Spin Ruin: (A Mafia Romance Two-Book Bundle) (45 page)

“There’s more American in you than the accent,” he admonished. “This is not your choice. Not after the first one.”

“These decisions were mine. And this one is mine, too. I’ll do it with you or without you. With you is simpler.”

“It’s too late, Tonio. You gave up your life.” He was angry, growling at me in a way he’d had no chance to do when I was a kid. “I told you this when you were my
consigliere
. I warned you it was the worst decision you’d make. And when you left my side to go over there, chasing them, I told you then, too.”

“I’ll sell the businesses. Peel off territory. Stop taking tributes. Just tell me what I have to do to get out.”

“Nothing. You don’t get to go back; that’s the end of it. If you don’t care about your own life, at least think about the woman. The one you’re fucking. They’ll kill her same as the last one who got in the way of business.”

Stupido
. God, that poor kid. Donna Maria killed his girlfriend, without a word of remorse for it.

“I know you think you can protect her,” Benito said. “But know this. They’ll kill you first then her. There’s no message if she lives. And don’t make a mistake. There are a lot of them. If they want you dead, you will die.”

“How, then? How do I do it?”

“Don’t let them smell weakness, son. If you want to out, you have to find your way. Don’t whisper a word, even to me. I will try and stop you.”

I watched the blood of the sun pour onto the city and knew that, years before, I’d sold my hopes in the name of vengeance.

“
Capito
,” I said.

“
Bene,
” he replied. “After the Bortolusi wedding, you and I will discuss your courtship. It will be very traditional. You’re lucky. She’s a nice-looking girl. It could have gone much worse for you.”

I rubbed my face. I’d never been less attracted to a woman in my life. I hung up without telling him that.

I drove up the mountain and through the flatness of the valley, up into the freeway split of the Angeles National Forest, where a man could be alone with his thoughts.

I didn’t blame my father for what he was doing. I’d taken a
camorrista
vow to be at the service of the family. The camorra worked the way it worked because marriage was a business deal. My father was the result of such a marriage, so why should it have been different for me? The fact that he’d never been forced to marry was the result of luck. There had been neither necessity nor opportunity.

I drove faster. I had no business doing it. I was endangering everyone else on the road, but the faster I drove, the faster I thought. The other cars, and the mountains on either side, faded into a blur.

Benito Racossi, my father, counted me lucky with Valentina. I’d married the woman I wanted to marry. She had been outside the life, and I was finishing law school. My father was proud and grateful. My mother had even spoken to him for fifteen minutes without a fight.

I pulled onto an exit that wasn’t an exit. It was no more than a bastard turnoff onto a dirt road. No gas stations, no fast food, just the potential for a city. It was a space set aside for something, someday. The freeway turned pencil thin in my rear view, and up ahead, the mountains went from shapes against the sky to solid masses of green and brown. I’d hoped to drive into a wall, but it didn’t work that way. I knew that from home. The roads to Vesuvio twisted and rose gently until ears popped and the car slowed, but in increments. Halfway up the mountain, I’d realize I’d made a choice to go there.

And Nella, sweet Nella, my sister. Raised outside the camorra, she was promised to a man against her will then fell in love with him anyway. Like animals, a rival family gang-raped her to prevent the marriage.

I thought about what might happen to Theresa if I refused to marry Irene. That stupid man and his girlfriend had washed up on the sand because they’d refused.

But he’d been weak. What if I wasn’t? What if I started with Donna Maria and killed every single son of a whore beneath her until I had what I wanted?

No. Even if I was successful, I’d be more deeply trapped in the life than ever, and Theresa might not survive it. I had to do better.

I pulled the car over and looked east. Indeed, I’d gone halfway up the Angeles mountains without feeling it. I looked out over the washed-out colors of civilization, the gas stations and fast food joints, and the stucco houses and dots of cars. They looked like plastic debris caught on a slowly heaving sea of dirt and dry grass.

I felt as if the world reorganized around the
camorristi,
spinning up and away. We nailed our feet to the ground with spikes of tradition while the whipping winds of modernity threatened to rip our bodies off at the ankles. And if it succeeded? If we let ourselves be yanked into the air? We’d fly and fly and be unable to walk when we came down, crippled by our fear of change.

I couldn’t murder my way out of it.

I couldn’t walk away. I was hobbled.

But maybe, just maybe, I could run.

theresa

aniel’s envelope had a set of seven flaccid wire lengths with plastic nodules on top, and it took me a second to identify them as earpieces. I was about to call Antonio. I wasn’t going to keep a word Daniel said secret. I owed him nothing, and I owed my Capo everything.

I went to the Spanish house on the hill. The door was locked, and the Mas was parked out front. I went around to the side, where I could hear Puccini through the leaded glass windows. I called his name over and over but got no reply. Finally, the obvious occurred to me, and I texted.

—Capo? I’m outside—

The music went off. I waited, but he didn’t come out. I went to the front of the house and found him by my car, driver’s side open. A plume of smoke curled from his perfect lips.

He was smoking. That never boded well. He never lit a cigarette when everything was all right.

“You need to go,” he said when I was within earshot.

“I have things to tell you.” Did he hear I’d been in the same room with Daniel again? That wasn’t my fault, and if that was the source of his anger, he was going to get an earful about waiting to talk to me before making assumptions.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just go.”

“Whatever it is—”

His face was stone cold. His mouth was set so hard the last wisps of smoke came from his nose.

I crossed my arms. “What?”

“It’s not you—”

“It’s you. I know. I’ve heard it. And I agree. It is you. It’s all you. I’d be at work now, pushing numbers and fighting through protocol meetings, if it wasn’t about you. So, what’s this about now?”

He dropped his cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. “I’m leaving.”

