Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (39 page)

“Jesus, Tink.” He was barely breathing.

“You’re hard.”

He reached for my breast, and I caught him at the wrist and pinned it to the back of the couch.

“If you knew me, you’d respect me. If you respected me, you wouldn’t threaten my family. And you wouldn’t even breathe my lover’s name.”

He deflated, though his dick was still rigid under his trousers. I stood straight.

“Since we’re doing threats, let’s talk about the illegal campaign contributions, the filthy texts. There’s enough borderline stuff I know about you to sink your career. But if you fuck with me, it’s going to be my civic duty to tell the
LA Times
about how I helped you with your struggles with overseas taxation.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Fuck with me,” I said. “Please. I want you to. I want to shed a tear, telling the
Times
about how we opened accounts for the express purpose of your tax efficiency two weeks before you lobbied to pass laws against them.”

I crossed my arms and set my mouth. We stared at each other.

“This sounds like an impasse,” he said.

“Then we understand each other.”

I backed up and reached for the knob. Quicker than I would have thought possible with that rod of an erection, he got up and put his hand over mine. “How is he going to react to you being here? Is he going to be able to hold himself together long enough for you to win his war for him?”

“You’re implying I’m being used?” I asked.

“Implying?”

“Dan, you don’t know the half of it. And it’s not my responsibility to tell you anything.” I pushed my bag farther up my shoulder and faced the door, putting my fingers on the seam at the jamb. “But I will tell you this: he is genuine. Maybe not in the ways you care about, but I’ve never been loved the way he loves me. He loves me recklessly, to the misuse of everything else in his life. What kind of woman would I be if I let him get careless for me?”

“He’s playing you.”

“He’s not. I’ve been used before, and it didn’t feel anything like this.” I stole a glance up at him. I’d hit him just where I wanted to.

A soft knock came through the wood of the door. I looked through the frosted glass to the light-grey shadow of Gerry.

“We’re on,” Gerry said.

Daniel opened the door.

I said a few hellos to the people I’d known in my past life as they filed into the conference room, and I walked out unscathed.

antonio

 could smell the rabbit cacciatore from the yard, where I swirled a jelly glass of sweet wine and walked along the rows of hutches. A slinky mink nibbled on the wire of her cage, and I leaned down to stroke her nose. Paulie was due in fifteen minutes. We’d make a cautious peace. He’d marry Donna Maria’s granddaughter and run an empire. And then?

Then, I’d make the impossible happen. I’d get out. It had to be done. Even if I got out of Los Angeles to avoid Paulie, I’d be expected to continue in the life, and Theresa would never fit. The only option was to secretly unwind everything in my life and live the rest of it out with her. I didn’t know when or exactly how. I didn’t know if it would be done during peace or war. But I knew it would be done. Then my Contessa could be released from the cage I had to put her in.

Far in the front of the property, I heard a car engine get louder then stop. It was Paulie, undoubtedly. I didn’t react to knowing he was there, close enough to shoot at me again.

Fabric rustled behind me, and I turned. “Hello,” I said to the girl before me. Her mane of dark curls contrasted with her white shirt. She had Donna Maria’s brown eyes, without the hardness.

“Hi. Grandma said I should come and see if you wanted anything.”

“Anything?”

She shrugged and smiled. “Sure.”

I handed her the empty jelly glass and spoke to her in Italian. “You’re from Sicily?”

“
Si
.” She took the glass. “I mean, no. I was born here, but I’ve lived there since I was six.”

“And you’re how old now?”

“Twenty.”

She looked about that, with her lips parted in a smile and skin so smooth she looked like a painting. She looked as if she’d never cried a day in her life. She reminded me of Valentina, my wife, and I was blindsided by the memory. She had been one of the truly beautiful things in my life, before I became everything my mother tried to stop me from being.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Irene.”

“I’m Antonio.”

“I know. Grandma said.”

“What else did she say?”

