Freedom (17 page)

My surprise at seeing Cooper doesn’t go unnoticed by Robert.

“I’m pretty sure there’s another one behind me,” Robert says with a little smile.

I lean to my left to look past him, and sure enough, Carson is sitting three tables behind Robert. Carson looks just as rough with his longish hair and scruffy face. He puts his sunglasses on the table and checks his phone but glances up at me. Our eyes meet, and I realize that, whoever orchestrated this army of support, is a unified front against Robert. It makes me feel that much safer.

I slowly pull my hand back from Robert’s.

“I heard your dad is in trouble,” I say, wondering where to begin.

“Good, old Dad. He’s worse than… he’s setting me up, Emma. Remember that drug bust from two years ago? The one that made its rounds in three different states?”

“The one that hit all those colleges and they questioned all those students?”

“Yeah, it was an eight-figure deal and some of my dad’s guys went down in that.”

“I remember,” I respond, thinking back to that year at college and how I had become unhappy with Robert. He was anxious, short-tempered, and angry at his father, yet he refused to talk to me about it.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about, Emma. I’m taking you into the city for a little vacation. We’ll get away from school and forget where we grew up for a while. Just you and me. And we can talk about our future.”

I remember that time very well.

Robert had just started working at the prestigious law firm. He thought he had unbound the chains that shackled him to his gritty childhood when his father had been working his way up in the organization. Robert had wanted to be as far away from it as possible and I had, too. The dirty money that paid for his family to live well and afford him an exceptional education weighed on him heavily with guilt, though he wouldn’t talk about that. It’s one of the things I admired about him—his desire to be better, and to do something legitimate with his life that wouldn’t be an extension of his father’s corruption.

This is also how I’ve justified being with Robert. I felt we were cut from the same cloth; we didn’t choose to be in that bleak world of criminals, our fathers put us there. Together, Robert and I would expunge ourselves from the harsh reality of the violent organization that surrounded us.

We were dreamers, and the young Emma in me had still been in love with Robert. He had been my beautiful savior, the boy who would protect me. Five years after the pizza shop incident, when he saw me in my father’s office and immediately asked me out, my heart slammed against my chest and did a back flip. I was twenty at the time and his attention had wiped out the memory of every boyfriend and date before him.

It wasn’t just that he was a perfect specimen of masculine beauty; I saw the inner side of Robert, a good soul that wanted to be better than his father and the men in his family before him. The world saw him as a wealthy, handsome man who could parade around with a pretty woman on his arm and live a lifestyle of means that most don’t acquire.

It’s true—the expensive cars, clothing, restaurants and trips have come from blood money. I’m not going to kid myself into thinking it’s anything less heinous than that. It is also true that Robert and I became kindred spirits in our decision to cut those ties and make it on our own.

When he had been hired by the law firm, Robert stopped accepting money and gifts from his father. He purchased a modest, one-bedroom condo in a Jersey suburb and visited me on weekends at college, taking me on nice but affordable getaways in the city. Sometimes he would book a room at an inexpensive hotel near campus and we would spend the weekend together, eating take-out and watching movies while I also caught up on my studies.

I had loved him. I had imagined that there would be a future of a blissful marriage, a home with children, and careers we could both be proud of. It was easy to love Robert then. He was the same starry-eyed romantic as me, and he’d treated me with loving care and a resolve to make things right against the twisted world we’d grown up in.

It didn’t go as planned, though. Before the drug-ring bust, other incidents regarding the Marchetto family were splintering Robert’s optimism and future plans. There were times he would show up at my college apartment to pick me up when he was quiet and removed, angry about something he refused to discuss. He would say he was protecting me from ugly truths, but what good is a relationship where someone is kept in the dark?

My idea that we were more than lovers, that we were partners, became increasingly difficult to believe as I realized Robert was becoming secretive, and with that, more needy for my attention and approval.

“All that matters is that I love you,” Robert says, kissing me.

He has me pushed against his car in the isolated, unlit parking lot.

