Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (46 page)

“I have mixed feelings about the name,” I said, tossing my fake passport on the bedspread.

“Persephone? The goddess of the death?” He kissed me from above, hands on either side of my waist, his upper lip pressing against my lower.

“She was abducted into hell.”

“She kept running into the wrong types of men.” He kissed between my breasts, moving the St. Christopher medal aside with his teeth. I put my arms around him, letting him move above me like the shifting sky. “And poor you, with only me at your feet.”

He moved his lips over my belly and hips, and I over his, until our mouths could worship each other properly.

antonio

he understood. I thought she wouldn’t. I thought she’d dismiss how serious our power and our traditions were. But she was from an old-fashioned family. I don’t think I realized that until Thanksgiving.

“I want you to come,” she said over the phone as I stood in the driveway, watching Zo go over building plans with his workers. Someday the house would be done, even if I never lived in it. “Thanksgiving is important here.”

“I can’t.”

“I want you to come. That should be enough.”

“No. It’s that simple.”

I couldn’t believe we found the time to argue about something so mundane. It felt like practice for real life.

“I’m not some kid looking to show you off. I want you to meet these people. They’re important to me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I did. And maybe I didn’t want to go for just that reason. “I want to talk about this when you’re in front of me and I can occupy your mouth with something besides your demands.”

“Don’t avoid this,” she said.

“
Ti amo
, Contessa.”

“I’ll text you the address. I expect you there.”

I’d found myself in the position of trying to talk her out of our escape plan. She would be better off without me. And I tried to convince her, but only wound up fucking her. I tried to slip away, but she caught me by my dick and had me.

I’d promised to protect her. It was a promise I realized I couldn’t keep. I felt resigned to the difficulty of the path and also to the potential of it. The trick to dying without dying was to make arrangements without making arrangements. The strategy was to not break up, to not stay together, to not
change
. And the question I’d pose to her when she was in front of me would be, “Would I go to Thanksgiving dinner with your family under different circumstances?” I didn’t think I would. Not yet.

“This has to be done,” my father said over the phone as I opened the door to the basement. Lorenzo and I clattered down the wood stairs.

“I understand.” Zo handed me a box of handguns. I had an armory under the house that had been moved from
l’uovo
. I had the phone tucked between my shoulder and ear as I pointed to one of the guns and mouthed the word
ammo
.

“She’s a nice girl,” my father said. “You’ve met her?”

“Yeah.”

I chose the one thing I’d need: a small handgun, built for a woman’s hand but large enough to stop a man. Zo took a box off a shelf and shook it. Full.

“When this is done, I want you back here. This is going to put a lot of vendettas to rest. You and Irene will be safe.”

What was the answer? What would it be if I were going to live past the next few weeks?

“No,” I said taking the box from Zo and heading upstairs. “I’m not going back.”

You didn’t say no to Benito Racossi. You said yes, boss. But I wouldn’t have said yes. I would have said no and gone to Napoli anyway.

“Is this about
la rossa
?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Bring her.”

“She’s American, Pop. It doesn’t work like that here.” I pocketed the weapon and put the rest away, and we clattered back up the stairs. Zo shut the light and closed the basement door behind me.

“It’s all right. I’ll figure it out,” I said. The conversation with my father was such a play. I felt like an actor reading lines.

“You always do, son. You always do.”

I didn’t think he knew what was going on, but he was suspicious. I could hear it. We hung up soon after. Zo put the box of bullets on the kitchen counter.

“Who’s this for?” Zo asked.

“Wedding gift.”

“Nice. She’s hot, you know? You gonna, you know, get to know her better?”

“After the Bortolusi wedding.”

“What are you going to do with the rich one?” He opened the little gun, popping the clip.

I shrugged. “She can stay around if she wants. I can handle two. What are you doing?”

“Loading it.”

I took the gun away and put it back on the counter. I knew all too well what Theresa was capable of, even with an empty gun.

“I need a favor from you,” I said. “If something happens to me, I want you to watch after Theresa.

“Why would something happen to you?” Zo was never the most fruitful tree in the orchard.

“I’m the last one. And if I don’t take this Irene girl, Bortolusi doesn’t have any real competition. Donna Maria’s going to have to handle it herself, along with Paulie and the other camorra bosses who spend more time fighting than making money.”

“Well, nothing’s gonna happen to you.”

“Well, if something does, you take care of Theresa, or I will come back from the dead and make you a very sorry man.”

“In that case…”

“I trust you, Lorenzo. I want you to know that. Next to Paulie, you were the guy I trusted most.”

“Paulie didn’t work out so good.”

“So, don’t fail me. Don’t fail me.”

I didn’t mean to be fatalistic, but it was hard not to be. There would come a time when the father I’d just hung up with, who I hadn’t known the first decade of my life and who’d always had my best interests at heart, despite everything, would write me off as dead. And the friend here, in front of me, who was building and rebuilding my life, would be unreachable.

I was making the project seem easy to Theresa, and it wasn’t. That decision was going to break her heart before it healed her.

“Something going on, Spin? Something you can tell me?”

“Yeah, and I think I need your help. I can’t do it by myself. But I need to trust you. You need to take this to the grave.”

