Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (29 page)

I had a Fiat on the lift. Grease up to the elbows at midnight. The customer was demanding, and wanted his car right away. I’d had to leave my father’s birthday party to finish the job.

“
Figlio
,” he said.

“Papa.” I didn’t look away from the transmission. It was a tricky thing.

“You have a woman now. You’re going to marry her.” He’d told me before that he liked Valentina, so I didn’t expect he was about to give me trouble about it.

“If her father agrees.”

“He will. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I’d rather win my own way.” I always did things my way because it made my mother happy when I was away from my father’s influence. But I liked my father; he taught me a lot, and I felt like a man around him.

He sat in silence for a while.

“What’s on your mind, Papa?”

“When are you leaving for Milano?”

He was obsessed with my going to law school. He asked a thousand questions about it, how much it cost, how the year was broken up, who my compatriots were. But he never got to the point until that night.

“August,” I answered.

“I’ve talked to every capo. None will take you for their
consigliere
.”

“Have you talked to yourself?” I looked away from the car long enough to make eye contact.

And it all became clear right then. He was worried I’d become like him. Even though he watched over me and gave me jobs, he was of two minds. He’d send me on an errand with one hand, because he didn’t trust anyone else, and with the other, he’d tell me to go to law school in the north to be away from the
camorra.

“You will never be my
consigliere.
” He tilted his chin up and rocked his hand at the wrist, two fingers up, which he did when he meant to be taken seriously.

“I’ll be a prosecutor.” I smiled up at the transmission. I had no intention of being a prosecutor or a defender. I wanted to do family law, and he knew it.

“I want you to keep that woman,” he said.

“Yes, Pop.
Bene
.” My father could have had any woman, but he pined for my mother, who despised him. He’d never change for her or her children. He’d never try and be a man he wasn’t. He was a crook and as damned to hell as they came, and he knew it. He’d risk me being a non-
camorra
lawyer for the love of keeping me from being like him.

At the time, it seemed easy. The path was straight and clear. My father taught me how to hold two opposing ideas in my mind at once, but he never taught me how to live those opposites.

How distorted the path must have become, to have gotten me to America. To Los Angeles, of all places. I was neither
consigliere
nor lawful. Neither husband nor free. And now, I was twisted with that red-haired beauty I could never resist or deny. I’d been on a death-march from the minute I saw her, with her porcelain skin and blue eyes. She was a swan, gliding across the floor, so straight that I had to see her bend.

Then I saw that mistake on her shoe, that imperfection inside that perfect package. It was a sign that I could have the unattainable, and when I touched her arm and spoke softly, she bent to hear me. She smelled like sweet olive trees, and she blushed like a virgin when she saw the paper on her sole.

I wanted to make her come from that moment. Not just come. I wanted her lost in such pleasure that mascara would streak across her china-white cheek.

“
Amore mio
,” I whispered after I exploded inside her.

“Capo,” she groaned. “Fuck.”

“Those words.” She had been so pure when I’d met her. Innocent, yet mature. Her purity was a choice. Sinful words never left her lips until I demanded them, and every time I touched her, she lost a little more spotlessness and came closer to me. Closer to the animal I was. The only moral choice would have been to leave her, but I couldn’t. Not because of guilt, even though I had a little of that. But her pull on me, and mine on her made it impossible for me to leave her, even for her own sake. I never felt so helpless in the destruction of graciousness as I did with my Contessa.

“Destroy me,” she said, as if I had to be told.

“You’re ruined,
amore
.”

She put her hand on my cheek and put her blue eyes to mine. Was it wrong to want her again? Was it immoral to have a desire that grew with the destruction of the object of it?

“Where were you?” she asked. “I don’t even know how long you were gone.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It was too long.”

“I agree.”

“You should make peace with Paulie,” she said.

How was I supposed to tell her that my old partner would not abide her in my life? He’d been very clear about that. As much as I loved Paulie like a brother, I couldn’t choose him. The last time I’d thrown Theresa from my life, my future had blinked out like an old bulb.

“I can’t,” I said. “That’s over.”

“But, Antonio—”

I put my finger on her lips. “What did you do today?”

“Nothing. I can’t leave here.”

“Yes, you can, but Otto has to go with you.”

“Shouldn’t he be working with you? Whatever it is you’re doing. Which you won’t tell me.”

“My most trusted man is with you. As he should be. And if he’s not around, you call me, and I’ll find someone for you.”

She sighed and looked past me to the ceiling. I’d been with many women in my life. I’d cared for some of them and loved only one before Theresa. She was the first who seemed so contented and discontented at the same time.

“You can go shopping,” I said. I almost offered her money, but the last time I’d done that, she’d laughed at me. Her reaction to my suggestion wasn’t much better.

“Shopping?” She turned her eyes back to me. “Are you joking?” The foul-mouthed girl who begged me to fuck her was gone. She was back to her haughty self. I wanted to fuck the arrogance right out of her, rip away the coating of innocence and take her to the dirty, sexy core again, because it was mine. Only mine.

“Get something nice for me,” I said.

“Antonio.” She put her thumb on my lip. “I need something to
do
. I need a
life.
”

“I can stay the night.”

She sighed again. There was something I wasn’t getting. Some key to a door I couldn’t find. She wasn’t fitting into my world. She had nothing to do, and she didn’t need me for anything, not support, not money. Nothing I was taught to give a woman, was right for Theresa.

She got up, clothed only in her poise. “Someone’s going to notice when I’m not around, and when they do, they’re going to tell someone else. And before you know it, you’re going to see my face on the news, and you’re going to wonder what the hell happened. So for your own good, Antonio, I’m telling you: tomorrow I’m leaving, and you’re not going to stop me.”

