Xanaphia
Evil Midweek Cutie
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2013
I ain’t never crossed a man who didn’t deserve it.
The lounge of the Gilded Cage Hotel and Casino was packed this evening, as it was most evenings. Men in sharp suits and women in elegant dresses, the seats were filled with bodies, and their hands with filled with drinks. Cigarette smoke made up the hazy atmosphere, obscuring things beyond the low lighting. Conversations were scattered and light, as everyone awaited the start of the show.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome to stage, the Gilded Cage’s own Mercedes Morello!”
The spot light opened, focusing its brilliance on the young woman. Light clapping and a few scattered wolf whistles could be heard as the band started up. The jazz singer positively glowed in her tight, floor length silver dress, with soft chestnut curls cascading down her shoulders. Warm brown eyes lit up with her smile, as rich and earthy as her voice, as scarlet lips opens to let out the long, low note. “Ooooooohhhhh.” Slender fingers slide down the microphone stand, and then back up as she moved up the scale, following the rhythm set by the piano player.
For over an hour, Mercedes’ songs enraptured her audience, like the sirens of myth. Her voice was smooth and dark, the kind of voice to lure numerous young men to their deaths. Not that she had ever killed a man, or even raised her fist to one, but more than a few had come up with a broken heart, alongside broken bones, at the hands of her husband’s men. Some at her husband’s hands himself, mob boss Vinnie Morello. He owned the joint, and half the city’s liquors connections. Chicago had been good the couple, even under the sweltering heat of August.
Her set ended, and conversation returned to the lounge. Men drank, women laughed, and Vinnie enticed the police commissioner with a hefty briefcase filled with a thousand reasons to look the other way. Mercedes sipped at her own gin and juice backstage, soothing her throat after the show she put on.
“You came in early on Me and My Gin,” she teased Tom, the trumpet player, poking him in the chest. The musician merely smirked at her claim, his teeth starkly white against his dark skin.
“So you listenin’ for me then, Miss Mercedes?”
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I?”
“I just figure ain’t no one listenin’ to me, when they could be listenin’ to you.” Mercedes and Tom laughed in harmony, until Mercedes reached for her drink. In the span of of a blink, Vinnie had appeared.
“You talkin' to my girl?” Vinnie barked, getting in Tom’s space.
“Naw, sir. Nuthin’ like that.”
“Stop it Vinnie. It don’t mean nothing. Just talking ‘bout the music.” She grabbed her husband’s arm, urging him away from Tom. Vinnie’s eyes filled with barely contained rage as he half turned to look at her, tugging his arm from her grasp.
“You ain’t gonna like it, if I see you talking to my wife again. Understood?” Vinnie’s words barely held on to the semblance of control.
“Understood, Mr. Morello.”
“Come on, Mercedes. You need to be getting to bed. Rest your pipes, and such,” Vince insisted, bruising fingers digging into her arms as he longed her along.