I love our spontaneous sexual encounters, thinking it makes us a romantic couple. However, his sudden desire is unwanted, especially since he is trying to silence me from talking about the recent news story about his father and everything that worries him. His need to distract me with sex in public only dampens my arousal.

He pulls my dress up and pushes my underwear down before he whips out a condom and covers himself. He is aggressive, thrusting into me before I am ready, making love to me in a way that he never would have in the past
—
without feeling. It’s not love; it is a basic, desperate need to fill some void.

He climaxes in a matter of minutes as I hold on to him, hoping I am giving him some comfort. Yet, I don’t want to be the “void filler.”

As time moves on, our relationship turns in a direction I don’t like. Robert becomes more elusive and I become more resentful. He thinks he is keeping me safe by withholding information about his father’s criminal activity, but it only makes me angrier. He is still kind and loving, however the sparkle of humor and vitality of that eighteen-year-old Robert who was so enigmatic is gone. I am dealing with a different man all together, one who sometimes seems paranoid and is most definitely not telling me what is going on, and his neediness takes an ugly transformation into possessiveness.

He calls me several times a day while I am rushing to classes or study groups. He checks in to verify with whom I am hanging out with, and suggests that he come upstate to visit me during the weeknights, too. It is no longer a relationship headed towards my fairy tale marriage; it’s a young woman managing the fears of a young man.

I play nursemaid, therapist, nurturing friend, and regardless of how much I still care for Robert, I am no longer in love with him. I feel like I’ve become his comfortable safety net instead of his ardent lover. My passion to be with him has withered away to an undeniable pity for him, and a self-loathing for myself, believing I could change him or us.

“Robert, what exactly is your dad doing to you?”

“The feds are breathing down his neck, and I think he realizes that he’s not Teflon Vinnie any more. Some undercover agents and informants have plenty of tape on my dad’s guys, and even my dad, making incriminating statements. My father is getting scared, and when he gets scared, he becomes inventive.”

“In what way?” I ask, noticing the tremor in Robert’s hand.

“My father never leaves a paper trail, not in this business. He screwed up somewhere, and he’s ready to throw other people under the bus to spare himself.”

“You? He’d do that to you?”

“Not just me, but others.”

“How?” I don’t know the dynamics or the ins and outs of the Marchetto organization—I’ve never really wanted to.

“My fingerprints are on that drug bust,” he whispers shamefully.

I stare at him in disbelief. That was a huge news story. One weekend, in a hotel room, we watched the constant news coverage of people being arrested and doing the perp walk to various courthouses. Robert and I had felt relief to be out of that world, or so I thought.

Angry tears begin to blur my vision. “How is that possible?”

“I’m not going to make excuses for what I did, but my dad assured me that he just needed me on one job. It was a simple exchange of funds. No guns, no drugs. I mean no one was hurt.”

“Of course people were hurt,” I snap. “It was an enormous distribution of heroin that went to not only addicts, but kids, students, mothers, and anyone else they could sell to. How could you be involved in that?”

“I made a bad decision. A deal with my dad. If I did what he wanted, I would be cut loose, free and clear. I wanted that so I could leave here, and to maybe go across the country to be with just you. I should have known that the only one who wins in deals with my father
is
my father. He made sure to mark me with evidence as future protection for himself. His guy was wired and has me making a transaction during that time. It’s small, but it’s strong enough to bring me in. I knew I was picking up a cash payment, but I had no idea it was tied to the heroin shipment. You have to believe me. I thought it was one small, dirty deed, if that’s possible. Something insignificant.”

“And if they bring you in, they’ll cut you a deal to blow the whistle on the guys at the top—your dad.”

“My father would never let it come to that.” Robert looks down at his trembling hands. Strong hands that used to engage in street fights for kicks. Hands I used to kiss and hold.

“I don’t understand. Your parents kept you out of most of this crap, and when your dad became the boss and made the money, he sent you to the best schools. He wanted you to succeed in the real world. This doesn’t make sense. Are you saying he’d let you go to prison for him?”