She spun on her heel and didn’t look back on her way to the bathroom.

We weren’t going to last, not as a couple. Not as lovers or sinners. She loved me. I owned her. Her heart was branded with my name. But she’d loved before, and she’d survived. She’d leave me as a matter of practicality.

I avoided death and imprisonment. I protected my territory and my partnerships as a matter of honor and business. But I didn’t fear losing those things. I’d had nothing in life, and having nothing again brought no fear.

When she walked to the bathroom without looking back at me, though, I felt fear.

She was my second chance to be whole and clean, and to have a life I’d failed at.

I wasn’t losing her.

But I was.

If I kept her under lock and key, I’d lose her. If I tried to keep her too safe, she’d evade me. If I worked too hard to keep her away from my business, she’d want to know more. She was right; she needed a life. I was going to have to provide her with one.

theresa

 think he bruised me. Or, more likely, I bruised myself on him. I was going to ache the next day, but if he wanted my body any time between now and then, I’d give it to him.

I leaned into the mirror. The sensitive skin of my neck was reddened and raw where his scruff had abraded me. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t as though anyone was going to see me anyway.

He came in quietly, no slammed-open door or yelling or grabbing. He just stepped in as if he had every right to.

He took my shoulders. The hands that had hurt were so gentle now, exerting just enough pressure to pull me back and kiss my shoulder. His lips curved themselves to the slopes of my body as if they’d been constructed for my pleasure alone.

“Contessa,” he whispered, “I want to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You. I want you. But I don’t know how to have you.”

“What if you don’t have me? What if you’re had? You leave it to me, and I’ll take care of you.”

“Antonio, we talked about this. I have money. I couldn’t give it all away in this lifetime.”

“I don’t mean money.”

In the mirror, he considered my shoulder, and brushed the curve of my arm with his thumb like a lit fuse slowly burning.

“What do you mean, then?”

“I mean your safety,” he said. “Give me your safety. Abandon any idea you can take care of yourself.”

I turned to face him, and he pressed me against the vanity. “But I can take care of myself.”

“No.” He held a finger up. “You can pay for things. You can manage a political campaign. You can walk into any room and talk to anyone. In your world, you are the Contessa. In my world, you are helpless.”

“So, what are you going to do? Send me out in a suit of armor?”

“Don’t tempt me.” He gave a smirk, and I loved and feared it at the same time.

“Antonio, really, what are the odds Paulie is going to do something stupid to me to win this battle with you? I come from a very large, notorious family. I was engaged to the District Attorney. I’m not trying to throw that in your face; what I’m trying to say is—”

“You’re not untouchable.”

“I’m not saying I’m untouchable. I’m saying messing with me would be crazy. Suicidal. I’m not only protected by you; I’m protected by the world. It’s just who I am. Honestly, my disappearing into this apartment for too long is going to cause more of a problem.”

“How?” His eyebrows arched like landmarks, and he looked as if I’d just told him Santa Claus was at the door.

“There are places I go and people I see. Even if I have no life that you can see, someone is going to notice I’m not picking up the phone or taking lunches at Montana’s. I’m not saying it’s easy to prove an absence, but someone’s going to connect that with you and me at Catholic Charities. Someone ambitious and smarter than me.”

“Not too many of those around,” he said.

“Well, thank you. But the facts remain: I need to be let go without a fuss from you. And soon.” I poked his chest. He pulled my arm up by the wrist and put it around his waist. “You said you were going to leave the world. Under
l’uovo
. You said you were getting out. Give Paulie your business and come with me.”

“You need to watch more movies,” he said.

“Believe me, I’ve seen plenty.”

“Then you know I can’t just divide my business and walk away. Even with everything the movies get wrong, they get that part right. And with everything the FBI thinks they understand, they get that one thing right: I can’t just walk away. I can’t surrender in the middle of a fight.”

“Why not, if you have no more skin in the game?" I said. "Why wouldn’t they just let you go?”

“Imagine this. I act like a reasonable man. I divide everything and walk away. I promise you, I’d be a dead man as soon as I turned my back. And you ask why. Why? It’s because I have information. I’ve done things.”

I started to ask what, but his expression shushed me.

“Without my family to protect me, I’ll be picked up by your ex and questioned. Accused. I can either talk or not talk. If I don’t talk, I go to jail, where I’ll be murdered to keep me from talking. Or I’ll talk, and I can choose between a witness protection program, where you can’t join me because of who you are and how well-known your family is. Or I can be murdered in jail for talking.”

“What if I made a deal with Daniel to leave you alone?”

He held a finger up in my face, jaw clenched. “Do not—”

I took his wrist and kissed the inside, on the rough, blue tattoo of Mount Vesuvius. I’d asked him if it had hurt to have it burned into such a sensitive area, and he’d laughed and said he practically slept through it.

“If you made peace with Paulie, you wouldn’t have to worry about him killing me.”

He pressed my hands together between us. “It’s been quiet these few days. Zo is working on rebuilding the shop. The Sicilians, Donna Maria and all of them, have stopped complaining that the Neapolitans are fighting. I’m just starting to breathe.”

“Can I speak my mind?” I said.

“How can you not?”

“I don’t trust her patience. When a political opponent doesn’t respond to an attack or an offer, he’s not just sitting there waiting for something to happen; he’s gathering ammunition. The worst thing you can do is give him time to arm himself.”

He pressed our hands together pensively then kissed my fingertips. “You have a devil of a mind, Contessa.”