Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (69 page)

antonio

he always resisted when she was tense, and I always forced my way through. This was us. This was how we were. I felt better afterward, no matter how I felt before, and our ferocity always lapsed into tenderness.

But she was crying, and she meant it. She wasn’t playing. I was about to hurt her, or I’d done it already.

Had I lost her?

My pain was almost physical. I took my hand off her mouth.

“Let me go,” she gasped.

“Why?”

I didn’t know why I asked. To fill the space, maybe. I stepped back with a heavy heart. I’d done something wrong. Maybe too rough? I didn’t have a minute to ask what exactly had gone over the line in the sand for her. I didn’t have a second to make it up to her. She buttoned her pants and walked out of the room.

I didn’t know the layout of the house, so I followed because I didn’t want to lose her. I didn’t fear much, but I did fear having her too far from me, and if she went outside, I thought I’d never see her again. That was a reality to me. Her disappearing into a puff of smoke, or getting shot or taken when my back was turned. I’d let her see her brother for thirty minutes while I met with her sister, and she wound up getting dragged down a stairwell by Domenico Uvoli.

I turned a corner in time to hear a door slam. She’d gone into a bathroom and closed the door without even turning on the light.

I knocked. “Contessa? Open this now.”

“Pounding on the door is not helpful.”

Had I been pounding? I realized my fist hurt. “Let me in.”

“No, please. Just leave me alone.”

“I will break this door down.”

“Go to hell. I’ll climb out the window.”

A window? Was she
botz
? Was she trying to drive me to the edge of a cliff? Because jumping out the window and rolling down the scrub-brushed hill half naked was not all right. My blood got hot with the thought. My skin tingled and curled on itself. If she knew that I was sure she’d be picked up by some
stronzo
as soon as she was out of my reach, she would have come out of that fucking bathroom right then.

“This is your last chance to come fucking
out
!”

No answer, just the sound of her weeping on the other side.

Fine. At least I knew she was in there.

I checked the objects in the room. Nothing. Carpet. Blinds. Electrical outlets. Enough. That was enough.

I tore down the blinds with my bare hands. She must have thought I was having a temper tantrum, and maybe I was. She’d separated herself from me by not telling me what I’d done, then again with that door that I could have torn off the hinges.

The crossbar that held the blinds separated from the wall, tearing plaster. I yanked off a vertical blind, cracking it. I used the edge of a piece to start unscrewing the plate from an outlet.

“Are you in there, Contessa?”

I needed to keep her in the bathroom. If she crawled out the window, I would rip the mountains off the earth and fling them at heaven.

“Are you there?” I shouted.

She sniffed.

“I don’t like too much talking,” I said. “Too much can get misunderstood. So if you say straight what I did, I can apologize and we can finish fucking. But you sit there behind that door, then we’re fighting, not fucking. That, I do not like.” I finally got the plate off.

She mumbled something.

“I can’t hear through the door.”

I got the plate off the outlet. It left a nice hole in the wall that would work for leverage.

I pulled up the blinds by the crossbar, extending them to their full length. I jammed one end in the hole in the wall the plate had covered, bending the outlet until I had room, then put the other end against the doorknob.

“It’s too much. It’s just too much. I can’t… we can’t… this is wrong.”

I bent the crossbar so it wouldn’t slide closed. Adjusted. “What’s wrong?”

I felt a little less angry knowing she was inside and staying there.

“You’re married. I can’t get past that.”

I didn’t even address that concern. It was ridiculous. I went outside. The vegetation at the side of the house was overgrown, and I walked through the brush like a bulldozer, breaking any branch in my way, angry as the floodlights at the back of the house. The rear wall was five feet from a near-sheer drop into the oblivion of the canyon, and at the back wall, the bottom of the bathroom window was six inches over my head.

I tucked my thumbs under the window. It was locked.

“Open this window,” I shouted.

“Are you nuts?”

I could see the top of the bathroom door. Saw the geometry of it change then snap back into place. She was trying to open it.

So eager to get away from me. Oh, this would not continue. Not for another second. I was going to make her understand that she was not to hide from me. Not to run. Not because of Valentina or anything. She was mine, and what was mine stayed in my sight until I decided it was safe to leave it.

I knew how to break a window. I’d broken a few dozen. I didn’t want to scare her or cut her, but that window was getting broken or opened, and I was getting in there to explain to her what all this meant.

Of course, no rocks in Los Angeles. You had to buy fucking rocks. Sick place, this, where you couldn’t find a rock to break a window. I lifted a flat flagstone from the path, exposing fat white grubs and a sprinkling of ants.

I tapped the stone. I loved that woman. She was as much mine as a part of my body, and she was upset about Valentina. I understood that. Sure, who wouldn’t be upset? But my wife had nothing to do with her. With us. With the fact that I couldn’t think about what to do about Valentina, or the son I hadn’t known I had, or anything, with Theresa on the other side of a wall

“Theresa,” I called as I put the stone on the windowsill and climbed up. I heard the shower running, and Theresa was nowhere to be seen. Good. I wouldn’t have to ask her to move to the back wall. Clinging to the siding and the wood window frame, I touched the rock to the top edge of the bottom window.
Tap. Tap
. Then something stronger, until the window cracked. I pressed the stone to the glass, and the crack widened into a poorly-defined web. A chunk popped onto the bathroom floor.

