TIME TO DANCE

“Buy yourself something nice,” he drawls in accented English, and the city trembles again, like it knows the chaos that’s been brought to it.

He slides into an inconspicuous black car and lounges against the leather seat with his legs spread and jacket thrown open, breathing in smoke and exhaling strife. He stays like this until the car creeps to a stop in front of an imposing (familiar) club, stewing in his own anxieties and methodically ashing cigarette after cigarette, until his driver glances reproachfully back at him. A signal to go. A signal he must return to a life that nearly ruined him. A signal his break is over, and now he must attend to the chaos the heist has erupted in, fear in his veins and throat. The car door swings open noiselessly, sunshine streams in, and Ciro’s mouth twists into a wolfish grin.

(Because it’s expected. Because he’s nothing if not Capecchi. Because he came back from the dead and learned no lessons from it at all.)

Still, he feels small as he strolls through the Victorian’s grand entrance, feels undeniably unwelcome as a cool wind whistles past him and the door clicks shut behind him, feels out of place even as he locks gazes with a familiar face, lurking among the velvet sofas and heady smoke and glittering chandeliers.

“It’s been awhile,” Ciro says around his cigarette, head tilting to one side. His dark hair bounces with it; it’s longer and lighter, not gelled, soft curls untamed, a laziness he’s grown used to in his weeks away from the melodrama of the heist, although the garishly colored suit stretched across his shoulders nullifies the possibility of a complete transformation. Some things simply never change, and when he continues, words spoken with playful vitriol through a tight grin, it’s clear that his brash Capecchi wit is one of them: “Miss me?”

“I wonder when those Lohovary bastards are going to make their next move,” the fissure says absently, edges rippling, so full of blackness that it threatens to spill out, to taint anything unfortunate enough to stand in the way. It—or is the chasm somehow still, after all this time, a he, in spite of all of his grotesqueries, in spite of all that he has lost, in spite of his claws and his teeth and his ichor, spilled out onto the cavern floor?—makes a soft noise of disapproval, a sound plucked from somewhere between contempt and disapproval. “I’ve always fucking hated chess.”

Monaco ━ oh, how it had her frigid, splintered heart. It was a city that consumed her all at once ━ a city she had visited when life went quiet and no work was to be done. France’s greedy, lustful hands wrapped around the length of her neck and refused to let go. It was selfish ━ it was lonely. No one accompanied her but that’s how she wanted it, wasn’t it? Even so, people knew better than to approach the rotting beauty in her time of self-loathing and wrath.

She had one too many flutes of champagne, the alcohol thriving in her frostbitten veins. And though she should have stopped after her fifth, the bartender of the Monte Carlo was a little too eager to drown her sorrows in the expensive, gold-encrusted liquid.  

Adelaide found herself nearly stumbling to the nearest balcony ━ she needed air, she needed to breathe. The crowds, the incessant, bullshit laughter, the sight of people actually enjoying themselves ━ it made her nauseous and unsure of herself. So she’s opted for isolation, the strap of her Givenchy dress hanging from her shoulder like past lovers once had. The wind is biting and harsh but she’s completely numb. 

And just like that, her moment of silence and self-deprecation is abruptly torn from her, a familiar voice haunting the depths of her ears. So she’ll turn her head slightly, eyebrows furrowing in near vexation. But she can’t seem to muster up a biting comment ━ she’s too indulged in the fact that they’ve found her sniveling and falling apart at the seams. It disgusted her. 

“Don’t.” Her brash tone is fleeting, yet to the point. She wants her sudden, undesired company to disregard her tears ━ disregard her disheveled presence. Because this? This is not the Adelaide that people are supposed to know. When they’re consumed by her existence, they are meant to feel fear ━ not god-damn pity. 

Drunk off glory, high off victory and a pinch of cocaine, Ciro Capecchi is a goddamn mess, and he knows it, he adores it. His favorite casinos are the Lees’, the ones riddled with lies and theft, the ones where he can hide cards up his sleeve and get away with it, but tonight, the Monte Carlo, in all of its palatial elegance, is serving as a satisfactory substitute, and God, is he grateful. Ever since Shanghai, ever since the Lohovary twins played their final hand and hedged their bets, Ciro has been jet-setting across the globe, avoiding his home, avoiding his family, avoiding the sweet beckon of Palermo. It’s a siren’s call if he’s ever heard one, and the temptation to return, to bathe himself in the radiance of his most favorite place, is sickening. He needs this now, tonight, if only to keep himself from Sicily’s shores.

His tie is loose, his hair is mussed, and the first couple buttons of his shirt are undone when he steps out onto the balcony, nearly gasping for relief from the muggy interior of the casino. At first, he doesn’t quite realize who he’s with; he’s preoccupied, his attention stretched in a thousand different directions, the glass in his hand nearly drained of its liquor, the burn on his nostril still fresh, and then he notices, and then he speaks without thinking. His words are honeyed, sweet, but he knows that she knows better than to believe it. Funny seeing you here, he murmurs, and Adelaide’s response is as sharp as a knife, sharper than the one that split him open just a few weeks ago. Ciro wants to laugh, but he doesn’t; he just draws closer.

