Spin Ruin: (A Mafia Romance Two-Book Bundle) (42 page)

I nodded.

“No one trusts you. They think you’re going to sell me out, and then they’ll be next. So, we hear you’re with him—”

“Gerry,” I said. “He made the call. He’s got contacts with the city council in your neighborhood. I have a feeling you know the politicians pretty well, too.”

He smiled. There was a world of knowledge in the way his face fell into it. “Yes, of course.”

“Well, Gerry doesn’t trust me for the same reasons Paulie doesn’t. He made sure you heard all about it.” I put my hands on his chest. “I know I didn’t grow up with what you did. But you have to know I can keep my mouth shut. I will never betray you.”

“You betrayed me already by being there. By not telling me.” He put his hands under my knees and squeezed them against the sides of his waist. “I know it was done with a pure heart. But don’t do anything like that again.”

I bristled at being told what not to do, and he must have sensed my discomfort because he drew his face close and kissed me with those satin lips, flicking his tongue across mine.

“You realize that you just told me stuff,” I said. “Real stuff about your business.”

“I can’t do this without you. I can’t even protect you unless I put you by my side. It’s the only way.”

I didn’t know how to answer that because I didn’t know what it meant in a practical way, but from his face and his voice, I knew what it meant to him, as a man, as a leader, and as my lover.

“
Come vuoi tu
,” I whispered.

theresa

e spent the night in the heavenly expanse of his bed and woke up with the songbirds. The first thing I felt was pain between my legs. How many times had he taken me? Just thinking of it, I felt a familiar ache, and I reached for him, but he wasn’t in the bed.

“
Buon giorno
,” he said from the side of the room. He was already dressed in slacks and jacket and was pulling his cuffs from under his sleeves.

“How can you be up?”

“I have a lot to do.”

“Such as?” I said.

He sat on the side of the bed. “My shop is a wreck. Zo needs to rebuild it. I need to make sure my territory is secure. And I need to prepare a way for us to leave.” He slid the sheet off me, exposing my nudity to the morning sun.

“Where will we go?”

“Where do you want to go?” He smirked, running his hands along the length of my thigh.

“With you,” I groaned.

“Men die trying to leave because they make it public. So this is our secret, even from your sisters and your friends. Do you understand? It’s a matter of life or death.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re with me. You’re in the life. You are mine for everyone to see. One day, we’ll be gone.”

“I have a family, Antonio. I can’t disappear.”

“I know. For now, you’re beside me. No one will hurt you.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I mean it,” he said.

“Good. I want to go to Zia Giovanna’s. I want to look at the books.”

“No.” He cut the air with the flat of his hand. “
Assolutamente, no
.”

I sat up straight, naked from the waist up and not caring a damn. “You say you want me to be integrated. You say you know you can’t keep me locked up. You say you want to share with me.”

“Not in the business. If you do something you can be accused of, your consequence is on me.”

“I know Daniel’s been looking at Zia Giovanna’s. He told me it’s part of a fraud investigation. And I know you lost your accountant to that motherfucker in the Ferrari.” His eyes widened in shock. I was a little surprised at my language, as well.

“The books are clean,” he said.

I got down on my knees, letting the sheet fall from me. “You have no idea what Daniel’s people look for. You have no idea what they miss, and you don’t know what they catch. I know it inside and out. It’s wasteful to not use me.” I got up and stomped to the bathroom, turning before I got to the door. “I can fuck a felon, but I cannot fuck a fool.”

Lightning fast, with criminal agility, he picked me up and threw me on the bed. I landed on my back with my legs spread. I opened them farther.

“So, felon or fool, Capo?”

He kneeled over me, hands between my legs like he owned everything there. Two fingers in. Out. In. His lips covered gritted teeth.

“You’re going with Otto,” he said, taking his slick fingers up to my clit.

“Yes, Capo,” I groaned as he drew his fingers across it. “But I miss my car. Can he follow me?”

“Agreed. But about the books, you look; you don’t touch.”

“Fuck me.”

“You’ll wait.” He pinched it and I cried out. “That’s punishment for calling me
tonto
.”

“Oh, you bastard.” My smile belied my words.

He laughed to himself. “At least that. At least.”

theresa

 felt energized for the first time with him. Embraced. Accepted. Maybe it would even work. Maybe the solution really was to go deeper in. Dante and Virgil needed to go to the deepest circles of hell in order to find the way out.

I bounced out of bed and got ready. Otto waited outside, smoking with his four-fingered hand.

“Miss Theresa,” he said.

“Hi, Otto. Can you take me to my car?”

“I’m taking you,” he said. “And no running for food. We go; the car moves, and it stops when we get there.”

“I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t get you into too much trouble.”

He opened the back of the Lincoln. “Enough trouble for one man in one day.”

I got in. He didn’t talk much on the way to the west side but just asked where we were going. I breathed as the city went by. I breathed deep into my chest, inhaling relief and a sense of belonging, if not with Antonio’s world, then with
him.

I opened the door to the loft I shared with Katrina. The air smelled stale and the surfaces had a fine layer of dust. It hadn’t been that long since we’d been there, but the lack of activity had a psychological effect on the space. It felt forlorn and empty. I went right upstairs and showered and changed. Forty minutes later, I was back in Otto’s car, then I got into the car I’d renamed the Little Blue Beemer and headed east to Zia Giovanna’s. The Lincoln followed. I had at least the impression of freedom.