She smiled and looked away then looked up and swung her hand out, speaking English in a thick Italian accent. “‘Go find the man outside and get him something. Stand up straight. He is Antonio Spinelli, a prince. Treat him like one.’ Then she threw me out.”

“I’m no prince.”

“
Camorrista
from a long line? Kind of prince-like.”

“A bastard son.”

“Or just a bastard?” She kicked a hip out and shot me half a smile.

“For such an innocent-looking girl,” I said, “You flirt shamelessly.”

“At home, I don’t get to. My mother won’t let me look a man in the eye. Here, it’s expected. I kind of like it.” She looked me in the eye and waggled her brows. She was cute. We walked back to the house slowly, hands in pockets.

“What you’re doing is very dangerous,” I said. “If you pick up bad habits here, the boys back home will start talking. Then they’ll start doing. It’s not flirting anymore after that.”

“You sound like my father.” She flashed a pout worthy of a 1940s Hollywood drama.

“He’s a wise man.”

“All business.” She waved me away. “Cigarettes and gasoline. But he won’t let me smoke or drive.”

I laughed. Poor kid. Then I realized she’d told me her father’s businesses, and thus, her lineage.

“You’re Calogero Carloni’s daughter?”

“Yep. The Princess of Sciacca! I want to die. Jesus.”

“Hey, watch your mouth.”

She puckered it in response.

“Why did you come here?” I asked. “To Los Angeles. College?”

She laughed. “You don’t know?” I stopped and she stopped with me. We faced each other. “There’s a wedding in a few weeks. I’m expected. So are you, I’d think.”

“I never miss a wedding if I can help it.”

“I got a light-blue dress,” she said. “What color are you wearing?”

“Haven’t given it much thought.”

She shrugged and turned on her heel. I noticed her feet were bare. “Someone else was here for you. Should I bring the wine to the dining room?”

“Please.”

She went ahead of me, her hips flirting with me while her face was turned away.

I walked back to the house. As if a box had opened and giggles came out, it was suddenly populated with children. Three ran past, screaming and bumping, none taller than waist high. They joked in pidgin Italian from deep in the south of the boot and colored with Anglicisms. I swore I heard one say, “Dude,” before rattling off a series of baseball stats.

“Don’t shoot.”

I heard Paulie’s voice but didn’t need to look around. “You’d be dead if I wanted you dead.”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t expect an apology.”

“I don’t owe you one.”

Donna Maria shuffled in from the dining room. “You two quit it.”

She slid open a big wooden pocket door, revealing a small study with heavy chairs and dark fabrics. A deeply masculine room, it looked inherited directly from her late husband.

Paulie went in first. Two men were at either side of the window. They had risen to their feet when the door had opened. One was Skinny Carlo; the other was a clean-cut gentleman in a full suit, about forty years old. I didn’t recognize him.

“Carlo,” I said as Paulie sat.

“Spin,” said Carlo.

I turned to the man I didn’t know. “Antonio.”

He didn’t say anything. The cuckoo clock over his head ticked loudly. I could hear the gears grinding.

Donna Maria shuffled in. “Don’t mind him.”

“I’ll forget to mind him when I know who he is.”

“He’s from the old country.”

“Mine or yours?”

She laughed to herself. A clear, crystal Virgin lighter, about the size of an eggplant, wobbled when she sat behind her desk. It had a brass metal head that flipped up to reveal the flint. These things made better paperweights than lighters, but that didn’t stop old Italian ladies from buying them. I’d seen about a hundred of the monstrosities in my life.

“There’s only one, but if you have to know…” She waved her hand at the stranger.

“Aldo,” said the man. “From Portici. I’m sent to make sure this runs smooth. So we don’t have any trouble with our friends from the south.” He spoke in an Italian I knew well, the spiraling tones of my hometown clicking together like gears.

“I don’t need to be watched.”

“He ain’t watching you.” Donna Maria sat back in her chair, her body filling in the worn spots in the leather. “He’s watching me. Ain’t you, Aldo?”

