to Paolo first and make him such a juddering mess he didn’t know which way was up. “I’m not saying that.”
Dante smoked more of his joint, regarding Paolo with lazy, weed-hazed eyes. “Do you know what I think, homie?”
Paolo fought the urge to roll his eyes. “Go on.”
“I think you’re a convenient hole for my brother to get his dick wet while he figures out how to be a real man again. That prison shit got him good, though you’re not the first pretty boy to turn his head on the outside, so don’t be thinking you’re special.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Then I’m wrong, and you get your way, don’t you?”
“You’d leave him alone if he asked you to?”
“That’s not what I said.”
The weed smoke was getting to Paolo. His brain worked sluggishly to collate anything Dante had said that actually made sense. “What are you saying then?”
Dante sat back on his vulgar couch and spread his legs. “Does it matter? What people say isn’t important, it’s what they do. But I have an offer for you if you want to negotiate, pretty boy.”
Paolo’s gaze drifted to Dante’s crotch, to his cock, where it strained against his underwear, and hysterical laughter bubbled out of his chest. “Are you for real? You want me to suck your dick? Yeah, okay, mate. I’ll jump right on that.”
Dante moved like a snake. He lunged from the couch, grabbed Paolo by the throat, and shoved him against the TV unit. He lacked Luis’s strength, but knowing there was a posse of rude boys outside the flat, Paolo let it happen.
He fell slack in Dante’s grasp, resisting the urge to break free and punch him in the face.
Dante leered. “I wasn’t asking you to suck my dick, bro. I don’t swing that way.”
“What were you asking me then?”
“I wasn’t asking you nothing. I’m telling you. My brother’s a road man, and he makes his own choices. The Luis I know would lose his shit if he knew his little bitch was up in my face making claims on him like this, so why don’t you take your homo self out of here before you get hurt?”
Frustration ripped through Paolo. He squirmed in Dante’s hold. “You really don’t care, do you?”
“About what? Your opinion on what my brother should be doing?”
“It’s not my opinion. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“So why are you here? Why are you in my yard talking about sucking my dick when my family business doesn’t concern you?”
“I don’t give a fuck about your business. I only care about Luis, and you’ve got to know whatever you’re doing to him is fucking him up. You can’t be so dense that you don’t understand that.”
Dante snorted. “That kid has always been fucked up. It don’t matter if he’s on the road or working at the damn supermarket, he’s never going to change, so if you’re waiting for him to turn into your ideal husband or whatever, you’re wasting your time.”
Paolo was beginning to believe he really was wasting his time, but not with Luis. It was Dante who was a gold-star oxygen thief, and the urge to tell him so danced with Paolo’s simmering temper. Only the knowledge that he’d be playing into Dante’s hands kept him quiet. Talk to him like he’s human. You might be the only one who ever bothers. But there was a reason for that. Dante wasn’t human. He was a cold pit of a man who’d forgotten how to be anything else. “Please,” Paolo ground out through gritted teeth. “Just leave him alone. He did his time for you so you could get on with whatever bullshit you do out here. Six years of his life. For you. Why can’t you just let him go?”
Dante’s expression changed. For a fleeting moment, he looked just like Luis; hurt, bewildered, and so lost Paolo almost felt sorry for him. But a heartbeat later, his face morphed back to the icy sneer that made Paolo hate him so much. “Newsflash, Paolo. Luis didn’t serve that time for me. He took the years to get away from me. Told me himself, so guess what? That’s how we roll now, so if your boy wants out of the life, he’s gonna have to do more years in the box, you feel me? And don’t count on him making it out alive this time. I got shanks everywhere, man.”
Paolo wasn’t up to speed on street talk, but the sentiment wasn’t lost on him.