Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (32 page)

“Antonio Spinelli is the bastard son of Benito Racossi.” Will put his elbows on his knees, the angle of the sun cutting his face into dark and light sides. “By the time he found out who his father was, he’d already made a name for himself as a petty criminal and pickpocket. He went to his father to settle a dispute between himself and another thief who’d stolen a shipment of his bootleg cigarettes. He was eleven. A prodigy, even by Neapolitan standards.”

“Look at you.” Margie, arms crossed, leaned back in the chair. “You got a face like a brick wall. You don’t want to hear it, because you already decided you don’t care. This mug shot, it’s Interpol’s. He was accused of killing the men who killed his wife.”

This story wasn’t new or shocking, though I guess it should have been. I guess if anyone else heard their lover had murdered someone, they’d be upset. But I wasn’t just anyone. I was a savage.

“She took a car bomb that was meant for him,” Will said. “He was visiting a client in a neighboring town. His business partner drove, which saved Spinelli’s life and ended his wife’s. He killed the two guys allegedly responsible.”

“And?” I flipped through the file, moving quickly past the photos of the bodies of the men who’d killed his wife. Allegedly killed. “It’s just a theory. Do you want me to say, ‘Oh, darling, welcome home, let me take your coat, what exactly happened with your wife?’”

“You could start by asking about the real-estate-assessment racket,” Will said. “Go on to the money laundering, the car insurance fraud out of his shop, the sideline in tax-free cigarettes, and the occasional truck hijack on the 60 freeway.”

“If that’s not enough to make you ill,” Margie said, “I don’t know why you even need a car-bombed spouse.”

It didn’t make me ill. Not a bit. It made me curious and hungry. And a little turned on. I was fascinated not by the wife but by the web of underground criminal activity and the way he’d mastered it. He’d turned East Los Angeles into his own marionette theater.

I hid my excitement behind a cold stare and a raised chin. As if she saw right through me, Margie got out of her chair and looked down at me. “I’m trying to say things so you hear them. I love you. I want to protect you. How has he protected you?”

“Maybe it’s time everyone stopped trying to protect me.” I stood up. I’d heard enough facts I already knew and the rest was conjecture. “Will needs to go back to doing whatever he was doing for Jonathan, because there’s nothing here to fix.”

I started to leave. Margie took my shoulder. “Please, Theresa. It’s going to get worse, and you’re going to be a target.”

“How could it be worse?”

“There’s a wedding,” Will said, gathering his papers and files.

“I know all about it.”

“It’s a serious imbalance. No one knows how it’s going to be rectified, but it won’t be bloodless. All I have to say is Spinelli will have to get involved. His life isn’t his own. Never was.”

“Speak clearly, Mr. Santon. Tell me what you mean. You didn’t come all this way to make insinuations.”

His mouth curled into a knowing grin. He was a nice-looking man with brown eyes and scruffy black hair he’d tamed into something conservative and nondescript. “You really are all cut from the same cloth,” he said warmly.

“Enough, Delta,” Margie cut in. “Get to the point.”

He cleared his throat and sat back. “To correct the imbalance, Donna Maria Carloni is going to have to have a granddaughter marry into a nice Neapolitan family with ties to the old country. The most likely candidate is a young lady named Irene. She’s just been flown in from Sicily, where she was educated in the old way. She is unsullied, if you will.”

It was funny, what came to mind. Will was describing a young woman educated in a particular way to achieve a certain goal and groomed in behavior and speech, much the way I’d been.

“Well,” I said. “I hope she likes it here. If she can stay a virgin for fifteen minutes, I salute her.”

“Oh, she’ll stay a virgin,” Margie said. “Because the Neapolitan who was supposed to marry her has disappeared.”

“The
stupido
?”

“And his girlfriend.” Will handed me a picture of a nice-looking couple on the beach. He was dark-haired and bulky, smiling. She was cute as soda pop, mousy blond and cap toothed.

“Theresa,” Margie said softly. “Get out while you can. It’s chaos.”

“You were there when the thing happened with Daniel. You saw me. You saw what I went through. You want that again?”

“I’ll take it over a funeral.”

“I can’t; it’s too late. I love him, and whatever he faces, I face with him.”

