Justine was doubtful, and a little leery at the prospect; not a few of her clients were the kind of men who could make life very difficult for a young girl working alone late at night, but John had spread the word: mess with Justine, or disrespect her in any way, and he’d come calling. Those who knew him knew what a potent and very real threat that was, and passed the word to those who didn’t, and pretty soon some of the most dangerous men in the specialized world John moved in were bowing and scraping to ‘Miss Justine’ as though their very lives depended on it, which in many ways they did.
John also availed himself of her services; he needed his place cleaned too, he loved his baby sister’s cooking, and he liked the idea of giving her money the only way she’d take it; if she was earning it. He liked the thought of his kid sister using his place as a bolt-hole too after a night spent cleaning other people’s homes; often he’d come from work to find Justine still there, waiting for him with a coffee, a hot meal, and a willing ear, and he began to look forward to their loving, but innocent, trysts as they gradually reconnected as big brother and his baby sister; for him, it was the only way to finish the day.
It got to the stage where, if he came home as dawn was breaking and she wasn’t there, he felt cheated, and the rest of his day was colored by a feeling of loss and emptiness, as if something important was missing.
It was typical of him that he refused to examine these feelings too deeply; Justine was married, she was his sister, and, beautiful and desirable as she was, that put her forever outside the pale. He’d tell himself that every time the thoughts arose in his lonely moments, he pushed those thoughts down where he didn’t have to confront them, but the fact remained; little by little, and fighting it all the way, John was falling in love with his little sister, and it was something he couldn’t allow to happen.
It was getting more and more difficult, though, to ignore his feelings for Justine; increasingly, with every morning chat over coffee, Justine would reveal, sometimes unwittingly, just how her life with Giancarlo was spiraling downwards, the arc of its self-destruction plainly visible even if she was reluctant to admit it; he hardly came home, and when he did he was half drunk, surly, aggressive, and unreasonable.
His attitude didn’t turn physical though; drunk as a skunk or stone-cold sober, Giancarlo Pellini knew full well that laying a hand on Justine would be tantamount to signing his own death warrant; John Bastine took no prisoners, and gave no second chances when it came to his little sister.
As John and his sister moved closer together, helped in no small amount by her husband’s reckless neglect and unwillingness to engage with her, so John began to wonder if perhaps his feelings for her could be so wrong after all; with mama dead, and her daddy passed away, without him she had no-one. None of his friends knew that ‘Miss Justine’ and John were half-siblings; half of them thought she was his girl anyway, the other half paid it no mind and stepped carefully around her; Big John was watching out for her, ’nuff said.
The more John thought about it, and the more careless and distant Carlo became, the more it began to seem possible that he and his beautiful, neglected half-sister could make something together.
Fantasies of them together occupied a goodly portion of his pre-sleeping hours. His mind constantly conjured beguiling images of how she’d look naked, the feel of her pale, satin skin against his, the heat of her body as it pressed against his, the scent of her excitement as they moved against each other, the softness and excitement of her lips against his, all these pictures, and more, came to increasingly occupy his mind and distract his attention. To him, Justine Pellini was the sum total of perfect womanhood, and he knew he wanted her.
He was adamant in his mind about one thing, though; Justine was a married woman, she’d made vows before God and in her mind, and he wasn’t going to be the one to make her break them. If she came to him of her own accord, that was something else entirely, but he wouldn’t do anything to make it happen; she had to come to him.
Pretty much the same kind of turmoil was seething inside Justine; Carlo had locked her out of his world, he barely acknowledged her existence, never remarked on her work hours or what she did; the only interest he showed in her was when he’d ask, seemingly casually and almost in passing, how much she made from her new job. Justine always managed to dodge or deflect the questions; she assumed that, because the bills were paid, and there were no more final demands to trouble him, Carlo had stopped caring what she did or where she went. Carlo gave the impression that, as long as the bills were paid and she stayed out of his face, everything was OK again, and he’d stopped caring, or so she’d come to believe.
The only person who showed any interest in her and compassion for her predicament was her Johnny, and she found herself powerless to resist being drawn to him; when she lay alone in her bed after working all night, and barely being acknowledged by her husband as they passed in the hallway, she recalled and replayed that day’s conversation with Johnny, the play of light on his light brown hair, his soft Southern accent that he’d exaggerate just to see her smile when he did it, the way his steel gray eyes softened when he smiled at her as he talked, the air of calm competence that radiated from him.
“Why couldn’t I have married Johnny?” she sighed to herself, before pausing in shock that she could even think such a thing, and not for the first time; no matter how many times she thought it, though, it was still unthinkable; he was her brother…
And that was when her eyes would fill and she’d lie alone in her bed and try and not cry at the hollow, empty, mockery of a marriage she had, shackled by vows she dare not break to a man she’d stopped loving, who’d stopped loving her, while the man she was coming to love in ways that shocked her to the core was forever denied to her by an accident of birth.
*
Justine wasn’t stupid enough to tell Carlo how well her little business venture was going; in the little over a year and a half since she and John had put this together, she’d earned almost a hundred thousand dollars, their debts were being steadily reduced, they were keeping afloat, and she finally felt they were getting somewhere.
It wasn’t easy, either; she worked twelve-hour nights, six, sometimes seven nights a week, and her clients, John’s friends and colleagues, had shown their appreciation by paying her top dollar, cash, for the order she’d brought into their sometimes chaotic lives. They knew when they came in their laundry would be done, pressed, folded, and put away, their apartments would be sparkling clean, and, if they’d requested it, a hot meal would be waiting in the oven, and a dessert chilling in the fridge or cooling on the counter. They were willing to pay whatever it took to keep that kind of order in their lives, and the more she worked, the more the money rolled in.
The fact Justine was obviously someone special to Big John made her customers even more anxious to show their appreciation for the work she did; John Bastine was a name to conjure with, he was widely respected in the world they all moved in, and to be thought of as a friend and ally of John Bastine was desirable and highly sought after, because the alternative was something no-one wanted to even consider.
*
Her business prospered, and finally, and for the first time in her life, Justine felt like a winner. She was earning a lot of money, cash money, more than she’d dreamed this kind of work could ever net her, and more than enough to give them the kind of life they’d once believed they were going to have.
But Carlo wasn’t interested, or so it seemed; the more successful she was, the more sullen and withdrawn he became, and the further away he pushed her; the last thing she was going to do, for all kinds of reasons, was let Carlo know they had that kind of money.
There was no way to hide that much money, not easily or legally. Justine was wary of getting a safety deposit box, and she couldn’t very well put it in a bank; that would lead to awkward questions, beginning with where a young woman like her was getting so much cash from, so John had obtained a safe through one of his mysterious contacts in the security world, and installed it in his loft, which made life easier for Justine, and made sure she didn’t have to try and hide that much money at home from her wastrel husband.
This arrangement worked fine for all; it meant Justine could stash her cash before she ever had to go home, in the safest place she knew of, and with it safely in Johnny’s care, she could be absolutely sure Carlo had no way of getting to it. He’d tried to find where she was stashing her earnings, but all the obvious hiding places in the apartment were empty, and her checking and savings accounts usually held only a few hundred dollars, just enough to pay bills and buy groceries. Unknown to her, Carlo had tried on many occasions to find the huge amount of money he was convinced she was hiding from him, going through her closets and dressers time and again, even going so far as lifting the floorboards, looking for secret hiding places, but he came up empty every time. Wherever she was keeping her money, it was out of his reach.