1. Chapter One

Chapter One

S omething is exciting about the thump of wheels on a runway.

Or, generally, there was. This trip, this touchdown, was not leading me into a bacchanalia on some tropical island or to a hedonistic ski trip at the tip of a European mountain range. No, this meeting of rubber to asphalt was not going to result in parties until dawn, sadly. What that sickening thud and lurch forward meant this time was a sit down with my father.

Never a fun time. And since I lived for fun times…

To be fair, I might have stepped over the line just a little. But in my defense, how was I to know that one of the two guys I got caught giving blowjobs to on the patio of my Fire Island condo would turn out to be the closeted son of a Supreme Court justice. All I knew about the man was that he was hung like a Belgian Draught horse and enjoyed sharing. Everything. His vodka, his cocaine, and his dick. Not that I was usually into chem sex. I tended to like to recall whose cock was in my ass, but he had tons of powder so I'd agreed before the oral treats to indulge this once.

Looking back at that decision, I had to wonder if I should have stuck to poppers for that added buzz. Sure, I knew they weren't really "in" anymore, but I liked them now and again. But I'd let the boys talk me into a line and somehow a few hours later we were being frisked and fingerprinted. Honestly, who the fuck on Fire Island was that much of a jerk to call the cops on a trio of men sucking each other off on their terrace?! Did some straight old Puritan lady sneak in just to cause havoc among the queers? How did that even happen? Had someone smuggled the bitter old bitch in on the ferry stuffed into one of those precious old steamer trunks that was all the rage? Okay fine, all the rage for me and if Arlo Bonetti was saying steamer trunks were the thing for fashionable travel, then motherfuckers all over the world had best be using them.

I was a gay icon on social media. I did have over two million followers. I was a damn influencer with scads of people hanging onto my every post with bated breath.

"Excuse me, Mr. Bonetti, we're disembarking now."

The soft voice of a tired flight attendant broke into my little mental round of back pats. Glancing around, I noted the plane was empty. Yes, there were other passengers on this flight. Part of my father's punishment for what the press was now calling ‘The Fire Island Fellatio Fiasco' which, sure, made me look bad—as had the images of me on my knees tonguing two massive pricks at the same time—but was also pretty clever. I liked to acknowledge those who came up with witty lines that grabbed the attention of the masses.

"Thank you," I whispered, wiggled out of my economy seat—the sheer fucking horror—and walked down that aisle with all the flair Arlo Bonetti possessed, which was a shit ton of flair. Giving the flight crew a tiny smile and nod, I hoisted my vintage leather rucksack higher on my shoulder, the sounds of a packed airport growing closer with each step I took. Before I exited the sky bridge, I slipped my shades on to avoid the rush of possible photographers. I was sure that some of the people seated around me had known who I was, or perhaps they were simply stunned by the mere sight of such a gay man.

The man next to me kept sneaking peeks, but I suspected he was merely trying not to let his arm brush mine. He'd seemed oddly put off when I wiggled past him to sit by the window. Obviously, my father's personal assistant, Lowell, had at least done me this one favor. I hated aisle seats. Not that I sat in them often. Usually, I flew to my destinations on one of the Bonetti personal jets, but I had seen videos of people in aisle seats online. One showed an older woman being bonked on the head when some skinny blonde chicklet lost control of her carry-on bag as she removed it from the overhead. I mean, hello, bitch, control that bag or leave it at home.

I did not wish to suffer a concussion before facing down my father. I'd need all my wits. And a coffee. I veered to the left after passing my airline's arrival/departure desk, pulling a cap out of my bag as I moved into the throngs of people moving through Sacramento International. No one seemed to be following me as I dipped into a Starbucks. Once I had my coffee in hand, I wiggled out of the shop, sipping gingerly at my drink, and made my way to the arrival gate to meet up with Lowell, who, I was sure, had already picked up my bags.

Lowell Perry stood out among the harried parents, whiny kids, and old folks tottering out the doors to find a cab. He was a tall man, silver-haired but not due to age. He had gone totally white in his early twenties, much like Anderson Cooper, and wore that shock of ivory locks proudly. If I was into older men, I'd have hit on him daily, but I wasn't and he wasn't into precocious rich boys who like dick. Lowell was into…well, to be frank, I had no idea what he was into. He never spoke about his private life. Probably the poor bastard didn't even have one. My father demanded a lot from the people in his employ, and those who lived on his bank, that being me, his only child.

By Lowell's well-polished shoes sat nothing. I gaped at him, my coffee in hand, as I drew closer.

"Seriously?" I asked him. He ran a hand down the front of his dark blue suit and nodded. "Did he tell you not to get my bags?"

