the man.
The bartender stroked his chin a moment, giving Deangelo the once over with his eyes. Then he glanced around before casually reaching down to pick up the fifty, folding it over and palming it into what Deangelo could only assume was his pocket. He hadn’t actually seen the guy’s hand disappear into a pocket or anything, but the fifty had vanished and he seemed to be warming up; that was all that mattered. “Tell you what, kid. Hang around for a while; I know a guy who has a friend that might be able to help you out.”
Twenty-four hours later, Kyle Aspen took the first steps into his new life.
