Tearing Down Walls (Love Under Construction Series Book 2) (62 page)

Laura was stunned. When she managed to pull herself together enough to speak, she said, “How many women are we talking about here?”

Vic blushed deeply. “I have no idea. But two or three a week for at least two years? Well, you do the math.”

She gasped. “And your parents?”

“My mother didn’t realize what was going on until my nonna found out from someone who thought she already knew. They were berating Nonna for letting it happen. When word got back to him what was going on, he was horrifically embarrassed that I’d pretty much become a fuck puppet for wealthy older women – well, that’s what he said anyway. It was rare that I slept with any woman under forty. He confronted me, and I outright told him to go fuck himself. That was the beginning of the real trouble.”

Laura waited, and Vic started again. “He told me to stop, but they wouldn’t leave me alone. And my agent encouraged it, not to mention that she used me too whenever she wanted. My
babbo
got furious and demanded that my mother make me stop. She didn’t know how to do that; I pretty much did as I pleased by that time. But he wasn’t being completely honest. Well, not at all honest. He was putting on a good act, though. I never guessed.”

“Never guessed what?” Laura asked. Vic choked. He didn’t think he could get the words out. “Sweetie, whatever it is, trust me to hang in there. Good god, you’ve hung in there for me. Now tell me – please?”

Vic couldn’t look at her, and he was pretty sure it would be a long time before he could even look at himself in the mirror. “The women. He was putting on a big front, pretending to be embarrassed, pretending to be mad about what I was doing. Truth was, he was mad because Mamma and Nonna had found out.” He was starting to have trouble breathing, and he was pretty sure his heart was about to explode, it was slamming so hard.

“I don’t understand . . .” Laura started. Before she could finish, Vic interrupted.

“There was an exchange.”

“What? What do you mean?” Laura was very confused.

“The women. I thought they were attracted to me. Hell, they were. But I thought . . .” He stopped, then started again. “Paloma? The woman I fell in love with? She didn’t leave me for another boy. She just wanted someone new to sleep with. I think she moved on because she knew how I felt about her and she felt guilty about it. Over the two years that it went on, I gave my heart away to one woman after another, and they all broke it because I just didn’t understand what was going on.”

Laura still didn’t understand. “I’m still not sure what you mean,” she stammered.

Vic looked straight into those hazel eyes and said, “Laura, my father was making money off of me. Lots of money. He was pretending he was mad that I was sleeping with all of those women, but they were paying him to use me.” Vic’s eyes dropped and he fought to keep his composure.

“My god. Your father was . . . oh god.” Laura couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could someone do that to their child?

And that was it – Laura could see Vic shutting down, his face going blank. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t figure out how to make the horror seem bearable. All Laura could think to do was hug him, so she wrapped her arms around him tight and squeezed. When she did, he started to tremble.

“Baby, talk to me. It’s okay. I don’t want you to hurt anymore.” Laura tried to calm him as he struggled to get some measure of control. She realized she was saying the same things to him that he’d said to her when she felt she was coming unglued, and she understood. All that was important was that he not hurt anymore. “I know it had to make you feel . . .”

He stared at the floor. “I felt like I was nothing, like trash, like something that had stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe. I wanted to die. I wanted to run. I didn’t know what to do. I thought about killing myself because it just hurt so much. That’s when my mom brought me here to the states. But there was a problem.”

Vic stopped but, seeing the questioning look on Laura’s face, he started again. “Before we left, my mamma cleaned out his bank accounts. Part of it was my modeling money, but most of it was the money my father had made off of . . . Turned out most of the women who paid him to sleep with me were connected to upper society or the government in some way, and he was blackmailing them. He needed the money. He owed people for gambling debts and bribes to officials, bribes that let him do whatever he wanted. When Mamma hit his bank accounts, he hired a hit man to come after us. That’s how we wound up here. Everyone thinks he was an alcoholic or something and left us, but truth is we ran for our lives. We didn’t take anything with us. And we came here, but that only made things worse for me.”

“I thought Tony’s parents were nice to you.”

“They were. But you have to understand: I was fourteen. I’d graduated from high school in Italy, but in the United States I was expected to go to school, so I was bored out of my head. The kids didn’t like me; well, the boys didn’t. They were intimidated by the way I looked. The girls were scared of me. They all wanted me, but at the same time, I was six two by the time we moved here, and they were afraid of me. Plus they didn’t interest me at all. I was fourteen, had lots of sexual experience, was used to having sex almost every day, and found myself thrust back into high school life? I was miserable until I found wrestling and weightlifting. They gave me something to hang onto. Zio Marco wanted me to go to college like all of his boys, but the idea of going back to school . . . well, I just couldn’t. So I joined the military.”

Laura nodded. “Molly said Freddy told her that the military was good for you.”

“Yeah, it was.” Vic had managed to pull himself together a little. “It gave me some structure, and I enjoyed the physical aspect. And I knew if I was on leave or in a city near a base, I had a never-ending supply of sex partners. I never, never went to a party and left alone. During the four years I was in the service, I’d say I went through, oh, I don’t know, maybe an average of three women a week?”

Laura was finding all of it hard to take in. She’d had actual intercourse with one man in her whole life. “So best estimate – how many women are we talking about?”

Vic stopped, rolled his eyes up to his brows in thought, then said, “I dunno, maybe three hundred? Four hundred?” Laura’s gasp didn’t escape him, and he wondered in shame what she thought of him. His face went crimson, and his gaze dropped to the floor. “Please, Laura, I . . .”

But she collected herself and patted his hand. “Baby, if you’d known, you wouldn’t have done any of that, I’m positive. It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid. These were grown-ups.”

“I never thought about it. It was offered, and I took it. I liked it.”