"Your father insisted that I not," Lowell replied with nary an inflection. I studied his face, the dark brown eyes that rarely held any kind of emotion, and sighed.

"Fine. Oh my fucking goddess, he is being such a douche. Did you know that he made me fly back in economy? A kid sneezed on me the entire flight. I could feel the spittle flowing up between the seats to pepper my arm. There isn't enough hand sanitizer to counter grody kids' germs. Also, and this is maybe the worst, but not really, the guy next to me wore a red ball cap and sneakers with holes in them. Holes, Lowell." I gesticulated and nearly clocked some lady pushing a stroller with a screaming infant. She was pale, her sweatshirt damp with baby puke soaking into the shoulder. She looked like she was ready to leap into a jet turbine. That was why I was never having kids. All the projectile vomiting and sneezing. "I mean, why holes? It takes no time at all to ensure you always look good."

"I'm not sure the hour that you spend before leaving the house would be considered no time to most." He glanced at me flatly.

I took a sip of coffee. "Whatever. Can you at least point me to where one finds their luggage?"

He did as asked. I took off in a huff after shoving my coffee into his chest. When I got home, I was going to give my father a large chunk of my mind. Sure, I got it that he was upset. But he was always upset about something. Forcing your only child to endure such atrocities as economy seats was just cruel. Making said child wade through the unwashed throngs to claim his six bags was right up there with international war crimes, I was sure. I'd check the United Nations website when I got into the limo. If I ever made it to the limo toting my own bags. Honestly, the least Lowell could do was offer to help. I glowered at him the whole way to the long black limo parked out front. When he climbed into the back without aiding me to load my bags, I called him really bad names. Out loud. Not inside my head.

Franco, our driver, didn't assist either. He just sat behind the wheel looking sheepish while I battled with my luggage. It seemed my sire had enlisted the entire staff to be snotty to me today. Seems I may have misjudged just how rabidly pissed off Dad really was.

After throwing out my back from tossing that adorable vintage steamer trunk into the boot—as my British followers termed it—I slung my ass into the backseat.

Lowell was tapping away on his tablet, his attention never leaving the iPad resting on his lean thighs. I crossed one leg over the other as Franco eased away from the curb, his dark eyes guiltily flicking back to me as I stewed. After a moment, I blew out a breath, swiveled my head in Lowell's direction, and waited for him to glance up. He would soon since the heat of my glare could peel the paint off the side of a brick building. Franco honked at a taxi swerving in front of us, soft Spanish flowing into the rear.

"Is there something that you wish from me?" Lowell asked, glancing at me over the top of his little glasses.

There were a lot of things that I wished for from him. Help loading my bags was just the tippy top, but since that was already a memory, I rolled my jaw back and forth and drew a long drink of air in through my nostrils.

"How mad is he?" I asked in a shaky whisper that sounded rather like five-year-old Arlo instead of twenty-four-year-old Arlo. Why did the prospect of sitting in that dark-paneled office of Tommaso Bonetti always make me feel like a child? If my mother were alive, she would buffer my father's ire, but she had passed when I was nine, leaving me alone in a mansion the size of the Golden One Arena with only a nanny for company. Oh, and Lowell of course, but his interest in a sniveling child was nil, something that I didn't understand then but fully grasped now. Kids were gross, whiny, and clingy.

"Your father is furious," Lowell replied softly. Whether he was being circumspect because Franco was listening or because he felt bad for me, I couldn't say. Lowell was a walking, talking ice statue most of the time. His temper suited well as he tended to calm the more fiery Bonetti temper my father possessed but rarely let loose. Lowell stared at me as if expecting me to say something erudite. His hand went to the buttons on the door. The privacy screen slowly rose, closing off Franco from whatever was about to be said in the rear of the Benz. "I'm not wholly sure what aspect of this latest debacle has him angrier. The fact that you didn't possess enough common sense to take your oral pleasures inside or the fact that one of the men you were pleasuring was the son of a Supreme Court justice who, famously or infamously depending on your particular point of view, recently released a lengthy personal dissenting opinion about marriage equality."

"In my defense, he never mentioned that his father was a hateful bigot," I explained and got an eye roll from Lowell. "He never said a word about his father being a justice or even a lawyer. We just hooked up at a party, then this other guy showed up and we kind of got a little toasted and ended up back at my condo and…" I exhaled loudly while Lowell studied me with that gimlet eye of his. "I didn't know."

His lips pursed slightly, the only sign that he was experiencing any kind of emotion. "Perhaps you should have asked a few pertinent questions before the zippers went down?"