I touched my St. Christopher medal, pinching it between my thumb and second finger. Antonio could guarantee my safety from many things, but he couldn’t protect me from derision and dislike. I’d have to turn that around myself.

The restaurant was packed with a lunch crowd, hipsters and businessmen who must have been from the media center down the street and a few moms with strollers parked alongside their tables. I went right to the kitchen. Zia Giovanna scuttled between the row of hanging tickets and the stove while waitresses filed in and out with heavy dishes.

She looked up, saw me, and went back to scanning her orders. “
La Cannella
. He said you’d be back.”

“You know why I’m here, then?”

She plucked a ticket off the rail and put it under a plate. “In the office.”

I paused, waiting for more, but she continued managing four burners, two other chefs, and a line of waitresses. I went to the office.

There wasn’t much in the room, just an ancient beige computer and a few dozen sticky notes with bits of Italian scrawled on them, some with curled, greasy edges and rectangles of bright color where another note had been on top for too long. On the desk, which was actually a shelf with two filing cabinets under it, were two bank boxes of documents.

I got to work.

***

I don’t know how long I stood over the rows of numbers and figures. I don’t know how many rivers and eddies of money I followed, keeping my eyes on the big picture and letting the errant details expose themselves, but at some point, it got dark, and Zia Giovanna entered with a sandwich, coffee, and wine.

“You need to eat,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, concentrating on a little notebook of expenses. I’d honed in on a few things and gotten down to the nitty-gritty.

Zia Giovanna just stood there with her hands on her hips.

“What?” I said.

“You’ve been in here seven hours.”

“I’m not done.”

She snapped the book away. “Eat.”

She put the tray on top of the ledgers. I sighed. I was hungry, and the hot tomato sauce made my stomach rumble.

“It’s chicken
parmesan
,” she said. “Not even on the menu, but Antonio likes it. So I made a batch. You might as well eat it.”

“One minute.” If I ate first, I’d forget something. I slid a slim packet of notations from the pile and disconnected a page from a printout. I snapped up a couple of the dead sticky notes that had numbers I understood, and I sorted through the ledger for all the other red flags I’d identified. Once I knew I had it all, I handed Zia Giovanna back her tray with half a sandwich on it.

“Thank you,” I said. “
Grazie,
I mean.” She made me nervous: I didn’t know why.

“You didn’t finish.”

“The numbers don’t talk to me if my stomach is full.”

She made a face that made me feel as if I were a sick, crazy, exotic bird. Then she left, and I got back to work. I dammed a river of money, put signage on a river of cash, rerouted a flow of expenses, and took a pile of papers to the kitchen. Zia Giovanna had gone to manage something on the floor, and I worked quicker without her.

Dinner was at a lull, and the kitchen was empty. One waitress flirted with a sous chef who was cutting blocks of chocolate with a band saw. I went around a corner and opened the back of the pizza oven, stepping back when the blast of heat hit my face. The wood was good and hot, smoking and red. The paper would disappear in the flames, along with my spotless character.

As I stood by the flames with the documents over it, I paused. Was I really doing this? Was I really going to cross over? My impending action was not just illegal. It constituted aiding and abetting criminal activity. This was jail time. It was my soul in flames.

I hoisted the papers and books to oven level and was about to throw them in when I felt pressure on my arm. It was Antonio.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Cleaning up the books.”

He took the pile of papers from me and closed the oven. He looked stern and almost confused.

“You are with me, but you’re not to endanger yourself. We’re going to put these back. You’re going to watch it. If anyone asks, as far as you know, the boxes have everything.
Si
?”

“
Si
, Capo.”

Zia Giovanna pushed him out of the way and pulled the stack of papers from me, muttering something in Italian. When Antonio spoke softly and patted her on the back, I knew he’d accepted an apology.

“Listen to me.” He pinched my chin. “That you would do this with your own hands, it says a lot. But those books are clean.”

“No, they’re not.” I held up my finger. “You might know your business, but I know mine. You have income streams at the beginning of every quarter that make no sense at all. Your expenses would break the bank of a corporation. All we have to do is get rid of—”

“
Basta
.” He put his hands up.

“No, I’m not going to
basta
. You’re going to
basta
. Either this accountant you had sucks at this, or he was setting you up. I’m going to hope for the former, and you can worry about the latter, but—”

He silenced me with a kiss, a mouth-filling, brain-wiping kiss. By the time he pulled away, I’d lost my train of thought.

“I’m crazy,” I whispered to him.

“Sit with me,” he said.

“Don’t try and shut me up. I want to say what needs saying.”

“
Come vuoi tu
.”

A corner table had been set with red wine and bread. Antonio pulled the chair out for me and sat across. “I got us
osso buco
. Zia Giovanna wanted to give you the same sandwich you left on the desk.”

“She’s tough.”

“In her old age, she’s softened. When I was small, she held my nose to open my mouth more than one time. And she was a devil with a wooden spoon. I have scars.”

“I haven’t noticed any.”

“You have to look harder next time.” He poured wine. “We can talk here. About the books. I’m not an accountant; I can’t see what you saw.”