“You might face it without him. He’s part of a world you don’t understand; he’ll cut you out, and you won’t even know what hit you.”

“You don’t know anything,” I growled. “You’re so closed off. You’re so scared. You run every piece of information through your worry filter, and nothing gets through unscathed. You calculate everything that can go wrong, and when you’re done doing it for yourself, you do it for the rest of us. I think you were happiest when I was alone and not taking any risks. You need to stop. You need to let me try and be happy.”

“I can offer this,” Will interrupted. “I know you won’t take protection from the authorities because of Daniel. But I can offer it to you separate from that. I have contacts in the military who can keep you safe from Paulie Patalano, Antonio Spinelli, Donna Maria. All of them.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“It’s through me,” Margie said. “Limited-time offer.”

“Thanks for the offer, Margie,” I said, “but I have mistakes to make.”

As if summoned by the word “mistake,” the latch turned, and Antonio walked in as if he owned the place. A second passed, or a fraction of one, during which all parties assessed the imminent threat of danger. Antonio was armed, as was Will; I knew that much. If either of them was worth his salt, he would smell it on the other.

“
Buongiorno
,” Antonio said with a smile. The three of us stood. I went to him, kissing each cheek. He put his hand on the small of my back.

“Antonio, have you met my sister, Margie?”

“I haven’t,” he said, smiling to her and offering his hand. They shook.

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “This is my friend Will Santon." They shook hands, as well. The distrust in the room was palpable, multiplying exponentially, like compound interest on a bad loan.

“Tea? Coffee?” I offered, half joking.

“A butter knife for the tension, please,” Margie said.

“Something serrated might help?” Antonio offered.

“You’d know, apparently.”

“Margie!”

“I don’t like niceties,” Margie said. “They bore me.”

“Of course, then.” Antonio spoke the words with one hand extended, as if offering peace, and the other firmly planted at the base of my neck. “Let’s skip all that. How can I help you?”

“You can let my sister answer her calls.”

“Your sister does what I ask her to because she knows what’s best for her.”

The conversation was going nowhere in a big hurry. If I knew anything about Margie, her intention had been to leave the apartment with me, and she wasn’t walking out any other way. If I knew anything about Antonio, she was going to have to walk over a dead body to do it. So, either the unstoppable force and the immovable object were going to have a meet up, or I was going to step in between them.

“I can pick up my phone any time, Margaret. But I don’t want to. I’m sorry; I wasn’t trying to worry you or stress you out. But you really have to step back and trust that if I’m not answering the phone, I’m busy. I want you to consider that no news is good news.” She started to say something, and I held my hand up. “I’m not in a bit of danger. Boredom is my biggest problem right now. Antonio,” I said, turning to him, “you tell my sister you’re bossing me around, and she’s going to get a SWAT team in here. Personally, I don’t need the aggravation.”

“I’m sorry, then,” he said, facing Margie. “Of course, she’s a grown woman, in America.”

I held my hand out to Will. “Mr. Santon, thanks for coming. I appreciate your candor. I hope we never meet again.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” he said as we shook on it.

I separated from Antonio and went to the door with a cold spot at the back of my neck where his hand had been. I opened it. Otto was waiting in the hallway.

“I promise I will pick up my phone from now on, as long as you don’t unleash a stream of neuroses on me.”

Margie brushed her skirt down and composed herself, which meant, in Drazen parlance, that she was about to unleash a torrent of The Truth According To Margaret, and nothing could stop her, not a word, gesture, or forward tackle.

“I’m fine with being dismissed like a child, and I’m fine with you not taking my advice. I can walk out of here without a problem. But when the last asshole did things I don’t even want to talk about, I was the first one you called. And I was the one who stood by you for the whole thing.” She slashed the air with the flat of her hand, the gesture filling in for words like bawling, suicidal depression, the inability to move, long bouts of self-doubt, reproach, and loathing. She’d been with me for every minute of it, and with that karate chop, I relived it.

“And I want you to know,” she continued without pausing, though my brain had hitched, “that the next time you call me because you’re in over your head, and you can’t handle what’s happening, I will pick up the phone, and I’ll be there for you again. And I won’t even say ‘I told you so.’”