“I’m coming.”

“You can’t.”

“Like hell,” I said.

“I have two choices. I leave quietly, and I’ll be hunted the rest of my life until they find me and kill me. Or I kill everyone who demands the marriage, and I protect you at the same time. Those are the two. There is no third.”

“Another consolidation, to match the marriage in December.”

I must have surprised him with my immediate understanding and my lack of emotion about it.

“Yes,” he said.

“What century is this? Don’t do it. Just say no.”

“The last man who said no washed up on a beach with his girlfriend.”

“The girl’s going to get a complex.”

“I’m sorry, Contessa. I’m willing to die. I’m willing to say no and leave the life, even though one day they’ll kill me. But I keep thinking no matter what I do, I hurt you. And
that
I’m not willing to do. If I go away, and I’m not around anymore… sure, they find me. I don’t care. Eternity is a long time. Another fifty years on this earth isn’t much, by comparison. But, without you, it’s wasted.”

“And that’s your plan? Run away and get killed to protect me?”

“I’m not dragging you down anymore.”

“I thought the only way out was through.”

“Don’t ever doubt I cared for you,” he said.

He walked back to the house. As soon as he walked back through that door, he’d be gone. He’d close the door and lock it. Then I could text all I wanted; I could call and I could come with a battering ram and a police warrant, but he’d be gone.

I ran ahead of him, wedging myself in the doorframe.

“One more time,” I said. “Then I’ll let you go. I’ll never see you again. But one more time.”

He was on me so fast I didn’t have a chance to put my bag down. His lips crashed into mine, his arms cocooned me, and my knees came out from under me.

He shut the door behind me and pushed me with his lips and his intentions. I pulled his jacket off, and he undid my hair. His face an inch from mine, his palms on my cheeks, he kissed me, and in that kiss there was more love than I thought a human heart could contain.

“I want you right now. Right here. One more time for the rest of our lives.” He kissed me with a mix of gentleness and depth. “Just a moment with you.” His words were breaths made of desperation and heat. “Please. Indulgence. Saintly indulgence before the devil finds me.”

It couldn’t have been that cut and dried: marry another woman and live; stay with me and die. It couldn’t have been that simple. But his mood wasn’t nuanced; he needed me. There was no use denying it. Practical matters would have to wait.

“Take me.” I raised myself. “How do you say it?”

“
Fammi tua.
” Even as he said the words, his hands were already up my shirt, feeling under the side of my bra and where the underwire creased the soft flesh. I turned and put my arms around him.

“
Adesso
.” He pushed his hardness against me, and I swung a leg over his waist to get him closer to home.

“Fammi tua.”

His hands crept up my skirt into my panties, finding the split in me, following the wetness.

“
Fammi tua!
” I cried. “God, is it my pronunciation? “
Fammi tua!
”

“You are my heaven.” He hoisted me up, leaning me against the rock of his dick. “I can’t say no to salvation.”

He carried me upstairs, kissing me, and laid me on the bed. A full suitcase fell onto the floor, spilling everything.

He pulled his pants off. God, that piece of meat between his legs was a beautiful sight, and when he pulled his shirt off, the shape of his body looked built to fit into mine, every curve and line angled as if calculated to match my desire.

Where was I going? What life was I living, without him? I’d be an empty shell of a woman.

He fell on top of me, yanking my clothes off until we were naked together.

“Wait.” I pushed him away.

“I will not be told what to do.”

He looked at me with such intensity that I knew he wasn’t talking about me telling him to wait.

I laid my hands on his neck. “Daniel found me today.”

“That son of a whore… if he touches you…”

“He wants me to go to the wedding and pass the bathroom attendant a bunch of bugging devices. He’ll hurt you if I don’t do what he says.”

“I’ll be gone. Dead, probably.”

This man was willing to die rather than live without me. I wanted to save him, but maybe I’d be damning myself if I told him the extent of Daniel’s manipulation. Even the fact that I was willing to use my safety as a bargaining chip made me wonder about my motives. “He’ll file charges against me.”

“You’re not compelled to pass listening devices around, Theresa.”

“The attempted murder of Scott Mabat. The loan shark.”

His breath was deep and sharp. “When I murder Paulie, it will be for that.”

“You said you wouldn’t,” I said.

But he would; I knew that. If he wasn’t protecting a relationship with me, and the opportunity arose, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill Paulie.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said as if admitting to a crippling weakness he’d hidden his whole life.

“Yes, you do.” I brushed my hand against his cheek.

“I don’t. There’s no solution.”

“There’s always a solution.”

He just shook his head. He believed it. He’d done the math and come up with the best, most selfless solution he could. Walk away.

“Fight, Antonio. Fight for me.”

“I am fighting for you,” he said.

“Fight harder.”

He whispered it back to me. “Fight harder.” Then he smirked, shaking his head a little. “Of course. I’ll die fighting for a life with you. If they kill me for it, my fate is set. I’m marked for hell. I’m damned, and once this life is over, we’re separated for eternity. So while I’m on this earth, every second I have is yours.”

“And my seconds and my minutes and hours are yours. Will you take them?”

“I am yours, Contessa.” He kissed my breasts and belly. “
Solo tua
.”

The particular strain of his voice, hinted with both intensity and hopelessness, gave me pause. But it was a short pause because his tongue was between my legs, finding ridges and edges, working around my core and then upward, tickling my clit.

He came up to me, face to face, leaving me still wanting his tongue. He hitched my hips up and slid his dick into me. “Forever. Everything I do with you is forever.”

“Wait. A second. Wait. Just. Ahh.” He fucked me so hard every thought went out of my head. He fucked the brains out of me, the common sense, the grounded quality he loved so much. I was gone. Every thread of maturity, wisdom, and care was gone.