Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (66 page)

“I don’t believe you.”

“I thought Theresa was dead, and I died with her. Everything died. Even my desire to hurt you for it. When I realized she was alive, I swore I wouldn’t make her life difficult any more. Which means I’m not taking revenge on you for hurting her, or stealing her, and I’m not coming after you for fucking me up. I don’t care if you think I’m a coward for that.”

“Not for that.”

“Touché. But I’m not done. We have conflicting intel regarding the price on your head for bailing on Irene Carloni
[→9]
. As low as half a million for your corpse. Alive, we’ve heard up to two million.”

“Alive is nice. They get to torture me.” I smiled at him. I wasn’t afraid of torture or death. I’d been hurt before, and I’d be hurt again.

“I assumed it was because if the murder is witnessed and documented, she gets your territory.”

“Money is a great motivator.”

“They also want Theresa. Quarter million.”

My hair stood on end. My fists balled tightly enough to stretch the skin over the knuckles to white. I put my hands under the table.

“Who told you this?” I asked.

“Fuck you.”

“No. Fuck you.”

We regarded each other over the table. It didn’t matter who the mole was. What mattered was that the life I’d promised Theresa wouldn’t happen.

“And your wife and child?” Daniel said as if reading my mind. “Once they find out they’re here, she’ll be a target. Never mind the fact that if you’d married Irene, you’d be a bigamist. Let’s focus on this. You’re going to be followed everywhere. You’re going to be in constant danger. Even if I wanted to cut you down, I wouldn’t. All I’d have to do is step back and watch. Except for Theresa, who’s so upset you’re married, I don’t think she’s absorbed that she’s going to get killed.”

“You told her? That’s for me—”

“Do you even know her? Do you even know what you made her? She doesn’t hear the word ‘no.’ I told her to stay in the hall, but she was in the room before I could close the door.”

He jerked his finger at a wood panel on the wall. I hadn’t given it a second look until that moment, but when I trained my eye directly on it, I saw the translucence. Theresa had seen the whole thing. I tried to piece together my reaction to Valentina. Had I kissed her? Held her? Spoken a tender word in English?

“The safest thing to do would be to keep you here,” he said. “But I can’t. I don’t have enough on you.” He stood. “And you need to protect Theresa, because I can’t do that either. I’ve tried, and I have no resources. Not like I did before the wedding.”

The facts were damning. If I hadn’t made that last unnecessary volley against him, he’d have the power to protect the woman we both loved. The result of my vengeance was vulnerability.

Daniel opened the door. “I’m sorry to say, you’re free to go.”

“And Valentina?”

“She’ll be in touch.”

theresa

 finally left Daniel’s office drained, wrung out, a shell of hard skin around an empty core. I’d have to get to the hospital in a cab. That was all I had to do. That was what I’d come back for. After seeing Jonathan, I could let my world crumble. I could make decisions, run, stay, thrive, die. But this thing with my brother had to be done first.

I felt pressure on my elbow, then at the base of my spine, and lost control of my direction and will just as I caught the scent of burned pine. I couldn’t spin around to face him until the door was shut and he was pushing me against the wall of an empty room.

“Antonio,” I said firmly, “stop it.”

“Stop what?” A lock of his hair dropped in front of his eye, and his lips parted with the tick of the last T. “You can’t leave without me.”

I pressed my hands to his chest and pushed him away, but I couldn’t move him. “I know.” I paused to see if he could tell what I meant. “About Valentina.” I watched the flick in his eyes as they moved across my face, looking for my feelings on the subject. Feelings I was desperate to hide. “I’m happy for you.”

“Are you?” He took my wrists and snapped them over my head before I could resist. He pressed his body into me and spoke so close to me that his lips brushed my cheek. “Why?”

“Don’t be stupid.” I tried to wrench away, but he held my hands fast and immobilized my hips with his. My body didn’t care about wedding vows or another woman. My body wasn’t worried about moral complexities. My body surged with lust at the feel of his dick against me.

“Men are dead because of her,” he said through his teeth.

“She’s alive, Antonio. And you have a child. This is your chance at life. It’s staring you in the face. Don’t you see? You go back to her. Tell Donna Maria that was why you couldn’t marry Irene, that you knew. She’ll forgive you, and you can go home.”

He bent his knees until our eyes were level. “And you?”

I looked him in the eye. If I obfuscated even a little, he’d think I didn’t mean it. “I cop to shooting Paulie. I tell the police, not the DA. I convince them. I can do it. You walk back into the life you lost. It’s perfect.”

He let my hands go but left his hips against me. “Perfect?”

“It’s like a puzzle clicking into place. This is your only chance. It’s a gift that she’s back. Just make your life what you want.”

I was a weakling. When he cupped my chin and brushed his finger along my cheek, I turned enough to trick myself into thinking I was resisting, and I put my gaze on the floor, because I couldn’t look at him.

“I saw her, and it was shocking. I’m only a man. I thought all the things you think I did. That I could go back. That I could have another chance. I admit it. But the truth? It’s more frightening. I kissed her cheek and felt nothing. Like kissing my sister. Or a stranger. I’m not that boy anymore. I’m a man. I’m made of everything I’ve done and everything I want, and I don’t want a life in Napoli with her. That’s the idea of who I am. I want a life with you, because you accept me. All of me. I am whole with you. Only you.”