“Excusez-moi,” he starts, sarcasm thick on his tongue, and even though she’s half a dozen feet away from him, he’s almost certain that Adelaide can smell the liquor on his breath. If he had access to any more of his faculties, he would find it nauseating. Swallowing what little is left of his scotch, Ciro moves closer, places the empty glass on the sturdy concrete railing encasing them, and grins like he’s about to share some great secret with her. “We have to stop meeting like this.” He gestures vaguely around them, at the balcony, at his suit and her dress, at their equally wrecked appearances, his drunken dishevelment and her drooping strap, but that’s all that it takes to get his point across. The ball feels like it happened a lifetime ago, but it didn’t, and they both know it, don’t they?

The cigarette burns down between her fingertips, betraying the fact it has remained there instead of near her lips, smouldering ash dangerously close to falling against her skin.  She couldn’t say she would care. The discomfort it would cause may not even be noticed, at least not beyond fleeting immediacy.  Her mind is preoccupied with a great many things more than the present, and while she is loathe to admit it, Ciro Capecchi is one of them. His past far more than their current, when she wonders not about the state of his face but about how such a thing had transpired. Wonders how he had reached such a decision to so vaguely conceal it, wonders whether he thinks it a vulnerability or a badge of honour. 

She is physically placid while he can’t seem to stop moving, but it is only his words and not his actions that require a response. She thinks with honesty, of shaking her head to relay some of the thrumming beneath her skin, of telling him ‘No, you aren’t.’ Of actually furthering the notion that they should do something, anything; just move, breathe, live like there’s no tomorrow (and not so long ago he had faced the expectation of that); no personal guilts or perceived judgements forthcoming.  Instead, a mere murmer from her lips, a hmm of polite agreement, as she shakes the ashes free to the ground (not because she noticed, but to look alive). “Can most really settle so soon after them.” Whether she’s referring to the Fiori’s or Lohovary’s is for him to decide. 

“Apparently, they can,” he mutters, part of him amused, the other annoyed. He hates feeling useless like this, hates lying in wait for the unknown. Without a new job on the horizon, boredom quickly consumes Ciro, and he absolutely loathes it, even though he’s been like this for nearly as long as he can remember. Even as a boy, younger than Isabel, he never felt quite full without some sort of excitement thrumming in his life. Maybe that’s why he turned to parties, to drugs, to the sweet burn of liquor sliding down his throat. Maybe that’s an excuse.

Either way, here he stands, unable to keep still, with a girl six years his junior. In a way, she reminds him of a former version of himself: placid and aloof and disconnected from the world. He was like that too at her age, but he suspects that their reasons are different. He was angry, broiling beneath his cool exterior, drowning in indignation and plotting how best to get retribution. Against who, he still isn’t sure. Isabel seems different, but Ciro can’t figure out precisely how. At the very least, she doesn’t seem resentful, as so many teenagers do, and that alone is difference enough for him.

He notices, after a long moment of studying her, that she doesn’t even seem perturbed by their circumstance. With smoke curling off of her cigarette, Isabel looks the picture of French elegance: a bombshell blonde wearing her indifference on her sleeve. It’s a demeanor that is both intimidating and envious, and Ciro can’t help but smile as he notes it. “They’re still a threat to us, you know,” he murmurs, his words soft, a gentle warning wrapped in hesitancy. Just like Isabel skirts around a name, he does, too. The Fioris and the Lohovarys both tread that line, and he isn’t sure who scares him more. “We’re all sitting ducks right now.”

He remembers the feeling of Charles’ fist impacting his jaw well: first shock, fingers crumpling against bone, bone thudding against fingers, then pain. In the days that have passed, the pain has largely subsided, but his chin is still tender to touch, still a mottled shade of purple, still swollen and ugly. Even so, Ciro does not regret provoking Charles at the Barking Dog; the skin stretched taut over his ribs, stabbed and now stitched, is still bruised itself, a greenish shade of yellow beneath his shiny blue jacket and crisp white shirt. Now just barely out of death’s grasp, he cannot fathom regretting something that amused him in the moment simply because of where it led.

Still, as he speaks to his companion, Ciro keeps his voice quick, his tone buoyant, his face angled away. They are all transparent attempts to gloss over the bruise; the discoloration is concentrated on the left side of his jaw, but webs up toward his eye and down toward his neck in equal measure, too obvious to ignore. He lights a cigarette between his lips, fidgets openly, tries to mask his discomfort as he murmurs to the person beside him, “It’s strange, isn’t it? Three weeks of nonstop work, and now… nothing.” His pause is brief, his chuckle smoke-scented. “I can’t be the only one restless, can I?”