When Smiles Fade (37 page)

Ethan took off his belt, grasped her arm in a tight grip, and dragged her into the bedroom. “Take your clothes off,” he ordered.

“No, Ethan, I
won’t
take my clothes off,” Emma told him firmly. “And you’re right. Things
are
going to change around here. I’m not your kid. You can’t control me anymore.”

Emma didn’t see the first punch coming, and it threw her off balance.

“Well, Miss Mouthy,” Ethan said in an ominous tone, “somebody is getting a beating for leaving. You can take your clothes off and accept what’s coming to you, or I’ll give Izzy the beating that is meant for you.” Then he turned and started for the bedroom where the child was sleeping.

“I
hate
you!” Emma said with all the venom she could muster as she began removing her clothes one by one.

Ethan flayed her with his belt until the welts on her back and legs were so swollen they started to bleed. To have her at his mercy again was a real turn-on for him. It made him feel powerful and in control once more. When he was done, he was so aroused by the punishment he had given Emma that he climbed up behind her, his penis erect, and entered her fast and furiously.

In the morning, when Ethan had left to meet his friends, Emma somehow limped into the kitchen, followed by a still sleepy Izzy who had just woken up, and took out the jar of honey and a cloth.

“Izzy?” she said softly. “Sweetie, I need you to put this honey on my scratches, okay?”

Izzy examined the “scratches” with a critical eye. “They look like pretty bad scratches, Aunt Em. How did you get them?”

“I don’t want to talk about that now, baby. Just put some honey on them, will you?”

“All right, Aunt Em.”

Izzy gently applied the honey to the wounds, muttering all the while about how ugly they were. “Aunt Em,” she added, “don’t forget that when I grow up, I wanna be a lawyer so that I can tell the judge to send people to jail.”

Emma smiled in spite of her agony. “You can be anything you want to be, sweetheart,” she told her.

Izzy’s voice rose in excitement. “Me and Sydney watch lawyers on TV all the time! Lawyers tell judges that people should go to jail because they do bad things. That’s what I’m gonna do, tell the judge to send Ethan to jail because he’s mean to us.”

Emma’s voice caught in her throat. She didn’t want her niece exposed to this kind of life, never wanted her to imagine that it was acceptable.

“That’s great,” she responded, trying to match the little girl’s enthusiasm. “I hope that someday you do become a lawyer. Another thing, Izzy. I want you to understand that when Ethan does mean things, he’s wrong. He should not be doing them.”

“Then why don’t you stop him?” the child retorted with the logic of a savvy forty-year-old, startling and shaming Emma. “If it’s wrong, he shouldn’t be allowed to do it. That’s what you always tell me.”

“You’re right, Izzy, you’re so right.”

“Aunt Em,” the child said suddenly, moving off on a tangent, “I miss Sydney.”

“Me too, baby,” Emma agreed.

Still lying on her belly, she stretched out an arm and Izzy snuggled into her.

All Emma could think about was how to end this once and for all.

When Emma finally felt able to walk without limping, she made it to the phone and called Katie.

“Oh my God!” her friend exclaimed. “Where have you been? Ethan has been like a lunatic, looking for you.”

“I’m back at the apartment now,” Emma said tiredly. “We spent some time in Philadelphia. I was hoping Ethan wouldn’t find me, but he did.”

“You don’t sound good. Did he hurt you? What did he do to you?” Katie asked, dreading the answer.

“He beat the hell out of me with his belt,” Emma replied, the fury in her voice barely suppressed, “but I’ll survive. Ethan is a little boy who thinks that if he can control me, he will magically become a big man.”

“I’m coming over,” Katie said, and without waiting for Emma to reply, she hung up the phone.

Fifteen minutes later, Katie knocked at the door. When she saw Izzy, she rushed over to her. “There you are!” she said. “I’ve missed you, Iz.”