She poked her head past the curtain. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her hair stuck to her face. “Antonio, just leave me alone.”

I reached up and in, twisting the lock. “No. I’m not leaving you alone. Never.”

I slid the window up and crawled into the bathroom. My shoes hit the floor when she turned off the water, and I snapped the curtain open. She faced me, skin textured in drops of water, and she covered herself, ashamed of her nakedness.

“Put your hands down.”

“I need space.”

“You do not. You need to come back to me naked. That body you cover? It’s mine. Every centimeter of it.”

She shook her head and looked down into the middle distance. “I saw her. When she came into the room. I was behind the mirror.”

I took mental inventory again. The moment when I saw Valentina… what had I done? Had I kissed my wife? I didn’t think so. Had I held her? What had my expression been in that moment when all my grief and vengeance came to nothing?

“I know. Did Brower do this? Did he make you watch? Because I’ll kill him.”

“No,” she said. “I forced my way in. He tried to get me away. But I’m glad I saw. I wouldn’t have believed it otherwise.”

“Believed what?”

“Can I get dressed?”

“No.”

“She’s your fate. I’m just a distraction.” Her face dropped, fell apart, and she started crying. Her hands left her breasts and the space between her legs and covered her face.

I wanted to punch whoever had made her cry. I wanted to avenge her every pain, but how could I take vengeance on myself?

“Contessa…” I put my arms out for her.

“Don't touch me!” she shouted as if I were a scorpion in her bed. “You don’t get it. You don’t belong to me. You never did. We didn’t know. All right, that’s fine. But I won’t be the one to break a marriage. That’s forever, Antonio. Forever. Until death. You really need to think about that.”

“There’s nothing to think about.”

She stepped out of the tub, and I stopped her.

“
Aspetta,”
I said, looking around the floor. I pulled up the blue glass-coated rug and flipped it. The underside was safe. I put it in front of the tub and moved out of her way when everything in my body told me to get in her way. “Step on that.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Your feet are bare. There’s glass all over.”

Her jaw jutted out, but she stepped on the upside-down bath mat. “You old world guys… you think it’s fine to have a wife and fuck a mistress. Don’t think I haven’t been on the other side.” She held up her hand. “And before you even speak, I know this situation is different.” She dried herself off, apparently unaware of what her naked body did to me. “It’s crazy. Your dead wife shows up because she thinks you’re dead. There’s no precedent for this, I know. And its irony isn’t lost on me. But you’re not seeing this situation for what it is because you figure you can keep on sleeping with me while you figure out what the whole ‘Valentina and a son’ thing means. Well, I don’t figure it that way.”

She poked her feet through her pants, and I watched her beautiful legs disappear into the fabric. My balls ached. My thoughts were disorganized. All I could think about was getting inside her, like an adolescent.

“The way I figure it,” she continued, wrestling on her shirt, “you just had a priority shift, and you have to shift back to your wife.” Her head stretched through the neck of the shirt, and her red hair left wet splotches on it. “You belong with her. You speak the same language. Same country. Same community. Your dream to go back to Naples and live in peace? You can’t have it with me. You’ll never have it with me.”

She tried to open the door to end the conversation but couldn’t. She pushed, but I’d wedged it closed very effectively. She yanked the door back and forth. “Damn it, Antonio!” She smacked the door so hard she had to cradle her aching hand.

I took her injured hand and turned her back to the door. She had defiance in her face, and I wanted to wipe it away with a fuck so hard we’d both break.

“You listen to me,” I said, getting close to her and putting up my finger so she knew I meant what I said. “I want what I love, and I love what I want. What I want is you. You came to me as a lady and now you are a queen. I’ve never met a woman like you. I don’t even deserve you, but I have you. And having you, I’m not giving you up. Not for an old promise I made when I was a boy. Not for a place that rejects me. Not for a family that won’t have you. Your world is my world. Our world.”

“You have a child.”

Her eyes blazed, and her words were the end to a story. She was right. I had a son who was a stranger. I would never shirk my responsibility to him, but I needed a minute’s peace to get my head around what that meant.

“I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry. That’s outside all this.”

She shook her head slowly. “It’s not enough.”

“I don’t have anything else.”

“I love you. But I won’t share you.”

“I’m not asking you to share.”

“In the eyes of God?”

I pushed myself away from her. “You choose your sins like a woman.”

“I’ll kill for you again, because I love you still. I’ll kill for you a hundred times. But I’m not touching you. Not like a lover.”

I saw white hot. Did she think she was going to walk away from me? She was wrong.

“No other man will lay his hands on you as long as you live.”

She looked as if I’d slapped her, and I had a moment of regret. I’d only spoken the truth, but maybe I spoke it too soon. Or too hard.

“Capo,” she said softly, “there will never be another. I’m ruined.”

She blinked, and a tear fell. Then another. I wanted to kill the man who’d hurt her.

theresa

d made every effort to keep Valentina in a little compartment in my head. To stick her in a box, mark it “LATER,” and keep it on the shelf. But when Antonio tried to fuck me in the safe house, the box rattled off the shelf and fell to the floor, breaking apart in a spray of unwanted news.