“But you didn’t know or understand. You might like cocaine or LSD, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for you. It feels good at the time, but you pay for it later. You were just a child. These were people who were supposed to care for you, take care of you, protect you, and they didn’t.”

“That’s what hurts the most.” Then Vic got a funny look on his face and he looked at Laura as though he’d had some type of epiphany. “Remember when I told you that I wasn’t going to have sex with any of the women at the club anymore but that it didn’t mean anything to me anyway?”

“Yeah, and I don’t understand that.” Laura was confused.

“Tony thinks this is where all of my problems came from. You know, with Carrie and my other girlfriends.”

“How so? I don’t understand.”

“I haven’t had those problems with the women at the club. But then I haven’t felt anything for them either.” The wheels were turning for Vic. “With Carrie and Andrea and Therese, I loved them. And I hurt all three of them.” Vic turned pale. “And what if I hurt you?”

“Oh, baby! You wouldn’t do that.” Laura kissed his cheek, but it didn’t make him feel a bit better.

“I can’t promise that.” There was alarm in his voice when he said, “I don’t know what to do.”

“What about talking to Steve? Maybe he could help,” Laura offered. Vic stared at his hands in his lap again and didn’t move. “Go ahead – call him. Please?”

When Steve answered, all he said was, “Is everyone okay?”

Vic felt like he’d been slammed in the chest with a baseball bat. “Yeah. Everybody’s okay. But Steve, I . . .”

“Buddy, it’ll all be okay. Tony’s already talked to me, and I was going to call you anyway. I’m not sure what this is all about, but let’s see if we can figure it out.”

Laura watched as a big, hot tear rolled down Vic’s face. “Okay.” He sounded pretty shaky.

“So you and Laura have talked.”

“That’s what we’re doing right now.”

“And?”

Vic gave Laura a weak smile. “She’s right here with me.”

“She’s not leaving, Vic. Even if you hurt her, she’s not going away.”

That was the moment it sank in for Vic: This woman was committed to staying with him, no matter what. And she’d been hurt enough. He couldn’t hurt her too. He just couldn’t.

“I want you to understand something if you haven’t already figured it out. You hurting the women you had relationships with? It was your way of pushing them away before they could hurt you.”

Vic was mortified, and it showed. “And that’s why I didn’t hurt the women at the club.”

“You weren’t interested in a relationship with any of them, so there was no need.”

Laura watched Vic shrink before her eyes, and he looked too tired to stay upright when he said, “Steve, I don’t know what to do.”

“Buddy, I want you to think about all of this. It was clear to me when Tony told me what you’ve lived through, and it was pretty clear to him too. The only reason you didn’t realize it is because you’ve stuffed this down for so long. Now it has a chance to come out. I’ll find you a counselor, someone very discreet. And I’ll be checking on you. Okay?” Steve held his breath.

“Yeah.” Vic was so subdued that Steve could barely hear him. “Thanks, Steve. You don’t know what this means to me.”

“Hey, I know I drive you crazy, but I do care about you. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Get some sleep tonight. I know you’re exhausted by all of this.”

“Will do. I’m not going anywhere.” Laura patted Vic’s hand as it rested on her thigh, and he gave her a tired smile. “When you call, I’ll be right here.” He said goodbye to Steve and lay down on the sofa, his face in a throw pillow, looking more like a small, scared child than a grown man. But when he heard that sound, the one that was new, he sat up and turned to Laura.

It had all been too much and she’d begun to weep. When Vic reached to hold her, she pushed his arms away and, just as his heart froze at the thought of her shoving him aside, she wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. “You don’t hold me. I hold you. Someone should – no one took care of you before. But that changes right now.”

Laura tried to sort through her feelings. Fear had gripped her first, fear that maybe she’d given her heart to a guy who was so damaged that he’d never be able to have a real relationship, but then she realized that she could’ve pretty much been categorized the same way. And the horror – how had he survived all of that and still wound up being so gentle and caring? That was easy: Tony. He’d been lucky that he’d had Tony as a role model. That was one man Laura had come to know as being honorable, straightforward, and trustworthy. If Tony Walters told you something, you could take it to the bank, and Vic was just like him.

Vic pulled back and looked at her in weariness. “Laura, please . . .” He sighed, a worn-out sound that broke her heart. “Look, if you want out, I’ll understand. I didn’t tell you any of this before because I told myself that it didn’t matter, but the truth is, I was afraid of what you’d think and say. But you’re under no obligation here. This is more than I could expect anyone to accept, and if you can’t, I want you to do what’s best for you.”

She squeezed him even tighter and shook her head. “What’s best for me is to be with you. I’m not going anywhere unless you don’t want me anymore,” she cried into his shirt. “There’s nothing you’ve told me that we can’t work with if you still want me.”

Vic squeezed his dark eyes shut and huge tears fell like raindrops from under his dark lashes. “I can’t imagine wanting anyone else,” he said and kissed her. “But I might hurt you.”

Laura straightened and looked deep into Vic’s eyes. “Those men, when they did that to me? They didn’t give a shit about me. But you? If you hurt me, it won’t be that way. It’ll be because you can’t help it, but I’ll know that you didn’t want to, that you still love me. And it doesn’t matter how many times you hurt me as long as I know that – I’ll still be here.”

“Baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, so sorry, so . . .”

“Stop.” He dropped his face onto her chest, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “We need to get some sleep. Maybe by morning Steve will find someone to help you. Then maybe they can tell us what to do to move forward.”

Tony’s phone rang later that day. “Hey, buddy, you okay?”

Vic sounded a bit more bright. “I got some sleep. Steve’s calling around to find someone for me to talk to. But he thinks what happened with Carrie and the others came from fear that they’d hurt me. So I hurt them first to make them go away.”