Aldo didn’t answer.

“All right. Let’s get down to it,” she said. “This thing with you two, it’s bad for business. Not just your business, but mine, because if I gotta get into it with you to keep the peace—”

“It wouldn’t be a peace,” Paulie interjected.

“You can put it back in your pants. As an interested third party, I’m just here to make sure all’s fair and send you two on your way. I don’t need to tell you that what’s done in here is done. What’s agreed is law. What is said is true under God and the Holy Virgin. Yes?”

I made the sign of the cross. Paulie and the two men sitting behind Donna Maria did the same, even though it wasn’t their job to agree, it was their job to listen.

“
Bene
,” Donna Maria said, fingering a piece of paper. “We got a nice chunk of territory east of the river and north of Arroyo Seco. Biggest hunk of camorra territory in the country. You guys got tobacco, real estate, protection, and something happening with a garment factory on Marmion. Good job, that. No tributes to pay, either. Nice to be Neapolitan.”

Paulie snickered. I lit a cigarette with my own lighter. She didn’t know all of what we had, but she didn’t have to. She only had to know that within our territory, she could push all the drugs she needed without interference, and though she didn’t officially run prostitution, she managed to squeeze cash out of a few pimps working in the soot of the 110. We split the local councils and brokered the bigger politicians individually. When shit broke out with the gangs, we negotiated the area as a solid block. It was a good system, and I was invested in keeping it intact. We loved peace. Peace was profitable.

“I have a proposal,” I said. “Geographic. Split at the railroad tracks. I take east.”

“You take west,” said Paulie.

“The shop is mine. What’s left of it.”

“Split along the foothills through Avenue 37,” offered Donna Maria.

“That cuts the commercial district by half a mile,” Paulie said. “Do this. He gets three blocks at the edge of the foothills, and I get the outer ring up to the river and the arroyo”

“Fine,” I said. That gave me the garment factory and the shop. That was all I needed in the end. He could have the commercial sector if he thought he could make any money off it.

“When he bails on us, I get his stake,” Paulie said.

“What?” I said.

“
Eh
?” Donna Maria said.

Oh, that son of a whore was going to try and corner me. I should have shot him when I had the chance.

“See how easy this was?” Paulie continues, holding his hands out to indicate the room, the people, the agreement. “I would say, normally, he’s just going to grease me first chance he gets, but he woulda done that yesterday if he coulda.” He turned to me. “I ain’t afraid of you. I’m a made man. If you take me out, you’re gonna lose your dick. So I been trying to figure what you’re doing. Sat up all night, thinking. Tick tock, all night, listening to that clock, and it wasn’t till the sun came up that I realized. You’re getting your shit in order. You want out of the life.”

There was a dead silence that was filled with the ticking of the cuckoo clock and the laughter of the children outside.

Donna Maria laid her gaze on me. I didn’t have to answer the charge, serious as it was. I didn’t have to entertain the challenge or defend myself. I could leave it hanging with a laugh and a wave of my hand. But with Donna Maria looking at me, and the ticking over Aldo’s head, I knew I had to counter the charge.

“Let me tell you something. My great-great-grandfather carried a
carabina
for Liborio Romano when the
Atto Sovrano
was nailed to a tree. And not a generation has passed without an olive tree being planted for us. Not one grows that my grandfather didn’t oversee the pricing, and my father, even now, fixes the price of every kilo. My family is in the orchards, from the roots to the leaves, and you think I can run away from that? The blood beating in me is Napoli. It’s this life. I’m
camorrista
, blood and bone. And do not ever, ever bring anything like that up again. It’s an offense to my father and my father’s father.”

A heavy silence followed. Even the children were quiet. Only the clock went on and on.

Paulie leaned on the arm of his chair and stroked his chin with his finger. I know I betrayed nothing, but he was a little too confident. “I know who you are. And there’s another piece of this deal. You drop the
inamorata
.”