I could have fallen into him so easily. I could have broken myself apart and fit the pieces into a shape resembling sanity and morality. When he leaned in to kiss me and I felt his breath on my lips, my body bent to fit him, whoever he was and whatever he wanted.

The door snapped open, and he turned quickly to address what might be a threat. But it was Margie, looking unusually nonjudgmental. I guessed she got sick of waiting for me to get a cab to the hospital.

“Are you coming?” She looked at Antonio as she passed us. “Or do you want to stay here until they find enough to Mirandize?”

He laughed and took my hand, following Margie’s brisk pace down the stairs. They spoke another language as they walked. Not Italian, or even English. They spoke lawyer.

We got into Margie’s silver Mercedes without her or Antonio breaking the constant stream of jargon regarding Daniel’s ability to hold him.

“I wish he’d kept you,” I said, sliding into the front seat.

“Why?” Margie asked as she closed her door.

“They want to kill him. As soon as he gets out of this car, they can shoot him. Then when he leaves the hospital. And it’s not like he can go home.”

Antonio sat in the back, his shoulder against the door. Light slid over his face when Margie reversed, then it fell back into shade, then light again. Gorgeous in the light. Magnificent in the dark. Light. Dark. Light. Magnificent. Gorgeous. His lips relaxed to speak. Those full, soft, married lips.

“Don’t worry,” he said.

“I want to trust you on this, Antonio, I really do. But you can’t stop bullets with bossiness or good looks.”

“They would have killed you too.”

“I wish you guys would talk about something normal.” Margie snapped the ticket out of the parking machine and made a right. “Like cancer.”

“It’s hard to be normal with this guy.”

“I know how you feel,” she replied. “Listen, I know the director of neurology at Sequoia. I defended him on a thing. We can get his parking spot. It’s secure. I’ll coordinate with Antonio to get you both out of the hospital. Do you have a place to stay?”

“Not yet,” Antonio said.

“I got that. You have a phone?”

“No.”

“Let me take care of you tonight. I’ll get you a burner, and you can call him. But please, don’t leave fucking town until we know what’s happening with Jonathan. Please. I know it’s risky for you.” She looked at him in the rearview.

It didn’t matter if he liked her. He wouldn’t refuse her. No one could.

“It’s fine,” he said. “We came back for him.”

“You’re all right for a reprobate thug, you know that?”

“You can be a character witness at my sentencing.”

They went on like brother and sister the whole way to the hospital, while I looked out the window and reminded myself that my relationship with him was coming to a close.

We parked deep in the underground lot, past a separate gate, in a spot right next to the elevator. Antonio held the car door open for me, but I couldn’t look at him, even when we stood in front of the elevator doors.

“Mom’s medicated,” Margie said as the doors slid open with a ding. “Sheila’s managing her anger. Deirdre’s sleeping on a chair. Dad turns up in the halls sometimes. Jon’s girlfriend is the emaciated specter on the verge of tears.”

“Three short?” I asked.

“At the moment.”

theresa

eturning to Los Angeles had been dangerous and stupid. Our journey back had the potential to ruin our lives. If we’d continued with our plans in Mexico, Antonio would never have reconnected with Valentina. I wouldn’t be considering admitting to shooting Paulie. We would have gotten married, bought a house, had children.

But we came back for Jonathan, a fool’s errand that wouldn’t do anyone any good. When I saw my rake of a brother in that bed—tubes sticking out of him, hair a mess, skin battered in flour—I was glad I had come.

I sat in the chair beside him. “If you’re up, I’m over here.”

“I’m up,” he said, slowly turning toward me. Machines beeped incessantly, and a hiss of a medical apparatus underscored every other sound in the room. “You look like hell.”

“You look great. I saw your girlfriend on the way in.”

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

I thought he slipped out of consciousness, or maybe he was gathering strength to speak. But his eyes closed, then opened halfway.

“She won’t marry me. I asked, and she ran off.”

“Why?”

He held up his hand, or he attempted to. He had too many tubes sticking out of him to do it properly. I held it down and squeezed it.

“Pledge open,” I said.

“Dad’s making trades with her. He bought her house to keep it from foreclosure.”

A seemingly kind gesture in my father’s hands always required a payment. You might not see it. You might not understand the depth of it, but no favor went unsettled.

“And I’m stuck in this damned bed,” he said. “She doesn’t know what she’s getting into. I don’t know how else to protect her.”

“I don’t blame her for saying no,” I said. “No one wants to be asked out of desperation.”

“I’m not desperate,” he protested. “I’m pressed for time. And Dad…” He took a few deep breaths. “I’ll kill him.”

“You need to get better first,” I said, as if that might give him some hope and strength. Looking at him, the very idea of recovery was as ridiculous as the idea of him dying.

“What if I don’t get better?”

“She’d be a widow.”

He swallowed, leaving a long gap between the word “widow” and our next words. I smiled to myself. If Antonio died, he’d have a widow, and it wouldn’t be me.

“I realized something today,” I said. “I realized what I thought of marriage. I think I took it all for granted, with Daniel. I just said yes because I did. Because I could, and it seemed like the next stage of life. But it’s sacred. It’s holy. Let no man tear asunder. We have to mean it when we say it. No one should rip up a contract God wrote. I’ll go to hell for plenty I did without thinking, but I won’t go for a crime I chose while knowing better.”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were closed, then he tightened them and looked at the ceiling. “What’s today?”

I counted days from the Bortolusi wedding. “The nineteenth.”