“Okay.” He seemed unsure.

I snapped a drawer open and took out a knife.

“No, no, no. Come on man…”

I cut the web between my left thumb and forefinger, drawing blood.

“Give it here,” I said, holding my right hand out. Zo gave me his hand, and I cut it. We shook with our left hands, a mirror image of gentle society.

“On
San Gianni
, do you swear silence?” I asked.

“I swear it on the five stars of the river.”

I let his hand go and yanked off a paper towel.

“You cut deep,” he said. “What the fuck?”

“
Forza
, my friend. You’re going to need it.” I unrolled a towel for myself. I felt relieved to have his help. I couldn’t prepare the way without him, because there were two paths. Theresa and I needed out path secured, even though it would never be tread. And I needed another path. It needed to be a separate one, yet connected at the beginning, with props and plans and a clear way for me, and me alone.

Because she wouldn’t be coming with me.

theresa

e ended up at Sheila’s most holidays. She had the children, and apparently their schedules held places in the pantheon. The Goddess Tina of the Late Naps needed a sacrifice, as did Evan, God of the Special Diet, and Kalle, Goddess of I Will Only Go Wee In My Own Pink Princess Bathroom.

It was easiest to just go to into Palos Verdes. Anyone who couldn’t make it just didn’t make it. It was impossible to herd eight siblings anyway, even if Daddy had tacitly agreed to be someplace else for a business function.

RPV, as it was called, was set deeply west and south on the map, and was practically inaccessible by more than one freeway, making it unmanageable for even the richest commuter with an actual job. A famous movie director’s wife had started her own RPV-based Montessori school in her basement just to avoid having to bring her equally famous children to the Montessori school over the hills. Sheila described it as strictly a matter of geographical convenience. The children within a two-mile radius joined in, walking to school in packs and creating a true neighborhood enclave of a type that had once been the American norm, but with more money involved than most people would see in seven lifetimes.

Sheila answered the door, her more-blonde-than-red hair disheveled, cut into a bob, and her flip-flops showing off a weeks-old pedicure. She didn’t even say “hello” when I was beset by children whose red-topped heads bobbed and swayed like the flames of birthday candles.

“Did you bring wine?” Sheila asked when I got through the door. Tina had latched onto my leg and insisted on being carried on my foot.

I handed my sister the bottle, and she snapped it from me with one hand while picking an oatmeal-crusted plastic spoon off the floor with the other.

“The turkey didn’t make it.” Her Pilates-toned ass worked the yoga pants as we walked toward the kitchen. “I’m having one brought in.” Sheila’s voice rose and fell in a childlike singsong, often ending sentences in a question. But underneath that sweet exterior rolled incredible rage. Pushed the wrong way, she reacted with blinding, illogical anger. So she didn’t let much get to her anymore, or she’d lose control.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Dog got it.” She swung her hand as if it didn’t matter. “The mess was anthemic.”

“Anthemic?”

“Like an anthem. It’s the new ‘epic.’ Only Jon’s here so far. Alma?” She turned to her helper, barking instructions in Spanish. The kitchen was indeed a mess, but without the usual holiday smell of good cooking. Just the food. All product, no process.

I heard men outside and saw Jonathan with David. My brother was instructing his nephew on the proper windup for some pitch, using an orange as a prop. The kid pitched it into the yard. I slid the door open.

Jon picked another orange off the tree and lobbed it to David. “You’re opening your hips too soon, so you’re getting zero power from the lower half of your body.”

“Hey,” I said. “Whatcha doing?”

“Basics. Again,” David said, winding up.

“Wait, wait. This whole thing is in the hips. That’s why you kick your leg. So don’t forget to turn them.”

David wound up and pitched into a tree about fifty feet away. The orange smacked against the trunk, bouncing off and landing in a pile of half-green oranges collecting on the grass.

“That’s in the stands. You just took out Jack Nicholson. He’s going to sue your ass.”

“See, it’s because you’re making me turn my hips like that,” David protested. He was ten and a funny kid, sixty-five pounds soaked in saltwater.

“It is not,” Jon said.

“David.” I sat at the table. “Your uncle knows.”

He rolled his eyes so hard his brain should have been in his line of sight.

“Here.” Jonathan poked him in the arm. “Watch.”

He pulled another orange off the tree and pitched it into the tree trunk. It landed three feet below David’s, even though its velocity had been much less.

“You just gave up a double pitching like a pussy.” David grumbled.

Jonathan laughed. He had infinite patience with David’s crappy attitude and stunted attention span. “Get out of here, kid,” he said. “Go play Minecraft.”

David rolled his eyes again, bobbing his head as he skipped off. Jonathan threw himself into the chair beside me.

“Uncoachable, that kid. Just raw energy all wrapped in IQ points.”

“I wonder if you’d be so patient with your own kids.”

He shrugged, fondling a short glass of whiskey with nearly melted ice.

“Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Nah, Jessica’s miscarriage was a long time ago.”

“I feel like you guys never recovered from that.”

“We took each other for granted. That’s what we never recovered from. And me, I’m over it entirely. She stopped taking me for granted fifteen minutes after she saw me with someone else. It’s sad.”

“Where is this someone else?” I asked.