"Right, like you just go up to some hot guy at a rave and enquire about what his daddy does?" I scoffed and took my now cold coffee from the cup holder on my side of the door.

"No, obviously, but you could show a bit of discretion, Arlo. It's not asking that much from a man of your age and stature to be prudent on occasion."

Knowing that I'd get nowhere with him, I sulked and sipped all the way back to Pindes Hill, the small community where one of our many olive tree farms—and our home—were found here in the States. Pindes Hill sat about forty miles west of Sacramento. The views as we rode along in stilted silence were spectacular. The Klamath Mountains and the Cascades robbed those who visited this area of breath. Mount Shasta sat far off in the distance as we neared the two thousand acres of Bonetti lands in this area. High peaks capped with snow, crystal clear lakes, streams that ran fast and furious in the spring, and cinder cones made up the area until you reached the foot of the mountains where the land began to climb, the trees changed, and the air grew colder.

I'd grown used to the views. Perhaps I was jaded or simply had seen the beauty of this locale too many times. Maybe I equated the rugged nature to a lonely childhood spent with everything a boy could ask for but not getting the one thing he needed the most.

Chewing on the lid of my empty cup, I watched as we passed hundreds of acres of olive trees as we neared the manse behind the stone arches. Workers milled around in the groves, doing what I couldn't say. Dad had tried for years to get me to show an interest in the family business as it would all come to me upon his death. I had no interest in farming at all. Not even from afar. This house—it had stopped being a home when Mom died—sitting up on a rise to overlook the empire that generations of Bonetti's had forged, could wash into the sea as far as I was concerned.

Row after row after row of trees, most topping out around thirty feet, every one heavy with varieties of Pendolino, Liccino, and Kalamata olives ready for picking, welcomed me home. Harvest would start soon…it was mid-September. The gathering would run through the middle of November. The crews in my great-grandfather's day would have used ladders, moving from tree to tree, picking each olive by hand. My father and his father before him had invested in massive machines to do the work, the shakers grasping the trees and then vibrating them, knocking off the olives that would fall into a large tarp. As a kid, I would have a fit if my nanny didn't take me down to see the ‘dinosaurs' moving through the groves. The tarps that spread out around the shaker arms to catch the small green fruit reminded me of the frilled dino in Jurassic Park.

Now, seeing the harvesters gathering for the cultivation of a year's worth of tending did nothing for me other than fill my chest with the resignation that I'd not see my father for weeks on end, if at all. He was always moving, flying from Italy to home, keeping an eye on his kingdom as if all that gold in his dragon horde could replace his wife. I had news for him, it wouldn't. I knew that firsthand. I'd been fucking trying to fill that void inside me for over fourteen years. And so, if he was never home, why should I be? Our riches allowed me to stay one step ahead of the memories.

"Dawdling won't help. You might as well go in," Lowell said, snapping me out of the fog I'd floated into. I blinked, pressed my fingertips into my dry eyes, and nodded dully.

"I drifted off," I lied, moving out of the car without waiting for Franco to open the door. I was sure my father was at the window of his study, drapes pinned back, a glass of dark Malbec in hand, viewing what was taking place in the driveway. I took a moment to stretch, eyeing the rambling sixty-six thousand square foot Tuscan-styled home, purposefully not looking up at his window. Our home had been renovated the year after the cancer had claimed my mother, my dad's meager attempt to clear the grounds of her ghost perhaps. My great-aunt Ginerva, the one who kept a dour eye on the Italian businesses from her villa overlooking the Arno, had sent over her own decorators and contractors to ensure the place looked as it should. Should in her opinion, obviously.

A light breeze tickled the palms lining the drive.

"He's waiting," Lowell reminded me as I stretched my arms over my head. Franco stood by the trunk, lips flat as a papercut, dark cap on his head, unable to assist me. "Best not to make him wait."

"Can you at least put my bags in the foyer?" I asked the driver and got a sad shake of his head. "Okay, yeah, no worries."

Ten minutes and a gallon of sweat lost later, I had dragged my luggage into the foyer, uncaring if the trunk scraped the Italian marble tiles. Winded, I glanced up at the curling stairs that led to the second floor. The soft hum of a vacuum being run somewhere on the first floor reached me as I began the climb. I glanced back to see Lowell and Franco at the bottom of the stairs, one with a cap crumpled in his hand and the other with his shiny silver tablet, watching me stride closer to the riser. I gave them a flip little smile as if I hadn't a care in the world, flung my scarf over my shoulder, and ticked my chin upward.

If Tommaso was going to hit me with a double barrel blast of parental displeasure, I was going to make sure he got a flamboyantly cheeky target.