Isabella vaguely remembered Katie, who seemed so excited to see her. She looked to her aunt for reassurance that this woman who was now hugging her was safe to be with. Emma casually nodded and Izzy relaxed. The two friends talked for hours. Emma filled Katie in on all that she had gone through since her departure from Ambler.

Katie listened to the story, and while she was sad that Ethan had found her friend, she was selfishly happy that she was back in her life again. She had been lonely while Emma was in Philly.

A week after she returned to Ambler, Emma was back working at Double Visions. Informed about her comeback, Salvatore was at the bar, waiting. When he saw her come out on stage, he was barely able to contain himself. He badly wanted to talk to her, to find out where she had been all these months. When she went around the bar to collect her tips, he was waiting at the end.

He gave her a warm embrace. “Where the hell have you been?” he asked. “I’ve been worried.”

“I had to get away from him, Salvatore,” Emma told him frankly. “I took Izzy and ran to Kensington. For a while, everything was going fine, but then the prick found us. I’m back at the apartment, but I don’t plan on being there for long.”

“You don’t have to stay there for another minute if you don’t want to,” he told her. “I can help you.”

This time, Salvatore’s offer seemed nearly irresistible to Emma. But the very thought that letting him help her meant she would become dependent on yet another man who might not treat her right made her hold back. Not that Salvatore was anything like Ethan. But that was where the problem lay. Salvatore had real power at his fingertips. And if he turned out to be anything like Ethan in temperament, Emma would never be able to escape the situation.

Alone in the lap-dance room, Emma sat on Salvatore’s lap. She took a deep breath before she spoke. “Ethan raped Gracie. Isabella is his daughter,” she said and quickly added, “He threatened to take Izzy from me if I didn’t move back in with him.”

Salvatore said nothing. He sat and thought about what Emma had just revealed to him. Driving home that night, he had to fight back the urge to drive over to Ambler and shove his gun into Ethan’s mouth. He wanted Ethan to beg for mercy, until he finally pulled the trigger so that he could watch the blood drain from his skull. No, he thought to himself, that wouldn’t make Ethan suffer enough. Maybe, he considered, he would cut off his fingers one at a time and then his hands to prolong the agony. As the underboss of the Morano family he rarely got his hands dirty anymore. But this time it was different. This time it was much more personal.

It was unlike Salvatore to sit by idly for so long and let an arrogant jerk-off like Ethan get away with hurting the woman who he had come to love. It was in his DNA to set things right, and his rage had now taken control over his will to stand by and do nothing.

Salvatore had been exposed to violence his whole life. He was now reminded of how the Mafia had begun centuries before he was born. His father told him of the story of a French soldier who raped a Palermo girl, only fourteen years old at the time, on her wedding day in 1282. When the raped girl’s mother found her she ran through the streets crying and screaming “ma fia, ma fia,” or “my daughter, my daughter.” Sicily’s citizens banded together and revolted against the French. On Easter Monday, at the church of the Holy Spirit, outside of Palermo, a bloodbath ensued as the Sicilians slaughtered thousands of French residents.

This beginning made Salvatore and his family feel righteous in their actions. They decidedly ignored the fact that over time they had become nothing more than ruthless business people who killed anyone who stood between them and what they desired.

Salvatore’s mind drifted back over the years, remembering a time when he was twenty years old and one of his father’s soldiers, Francesco, killed a man from another mob family because he had sex with his girlfriend. Francesco stabbed the guy forty-eight times, his anger uncontained as he thought about him with “his girl.” Later that evening, he went to his girlfriend’s apartment and beat her to death with the butt of an ax. After she was dead he planted the blade of the ax in her crotch, splitting her in half up to her hips. Francesco had been seen entering the murdered man’s apartment and the other mob family threatened revenge on the Morano family. But Salvatore’s father took matters into his own hands.