“Thank you,” I said, because there was nothing else in my vocabulary for that speech. She tilted her head down and left, with Will close at her heels. He and Antonio nodded to each other. I shut the door softly then pressed my back to it.

Antonio’s face betrayed nothing but perfection. I felt cornered by his beauty, soothed to inaction. I slid away so I could think.

“We have to talk,” I said. “And you’re keeping your pants on for the entire thing.”

“You’re going to talk,” he said, holding up a finger and stepping so close our bodies shared the same heat. “And I’m going to keep my pants on.”

He leaned forward until I took a step backward, and in the second of slight imbalance, he grabbed my shoulders, directing me into the chair behind me. I didn’t know what to ask first. He looked down at me with a fully visible erection, and the whole pants-on rule seemed really badly thought out. “You’re going to take these pants off. Then you’re going to spread your legs so I can see everything, and you’re going to tell me what they said to you.”

“Why do you need me vulnerable to hear this? Don’t you trust me?”

“I don’t need you vulnerable,” he said, leaning down and hooking his fingers in my waistband. “I need you accessible.”

“I’m going to tell you everything. You know that already.”

“Then it’s only right you should enjoy it.”

He yanked my pants down. They were loose, silk things and came off easily, taking my underpants with them. I tried to get up just to prove a point, but he pushed me against the chair. “Spread your legs, Contessa.”

I didn’t. He pushed me down with his right hand and took my knee in the other, wrapping his fingers around it easily and yanking it to the side. I gasped as the rush of fluids drenched me. He slid his hand down my chest and kneeled in front of me.

“Your sister is an honest woman,” he said, kissing my mound and working his way down. “So it’s not important what she said, only what she thinks.”

His tongue, honed to a point, slid down, parting my skin. The invasion was delicate and sweet, warm on warm, wet to wet, and I melted into the chair.

“I don’t care about any of it, Antonio.”

“Really?” He kissed my clit, folding his lips around it, closing them, tightening, sucking just enough, and releasing. “Tell me what you don’t care about.”

“You want a list?”

He licked me harder in response, and I pushed myself into his mouth, running my fingers through his black hair. He awakened a galaxy of burning stars that turned in the universe between my legs.

“She thinks you’re a killer, a criminal. Money laundering, insurance fraud, oh, God, just like that. Keep doing that thing.” He slid a finger into me and rotated it, not saying a word, but with his eyes, he told me to continue.

“You’re going to hurt me,” I gasped as his tongue swirled. “She’s afraid for me.” The burning points of heat and light coalesced into a bright center, and when he moaned, his mouth vibrated against me. I wanted to tell him more, but I couldn’t when the galaxy spun into itself and exploded, my orgasm a black hole of wordless ecstasy.

When I could speak, I said, “Now. Take me now.”

But he was already there, pants down, glorious cock stretching me open, his weight on me the comfort and security I needed. The protection Margie thought I wasn’t getting was him and me together: his thumb in my mouth, his dick owning me, his control and dominance frightening, deadly, and indispensable.

He came with a grunt, and I was right behind him, screaming his name again, tightening my legs around him, bucking as he held me still.

Through the post-orgasmic haze, I could barely hear his soft words in a musical language or feel the light kisses he laid on my cheek and neck.

“Capo,” I whispered.

“Contessa.”

“I wasn’t finished.”

He picked up his head and looked me in the eyes. “You feel finished.”

I laid my hand on his cheek, stroking the short hairs, their resistance pleasing my skin. “I need to finish what I was saying. About Margie.”

“You don’t have to finish.” He sighed and straightened his arms, putting twelve or so inches between us. “She’s more or less got a point. I’m bad for you. And you have a point also.”

“I do?”

“I think I’ve been wrong. I think if I keep you here, trouble will find you. So, get out. Go do… I don’t know. Find your life.”

“Oh, Antonio…” I didn’t know whether to assure him that my life was with him or thank him for coming around to giving me space.

“But please, be safe. Can you do that for me? Until Paulie is calm.”

“What happened to the
stupido
and his girlfriend?” I asked.

He put his fingers on my lips. “Not now. Just tell me you’ll let Otto take you around.”