“No, Emma. He didn’t want me to succeed in the real world; he wanted me to serve him. He wouldn’t let me make it to prison. He has leverage against me. If I squeal on him, I lose everything, too. He’s counting on me not talking.”

I can’t take in all this grisly information at once. He has shattered my perception of this dark world I didn’t want any part of, and he has made it worse.

“So, if you don’t divulge information to the Feds, they send you to prison, right?”

“In theory, but you need to think about the odds of me making it to prison or staying alive once I’m there. There will be a hit on me, no matter if I’m in or out.”

“Oh, God, Robert. I can’t believe this.” I drop my head and start tearing up again. When the waitress places water and some giant fried onion thing in front of us, Robert thanks her so she will leave then hands me some napkins to wipe my eyes.

My face must look puffy and blotchy from the tears because Carson looks at me and stands up. I shake my head and wave him back to his seat. He then looks over my head and shakes his head at Dylan, I assume. I glance over at Cooper who is leaning back on his bar stool, watching us full on. That is what I like about Cooper, he is not hiding like he’s on a stake out. He looks like he is ready to pounce into action if need be.

“I didn’t want to drop this bomb on you, but it’s not just about me. It’s…”

I look up at him as he struggles to find the right words. He decides to say nothing and then my curiosity is more than piqued.

“It’s what? Tell me.”

“Nothing,” Robert says quietly.

“I don’t know why you’re here and what you think I can do. What
can
I do to help you? I have no power in this situation with your father. My own dad has already paid an enormous fortune to the organization, and I’m hoping he can sell his business to a bigger operation and get out. Get out of Jersey all together.”

Robert winces, and I sense he wants to say something important, something that he’s meant to tell me at this meeting, yet he is beginning to shut down again. Those familiar walls are going up—the barrier—so I won’t hear or see unbearable things, but what does he have to protect me from now after what he’s just told me?

“I had to see you,” he says, his face relaxes a bit, his beauty oozing out again; those alluring dark eyes matched with a fleeting grin. “I suppose I had a fantasy that you’d drop everything and come with me. We’d leave this place and go far away—forever.”

I don’t know what to say, and my heart breaks a little as I watch his long, dark lashes sweep down as he closes his eyes. I used to love this boy whose swoon worthy good looks and adoring attention were enough to sustain me, I thought, indefinitely. A part of me keeps Dylan’s image firmly at the front of my mind because my heart is falling for him, although I believe Dylan would understand my reluctance to walk away from Robert and leave him to bear this alone. I don’t know what I am supposed to do, however I do know that abandoning Robert isn’t an option.

“I can’t leave with you, and I don’t know how to help you. I want to, though I can’t go on the run like we’re Bonnie and Clyde.”

“I don’t want you to live like that either.” He smiles and takes a gulp of his water.

I stare at the onion blossom, the fried monstrosity sitting between us.

“How can your mother stand by and watch this happen?”

I try to picture Robert’s mother with her pretty Italian features; her thick, black stylish hair and attractive figure. Would she be willing to let her son go to prison so her husband could keep the money stream coming in? Would she still look beautiful and stoic for news cameras, or would she break down at the thought of losing her eldest child?

“She’ll do whatever
the family
needs. Emma, I didn’t realize my parents were these kinds of people until recently. I tried to look at everything through rose-colored glasses in a way, like you.”

“What do you mean, like me? I’ve never had any illusions about the people in your business.”

“Right.” His tone is unconvincing.

There is more to this nightmare that he is hiding from me.

“Where are you staying? Who is helping you? What aren’t you telling me?” I want to reach out and hold his hand again, touch his face to reassure him. I am afraid my gestures could be misconstrued, though, therefore I keep my hands in my lap.

“The less I tell you, the better. I don’t want you to be a part of this. I’m okay, though. I have friends who are helping me and I’m figuring out what to do next. Please don’t tell your father or Sean that you spoke to me. Can you do that for me?”