Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (70 page)

He is taken.

He has a son.

He will never be happy with you.

He made a promise
.

There was more, some more hurtful than others. Some had a comma and the phrase “and you love him,” following, as if to drive home the point that not only was all this true, all this mattered. In the bathroom, I stabbed myself with those phrases and tried to wash them from me in the shower.

I knew he loved me. There was simply no question. I’d never been loved the way he loved me. With him, I felt important and whole. Without him, I was a piece of a person.

How pathetic. How old world.

“I’m ruined,” I repeated with my back to the door, not to sound pitiable but to shine another light on it. He’d ruined me with his love, branded me with an outmoded way of loving that I wanted more than anything in the world.

“No.” He laid a hand on each side of my head and stretched his arms, looking at the floor between his feet. “I’m the one who’s ruined. I was left a widower of a wife I loved, and I fell in love again. I can’t leave the wife; we have a child together. And I can’t leave the woman I love. I can’t be with either.”

“You can go back to her. It’s best for your family.”

“No. I cannot.”

“Why not? Because you feel sorry for me? That’s just—”

“No!” He spoke so sharply I jumped. “No one should feel sorry for you. I pity the man who feels sorry for you. Do you feel sorry for a starving tiger today? Or the animal she rips apart tomorrow?” He stood straight and sliced the air with his hands. “No. You can’t get rid of me so easily. I’m not turning my back on you. You’re mine. You’ll always be mine. We live together, or we die together. There is nothing in between.”

I shook my head, pressing my lips together as if tightening them against the words that wanted to come.

“There isn’t a good end to this,” I said.

“It’s decided.”

He was out of his mind, but I didn’t know how to talk him back to reality. We didn’t both have to be miserable. A measure of happiness could be meted out if he’d just accept that he couldn’t, and shouldn’t, have me.

But he seemed determined to let me drag him down. Then fine, he’d have his damned way. I’d be present at his side, and I’d protect him from harm, but no more.

“There is no sex,” I said. “No kissing. No touching. I do not have affairs with married men, and I don’t play second fiddle. We’re partners. Business partners. Which means if you’re up shit’s creek with the Sicilians, I am too. It means however we decide to remedy that, I’m right there with you. You can’t put me in a box and lock it until it’s safe for me to come out. That’s not what this is.”

“Nothing will happen to you,” he said, softening.

“Well then”—I put my hands on my hips, feeling taller and more powerful than I had even ten minutes before—“nothing will happen to you either.”

His lips were on me so fast, I didn’t have a second to turn away. He smelled so right, and the arches of his body on mine were such a tight fit, I forgot they were a wrong answer brought on by a flawed assumption.

I pushed him away. “I mean it. Do not test me. The next time, I bite. Your tongue will go back in your mouth a bloody piece of meat.”

He smirked, the asshole, and slinked closer without touching me. “I’ll die before I kiss you again.”

In contrast to my voice, his was silken, as if he was saying the exact opposite, that he would kiss me. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but he would kiss me.

My heart sank right into that thought. I wanted that kiss. Wanted it ready to be given when I was ready to take it. I turned my face a quarter of an inch, just enough to feel the heat of his cheek on my own.

Did it matter? Since we were doomed anyway, did it matter if I kissed him or not? Logic cut both ways. If I couldn’t see further than the length of my arms, what was the difference? I had no future with him and no future without him. No future. What had I sold myself for? For this? A guy with a wife? Of all the ridiculous, irritating, miserable, shitty choices in men.

“You know what?” I said. “Go to hell. You’re a piece of shit. And that’s not foreplay. I hate this. I hate everything about it. I hate feeling committed to you, because everything about it is wrong. I hate loving you. I hate myself for standing here right now, wanting you to fuck me.” I felt the muscles of his face change. He was smiling. I pushed him back. “That was not an invitation. I hate you for turning me into your side piece, and I don’t care if you meant it or not. I don’t care if you knew. You know what I care about? The damned facts. You made me a mistress, and I made myself a whore for loving you. And shut the hell up. Don’t defend yourself or what’s happening here. I’m mad, and I’m staying that way.”

I took the doorknob in both hands and shook the door. It was wedged shut by something on the other side. I punched it, which was the very definition of ineffective, and it hurt my hand. I pressed my face against the painted wood.

“Theresa,” Antonio whispered, putting his hand on my shoulder.

I leaned into it, because I was soothed wherever we connected. “Don’t touch me.”

“Get away from the door then.”

He dropped his hands, and I stepped back onto the upside-down bath mat.

Antonio kicked the doorknob once then again. It bent. One more kick, and it hung by half a screw. On the other side, something
thupped
to the carpet. He opened the door.

I walked through the bedroom and swept up his phone, wielding it like a sword. “I’m using this.”

“To do what?”

“To call my sister.”

His shirttail hung in fangs at his thighs. Hair stuck up in a sexy disaster. Pant cuffs an ombre of dirt. I’d never seen him look so helpless. I wanted to hug him and tell him everything would be all right.

“Get out,” I said.

He stood stock still. I didn’t know what to expect. He’d drag me to my knees and put his cock in my mouth, or he’d leave me alone. I half wished he’d take control of my body, force me to bend to him, so I didn’t have to be responsible for choosing him.

He spun and strode out of the bedroom, snapping the door closed behind him.

theresa

he closet was dark as sin and hot as hell. I’d been there an hour and had just gotten through to Margie five minutes before.

“He needs a heart,” Margie said. “That’s all there is to it. He’s got a shredded valve, and there’s not enough blood in the world to make up for the leaking.”

“We’re really going to lose him.” I huddled in the corner. My eyes had gotten used to the light from under the door. Two wire hangers hung above me, and under me were dust bunnies and nylon carpet.

