Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) Read Free

own thoughts this way. My own thoughts were sometimes of a forbidden nature. It was just something in my character, a base, hormonal inclination of my senses that could be as easily stopped as a tidal wave.
    As we used to say in the outside world. A woman can dream, can’t she?
    But that day, the name of Gideon Fortunati rang in the stale air. Allred and the Stake President, Parley Pipkin, were both smoking cigars. The open window that let onto the schoolyard didn’t dispel all of the smoke. I hated being in there, but suddenly I was intent on setting their paper doilies exactly so on their side tables, in making sure the fans cleared the air but didn’t muss their hair.
    “Military weapons, M16s, AK47s, MP5 submachine guns, lots of assault rifles,” Allred was telling Parley.
    I had to dally until they brought up this Gideon Fortunati guy again. I didn’t care if he was an arms dealer. People had to resort to some low, amoral things in this life of travails. While, of course, I advocated peace—I had constantly received inspirations that I needed to stay in Cornucopia, remain placid, and protect what remained of the bosom of my family—I wasn’t one to deny a man the right to make a living. And, I suppose, the fact that he was an outsider piqued my interest too. I needed constant reminders of the life outside, reminders that there were other ways of doing things.
    “Where’s he getting them from, the Mexicans?”
    Allred spewed a thin stream of cigar smoke. “I don’t know and I don’t care, Brother Parley. He’s the middleman so we’ve got no connection to them beaners.”
    “Or those pinkos, whichever the case may be.”
    “Russkies, pinkos, my point is, I don’t care the origin. Mr. Fortunati’s made sure they’re all clean.”
    “No serial numbers on any of the irons?”
    “None. Leastways, there’d best not be.”
    Parley asked, “If there are so many, why don’t we sell some?”
    Allred drew his head back like a lizard. I’d seen that look many a time before, right before he struck. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and his head even seemed to take on a reptilian shape. “Sell? And risk being connected to an arms shipment?”
    Parley fluttered his hands. “Never mind, Prophet. We need all the protection we can get here in Cornucopia.”
    “You bet your ass,” the lizard said. Then he looked up at me. I was aimlessly polishing a silver sugar bowl with the hem of my apron. “Ain’t you got nothing better to do, woman? Why you want to be listening in on the conversation of men, anyway?”
    “I wasn’t listening,” I protested innocently. “As you know, Prophet.” But I put the silver bowl down and made my demure exit.
    Parley yelled after me, “Sister Mahalia. We want them little meat popovers. Nice and glazed!”
    He meant empañadas. Being a mixed race, part Latina woman myself, it irked me when people couldn’t use the correct name for things.
    I was frustrated, too, that I hadn’t heard more about Gideon Fortunati. I shuffled back to the kitchen in my sensible shoes. On the outside, I hadn’t been forced to wear this restrictive, dull garb. After five years of looking exactly like every woman in Cornucopia, I still wasn’t used to it.
    “Kimball,” I told my friend, “they want those extra glazed. Here, you keep crimping them. I’ll beat some eggs.”
    But I guess I was sighing heavily while beating the whites with a fork, because Kimball soon asked, “They say anything about that Mr. Fortunati guy?”
    “ No ,” I said, with more force than was necessary. “And it’s driving me up a wall. I have a feeling he’s handsome.”
    “You said he’s in a biker club, right? He probably looks like that Mr. Grillo guy who came last year to sell arms.”
    “Oh, Lord! ” The bowl nearly slipped out of my hands, I was so aghast. “That Mr. Grillo guy was a nasty condom breath! His filthy pants were sagging low, he smelled like motor oil and something worse, and his