Salvatore and two other men were ordered to take Francesco to an abandoned house in North Philadelphia that was owned by the family. The three men told Francesco that they needed to keep him hidden until things cooled off between the two crime families, but the three mobsters tortured Francesco for days. They stripped him and tied him to a metal chair where they beat him with a bat, cut his arms and legs with dull knives, and three days later killed him by wrapping his entire head in plastic wrap, watching as he suffocated to death. His long punishment and slow death was meant to be a message to everyone in the Morano family that
no one sought retribution without the permission of the mob boss
. The other mob family sent members into the house to look at the mutilated Francesco to ensure that they had taken care of him properly.

Still annoyed about Ethan, Salvatore parked his car in front of his house in South Philly. He vowed to himself that he would take care of things the way they should have been taken care of a long time ago—even if it meant that Emma ended up hating him. At least then he would feel like a man of honor. He was more concerned about her being unharmed than winning her approval so that one day he could make her his.

Emma had been back with Ethan for a month. Yet it felt like years to her as she endured his fits of anger. He constantly threatened to harm Isabella, and his cruelty seemed to have escalated since her return. There was no sign of humanity in him anymore. Emma was stifled by his very presence. She wasn’t even allowed out of the apartment unless he accompanied her. The only time Emma could spend away from him was at Doubles.

Though he had used his paternity test results as a blackmailing tactic to keep Emma in line, Ethan treated Izzy as if she didn’t exist. The only time he seemed to acknowledge her existence was when Emma resisted his orders. Then he would ensure her compliance by threatening the child.

Darkness had descended on Emma’s life all over again. As with her father, she obsessed about killing Ethan by poisoning him, but knew it was too risky; too many people were aware of the situation between the two of them. If he died, the first finger of suspicion would be pointed at her. And if she landed in prison, Izzy would be on her own and helpless, orphaned in the true sense of the term.

One Friday night Emma was home with Izzy, and Katie came over for a beer. Ethan had gone to the bar with Pete, and the two young women were happy to have an evening to themselves without the ogre lurking in the background. They were having a good time together, drinking and talking about different people in the neighborhood when Katie forced Emma to confront the most crucial issue in her life.

“Em,” she began, “what are you going to do about Ethan? We both know how important it is for you to get away from him. And he’s certainly no good for Isabella either.”

Emma wasn’t surprised by Katie’s undisguised antagonism toward Ethan. She was well aware that her friend considered him a miserable piece of shit who wanted to be in complete control of Emma and Izzy’s life. The young women had shared a lot over time.

“I don’t know, Katie,” she said frankly. “Ethan’s been a fucking bastard all through, but he’s worse now, if that’s possible, than he was before I left him. I know he’s out of control and things can only get worse. I’m just keeping things together for now, until I come up with a plan so we can get away from him for good.”

Katie slid over on the sofa until she was sitting closer to Emma. “I don’t care if you have to live on the street or back in the car again, Em,” she said. “You can’t live like this! It’s madness! You deserve better than this. Whatever you decide, you need to do it soon.”

“I know, Katie. I agree with you. Things are going to change very soon. Trust me,” Emma assured her.

At ten forty-five that night, when Katie was getting ready to leave, Izzy woke up. Katie went to check on her, and when she came out of the bedroom, she picked up her keys off the kitchen table.

“Izzy wants juice and you don’t have any more in the fridge,” she informed Emma. “I need to stop by the grocery store for coffee before I go home anyway. I’m gonna run over to the store and swing by with it. I won’t be long.”

Five minutes after Katie’s departure, Ethan came busting through the door with Pete in tow. The two of them were cackling like schoolboys. Emma, who had been stretched out on the sofa, sat up abruptly. From their noisy exchanges, she could tell they were both very drunk and stood up quickly to retreat to the sanctuary of the bedroom. Ethan’s laughter died when he caught Emma in the act of escaping to the other room. He had been fixated on her for days. He had a overpowering desire to hurt her for not wanting the two of them to be together. As Ethan glared at Emma from across the room he was reminded of his mother, who had destroyed their family by being a dirty, rotten slut.

“Where the fuck are you going, Emma?” he growled. “Don’t you see we have a guest? You have to be the rudest whore on earth.”