Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (67 page)

“Merry Christmas.”

That was Jonathan, naturally deflecting from his seconds-span of unconsciousness with glib sarcasm. I’d miss him if he were gone. Even if I lived far away under a different name. The world would feel less sardonic and far too serious without him in it. “What do you want under the tree? Besides a ‘yes’?”

“I want her,” he whispered. “I asked for the wrong reasons, but I want her.”

“It’s forever, Jonathan.” I put my elbows on the bed and my hand on his shoulder. “Do it for the right reasons. Don’t do it because it’s convenient. Don’t do it because you’re scared. Marry her because you love her and your life wouldn’t add up without her. Can you do that? Can you promise me you’re not forcing it? It would break my heart to see you propose because you wanted to give yourself a reason to live.”

“What’s wrong, Tee?”

“I don’t think love should be taken for granted, and I don’t think you should keep on a path of least resistance.”

“This is hardly… the Italian guy. What’s happening? You’re acting strange.”

“Can you honestly say that if you were healthy, you’d marry her?”

“Yes. But we’d have a proper engagement.”

He was sure. Through hid glassy eyes, I saw a rock-solid surety. Antonio must have been that sure when he’d asked Valentina, but me? I wasn’t beating myself up, but the circumstances had brought his proposal on too quickly, and after seeing his wife alive and well, I couldn’t assume his feelings for me would withstand her return. Even if he’d meant it when he asked me to marry him, everything had changed...

Jonathan meant it. He did. Daniel had meant it. But Antonio couldn’t.

I fished in my pocket and came up with my soot-stained ring. I pressed it into his palm. “Try again, and use this. Give it back when you can buy her her own.”

His hand didn’t close around it at first. God, he was so messed up. Was he even conscious?

“The last time I saw you,” I said, “you were killing oranges for sport and making jokes in Italian. This is… I don’t know. A wake-up call.”

I had to spend the rest of my life doing right. If I had to answer for my actions, I wanted to be able to stand up and say that I had definitively and consciously decided to be better, do better, be a person I could be proud of.

“I never joke in Italian.”

“Sorry to make it about me,” I whispered.

He smiled a little then held up the ring so he could see it. “I’m boring right now. And all anyone talks about is me. Where did you get this? They said you went on the run? Did you start robbing jewelry stores?” He lowered his hand as if he were too weak to hold it up.

I didn’t know how much of this conversation he’d remember, if any of it. “Someone really wanted me for a while. You’ve met him.”

“Daniel won’t be happy. He still wants you.”

“How do you know?”

“I know regret when I see it,” he said.

“He’ll tell himself he cares, but we cancel each other out. We add up to nothing. Trust me when I say I’d rather break up for the right reasons than get married for the wrong ones. With him, or anyone else. I’m either first in line, or I walk.”

“You’re not the uptight priss I thought you were. You’re a priss with a purpose. I’m proud of you.”

“You thought I was an uptight priss?” I said with a smile. I’d never thought of myself that way, but maybe I was.

“I think I underestimated you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I can’t explain why I feel okay about it, but I do.”

“Thank you.” He held the ring in his fist as if he were afraid to lose it. “Pledge closed.”

“Pledge closed.” I kissed his forehead. It was cold, and my heart ached for him. “I’ll try to come back, but you might not see me for a while.”

theresa

 left in tears. My family was in the waiting room two doors down, and I craved them. Margie and Sheila, even Mom, whose hugs felt like being loosely wrapped in chicken wire. I wanted them. A week ago, I’d wanted to get away from them, but on that day, all I wanted was to be a pack animal. Surround myself in them. Drown out thoughts of Valentina and soak in family love.

I touched my St. Christopher medal before I got in their sights. I’d avoided facing my family on the way in because I needed strength for Jonathan.

Mom sat by the window, face slack with medication. She’s been on the worst of them, then gotten off them, then on again. Her expression was as deadened as it had been during her Thorazine years. Margie and Sheila talked with their arms crossed, and the singer stood to the side as if she didn’t belong. We’d have to fix that. I’d hold her first, then hug Mom, then Sheila, and I would apologize for running away. I wouldn’t explain the unexplainable, but I would go deep into my gut for the regret and gratitude they deserved.

Except I never got to the waiting area. One minute I was walking down an empty hall wide enough for two lanes of traffic, the linoleum shining in vertical stripes where the lights were reflected, and the next, my feet didn’t feel the pressure of my body. I was pulled out of the hall so fast I didn’t have time to scream, even if a sweaty hand hadn’t been covering my mouth. My shoes slipped on the floor, and my knees dragged. I no longer had control of my body.

A door slammed, then there were steps. I clawed at my attacker. Male. Huge. Not Antonio. As I got thrown down a flight of concrete steps, I knew, even as my vision swam and my stomach flip-flopped, that I was alone. As alone as I’d ever been. No one was coming.

The man looked like the guy Antonio didn’t shoot in Tijuana. The one behind the rock. Domenico. Bruno Uvoli’s brother. I remembered it when my lungs emptied as he grabbed me and, as if he just couldn’t be bothered to carry me down the stairs, tried to thrust me down the next flight.

At the last second, I grabbed his ankle. My weight, which already had significant torque, pulled him down with me.

Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, and we did exactly that. Elbows, knees, hips, the corners of the stairs, and gravity all battled for space. In those two turns, the civilized parts of me peeled off as if by centrifugal force, whipping away, leaving the basest, coarsest version of myself. The raw rage and adrenaline. All action and forward thrust. I considered nothing but action.

When we got to the next landing, I twisted until my hand was free, and I reached between his legs, grabbing for the soft flesh there. I squeezed, twisted, and pulled all at the same time.

Domenico’s howl woke me from my fog. He reached for me, and I couldn’t get away without letting his balls go, so he got my hair and jerked me around.

