Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (40 page)

Donna Maria broke in. “We don’t discuss the women, Paulo.”

“That’s the deal, or I’m out. Theresa Drazen goes.”

“You can’t lead like this,” Donna Maria said. “You’ll end up dead.”

“Well.” Paulie fingered his phone. “So you know, it’s not just ’cause I don’t like her face. It’s because she met the district attorney at the Downtown Gate Club today for a private chat.”

I burned from the inside, as if my spine were a fuse, and my heart was a bomb; the spark coursed from my lower back upward.

“You’re lying,” I said.

“I ain’t. Got this text right here from a good source. Gerry Friedman from the mayor’s campaign.” He held up the phone for Donna Maria. She put reading glasses on and read while Paulie continued. “He wants her to fuck off, too. She’s poison. But that’s besides the point.”

I didn’t want to see his fucking phone. I didn’t think I could read a word of it through the haze of rage I was holding back. I didn’t know what she was doing with Daniel, but I wouldn’t have her tried and found guilty by that
stronzo
.

“My split’s east of Cypress Avenue,” I said. “And south of Merced.”

“What?” Paulie twisted in his seat to face me. “You can’t redraw this now.”

I looked at Donna Maria when I said, “Yes, I can.” She did not flinch. This was going her way, I realized.

“No, fuck you.” He shot up, pointing at me, looking at Donna Maria. “What’s this asshole playing at?”

Normally, the person who stands first has seized the power in a negotiation. My father taught me that, but I taught myself how to change that without getting up.

“Ask him,” Donna Maria said.

“What the f—?”

He didn’t have a chance to drop the curse before I swept his legs from under him. He lost his balance and caught himself on the edge of the desk. I swiped the crystal Virgin from the desk and hit him on the temple. Blood sprayed on Carlos’s shirt, but he didn’t move, even when Paulie went flying into the sideboard. Dishes fell, Paulie grunted, yet I didn’t hear a peep from behind me. Just our breathing and the ticking of the cuckoo clock.

“It’s all mine, you
stronzetto
. All of it.”

I pulled him up by the collar. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, but he reached and slapped me. I barely felt it. Theresa had slapped me harder.

“Come on, Paulie. This is too easy.”

I dropped him, and he caught himself on the sideboard, wobbly. I almost felt bad. He’d been a brother to me until he broke with jealousy over a woman.

“You’re a dead man,” he grunted, his hand reaching for the bloodied lighter that I’d put down. I moved it an inch farther away. He reached again.

I looked back at Donna Maria. She had her arms crossed and was leaning back in her chair as if the TV was playing a rerun. Carlos was smiling, and Aldo frowned but hadn’t moved an inch. The clock ticked as always. I turned back to Paulie, who seemed to be getting his bearings.

Paulie’s fingers touched the blood-streaked crystal Virgin. Her head had fallen off, and she was just a lower half with a butane lighter sticking out of her.

I moved it another inch farther. “How many times will I have to make you pray before you understand?”

He didn’t answer but hitched himself up. I put my weight on him, pinning him under me. Stuff rattled on the shelves. I picked up the statue and put it in his hand.

“You mention Theresa again, I’m not going to kill you,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck and pressing his artery shut. “You’re going to beg to die.”

He became dead weight in my arms, and the crystal Virgin fell out of his hand. I picked it up.

“I’ve cleaned blood off that thing twice already,” Donna Maria said.

“Third time’s the charm.” I poked a cigarette out of the pack and lit it with the Virgin Mary’s brass butane head. “He’ll come around in a few minutes.”

“I’ll deal with him,” Aldo said.

“You got other problems,” Carlo said to me. “This woman. The one he’s talking about?”

“Yes?” I suddenly didn’t want him or anyone to utter her name.

“You going to do something about it?”

“Yes, but I’m going to have to miss the cacciatore. My apologies to your daughter.”

theresa

 wasn’t in the habit of going to church anymore. It was a requirement before I turned eighteen, but once I got to college, I could beg off with studies and activities a little too easily. Once I was in my twenties, no one pretended the requirement would stick.

I still knew what to do. Stand up. Sit down. Kneel. Stand. Kneel. The standing and kneeling seemed strategically placed at the end of the mass, when legs got wobbly and the evening’s fast made attention hard to keep.

Margie stood next to me in a
contrapposto
pose, as if she were simply too impatient to be in that big stone box with its waxy smell and bleeding Jesus.

“You called me here to tell me you’re worried?” I whispered. “Why didn’t you just call me?”

“I needed to see you. And now I’m worried more.”

Margie always had a sense of when things were wrong with us. Back before I knew how to get in trouble, it amused me. She could take one look at Fiona and know when she was using, or talk to Jonathan for ten minutes to know he was having trouble with his wife. The only one she couldn’t read was Daddy. But no one could read him.

“I’m fine.”

“I heard you went to see Daniel today.”

“Jesus—”

“
Shh
.” Her hush wasn’t drawn or loud, and sounded more like
chh
than a soothing naptime sound. “Will is watching you.”

“Watching me?” The church broke into song, and we stood, the organ drowning out our words, and the voices of the crowd keeping me from hearing the pounding of my heart.

“He’s good,” she said.

“I don’t want to be watched. I’m a grown woman.”

“Too bad. We need to talk, you and I. Right after communion.”

“No.”

The woman in front of me turned around to glare, and I glared right back.

“You are in deep, playing the DA against the mob, you’re—”

“Shut up, Margie. Just shut it. I’m not talking about it with you, ever.”

“I will not sit back and watch you destroy yourself,” Margie said.

Every muscle coiled, every breath came short. I wanted to yell, to push, to fight her on everything. I wanted to say words that would cut her, about her spinsterhood, about her lost opportunities, about her authority to mother any of us.