“Change the subject,” Margie said. “I can’t talk about this anymore. It’s making me want to punch someone.” She entered a crowded space. I heard voices and a whoosh of white noise. “You’re alive. That’s the good news. Everyone’s happy, but you ducked out without saying a word, and they’re scared you’re going to do something stupid. Or disappear again. Or die like you mean it.”

“I want to.” That was the wrong thing to say. I was heartbroken, but Margie was on the front lines of real tragedy. “Not really,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry, I’m being—”

“Please. Be dramatic. Talk about small things that seem big. Is he getting a divorce or what?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, hugging my bare knees. “He can get an annulment.”

“And make his kid a bastard? Sure. Good thinking.”

“Maybe she’ll divorce him?”

“She waited for him a long time,” Margie said.

“I’ll talk to her. I’ll explain that he’s different. Maybe I can convince her to leave him, because he won’t do it. Out of guilt or shame or some kind of feeling of responsibility.” I was grasping for control, looking for something I could do, some action I could take to bring his body and soul back to me. “Maybe she’ll tell him to fuck off if she knows he loves me. If I tell her.”

“Mom wants to talk to you.”

“Can I not?”

But she never answered.

“Theresa?” That voice. So flat and patrician. Jonathan called it
haute voix
.

“Mom.”

She didn’t say anything, but she sounded wet. I heard a half a breath and a ladylike sniff. Mom didn’t cry, so she tried to hide her hitched breaths and clear the mucous out of her throat with a rattle instead of a snuffle. I’d never heard much emotion from her, but what I was barely hearing was a soft sob from most people. For my mother, it was blubbering.

I could have been mistaken, confusing tears with allergies, until she spoke through lungs that wouldn’t stay still and a nose full of snot.

“I thought I was losing two in one day.”

“I’m sorry, I… we had to disappear,” I said.

“You didn’t see us on the way out today, and I was scared you were leaving again. Theresa, my baby. Don’t… please don’t do this.”

“Do what, Mom? I’m back. I’m here.”

“I wanted you. Did you know? You and your brother surprised me, but you were my special gifts.” She broke down into sniffles and hics.

I was frozen. I didn’t know how to react. I’d never heard this sappy story of her feelings about her last two children. “Mom…”

“And I’m losing the two of you.”

I touched my St. Christopher medal to protect against hating myself for what I’d done. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Why did I say that? Would I have to stick to it? Was I cursing any chance I had of working things out with Antonio? I wasn’t ready to make that bargain. Not yet. Other deals with the universe were still pending, but this was no time to take it back.

“Where are you?” said a voice that wasn’t Mom’s. The new voice was bent with rage at the same time it was lilting like a singsong meant for a child’s ears. Only my sister Sheila could do that.

I opened my mouth to tell her then realized I didn’t really know.

“Where are you?” Sheila growled and sang.

On a closet floor, feeling like an ass for getting upset over a man when my whole family is falling apart.
“I’m fine,” was the only lie I could articulate.

“Oh, bully for you. Really? Did you do this on purpose?”

“Do what?”

“Fall off the face of the earth? Let us all think you were dead?” Her phrases made hairpin turns around razorblades.

I wanted to tell the truth, spill everything. I was sure I’d get lacerated on a lie. “Sheila, I can’t answer that.”

“Oh, for the love of fuck, how could you? How could you do that to people who love you?”

She said everything I’d feared hearing when I came back, but I thought it would come from Margie or Mom. Instead it was Sheila, who had always had too many children to focus on me.

“I’m sorry to inconvenience you,” I said. “I’ve been a piece of furniture in this family my whole life. I haven’t asked any of you for a thing, and I promise you, I never will.”

It was the perfect time to hang up, but I couldn’t. I’d done enough walking away.

“Don’t pull that,” she growled. No one got away with anything as far as Sheila was concerned. “Any one of us would have jumped in front of a bullet for you.”

I was a pathetic woman crouched in a dark closet, but when she said that, and I heard the love behind her anger, I felt worthy in a way I hadn’t ever before.

“Maybe I didn’t want you to,” I said. “And I promise you the whole situation is more complicated than I can explain over the phone.”

“I’m so pissed off, I can’t even swallow.” But she wasn’t. She’d said her piece, and she was on her way down from her rage high.

“Well, get used to it. I’m not a piece of furniture anymore.”

“You were always the one we could count on to not change.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Not for that. The other stuff, yeah. I’m still mad. When are you coming?”

“Soon,” I said, lying again. It was possible I could be with my family some time before my brother’s funeral, but my own funeral was the likeliest event.

“I’m going to corner you, and you’re going to talk to me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Good.” She seemed fully calmed. “I have to go.”

She hung up. I dropped the phone as if it had turned into lead.

I stayed in the dark, hunched over and paralyzed with conflicting emotions. The shower turned on. I waited for Antonio to finish. Then waited a few minutes more before I couldn’t wait another second. I opened the door and padded into the living room. The kitchen island separated the two rooms, and Antonio stood under the island lamps, hair still wet, cigarette dangling from his lips, with the guts of his gun all over the counter. He clicked pieces together,
snap clap snap
.

His hands stopped moving when he saw me. I’d seen him magnificently tired, exhaustion making him look more feral and beautiful, but in that cone of light, he looked as if he’d been unzipped and emptied.

“Hi,” I said.

“
Buona sera
.” He slapped the last piece into the pistol. “I’ve been trying to find the right words to tell you. I keep choosing then unchoosing.”

I’m a wreck, everything is fucked up, I love you, I can’t have you. You could get shot any minute, my brother is dying, and I can’t see him. I feel like a half-played game of Jenga. Pieces of me keep getting pulled away and added to the load.