“You fucking mick bitch.” He went for my throat with one hand and pulled his other fist back.

I kept squeezing the flesh between his legs. His hand tightened on my throat. The edges of my vision dotted black as he cut off my circulation. I kicked at him but hit nothing, and fight turned to flight as I waited for him to smash my face.

But the blow never came.

Domenico was pulled away from me, mouth half open, eyes popping as if I was still twisting his balls.

In the whoosh of air as he was drawn away from me was the scent of campfires in a pine forest. Choking on my bruised esophagus and hurting everywhere, in a stairwell that should have been guarded but obviously wasn’t, I felt safe again. I got my legs under me.

“Theresa.” His voice, unflustered by anything but simple rage, cut through my pain and disorientation.

“I’m fine.”

I wasn’t. I was beat to hell, more shattered than I ever had been in my life. Yet I was fine the second I heard his voice.

Antonio held Domenico against the railing with his left hand while he pounded his face with his right. His knee was wedged between the man’s legs, immobilizing him into a back-arched position. His face was red.

“
Chi ti ha mandato?
”

I scanned the stairwell. Why was no one coming? How had this even gone on so long? The camera hung in the corner like a wasps’ nest, but it was turned all the way around.

“
Chi ti ha mandato?
” Antonio insisted, glancing at me quickly. “I’m going to fucking kill him if he doesn’t answer.”

Domenico made gacking noises in his throat.

“I don’t think he speaks Italian,” I said through a throat full of sand.

Antonio tightened his grip. “Too bad he can’t pray in God’s language.” He got up in Domenico’s face, jabbing his knee between his legs, and whispered, “Who sent you?”

Domenico puckered his lips as if to speak through layers of spit, and Antonio turned his head a quarter to hear.

“What?
Che
? I can’t hear you?”

Since Antonio hadn’t loosened his chokehold one iota, there was nothing to hear. My lover was being unnecessarily brutal. Cruelty wasn’t necessary. I should have been horrified, but I wasn’t any more dismayed by this than when Antonio had made Paulie recite the Hail Mary with a gun to his head.

“Antonio,” I said, “we don’t have time. I don’t know why no one’s here, but it won’t last.”

He looked me over, lingering on my throat, which must have been a shade of red that was about to go black and blue.

I turned to Domenico and said calmly, “Who sent you?”

Antonio loosened his grip a little.

I continued. “I’ve seen him kill people. And I’m no angel either.”

How could I revel in it? How could I align myself with the most savage part of the man I loved? And how could I feel so right about it? So empowered by murder?

“P-P-P…” the man sputtered.

Antonio and I exchanged a look and understood each other very clearly. Antonio removed his hand.

“Patalano,” he croaked. Domenico looked at Antonio expectantly, then me, breathing hard.

A beat passed before Antonio spoke low and with forceful intent. “Liar.”

In one fell motion, Antonio bent and scooped Domenico’s knees and pulled them up. The railing became a fulcrum and the man’s body a plane, and he tumbled down the space between the stairs. I heard banging and grunting, but I didn’t look. I only had eyes for Antonio.

Then it stopped.

Antonio wasn’t breathing heavily, as if he’d expended zero energy, physical or otherwise. His gaze burned my skin, peeling it off and looking through me. I felt vulnerable and soaked in desire, bare before him and still safe.

“You’re made for this life,” he said.

“I’m made for you.”

Below, someone screamed, and the camera behind me whirred to life. He took my hand and pulled me upstairs. He took the steps two at a time, not as if he were rushing but as if the steps were simply too small for him, and I kept up. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know why, because he hadn’t told me where we were going. But hand in hand, step for step, in a pine-scented breeze, I made it to the top landing.

“We don’t have time,” he said without breaking his pace. “There are no cameras here, so we could get out. Paulie’s here. The place is crawling with his family, but it looks like Donna Maria found me.”

Antonio turned back to me as he shouldered the door, checking on me. Admiring. Connecting. Yanking that spiritual tether between us.

Before the door clacked open, I noticed the floor and walls shaking in a consistent rhythm. Not an earthquake.

He yanked me forward, pushing the door all the way open and drawing me onto the roof where a helicopter waited. The pressure of the air almost slammed the door on me, but he held it. The rotors spun against the orange haze of the setting sun, and a man crawled out of the cabin to hand Antonio his headset.

“You got clearance to Montecito,” he shouted over the whip of the rotors. “Maintain at two thousand. Call in at squawk oh-three-five-one.”

“Got it.”

Antonio motioned to me and headed for the cockpit. I ran after him.

“Are you joking?” I tried to gather my whipping hair together and failed.

“Get in.”

“We can’t run away!” Even as I said it, I knew how ridiculous I sounded. Of course we were running away. “And you can’t fly this thing!”

“Yes, we can, and yes, I can.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a pilot’s license!” I yelled over the wind.

“I don’t. Now get in before I pick you up and belt you in like a child.”

I hesitated, and Antonio didn’t have time for that. He picked me up by the waist and tossed me into the helicopter. I dropped into the bucket seat just as he reached for the belt.

“I have it.” I tugged the belt. “Just promise me you’ve done this before.”

“It’s the only way to get around Capri.”

He went around to the left side and slid in, buckled in, and put his headphones on as if he knew what he was doing. I put on mine. He reached over to my headset and snapped the broadcast function off.

“If you kill us, that’s fine,” I said. “Do not kill anyone else.”

He turned to me and raised an eyebrow before pulling the helicopter off the roof. The bottom dropped out of my gut, and I gripped the edge of my seat.

“I think the word in English is ‘ironic,’” he said once we were airborne. “You don’t want to kill anyone by accident?”

“You want to discuss this now?”

“Yes.”

I lost my train of thought when he swerved east and my stomach twisted.