Luckily for Margie, the woman in front made it her business to shoot us a librarian stare, and I got to funnel my anger into her.

“Turn around and mind your business,” I said.

Margie looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, and maybe I had.

I didn’t smell burned pine when he stepped next to me, probably because of the weight of the incense. Nor did I feel his closeness, probably because the nave was packed, but when he put his hand on my arm, and I felt the lightning of his touch, I knew it was him.

“Contessa,” he whispered.

I looked up at him. Gorgeous thing in his jacket and shirt, hands gripping the pew in front, all squared-off knuckles and throbbing veins. Those hands needed to be on my thighs, clawing my back. Even in church, I had ungodly thoughts.

The hymn ended, and everyone sat in a rustle and clatter.

“She’s worshiping, for Chrissakes,” Margie said.

“Good,” Antonio said, snapping up a bulletin. “So am I.”

He knew the words, as did I, and we recited the responsives until Margie seemed distracted.

“I have to talk to you,” he said.

“OK.” I pushed against him, feeling him next to me, his solidness against my tipping form, rocking with the music as if the rising phrases of the hymn made him denser and made me more viscous.

“Were you at the DA’s office today?”

I went cold. My skin curled in on itself, and the backs of my thighs tingled with an adrenaline rush. The music sounded as if it were being sung through a funnel.

“Not the office. I saw him at a club.”

We faced each other, standing in church with our hymnals open. “Was this an accident?”

“It wasn’t what you think.”

“What do I think?” he asked.

“You think I want him, I—”

He took my hand and pulled me out of the pew. Margie looked more irritated than frightened, and I shot her a smile to keep up the ruse but then yanked back for half a second long enough to say to my sister, “Never. And stop asking.”

But I admitted to myself, as he pulled me out to the vestibule and down the marble stairs, I was afraid. I didn’t think he’d hurt my body, at least not in a way I wasn’t begging for. He could, however, hurt me with his anger, his disappointment. And though I hadn’t given the trip to see Daniel a second of thought, I probably should have.

“Listen!” I yanked back at his hand at the bottom of the stairs, but he yanked me and swung me through a doorway.

The choir dressing room was ancient with wooden lockers built in the Depression. So, when he slammed me against them, there wasn’t a clatter of sheet metal, but a
thunk
as my body rattled.

Antonio grabbed me by the wrists, locking them together in two fingers and holding them over my head.

“You think I’m worried about him?” He put his finger to my face. “I spend not one minute of my life thinking about that man with you. He’s not even a man. He’s not worthy of you. He’s one of a thousand rats on the bottom of a sinking ship.”

“Then what’s the problem?” My question came out in a gasp because my body gravitated toward him, arching to press against him, just as he arched in the opposite curve to keep his face close to mine.

“Why did you see him?” I could have kissed him, but I moved my head against the locker door, turning my face toward the arched lead-glass window. I wanted him, not in spite of his anger but because of it.

“He went to Katrina. His team grilled her, and I don’t like it.”

“What did they grill her about?”

He knew damn well, but he wasn’t going to assume. I noticed that about him. He never assumed anything or jumped to a conclusion.

“You,” I whispered.

“Me.”

“You.”

“And you told him what?” he said.

“To stop. To leave you alone. That if he didn’t, I had enough on him to make his life a living hell.”

“Do you think you maybe should talk to me first, before you do crazy shit?”

“No.” I twisted and pulled my hands down. He let them go but increased his weight on me, pushing me against the lockers. “You barely let me out of an apartment that’s not even mine. I highly doubt you’d let me see Daniel.”

“Because it’s stupid and dangerous.”

“It’s what I have to give. And it’s useful to you. And go to hell if you don’t like it. I will never, ever sit still while he’s after you.”

“I’m already going to hell.
Grazie
.”

I pushed him away, and he grabbed my jaw, holding me still while he put his nose next to mine and spoke into my mouth. “You’re a loaded gun. Do you see that? You’re from a different world, but you smell like home to me. I haven’t been to Napoli in ten years, but whenever you’re near me, I smell olive flowers. My heart gets sick with thirst, but the water is poison.”

“Antonio—”

“I’m drowning, Contessa.”

“What are you talking about?”

His face got tight, holding back a flood of emotion. His fingers pressed harder on my face until I took hold of his wrist, pulling it down. He let go.

“Talk to me,” I said. “Just tell me.”

He looked confused for a second. Overwhelmed. Then, as if the dam had burst, he wrapped his arms around me and put his mouth to mine. It happened so quickly that I didn’t kiss him back at first. I couldn’t breathe; he held me so tight, but I got my arms around him and my mouth open, pulling him close, pushing as much of myself as I could into whatever part of him was within my reach. Thighs, hips, hands, shoulders, lips bashing lips, tongues forceful on tongues. It wasn’t even a kiss, or at least, not like one I’d ever had before. It was a slap, a punch, the use of force, a coercion of two worlds into uncomfortable cohesion.

The kiss never got soft and only ended when he jerked himself away.

“Talk to me,” I said in a breath.

“The thing I want most is the only thing between me and getting it. You are everything that will destroy me. I should go back to who I was. But you made me dream I could be free, when I’d forgotten I was in prison.”

“Is this about you being honest? Is it about me seeing Daniel? Antonio. If I hurt you, just tell me how. Let me make it right. Let me help you get out.”

He caressed my face with both palms with a tenderness that shouldn’t have been able to contain such intensity.

“Sweet olive blossoms,” he said. “That was God’s message to me.” He stepped away, and the space between us became a sigh. He held his hand. “The only way out is through.”

antonio

 wanted to kill her. I wanted to worship her. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to fill her so deeply she broke from the pain, screaming my name.